Bolivia, having no coastline, has been termed the Hermit Republic of South America. Its territory is over 600,000 square miles in extent, and within its bounds Nature displays almost every possible panorama, and all climates. There are burning plains, the home of the emu, armadillos, and ants; sandy deserts, where the wind drifts the sand like snow, piling it up in ever-shifting hills about thirty feet in height. Bolivia, shut in geographically and politically, is a world in itself--a world of variety, in scenery, climate, products and people. Its capital city, La Paz, has a large population, but the vast interior is nearly uninhabited in many parts. In the number of inhabitants to the square mile, Bolivia ranks among the lowest of all the nations of the earth. 

Bolivia can lay claim to the most wonderful body of water in the world--Lake Titicaca. This lake, nearly two and a half miles high in the air, is literally in the clouds. "Its lonely waters have no outlet to the sea, but are guarded on their southern shores by gigantic ruins of a prehistoric empire--palaces, temples, and fortresses--silent, mysterious monuments of a long-lost golden age." Some of the largest and most remarkable ruins of the world are found on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and as this was the centre of the great Incan Dynasty, that remarkable people have also left wonderful remains, to build which stones thirty-eight feet long, eighteen feet wide, and six feet thick, were quarried, carried and elevated. The Temple of the Sun, the most sacred edifice of the Incas, was one of the richest buildings the sun has ever shone upon, and it was itself a mine of wealth. From this one temple, Pizarro, the Spanish conqueror, took 24,000 pounds of gold and 82,000 pounds of silver. 

Surely no country of the world has had a darker or a sadder history than this land of the Incas. The Spaniards arrived when the "Children of the Sun" were at the height of their prosperity. The affair of reducing the country was committed to the hands of irresponsible individuals, soldiers of fortune, desperate adventurers who entered on conquest as a game, which they had to play in the most unscrupulous manner, with little care but to win it. The lands, and the persons as well, of the conquered races were parceled out and appropriated by the victors as the legitimate spoils of victory. Every day outrages were perpetrated, at the contemplation of which humanity shudders.  

The Incan Empire had, it is calculated, a population of twenty million at the arrival of the Spaniards and in two centuries the population fell to four million. 

As is well known, the ancient inhabitants worshipped the sun and the moon. The Spanish priest, in order to gain proselytes with greater facility, did not forbid this worship, but placed the crucifix between the two. Where the Inca suns and moons were of solid gold and silver, painted wooden ones soon replaced them. The crucifix, with sun and moon images on each side, is common all over Bolivia today.