64 NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



eastern shores to a further height of nearly 10,000 

 feet ; and lake steamers give access to most of the 

 inhabited places on its shores — no slight matter when 

 it is remembered that the lake measures more than 

 a hundred miles in length. 



The second line, which, starting from the city of 

 Lima, is carried nearly due east along the valley of 

 the Rimac, was designed to open communication by 

 the most direct route between the capital and the 

 fertile region on the eastern slopes of the Andes — 

 called in Peru the Montana — as well as with the rich 

 silver region of Cerro de Pasco. The crest of the 

 Cordillera, or western ridge of the Andes, is scarcely 

 eighty miles from Lima in a direct line, but the most 

 practicable pass is somewhat higher than the summit 

 of Mont Blanc. The road was to pierce the pass by 

 a tunnel 15,645 feet above the sea-level, and thence 

 to descend to the town of Oroya on the high plateau 

 that divides the two main ridges. As the line was 

 laid out, the distance from Lima to the summit-level 

 was only 97 miles, and that to Oroya 129 miles. 



Considered merely as engineering works, these lines, 

 which owe their existence to the enterprise of an 

 American contractor and the skill of the engineers 

 who carried out the undertaking, may fairly be counted 

 among the wonders of the world. The Oroya line, 

 the more difficult of the two, unfortunately remained 

 unfinished. Although the loans contracted in Europe 

 by the Peruvian Government more than sufficed to 

 defray the cost of all the industrial undertakings that 

 they were professedly intended to supply, it is scarcely 

 necessary to say that a large portion disappeared 



