WHILE I was stopping for a week at Jura baths, on my return from Challana, Morosini, the proprietor of the hotel, came up to me one day and told me there was a lady staying there who wanted to have a talk with me—Do?a Corina San Roman, daughter of the late General San Roman, a former President of Peru. Morosini presented me, and after a few minutes’ conversation she showed me an original document left by Father San Roman to his brother, the Prefect of Callao, and handed down to her by her father, which gave particulars of a large treasure that had been hidden by the Jesuits. She told me that as I had been into Challana, and got back safely, I would be just the man to go and look for it, if I cared to do so, and she made me two alternative offers. If I tried to find the place with the help of the data she would give me, she would pay me ￡80 per month for the{143} six dry months of the next year, which was as much as I was getting from Mariano Penny for training his racehorses, and if I found it she would pay all the expenses of unearthing it, and give me ten per cent of the full value found. The other suggestion was that I was to take the copy of the document, and go myself, paying all my own expenses, and give her ten per cent of the treasure if I found it. I accepted the second proposition without hesitation.
The document gave no indications as to how to find the place, but simply described the kind of place, and mentioned that it was near the banks of the River Sacambaja. It ran as follows: “If you find a steep hill all covered with dense forest, the top of which is flat, with long grass growing, from where you can see the River Sacambaja on three sides, you will discover on the top of it, in the middle of the long grass, a large stone shaped like an egg, so big that it took 500 Indians to place it there. If you dig down underneath this stone for five yards, you will find the roof of a large cave, which it took 500 men two and a half years to hollow out. The roof is seventy yards long, and there are two compartments and a long narrow passage leading from the room on the east side to the main entrance two hundred yards away. On{144} reaching the door, you must exercise great care in opening. The door is a large iron one, and inside to the right near the wall you will find an image made of pure gold three feet high, the eyes of which are two large diamonds; this image was placed here for the good of mankind. If you proceed along the passage, you will find in the first room thirty-seven large heaps of gold, and many gold and silver ornaments and precious stones. On entering the second room, you will find in the right-hand corner a large box, clamped with three iron bars; inside this box is $90,000 in silver money and thirty-seven big heaps of gold. Distributed in the hollows on either side of the tunnel and the two rooms are altogether a hundred and sixty-three heaps of gold, of which the value has been estimated at $60,000,000. Great care must be taken on entering these rooms, as enough strong poison to kill a regiment has been laid about. The walls of the two rooms have been strengthened by large blocks of granite; from the roof downwards the distance is five yards more. The top of the roof is portioned off into three distinct esplanades, and the whole has been well covered over for a depth of five yards with earth and stones. When you come to a place twenty feet high, with a wall so wide that two men can{145} easily ride abreast, cross the river, and you will find the church, monastery, and other buildings.” Corina San Roman told me that the monastery spoken of in this document was built by the Jesuits in 1635 and abandoned in 1735. The treasure, accumulated from eleven years’ working of the famous gold mines of El Carmen, and the Tres Titilias, and from the gold and diamond washings carried on near Santa Cruz by 2,000 Indians under Fathers Gregorio and San Roman and seven other priests, who died, was all hidden under the hill indicated in this document with the exception of ￡70,000 for each of the priests. Out of the 500 Indians employed in burying the treasure 288 died of an epidemic of fever in the last three months of the work.
Corina San Roman also told me that her father used to send ￡25 every Christmas to an old Indian named José Maria Ampuera, who, he said, knew where the hill was. He used to send Macedonia Zambrana, one of his own men, who lived near Cochabamba, with this money and several pounds of tea, sugar and other things. The Indian was paid this to keep the secret, to visit the place from time to time, and to notify him if anybody started exploring there. He used to say he had a good enough income himself, and did not care to risk{146} getting malarial fever in looking for it. He kept the paper himself and gave it to his daughter shortly before he died; she put it inside one of the books in the library, and after his death she could not find it, but her uncle, the brother of the General, who was a priest and lived at Cochabamba, had a copy, which is the one I saw! Many expeditions had been fitted out to look for this treasure. One had been sent by Malgarejo, the President of Bolivia, another was fitted out at Valparaiso in 1895, but both were unsuccessful. Do?a Corina told me that her uncle had died in 1896, that Zambrana had not been heard of for the last eight years, and that if the Indian was still alive he must be over 100.
