Wheat is grown from 10,000 to 12,000 feet. The potato begins at 11,000 feet in the moister spots, and barley begins at the same elevation in the drier spots. Beyond these come the sheep and llama pastures, which extend right up to the snow line. Near Antabamba, Peru, at the elevation of 17,100 feet, higher than any summit in the Rockies, is a stone hut with a grass roof, the highest known human habitation in the new world.
Wherever in the plateau there is a warm valley, there the people have their villages. On the bleak plateau itself there is not a house for miles and miles around. In the villages the rich people live in the lower and warmer parts of the valley. The houses of the poorer people are higher up in the greater cold.
853. The railroads and the mines.—The western front of the Central Andes does not seem like a mountain. Steep, treeless, and bare, it seems more like a great wall of ma sonry than like a mountain. (Fig. 599.) But the white man, to get the precious gold, sil ver, copper, and tin, has built three railroads up this wall to the mines on the high pla teau. From what ports do the railroads go? On top of this plateau, at an elevation higher than that of any town of the United States, is Lake Titicaca, on which are steamboats that were brought there in pieces and put together at the little town of Puno on the western shore of the lake.
854. Precious metals have been the chief export of this region for the last four hundred years. The great mountain of Potosi alone
has produced, in that time, $1,500,000,000 worth of silver. In the mine there are five thousand tunnels. Since railroads have been built to the plateau, European and American companies are working the old mines with modern machinery.
Tin from near Lake Titicaca is the chief export of Bolivia. At present, Europeans and Americans plan and manage the mines, but most of the work is done by the natives.
La. Paz, the capital of Bolivia, is a mining center in a place where food is scarce. Every day hundreds of mule trains toil over the bare bringing potatoes and bar ley. Other pack trains bring bananas and fresh vegetables up the long stony trails, from the warmer valleys and from the edge of the grasslands to the eastward. (Sec. 811.) All of this transport by mule train is necessary, because a hundred thousand people live in La Paz, and it is a very long way to any good food supply by way of the railroads to the Pacific Coast. (Sec. 846.) more machinery, and more American mining engineers to help the Indians and Spaniards dig the valuable minerals out of the moun tains. Perhaps the greatest difficulty is the poor government, which results from attempts to have a republic in a land where most of the people are illiterate Indians.