This plateau is the center of Bolivia’s life to-day, as it was the cradle of successive aboriginal civilizations that finally culminated many centuries ago in the Inca empire. It is the highest inhabited land on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of Tibet. The evidence at every hand of nature’s tremendous activities must have left its impress on the races that formerly had their being here. The gigantic relics which are now the enduring monuments of these peoples are proof of the bigness of their point of view. They saw largely and the range of their vision embraced great distances, great altitudes, and great depths. There is evidence also that the newly awakened present race will prove worthy of its surroundings. The people now inhabiting this great Andean _Massif_ have in their veins the blood of both the intrepid Conquistadores and the hardy Aymara and Inca stock, and it is in the nature of things that the present-day Bolivian, now that his republicanism is established after a century of turbulent assimilation, will make great strides in industrial progress in justification of the spirit that is his birthright. In this altitude, so high that at first most foreigners suffer from its effects, the Bolivians have built their capital and chief cities. Here the first blow was struck against the oppression of Spain, and in the mountain defiles of the Peruvian Andes leading down to the Pacific coast the last shot was fired that drove the viceregal army to its transports. With the departure of the Spanish came the establishment, in 1825, of the Republic of Bolivia, the name given to the old Buenos Airean province of Alto-Peru by its first president, Bolívar’s famous lieutenant, General Sucré, in honor of his chief. Bolivia is fourth in size among the South American republics. It covers 708,195 square miles, and could include within its limits the combined areas of California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. The republic lies wholly within the torrid zone, but the gradation of its topography extends from the _yungas_ (“hot valleys”) at the border of the Amazon basin to the _punas_, or high table-lands, ranging from four to fourteen thousand feet, so that animal and vegetable life of every clime is represented—from the brilliantly colored flamingo and butterfly of the Amazon plains to the dread condor of the Andes; from the rubber tree, through all stages of arborial and plant life, to the little yellow bitter potato, grown near the point at which vegetation vanishes in the Arctic cold of the higher peaks.