Have you ever heard of a man named Simon Bolivar? Probably not, but in South America every boy and girl knows him as you know George Washington. In fact, he is often called the George Washington of South America. Just as England once owned the thirteen colonies, Spain once owned a great part of South America. Then this man Bolivar, Simon Bolivar, who lived in Venezuela, thought, as a great many others did, that Spain was not treating his country right. Bolivar had been in the United States and had heard how the United States once belonged to England and how George Washington had led the revolution against England until the United States belonged to itself. So Bolivar went back to South America and started a revolution to make his country and other countries of South America independent of Spain. He had a very hard time of it, indeed. Again and again he had to flee for his life, but again and again he returned to South America and at last succeeded in making five countries of South America independent of Spain. After he died one of these countries that he had freed changed its name from High Peru to Bolivia, after him. Bolivia is one of the few countries in the World that do not touch the sea, from which there is no way to get to the sea by boat.

Much of the tin in the World comes from mines in Bolivia. Tin pans and tin cans are not made of pure tin—it would cost too much if they were. They are made of iron and simply plated with tin. Pans and cans made of iron would rust and so be unfit for food, but tin doesn’t rust and that’s why the pans and cans are covered with a thin coating of tin. When this thin tin wears off, the iron rusts easily enough, and that’s why most tin cans you see on the ash pile are rusty; the tin has worn off.

Between Bolivia and Peru there is a very large lake. Its name sounds funny, like a person stuttering. It is Ti ti ca ca. It is the highest lake of its size I once built a rowboat in my cellar. When I had finished it I found it was so big I couldn’t get it out of the house. So I had to take it apart, carry it outside, and put it together again. There are steamers on Lake Titicaca, but in order to get them there from where they were built they had to be taken to pieces and carried up the mountains to the lake, piece by piece, and there put together again.