This Food God Gave Him, And He Thankfully Invited Me To Share
It.
I rejoice in being able to say that he afterwards became rich,
and had his favorite saying, "Dios no me olvidae" (God will not
forget me), abundantly verified.
Notwithstanding natural drawbacks, which every country has, Argentina
can claim to have gone forward as no other country has during the
last ten years. There are many estates worth more than a million
dollars. Dr. W. A. Hirot, in "Argentina," says: "Argentina has more
live stock than any other country of the world. Ten million hides
have been exported in one year, and it is not improbable that there
are more cattle in South America than there are in all the rest of
the world combined." Belgium has 220 people occupying the space one
person has in Argentina, so who can prophesy as to its future?
PART II.
BOLIVIA
[Illustration]
Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing
else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets
blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
- Robert W. Service.
BOLIVIA
Bolivia, having no sea-coast, has been termed the Hermit Republic of
South America. Its territory is over 600,000 square miles in extent,
and within its bounds Nature displays almost every possible panorama,
and all climates. There are burning plains, the home of the emu,
armadillos, and ants; sandy deserts, where the wind drifts the sand
like snow, piling it up in ever-shifting hills about thirty feet in
height. Bolivia, shut in geographically and politically, is a world
in itself - a world of variety, in scenery, climate, products and
people. Its capital city, La Paz, has a population of 70,000, but the
vast interior is almost uninhabited. In the number of inhabitants to
the square mile, Bolivia ranks the lowest of all the nations of the
earth.
Perhaps no country of the world has been, and is, so rich in precious
metals as Bolivia. "The mines of Potosi alone have furnished the
world over $1,500,000,000 worth of silver since the Spaniards first
took possession of them." [Footnote: "Protestant Missions in South
America."]
Bolivia can lay claim to the most wonderful body of water in the
world - Lake Titicaca. This lake, nearly two and a half miles high in
the air, is literally in the clouds. "Its lonely waters have no
outlet to the sea, but are guarded on their southern shores by
gigantic ruins of a prehistoric empire - palaces, temples, and
fortresses - silent, mysterious monuments of a long-lost golden age."
Some of the largest and most remarkable ruins of the world are found
on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and as this was the centre of the
great Incan Dynasty, that remarkable people have also left wonderful
remains, to build which stones thirty-eight feet long, eighteen feet
wide, and six feet thick, were quarried, carried and elevated. The
Temple of the Sun. the most sacred edifice of the Incas, was one of
the richest buildings the sun has ever shone upon, and it was itself
a mine of wealth. From this one temple, Pizarro, the Spanish
conqueror, took 24,000 pounds of gold and 82,000 pounds of silver.
"Ninety million dollars' worth of precious metals was torn from Inca
temples alone." The old monarch of the country, Atahuallpa, gave
Pizarro twenty-two million dollars in gold to buy back his country
and his liberty from the Spaniards, but their first act on receiving
the vast ransom was to march him after a crucifix at the head of a
procession, and, because he refused to become a Roman Catholic, put
him to death. Perhaps never in the world's history was there a baser
act of perfidy, but this was urged by the soldier-priest of the
conquerors, Father Valverde, who himself signed the King's death-
warrant. This priest was afterwards made Bishop of Atahuallpa's
capital.
Surely no country of the world has had a darker or a sadder history
than this land of the Incas. The Spaniards arrived when the "Children
of the Sun" were at the height of their prosperity. "The affair of
reducing the country was committed to the hands of irresponsible
individuals, soldiers of fortune, desperate adventurers who entered
on conquest as a game which they had to play in the most unscrupulous
manner, with little care but to win it. The lands, and the persons as
well, of the conquered races were parcelled out and appropriated by
the victors as the legitimate spoils of victory. Every day outrages
were perpetrated, at the contemplation of which humanity shudders.
They suffered the provident arrangements of the Incas to fall into
decay. The poor Indian, without food, now wandered half-starved and
naked over the plateau. Even those who aided the Spaniards fared no
better, and many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant over the fields
where he once held rule; and if driven, perchance, by his necessities
to purloin something from the superfluity of his conquerors, he
expiated it by a miserable death." [Footnote: Prescott's "Conquest
of Peru."]
Charles Kingsley says there were "cruelties and miseries unexampled
in the history of Christendom, or perhaps on earth, save in the
conquests of Sennacherib and Zinghis-Khan." Millions perished at the
forced labor of the mines, The Incan Empire had, it is calculated, a
population of twenty millions at the arrival of the Spaniards, In two
centuries the population fell to four millions.
When the groans of these beasts of burden reached the ears of the
good (?) Queen Isabel of Spain, she enacted a law that throughout her
new dominions no Indian, man or woman, should be compelled to carry
more than three hundred pounds' weight at one load! Is it cause for
wonder that the poor, down-trodden natives, seeing the flaunting flag
of Spain, with its stripe of yellow between stripes of red, should
regard it as representing a river of gold between two rivers of
blood?
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