TOPOGRAPHY AND RAILROADS 21 



roadbed with it. When we went down to Orotina on Oc- 

 tober 15, 1909, we were glad to learn that the "bad part of 

 the road was now good" — for this day only perhaps, but 

 sufficient unto the day are the slides thereof. We ap- 

 proached Las Lapas slowly and cautiously. The most 

 dangerous part was a very sharp narrow bend around a 

 small side valley. Here there was' a Y-shaped track, our 

 train approaching along one arm of the Y toward its stem. 

 The engine had previously been put on the rear end of the 

 train, and we were now pushed on to the stem of the Y far 

 enough for one car to be over the switch and uncoupled. 

 It was held back by some twenty peons while the engine 

 pulled the rest of the train away over the same arm leaving 

 the one car on the stem. Then the switch was thrown open 

 for the other arm (which was three to four feet lower than 

 the first arm), the car went down by gravity and was stopped 

 by its own handbrakes in the middle of a none-too-safe-look- 

 ing timber bridge. This operation was repeated for each 

 car and the engine, until the train was made up again, each 

 car reversed, on the bridge and the engine pushed us on 

 ahead of itself. The track was extremely uneven and 

 shaky. As we crawled along the cars swayed and lurched 

 from side to side and endwise, the tracks groaned and brakes 

 screamed, but we did somehow stick to the tracks. For 

 half a mile each side of this place the track looked as if it 

 would slip away any minute. There were many marks of 

 recent slides, the most impressive being a basket on a cable, 

 stretched from one arm of the Y to the other arm, to con- 

 vey passengers when the road was really impassable. In 

 January, 1910, the passing from one branch of the Y-track 

 to the other at Las Lapas was accomplished in a much 

 shorter time, for the stem of the Y had been lengthened by 

 cutting into the hillside, so that the entire train could be 

 run onto the stem at once and then off to the other arm. 



