named Page, who speedily organized a plan for working the mines by means of the wild tribes of Indians, who were almost the sole inhabitants of that lofty region; but the difficulty of feeding so large a body of workmen as was required was very great. The only vegetable produce of the district was a species of red potato and a few edible plants; though to the east of the great lake at Copacasana, and in the valley of Bolivia, were cultivated maize, barley, and fruit-bearing trees. No vessels, however, existed on the lake except canoes, which did not venture to cross its stormy waters, and to reach these sources of food-supplies by land in a rugged country without roads, was scarcely practicable. At a short distance from Tipuani were other productive mines belonging to General O'Brien and an Englishman named Begg, and to these gentlemen Mr. Page suggested the idea of jointly constructing a vessel for the navigation of the lake.
The project was a difficult one. The lake was actually situate at eighteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, and neither shipwrights nor appliances for shipbuilding could be obtained in those parts; but Mr. Page determined to overcome these obstacles. Having returned again to Arica on the sea-coast, he purchased in that port an old brig stripped of her anchors, sails, and rigging, and he succeeded, with extreme difficulty, in conveying the hull to the Apolambo, a river whose waters fall into the Lake of Chiquito. Thither he also brought some ordinary carpenters, who built a rude kind of stocks, and, after two years of almost unceasing labour, they succeeded in launching their vessel on the lake, thus opening a regular com-
