48 PROPOSED RAILWAY ROUTE ACROSS THE ANDES. [Jan. 23, 1860. 



subsequently to a town about thirty miles farther inland than Copiapo, making 

 about eighty miles from the sea. He had carried this line to between 5000 

 and 6000 feet above the level of the sea — an elevation higher than had been 

 so attained in any other part of the world. From that elevation, up to which 

 locomotive engines were now at work, he had found that practicable gradients 

 could be carried to a height of 16,000 feet above the level of the sea. From 

 that point, after some level space, there was one continued and very gradual 

 slope to the town of Rosario on the river Parana. From Eosario (on the east), 

 sloping thus gradually to the eastern foot of the Cordillera of the Andes, there 

 was scarcely any impediment of nature. Wood and water were abundant, the 

 country was fertile, the climate was healthy, and there were no Indians to 

 molest white people. In short, there was only the employment of capital 

 and adequate encouragement required to carry that portion of the railway to 

 the eastern summit of the Cordillera ; and chiefly because on this east side the 

 land slopes so gradually up to within a comparatively short distance of the 

 summit. 



For the character of the measurements, so far as barometrical altitudes and 

 distances went, he could vouch that they had been correctly calculated with 

 the proviso of a certain reasonable allowance for small errors in the horizontal 

 distances, which, in so great a length, would not tell much, as the extremes 

 were fixed accurately. The great difficulty of the undertaking lay between 

 the summit of the Cordillera and the highest point at present gained west- 

 ward of the Andes, between the point 6000 feet above the sea and the summit 

 level of 16,000 feet. Mr. Wheelwright said (from information he had obtained) 

 that there would not be much difficulty, in the opinion of practical miners, 

 and of the engineers already employed on the Copiapo Railway, with respect 

 to the gradients and the nature of the country. There would be less diffi- 

 culty there than had been already surmounted. 



But the commercial part of the question was a very different matter. The 

 practicability of the scheme was based upon the supposition that the materials, 

 and the men, and the money were available. 



There was one remarkable feature in the San Francisco Pass, through which 

 it was proposed to take the railway. It was the best pass in the whole range 

 of the Chilian Cordillera of the Andes, and the only one practicable throughout 

 the whole of the year. It was never snowed up ; the climate was mild (in 

 27° s. lat.), so that the snow never lay sufficiently deep to cause an obstacle, 

 nor were the winds or even storms sufficient to drive such quantities of snow 

 into the hollows as to blockade the pass. The pass of the Cumbre, about 11,000 

 feet in height, nearly opposite to Valparaiso, and another 13,000 or 14,000 feet 

 elevated, were snowed up for three or four months in the year. There was 

 also a good pass nearly opposite to Conception, of much lower elevation, but in- 

 terrupted not only by snow for a great part of the year, but by incursions of 

 the Araucanian Indians. 



However, supposing the intervening distance of two or three hundred miles 

 between the 6000 and 16,000 feet levels, to which he had referred, presents 

 insuperable obstacles to the construction of a railway, that portion of the route 

 could easily be crossed by a good waggon road ; and such a communication, 

 with the addition of telegraphic wires, would be of the greatest possible 

 advantage to the inhabitants of Peru and Chile, of the immense plains to the 

 east of the Andes, and of the whole of Brazil, besides the advantages it would 

 create for the extensive and great intercommunication that would be developed 

 between Australasia and South America. The actual distance from New Zea- 

 land, across that part of South America, to Europe, was rather less than the 

 distance by the Isthmus of Central America : and there was another considera- 

 tion connecting Australasia intimately with Chile, namely — a ship running a 

 few hundred miles to the north from Copiapo, or Caldera, got into the heart of 



