to sell to all sorts of stores in Bolivia. He made the trip five times in succession in five years, taking nine months for the journey. He traveled about two thousand miles on mule back on each journey and about two hundred and fifty miles by stagecoach. Bolivia at that time had the reputation of hav- ing the largest consumption per head of conserved food of all countries in the world. He took wines, liquors, teas, flour, candles, and the like. In the best year he handled merchandise having a total value of £35,000. He went from Calama to Uyuni at the southern end of the Bolivian plateau, thence to Tupiza, Tarija, Camargo, Potosi, Sucre, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Villa Bella, back to Cochabamba, Oruro, La Paz. From Oruro to La Paz he traveled by coach, the mules being sent to Corocoro to wait for him. From La Paz he went to Corocoro by coach and to Sorata by pack train. At Sorata he sold his mules for use in the rubber country, and all merchandise that he could gather was likewise sent down the Tipuani trail for Mapiri on the Mapiri River, a tributary of the Beni. From Sorata he went to Guaqui at the eastern end of Lake Titicaca on mule back, the mules having been sold at Sorata on condition that they should take him to Guaqui. Thence he went to Puno, across Lake Titicaca by steamer, from Puno to Mollendo by rail, and at Mollendo he took the steamer to Caldera, thence by rail to his home in Copiapé. George Earl Church, writing in 1877 and describing the cart roads of the high plateau of Bolivia and the absence of rail transportation, spoke of a country beyond the reach of a rail- way as being in a state of “territorial imprisonment.” He gave[1] a “list of freights” from Cobija on the coast of Chile to Potosi and enumerated the difficulties and uncertainties both as to passage and cost owing to the irregular and deadly com- petition of mines, such, for cxample, as Caracoles, 40 miles in- land from Cobija (compare p. 172). A similar list is given for the cost of unloading and transporting goods from Arica to Tacna, thence to Cochabamba and other plateau towns.
- ↑ G. E. Church: The Route to Bolivia via the River Amazon: A Report to the Governments of Bolivia and Brazil, London, 1877.
