134 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 161. 



familiar with the main facts in the history of 

 this, ' the highest railway in the world. ' There 

 is, however, one feature which the traveller 

 who makes the trip from Lima to Oroj'a, over 

 this wonderful road, cannot fail to notice, and 

 yet which has scarcely been noticed in previous 

 accounts. This concerns the climatic contrasts 

 that are exhibited between the beginning of 

 the line at Callao and its terminus at Oroya, 

 12,178 feet above sea level. The writer was so 

 struck with these climatic changes during a re- 

 cent trip over the railroad that he is tempted 

 to send a hurried note concerning them to Sci- 

 ence. 



There is nowhere else in the world an op- 

 portunity like that permanently afforded by the 

 Oroya Railway of travelling from sea level to 

 an altitude of nearly 16,000 feet in eight hours 

 in a comfortable railway carriage. JMany tour- 

 ists make the great mistake of going only part 

 of the distance to Oroya, and they thus lose 

 some of the most striking features in the cli- 

 matic belts through which the road passes. 

 Starting from sea level at Callao, the road runs 

 through Lima up the fertile valley of the Eimac, 

 where sugar cane and cotton growing on all 

 sides recall the sugar and cotton plantations of 

 our own Southern States, and bear witness to 

 the genial climatic conditions which here pre- 

 vail. The contrast, in this section, between the 

 dry and barren hills above the valley and the 

 fertile valley bottom itself, where the lack of 

 rainfall is made up for by irrigation, is most 

 striking. 



Chosica, 2,800 feet above sea level, is the 

 point at which the railroad was left and mules 

 were taken in making the ascent of Mt. Har- 

 vard, occupied by Professor S. I. Bailey and 

 his party in 1890 as a temporary station, before 

 Arequipa was selected as the permanent site of 

 the Southern Station of the Harvard College 

 Observatory. Mt. Harvard, 6,600 feet above 

 sea level, situated midway between the belt oc- 

 cupied by the ' coast cloud ' and a cloudy and 

 rainy region further inland, offered favorable 

 opportunities for astronomical work, but was 

 replaced by Arequipa, where the conditions are 

 still more favorafcle. 



Further up the line, at San Bartholome, 4,959 

 feet in elevation, there comes a small belt of 



country where sugar cane and cotton no longer 

 grow, but where fruit trees thrive. Bananas, 

 apricots, limes, [chirimoyas, paltas and other 

 fruits are offered for sale in great quantities at 

 this station, and are also sent down to the 

 Lima market. San Bartholome is also known 

 — in this case unfavorably — as the chief seat of 

 the disease known as verrugas, which, although 

 not yet carefully studied in this region in con- 

 nection with its dependence upou meteorolog- 

 ical conditions, would seem, according to in- 

 formation given the writer, to be closely related 

 to these conditions. Verrugas, which appears 

 to be a species of blood poisoning, is usually 

 less fatal to the natives of the region than to 

 foreigners. During the construction of the rail- 

 road at this point a special hospital had to be 

 built to accommodate the engineers and laborers, 

 who fell victims to the disease. Verrugas is 

 generally believed by the natives here to be 

 milder and less prevalent in years when there 

 are few cloudbursts, and more common and 

 more severe in years of many cloudbursts. 

 The disease is always most prevalent after the 

 rainy season has begun. 



In this region some rain is said to fall every 

 year on the mountains, but the annual rainfall 

 is reported to be very small, indeed, until above 

 Matucana (7,788 ft.), where the increasing eleva- 

 tion provokes increased precipitation. Cloud- 

 bursts, or huaicos, as they are here called, occur 

 anywhere on the mountains, at intervals of a few 

 or of many years. These huaicos, which seem to 

 be similar in every way to the cloudbursts of 

 our southwestern country, do great damage to 

 the railroad line, especially to the bridges and 

 embankments across the (usually) dry ravines, 

 or quebradas. They come very suddenly, and 

 bring down great quantities of rocks and sand 

 from the mountain sides. It was a huaico of 

 this kind that carried away the famous Verrugas 

 bridge a few years ago. Landslides are not un- 

 common in connection with the huaicos. A 

 rainy season here comes from December to 

 April. At Casapalca (13,606 ft.) the rain falls 

 mostly in the afternoon, and snow, when it falls, 

 comes usually late in the afternoon. The rain is 

 said to begin earlier and earlier in the day as the 

 rainy season comes on, this apparently being the 

 result of the increasing activity of convectional 



