681) and Totora (3501) are two important trading centres, and in the
department of Santa Cruz, Ascension (pop. 4784) is a large mission
station in the Chiquitos hills.

_Communications._--Under a treaty with Brazil in 1903 and with Chile in
1904 (ratified 1905) provisions were made for railway construction in
Bolivia to bring this isolated region into more effective communication
with the outside world. Brazil agreed to construct a railway around the
falls of the Madeira (about 180 m. long) to give north-eastern Bolivia
access to the Amazon, and paid down L2,000,000 in cash which Bolivia was
to expend on railway construction within her own territory. Chile also
agreed to construct a railway from Arica to La Paz, 295 m. (the Bolivian
section becoming the property of Bolivia fifteen years after
completion), and to pay the interest (not over 5%) which Bolivia might
guarantee on the capital invested in certain interior railways if
constructed within thirty years, providing these interest payments
should not exceed L100,000 a year, nor exceed L1,600,000 in the
aggregate. Argentina had already undertaken to extend her northern
railway from Jujuy to the Bolivian frontier town of Tupiza, and the
Peruvian Corporation had constructed for the Bolivian government a short
line (54 m. long) from Guaqui, on Lake Titicaca, to Alto de La Paz,
which is connected with the city of La Paz, 1493 ft. below, by an
electric line 5 m. long. This line gives La Paz access to the Peruvian
port of Mollendo, 496 m. distant, and promises in time to give it
railway communication with Cuzco. Rivalry for the control of her trade,
therefore, promises to give Bolivia the railways needed for the
development of her resources. Up to 1903 the only railways in Bolivia
were the Antofagasta and Oruro line, with a total length of 574 m., of
which 350 m. are within Bolivian territory, a private branch of that
line (26 m. long) running to the Pulacayo mines, and the line (54 m.
long) from Guaqui to Alto de La Paz--a total of only 430 m. As a result
of her war with Chile in 1878-81, the railways (282 m. long) of her
Litoral department passed under Chilean control. Lines were in 1907
projected from La Paz to the navigable waters of the Beni, from La Paz
to Cochabamba, from Viacha to Oruro, from Uyuni to Potosi and Sucre,
from Uyuni to Tupiza, and from Arica to La Paz via Corocoro. The central
northern line of the Argentine government was completed to the Bolivian
fron