Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
EDGAR P. RATHBONE, of London. In the year 1882, while on a visit to some of the great silver mines in Bolivia, an opportunity was afforded the writer of inspecting a new and successful process for the treatment of silver ores, the invention of Herr Francke, a German gentleman long resident in Bolivia, whose acquaintance the writer had also the pleasure of making.
In Bolivia are found the Bolivian violet-ear, Warren's wood-star, and many others; but we must bring our description of the humming-birds of this region to a conclusion. Full of animal life as are the forests of South America, the number of species of what are generally called wild beasts is remarkably small.
Then followed Colombia and Ecuador on the west; and, successively, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, ending at last in the south with Patagonia, a cold arid land, bleak and desolate. I marked the littoral cities as we progressed on that side, where earth ends and the Pacific Ocean begins, and infinitude.
In an eddy in the seething crowd was a placid-faced Aymara, bedecked in the most tawdry manner with gewgaws from Birmingham or Manchester, sedately playing a melancholy tune on a rustic syrinx or Pan's pipe, charmingly made from little tubes of bamboo from eastern Bolivia. At the close of the festival, on a Sunday afternoon, the costumes disappear and there occurs a bull-baiting.
Since the days when Pizarro's adventurers discovered the hitherto undreamed-of splendor of the Inca Dynasty, Bolivia has been a land of surprises and romantic discovery. Strange to say, even yet much of the eastern portion of this great republic remains practically unexplored.
So loose is the soil, that even the patient mule with a burden on his back can hardly make his way across it. Between the western end of this table-land and the Andes of Bolivia is a wide plain from one thousand to fifteen hundred feet in height, with here and there a few hills rising above it.
To-day lines of well-found steamboats, which correspond direct with Liverpool, are plying on the river from its mouth up to Manaos; others ascend to Iquitos; others by way of the Tapajoz, the Madeira, the Rio Negro, or the Purus, make their way into the center of Peru and Bolivia.
An earnest and cordial friendship continues to exist between the two countries, and such efforts as were in my power have been used to remove misunderstanding and avert a threatened war between Peru and Spain. Our relations are of the most friendly nature with Chile, the Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Paraguay, San Salvador, and Hayti.
One of them, Gomez, had the further advantage that he could speak excellent English. These men were willing to act as our personal servants, to cook, to row, or to make themselves useful in any way at a payment of fifteen dollars a month. Besides these, we had engaged three Mojo Indians from Bolivia, who are the most skilful at fishing and boat work of all the river tribes.
The contest between Bolivia, Chile, and Peru has passed from the stage of strategic hostilities to that of negotiation, in which the counsels of this Government have been exercised.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking