Aside from railways land transportation is chiefly confined to burros, mules, and llamas; in some places there are mule wagons or ox-carts, mules generally carrying the traveler. The cart roads, constructed and maintained by the Government or the Municipality, are mostly very poor; yet such as they are they extend 2000 miles. They are often if not usually impassable in the wet season. Llamas are more extensively employed than in any other country. In the plateau region with their 100 pound burden they wander leisurely along, cropping the coarse grass, tended by their Indian owners or drivers, who are in no more of a hurry than they. Along difficult mountain slopes are paths constructed by the Indians, skirting precipices and climbing steep inclines, where llamas, mules, and burros bear loads of minerals, coca, coffee, or other products or imports, from one section to another. About 5000 mules and burros pass over the La Paz-Yungas road daily. Except in the dry season, May to October, travel either by mule or by stage may anywhere be difficult or impossible on account of rivers becoming impassable by reason of freshets or roads because of mud. The importance of proper packing according to directions of goods which may be shipped to the interior, or indeed to any destination, cannot be overestimated. =Lake Transport.= Aside from the railways transportation in Bolivia cannot be called excellent either on land or water, though there is fair steamboat service on Lake Titicaca. This with Lake Aullagas (Poopo) and the Desaguadero River are the only waterways of the table-land where navigation exists. On the larger lake the Railway Company has steamers of 1500 tons or less, five in all, connecting with the trains, and some touching at small ports on the islands and around the Lake. Other boats are used, among them Indian balsas, built entirely of reeds, sails and all. In the use of these the Indians are very expert. The Desaguadero River is navigable to Lake Poopo for steamers of 500 tons. Poopo is navigable for boats of shallow draft. =River Transport.= Of great and increasing importance are the rivers of the eastern slope, both those of the Amazon Basin, and to a less degree those of the Paraguay, which river for some distance is practically the eastern boundary of Bolivia. Its chief tributaries are the Pilcomayo and the Bermejo. Bolivian statistics give the total length of all their navigable rivers as nearly 12,000 miles, but these figures include sections not conceded as within the boundaries of the Republic as well as rivers on the boundary. Half of the distance mentioned, 6000 miles, is said to be navigable by steamers of 4-6 feet draft.