Traversing the pass of Alto del Crucero, 14,660 feet above the level of the sea, and the highest altitude reached by any railway in the world, the road descends into the great basin of Titicaca, the heart of the Andes, stretching northward and southward between the two great chains of the Cordilleras for fifteen hundred miles, almost level, and twelve thousand feet above the ocean. Here in majestic splendor lies Lake Titicaca, one of whose islands was the Eden of the Incas, the birthplace of that prehistoric empire whose civilization has been the wonder and mystery of centuries. Here Manco [Illustration: RUINS OF AN INCA TEMPLE.] Capac (the Adam) and Mama Ocllo (the Eve) of Inca tradition, the Children of the Sun, arose like Aphrodite, and bearing a golden rod, marched down the valley until they reached the place where Cuzco now stands, and there commanded the Indians to erect a city, the seat of an Imperial dynasty which lasted a thousand years, and possessed a wealth and an industry that had no measure. Around the lake stand the mighty temples and palaces, erected of blocks of stone as large as those of the Pyramids, quarried and conveyed by means that still remain a mystery, and will never be known. These monuments of an extinct civilization, these evidences of art and industry that surpass any prehistoric architecture on the earth, are standing now in mute impressiveness, mocking decay, as they taunted the conquistadors who tried to overthrow them. But the Spaniards stripped them of their treasures, murdered their inmates, and destroyed everything that could not withstand their power. [Illustration: CONVENT OF SANTA DOMINGO, CUZCO.] The riches of Peru and Bolivia have been their curse from the time when Pizarro invaded the continent to the plunder of their nitrate deposits by Chili. It is true that few countries have suffered from such an evil, but it is nevertheless a fact that the wealth of these republics has been the cause of their disasters. For three hundred years the people sat with folded hands, and enjoyed the profits of the development of their natural resources by foreigners, and now, stripped of them, sit impoverished, mourning the departure of their prosperity.