whose slate roofs and towers a pale-blue vapor seemed to emanate as if it were offering incense at the shrine of some great god. And fittingly, for were not these two mountains, Illimani and Huayna Potosí, the Indian's Olympus, the abode of his

chief deities!

Along the precipitous walls of this abyss, white fillets of road cut zig-zags and loops, along which we could make out the donkey trains and llamas with their horsemen and drivers crawling slowly downward like strings of ants.

Our steam-driven engine was now changed to one run by electricity, and our train plunged over the brink. The up

The

per plains vanished. Steep walls gradually rose about us. houses of the city at each turn lifted themselves nearer, and in twenty minutes we were at the station of the Bolivian capital.

Viewed from the rim at the Alto, La Paz looks flat. Upon closer acquaintance, however, it proves to be one of the hilliest cities that you can find, clinging as it does to the slopes upon both banks of the Chuquiapu, the river, or rather the torrent, that tears through the bot

founded away back in 1549, and called "The City of Peace," to commemorate the reconciliation between Almagro and Gonzalo Pizarro. How any man had the courage to select this site is quite beyond one's powers of comprehension, yet the wisdom of the choice is apparent, protected as the city is by the walls of its

tom of the valley. Its steep streets plunge down one hill only to ascend another, and in this altitude you constantly find yourselves pausing for breath. But the bright colors and gay architecture of the houses, the rather modern aspect of the clean, wellpaved thoroughfares, make the city attractive to a degree, though it lacks the fine monuments and relics of the past that one finds in the Peruvian cities.

By this I do not mean to imply that there are no old palaces or churches. As a matter of fact, there are important buildings several centuries old, for La Paz was

great chasm against the bitter winds and storms that sweep this mountain world.

The principal hotel, installed in an extensive old palace surrounding two fine stone courts, overlooks one corner of the Plaza Mayor that forms the heart of the city, the centre of its activities. It is planted with pretty flower-beds and trees, semi-tropical in character, and decorated with a central monument. Fronting upon it are the handsome government buildings, a fresh new café and club, the unfinished cathedral, begun when the mines of Potosí were at the height of their activity, and the president's palace, where a group of soldiers mount guard in smart uniforms and bright steel helmets. In it, too, stand the carriages, open vehicles, each drawn by four horses, which fact will

give you some idea of the steepness of the streets. Few carts are ever seen, but pack-trains pass one constantly. Sometimes these are composed of big mules, laden with tin and ore from the great deposits of Huayna Potosí, headed by a bell-horse with red head-dress and gay pompons, and followed by the arrieros, well mounted, watchful, shouting to their beasts, now in terms of endearment, then again in curses. Next, perhaps, will come a flock of llamas, loaded with ice from the Sierra, the cold water trickling over their shaggy coats, or a long string of sure

Of all the types of La Paz, these stout cholitas are the most characteristic. Because of the decrease of the Indian race and the apathy of the Spanish whites, who constitute only one-eighth of the entire population of the country, the future of Bolivia rests largely upon these halfbreeds, who, cunning and shrewd at a bargain, have amassed much wealth.

Their women afford the evidence of this prosperity. Often distinctly handsome, their clothing is spotless. Upon their

heads they wear quaint little felt hats stiffened and chalked as white as snow. Their dress, usually of some rich material, is covered, when on the street, by a great shawl whose long silken fringes sweep about their ankles and whose folds are held in place by a handsome pin of gold, usually set with baroque pearls or emeralds, from which dangles a jointed fish, also of gold, with pearls or emeralds for eyes. Their long ear-rings match this pin and are also of gold and precious stones.

When they bend over to bargain with the seated women, they disclose their canary-colored, high-heeled shoes, ornamented with tassels, and a few inches of tight-drawn creamy stocking veiled by the well-starched laces of innumerable petticoats that give body to their voluminous skirts.

Petticoats seem to be the great luxury of the native women of all classes. Even the poor Indians wear a half-dozen. When a new skirt is needed it is added on the outside, those underneath remaining just as before. As they choose only the bright

est colors, the effect of these multi-colored garments worn one above the other is often startling indeed.

On Sunday mornings the market spills over into all the adjoining streets, along whose curb-stones the Indian women squat with their wares spread out upon the ground before them. And what a debauch of color they make, brilliant as any tulip-beds in Holland! Red, green, magenta, purple, blue, crimson-all the colors of a post-impressionist-their balloonlike skirts go ambling along. No German aniline dye is too strong for them.

And through this gaudy throng the creamy spots of the cholo women and the black mantas of the Spanish ladies, who understand the distinction of their sombre attire, strike the necessary accents.

Down by San Francisco-a handsome church of the early eighteenth century, with a remarkable nave and vaulting is another market where the Indians buy their clothes and the homespun cloths for the bags and saddle-blankets of their animals. Little stalls, where women sell laces and bits of jewelry and sandals worked with velvet appliqué, stand wedged between the buttresses of the church, and along the Calle del Mercado near by are the shops, gay with color, where you may purchase bright ponchos and pointed caps knitted in intricate designs. In them, too,

you may often see men from the Yungas, the rich tropical valley that lies below La Paz, and the principal seat of its coca cultivation-youths whose long hair, tied in queues, falls about their shoulders, and whose gay-striped ponchos conceal all else but their sturdy, bronzed legs bared to the knees.

If you wish to see the Spanish life, you must go, some afternoon, across the bridge to the Alameda, where the band plays two or three times each week, and where the people promenade under the eucalypti along a broad avenue bordered by the new villas owned by the wealthier citizens of La Paz and by the members of the diplomatic corps. To judge from one or two we visited, these homes possess every modern comfort, and judging from the