Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-07-05
THE VILDS or BOLIVIA.
HOW IT LOOKS NEAR THE HEAD
WATERS OF THE AMAZON.
The Record-Union Correspondent Flee
ing Through South America Pur-
sued by La Grippe.

Especial Correspondence of the RsooRD-UNIoN ]
La PAz, Bolivia, 1890.
We have been fleeing, far and fast, be-
fore the dreaded grip, but with Indifferent
success. 1t was hoped that the indefati-
gable traveller which has nearly circum-
navigated the globe might somehow miss
South America, but like thief in the
night it came, appearing simultaneously
on both sides of the continent, in Buenos
Ayres, Valparaiso and Lima, soon making
sad havoc in all the coast cities.
At that time We were in the midst of
some most interesting researches in Peru !;
but as one of our party is consumptive,
travelling expressly to prolong his span of
life, and another has been repeatedly
warned by physicians to escape influenza
at any cost, on account of chronic throat
trouble. we stood not upon the order OF
going, bat went at once. Stopping awhile
in Arequipa, lovely old city in eastern
Peru, it happened one day that the whole
garrison of wretched soldiers fell down as
one man under the stern grasp of the grip
Then We fed to Bolivia, the great but al
most unknown republic that lies, corner
wise, between Peru, Brazil, the Argentine
country and Chile, in the vain hope that
the disease might expendits force near sea
level, and not cross the intervening cordil-
leras of the Andes, the seven successive
walls, snow-topped and sky-piercing, with
the deserts and great lake that lie between.
OF Peru, the most interesting country
in the world, and of the wonderful Jour
ney to Bolivia, by the railroad that
reaches the highest point where wheel
was ever turned by steam, twice as high
as the celebrated Hospice of St. Bernard,
will tell you later, as we are going di-
rectly back over the same route, to COM
plete the abandoned researches. Leaving
the eternal summer of Arequipa in the
morning, we took midday lunch in a
snow-storm, nearly $4,000 feet above the
sea, and the same night reached Puno,
the last town in Peru, on the western edge
of Lake Titicaca, at the hight OF about
1880 feet.
Here we tarried to recover breath, a
difficult thing in these parts, where all
travellers suffer from the distressing COM
plant called "sirroche," before venturing
into the higher attitudes of Bolivia. But
the grip went faster than We, and two days
after we arrived in Puno that town was
almost at bad as Arequipa.
Crossing Lake Titicaca, the highest
navigable water on the face of the earth,
as well as the coolest, stormiest and most
disagreeable, whose SACRED Islands of
the long-dead Incas yet show their ruined
temples of sun worship and moon worship,
we came to La Paz, the melancholy city
which is not really the capital of Bolivia,
though at present its seat of government.
Here we remained for time in compare
tive safety, congratulating ourselves that
at last place had been found so forbid
ding that even influenza would shun it.
But again we had reckoned without our
host, and one fine morning awakened to
the knowledge that fully IS per cent of
the city's population were wrestling with
the scourge.
There was but one way of escape-to
run away into the interior, beyond the
borders of civilization and almost beyond
the haunts of man. There is but one such
pathway leading out of La Paz, except in
the direction from whence came the
enemy, and that is to the tropical valley
of Yungas, where are raised most of
Bolivia's cocoa and coffee, fruits, wines and
sugar. An arriero, or muleteer, was
quickly engaged, who supplied mule for
each person and several for carving our
beds, provision, hampers and other lug
gage; mozo, or man-servant, was taken
in tow, and early ole morning the flight
into Egypt began.
But alasi The enemy from which we
fled went with us, in the throat of the
arriero. The second day out he developed
the -;ripin its worst form, which speedily
RAJ into pneumonia. We were compelled
to cave the poor fellow at a farmhouse
aft doing all that was possible for his
comiort, leaving medicines and money
with the people who took him in charge;
but in little more than a week he was
dead
While on the influenza subject it may
not be amiss to add a few facts concerning
Its caprices on the southern continent In
the higher attitudes the disease has been
uniformly light, unless the lungs became
involved, in which case death was almost
sure to ensue. Among the people of the
coast a larger percentage of cases have been
fatal. The Chilean newspapers state, with
what truth do not know, that the disease
returned to some villages which it had al
ready devastated and in many instances at
tackled the same victims second time
However, it must be taken into account
that for months past it has been the fash
ion, the wide world over, TO call every cold
the grip. Strange to say, Chile's capital,
Santiago, suffered much more than its
neighbor Valparaiso, although the former
is supposed to be the healthier city; and
in Lima, Peru, though at. one time nearly
the entire population was Frustrated, lew
deaths were reported. Happily for us,
Bolivia went through its seyerest ordeal
during our two weeks absence at Yungas.
In the hotel, where our rooms were re-
tanned and luggage left, every soul in the
house was i'll at once, from the proprietor
to the stable boy; and before our return
several well-known faces had been laid
away in the pantheon.
The round trip between the cities Of La
Paz and Chulumani, the latter being the
Capital of the Department of Yungas, is
a distance of about 272 Yankee miles.
reckoned by reducing the Bolivian league,
which Is 6,l00 English yards. Though
most of the products that are used in and
exported from Bolivia come from the mar
row Iungas valley, and though the Gov
eminent annually expends large sum on
the alleged road thereto, the only high
way of centuries is mostly a narrow trail,
cut round and round the edges of the
mountains, sometimes zigzagging to and
fro over their perpendicular faces, like
the tacking of ship, in places where
neither man nor mule could walk straight
up like fly on the wall. But few places
are wider than barely to allow two mules
to walk abreast, and many miles of it CON-
pei single-file professions. Horses are
never used on this journey, for they cannot
survive the rapid change between the re-
gions of eternal snow and perpetual sum-
mer. While horse might possibly reach
the loMlands if sufficiently sllre-fnc,ied on