The first thing to be done was to find Zambrana, so in March, 1905, I left La Paz on my way to Cochabamba to look for him. I went first to Oruro by the Diligence Mail, which does the journey of 180 miles in two days, starting at 6 a.m., and changing the five mules and galloping horse every nine miles. The coach stops for half an hour at 9 a.m. for breakfast, and for lunch at 1.30, reaching the rest-house at 7.30 p.m. for dinner, leaving again next morning at 5 a.m., and reaching Oruro at 5 p.m. After La Paz Alto they go full gallop all the way; the driver has a long whip, and a box{147} full of stones to throw at the mules, and an Indian boy, who sits on the step behind, gets off every now and then to flog them. The coach carries nine passengers, eight inside, at $25 each, and one on the box seat for $35, which I took. Luggage and mails are strapped on the top; only 35lbs. of luggage was allowed to each passenger, and the heavy gear leaves the day before in a big mule waggon, and is charged for per 100lbs. Riding on the box seat beside the driver, and driving at a hard gallop across the level high flats 12,500ft. above the sea, through the pure and exhilarating air, under a wonderful blue sky, I found the journey most enjoyable.
The highest place registered on the road was 13,200ft. Oruro is 12,800ft. up.
At Oruro I found that Mariano Penny, the owner of the rich San José silver mine, was away in Chili, and J. B. Minchin, who owned rich tin mines, was also away, but Dr. Shrigley kindly lent me his place on the outskirts of the town, where there was a big walled-in grass field. There I engaged an Indian called José, with his wife and boy, the man to look after my animals, the boy to fag and wife to cook, with another Indian to help with the cargo, and bought four good mules, two donkeys and a horse.{148}
After a stay of two weeks, I started for Cochabamba, riding the horse on the first day, and next day a good little white mule. The journey of 190 miles took eight days’ easy travelling. We started each morning at 9 a.m., and camped every afternoon at 3 p.m., renting an Indian hut for the night. Each evening, after buying fodder for the animals, eggs and mutton, and whatever else was wanted, I generally took the gun for an hour or two, and shot some doves and other birds, which we ate cold for lunch next day.
The first day’s journey was over the high flats, a sandy desert, with little feed for the animals. Indians with llamas, each carrying a small load, passed us frequently on their way to Oruro, and now and then we met long strings of mules, led by their bell mare. The bell mare carries nothing; her job is to lead the mules, and they follow her in single file, stopping only when the bell stops.
The rest of the way was through a more fertile district, which bred sheep, llamas, cattle, donkeys, mules, and even a few horses. I saw Indians ploughing the fields with the same wooden ploughs as were used hundreds of years ago. Occasionally we passed small wooden carts drawn by oxen, with heavy wooden wheels made of one piece.
The crops in these parts are barley, wheat, pota{149}toes and, further on near Cochabamba, maize, ochres and yucas. Fresh mutton can be bought, the usual price being about 4/-to 5/-a sheep; also home-made bread, fowls, eggs, and guinea pigs, ochres, chu?o, potatoes, onions, barley in the straw, green barley and alfalfa. The native drink of chicha, made from corn, can also be bought quite cheap every few miles.
The weather was fine the whole time, warm in the day-time, and cool at nights, and the journey was a much more enjoyable one than going down by diligence. There were several rivers to be crossed on the way; between November and April, they are difficult to get over, and people don’t travel much from Oruro to Cochabamba during those months.
Cochabamba stands 8,200ft. high, with a climate which is one of the best in the world; it is never too hot in the day, and cool at night. Rents and living are very cheap. The market master regulates the prices of all meats, beef, mutton and pork. Vegetables are plentiful, and fruit of all kinds may be purchased on the market. There are no hotels to speak of, and no street cars or cabs for hire. The streets are all well paved with stone with a gutter down the centre. All the houses have heavy iron bars to the windows, and big, solid bolts to the{150} doors as well. Murders are not uncommon, and the criminal is seldom caught, which is due not so much to the negligence of the police as to the number of hiding-places where the criminal can easily conceal himself for a time. When a murderer is caught he is made to undergo a public trial in the square of the Court House, and if he is found guilty he is taken to the spot where the crime was committed and shot there. I saw one such trial in Cochabamba. A bad Cholo had asked and received the hospitality of a man and his wife for the night, and while they were asleep had killed them with an axe, and stolen a sum of money he knew was in the house. His bloodstained clothes convicted him, and he was shot. I was told by a man who knew that this was the first occasion for a long time that a murderer had been caught. The cathedral, which is built of stone, faces the big square and garden; the Hall of Justice, military barracks, and police station are on the opposite side. Six hundred priests live in the town. Chiquitos, where the Jesuits found a lot of gold, is twenty days’ journey by mule, and the famous Espirito Santo gold mine worked by them is ten days by mule. There is bear shooting three days away. I rented a nice little house on the outskirts of the town near the river, with large garden and{151} open air concrete bath. Only a very few houses contain proper lavatory accommodation; otherwise they are very well built and quite comfortable. I made this house my headquarters for three years, while prospecting for old mines and looking for the Jesuit treasure. In front of my place were the Municipality grown alfalfa fields for the Government animals; they were guarded day and night by two armed watchmen, to prevent them being cut by thieves. It costs little to keep animals here; barley and alfalfa can be bought by the load, one mule cargo for about 4/-, and two cargoes, one barley and one alfalfa, served for my horse and four mules a day.
