The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-31
LAKE TITIGACA.
THE HIGHEST NAY1GArED WA
TER

On the Globe-Of Unknown Depth, but Receiving Many Tributsries and wifh No Visible Outlet. a. [ Especial Correspondence of the Journal and Courier.)
 Chililaya, Bolivia, June 25, 1903. Please observe, I do not say the high | est nayigable water on the globe-be- | cause, for anything know, there may | be other mysterious mountain seas still | nearer to the blue; but this is undoubt- edly the highest which the ingenuity of | man has conquered by steam and pad de wheels. Lake Titicaca! How the name recalls school-days and geogra- phy lessons; though in that early time, when we located unpronounceable names on the map of country which to our young imaginations did not exist anywhere but on paper, we had no idea of proving their reality by a personal visit. It is amusing to remember what sncorrect accommodations of most of these South American names the teach CTS laboriously drilled into us. And the fact remains that many of them are still called, in our best schools. by names which the residents of the places would hardly recognize.
 However pleased the traveller may be to find himself sailing the highest navigable water on the globe, he must pay high price for his rare experience mot only in cash, but in many discom- forts. First and most dangerous, there is sirroche to contend with, which makes one feel as if grim death were clutching his heart strings with icy fin gers and piling a thousand pounds weight upon ris chest, while all the blood seems to fill his head to bursting, crimsoning the face and leaving the lower extremities cold as ice. Hardly second in unpleasantness, though sell dom fatal, is mol-de-mer, which the most weather-beaten voyager is bound ito suffer, though he may have circum- navigated the world many times with but a qualn of it.
 Consulting a map of South America, you will find Titicaca about midway down the continent, but only three hun- dred and twenty-five miles inland from the Pacific. It lies at an altitude of about thirteen thousand feet bove the level of the sea, in an enormous basin whose eastern border is bounded by the 1oftiest cordillera of the Andes--on ur- E broken, untrodden. snow-crowned wall, several of whose peaks rival Chimbora- 70 In height and sublimity. In shape, the lake Is an irregular oval, extending almost due north and south, one hun dred and twenty miles long, it's greatest width about fifty-seven miles. It has an average depth of 0 thousand feet but in many places line and plummel have failed to find bottom.
 Though many rivers, fed by mountain snows, flow into it, there is no visible outlet, except the Desaguadero river, broad. deep, swift but not turbulent stream, one hundred and seventy miles lang, which itself has many tributarie: and a fall of five hundred feet and dis. charges into Lake Auilagas, away t the southward. Very little is known the last-nared lake, except that 1t ha X no outlet to the sea, unless 1t be sub terranean, though receiving the drain age of the great upper basin and hay ing several other powerful feeders be sides the Desaguadero. During rain, seasons and years of drought, its wate remains always at precisely the sam depth. though no fewer than nine con siderable streams flow into 1t.
 The wonds which blow over Titicac are almost invariably from the north east. Always strong, they frequent come with prodigious force, renderin navigation extremely hazardous by tf frail sbaisas of the natives, and yer disagreeabIe, if not dangerous, by til steamers. Before the comparative recent introduction of the latter, thes balsas, or rafts and canoes made
 rtlshes woven together, were the onl boats on the lake. Very pretty ar picturesque are the curious little era when seen at distance; but they a, not inviting as a means of transit ov' ice-cold waters of measureless dept especially in a storm. Each Balsa l furnished with square sail, also nat of woven reeds, which can be fudle raised or lowered at the will of u boatmen.
 The steamers, which by tight squee ing will accommodate twenty-four pa sengers each, are of one hundred tol burden Being never heavily loade they roll and tumble and toss about the stormy waves in a way calculat
 to appall the stoutest heart and ups the strongest stomach, while Wlld Win
 howl shriek and moan among the II
 ging like legions of lost spirits, or as W