nterests.

Bolivians have shown great enterprise in building railways in all
directions in order properly to develop their enormously wealthy country.
Many important lines are in construction; others are projected--of which,
perhaps, the most interesting will be the one from Santa Cruz to Corumba
on the Brazilian boundary.

The day will come when the port of Arica on the Pacific Ocean will be
joined to Oruro, on the Antofagasta line, the well-known junction in
Bolivia, and eventually to Santa Cruz. The present plan is to build a
line from the already existing railway at Cochabamba to Porto Velarde on
the Rio Grande (Rio Mamore), then to Santa Cruz. The Brazilians on their
side will eventually connect Sao Paulo with Cuyaba and Corumba. It will
then be possible to travel by rail right across the South American
continent in its richest part.

There is also a project of connecting Santa Cruz with Embarcacion and
Campo Santo, in the Argentine Republic, and eventually with the
Trans-Andine Railway.

Other smaller lines projected are those between Potosi and Sucre, and one
from the Chilian boundary at La Quiada to Tarija. That system of railways
will greatly develop the entire southern portion of Bolivia. A small
railway is also proposed in the most northern part of the Republic,
between Riberalta on the River Madre de Dios and Guajara Merim on the
Madeira-Mamore railway, a district of immense wealth for the production
of rubber.

The exact elevation of La Paz by hypsometrical apparatus was 12,129 ft.

I left La Paz on February 21st, and travelled through flat, alluvial,
uninteresting country--only a huge flock of llamas or vicunas enlivening
the landscape here and there, or a group of Indians in their picturesque
costumes. The women, with their green, violet or red shawls and
much-pleated short skirts, generally blue, afforded particularly gay
patches of colour.

I saw a beautiful effect of mirage near the lake in the vicinity of
Oruro, as I was on the railway to Antofagasta. We were going through flat
country most of the time. It had all the appearance of having once been a
lake bottom. Perhaps that great Titicaca Lake formerly extended as far
south as Lake Poopo, which is connected with Lake Titicaca by the River
Desaguadero. In fact, if I am not far wrong, the two lakes formed part,
in days gone by, of one single immense lake. The mountains on our right
as we went southwards towards Oruro showed evidence that the l