Opposite Cochabamba, on the other side of the river, a German Company had a large brewery, and made very good beer; a dozen large bottles cost 2/-, and the bottles cost as much as the beer. Imported Bass beer cost 2/-for one big bottle, a bottle of good whisky 10/-or 12/-, and Three Star brandy 16/-.
After a considerable amount of trouble, I located Zambrana, who lived a day’s ride from Cochabamba. He had not seen old José Maria for many years, and the priest, Father San Roman, who used to pay him, had died, but he said he knew José Maria lived near a place called Cuti, which was{152} thirty-five miles from Palca. Zam, as I always called him, had never been to either of these places, but knew the way as far as a mountain village sixty miles from Palca. He agreed to join my expedition as campman and butcher, get water and wood, and help the cook, so I took him on; he was to find his own mule.
I had two tents made here, one for myself 16ft. by 12ft. and 9ft. high, and the other was 10ft. by 10ft. and 9ft. high; also a strong folding-up canvas catre 3?ft. broad and 7ft. long, which, with a horse-hair mattress, made a most comfortable bed. I also got together provisions for four months: sugar, rice, biscuits, jams, tea, cocoa, coffee, and some tinned meats, salt, ship’s biscuits and other things. Zambrana told me that round about the department of Palca both sheep and flour were plentiful and cheap. The Indian wife of Manuel, the mule man, made splendid bread, and at the different stopping places we often borrowed the use of a bake-oven, and stayed a couple of days to make bread. It is well worth the extra trouble to get good, wholesome bread made with flour that retains all the good ingredients of the wheat, which is always possible if it is crushed by the stone mill process. I also took two dozen bottles of rum, one dozen of the best for myself, and a dozen of a stronger, but inferior, quality for the men. With the exception of the things I brought out with me, such as Liebig’s Extract, a thing I never travel without, everything was bought from Barber & Co., who traded goods for rubber up the Beni, by advancing money and goods to traders for rubber to be delivered in two years’ time. Alfred Barber was the manager for this firm in Bolivia; in London and Hamburg the firm was Brandt & Co. Of course all the traders who dealt with the firm on the two years’ credit system had to show substantial guarantees in the form of unmortgaged property, otherwise such firms would soon come to grief. Barber himself had to put up a guarantee of several thousands of pounds (a legacy left him by his godmother) to be made managing partner in Bolivia.
On the 2nd May, at the beginning of the dry season, I left Cochabamba with Zambrana, Manuel, his wife and boy; two more men, Mariano and Ricardo, my saddle horse and white riding mule, four cargo mules and a donkey. Zambrana rode his own mule. The first day we got to Anacoraira, below the Turani range of mountains, where I bought a sheep and camped for the night. The road as far as here was an easy one; the surrounding country was flat, with little grass and a{154} few trees, and the scenery was very uninteresting. The next day we climbed a long steep path up the mountain, passing a good many Indians and llamas, also several Indian women tending their sheep, and spinning wool at the same time, with a sling made from llama wool. From time to time they throw a stone at the sheep to drive them on. Half-way up the mountain Ricardo gave out, and I had to leave him with some provisions and tell him when he was rested he had better return to Cochabamba; I was afraid he would not be able to stand going up the heights. We crossed the Turani Pass in good weather at 15,000ft. The height of Mt. Turani is about 17,000ft. We pitched our two tents on the other side at 12,000ft., near some Indians and llamas, who were halting for the night on their way to Cochabamba, with cargoes of wheat. There was plenty of grass about and several pools of clear water, and a running stream. It froze hard all night, and in the morning the pools were frozen over with an inch of ice, which did not, however, prevent me from having my morning bath. Before breakfast I got two partridges. We let the sun warm up the blankets and packs, and we started at 9.30 down the mountain, through a pleasant fertile valley of long flats covered with grass. There were streams running{155} in all directions, and on either side low hills covered with small shrubs and grass. Only a few habitations were to be seen, and near them cattle, sheep, horses, mules and llamas were grazing. At a place called Morochata I hired a mud hut for myself for 2/-, and bought some barley in the straw for the mules and horse. As I wanted to replace Ricardo here, we stayed the next day, and I eventually found and engaged another boy called José. I took the opportunity here of buying flour, got the loan of an oven, and the cook made bread, and we replenished our stock of potatoes and onions, which seemed to do very well here. Everything was extremely cheap. The village consisted of about twenty huts; the land round about belongs partly to the Government, and partly to a gentleman living at Cochabamba, who finds the land, seed, oven, ploughs, mud bricks and thatch for the huts, and keeps a foreman who looks after the property for a small salary, also cultivating his own small piece of land. At harvest-time the crops are divided between the cultivators and the proprietor, who sends in what is wanted from his store at Cochabamba, and takes it out of their share of the crop. I have often thought this system would answer well in other countries besides Bolivia. Next day we continued the journey, and after a{156} few miles came to the foot of the Santa Rosa Mountains. The path up the mountain was a long one, but not too steep, and the ground at the top of the pass was covered with a thin layer of frozen snow. The height of this pass was 16,000ft. There are always large heaps of stones piled up in pyramid shape at the top of every pass, and one or two solitary graves with crosses where somebody has passed away. The path down to the river was long and winding, through partial forest, with very few birds, and not many flowers. I got off my white mule, and led her down the hill, wearing the speedometer, or hexemeter, as some people call it, which registered nearly nine miles from the pass to the river. None of the land on either side appeared to be occupied at all, and we met nobody on the road. We decided to pitch two tents just across the river where there was plenty of grass growing on a wide bank and up the hill the other side, plenty of wood and water near, and no dwellings to be seen in the distance.
