Leaving this richly endowed agricultural region for the still richer location of Bolivia’s mineral wealth, the traveler ascends to the great plateau on which the capital and important cities are built. At Potosí one is in the heart of the great silver country. From one mountain here, the Cerro de Potosí itself, over three billion dollars’ worth of silver has been taken since its discovery in 1545. The luxury and almost unbelievable extravagance told of in the annals of this city have given it a world-wide fame. Its principal building, the mint, cost the then unprecedented sum of two million dollars, an expenditure that brought many qualms to the miserly ascetic, Philip II, who would have preferred to pour the flood of wealth into the coffers of the church. The author of “Don Quixote” refers to Potosí as the synonym for fabulous wealth, and there is hardly a writer of the early days of the colony who did not mention the silver mountain to illustrate the idea of lavish abundance. In those days silver was regarded as equally valuable with gold. Bolivia’s marvelous wealth in tin is unexcelled even in the Malay Peninsula. Already one of the chief centers of the tin industry, this metal promises to bring to the twentieth-century Bolivia as much commercial fame as the gold mines brought Alto-Peru in the sixteenth century. Copper, iron, lead and bismuth, as well as topazes, emeralds, opals, jasper, and marble, are also present in large quantities throughout the plateau. After descending from Potosí, which is at an altitude of 15,380 feet, one should visit the white city of Sucré before proceeding to the present seat of government, La Paz. In Bolivia the name of Sucré is as omnipresent as Bolívar’s in Venezuela and Colombia, and most naturally when the new republic was formed the name of its chief city, Charcas, was changed to Sucré to honor the hero of Ayacucho—Antonio José de Sucré—when this “right hand” of Bolívar became its first president. The city is ancient, kindly, and romantically beautiful in its setting on the eastern slope of the royal range, and once, under a law enacted some eighty years ago, it was the capital. [Illustration: SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF CAPACABANA, ON BOLIVIAN SHORE OF LAKE TITICACA.] [Illustration: TOWN AND MOUNTAIN OF POTOSÍ, BOLIVIA.]