The country was now new to old Zam, who had never been further than Morochata, the place we left that morning, and the boy, José, said it was another seven leagues from here to the top of the hill this side of Palca, with a swamp to cross over on the way. On these occasions, as we had no bell{157} mare, my chestnut horse, an old hurdle racer from Santiago, was hobbled, and a bell was tied round his neck with a long rope and a stone at the far end for further security. The mules and donkeys would follow him like a dog, and he was always led to the best grazing ground.
The next day, after two hours and a half’s marching up and down hill, we got to the top of another range of hills. At the bottom was a wide green valley, with several small streams; as we came closer we could see that it was very swampy in places, and I was told afterwards in Palca that during the rainy season these swamps are very often impassable for days together. There was only one place where it was possible to cross, and fortunately the boy from Morochata knew where it was, as nobody else did. Even at this place when one of the mules went a few yards off the beaten track, he began to sink, and floundered back only just in time. Palca was some five leagues further on, in the belt of forest at the foot of a valley, and surrounded by hills. In this valley I saw many bushes and flowers very similar to what is seen in Trinidad, which was rather strange, considering that the height of Palca is 7,500ft. and the highest hill in Trinidad is, I think, only 2,800ft. Near Palca are a good many large farms where wheat,{158} barley and maize are grown, and sheep, cattle, mules and horses are reared. I hired a hut on the banks of the river this side of the village, from a very obliging Indian, whose business was tanning hides with the quebracho bark, and decided to take on from him an Indian who knew Cuti, so remained there for the next day. From here there was no real path between Palca and Cuti, only a few beaten tracks leading over the hills to the different Indian settlements. With the exception of a few large farms owned by seven or eight men, who work them on the share system already described, all these vast lands are quite unoccupied and unexplored: there are just a few Indian squatters here and there living far apart.
The town of Palca consists of a few houses and has a church and a priest. It is noted for its excellent brew of chicha, which makes a wholesome and refreshing drink.
The tanner’s wife, a pleasant, civil Indian woman, asked her brother to take me to the ranch of a very old Indian, who lived on a sheep and maize farm at the foot of the Sapo mountain, and who, he said, would know all the old men in the district. He took me there the next day, and I put up at the old man’s house. His name was José, and he claimed to be 99 years old; he knew José{159} Maria well, and said that he was some years older than he was himself. He was a strong, healthy fellow, and had lived all his life in this pure atmosphere. The scenery round here was very fine; the lands for leagues around belonged to a man at Palca, and were worked by several families of Indians, who grew maize, wheat and barley on the share system, and had flocks of sheep feeding on the extensive grass lands between the River Cori Mayo and the forest. José sold me sheep whenever I wanted one for 4/-each, rented me two huts, one for myself and the other for a kitchen, and lent me the oven for 2/-a day. By his advice, I sent Zambrana down the river to José Maria Ampuera with a present of tea, sugar, cocoa, tobacco, matches, biscuits and cheese, and a few pounds of coca leaves, with a note, telling him I had come to look for the treasure with the data supplied by Corina San Roman, and wanted to visit him. Mariano was sick just then with a sort of cholera, which had been brought on by his own greed. On the way to Palca, I had bought half a sack of apples at a farm with an orchard, and he had eaten too many. He wanted to return to his home in Cochabamba, so I paid him off, gave him provisions for ten days, and took the Indian boy from Palca in his stead.{160}
José told me that the Sapo Mountain, as far as he knew, had never been visited for thirty-five years, that there were several abandoned socabons (mining tunnels) there, and that the settlers occasionally washed gold out of the Cori Mayo, so I decided to explore this mountain while waiting for Zambrana to come back. The next day, after breakfast, I rode off on the white mule up a path which José showed me, which led to a dip in the mountain where he said I should find a big socabon. I took Juan and the Indian from Palca............