412 The Andes and the Amazons. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



Over the Andes by Rail. — The Desert of Islay. — The City of Arequipa. — 

 The Summit. — Puno and Lake Titicaca. 



Foe the first time in history the locomotive has been 

 sent over the Andes. " Train leaves the Pacific for Lake 

 Titicaca at Tialf-past seven.'''' What a strange announce- 

 ment! An omnibus to Damascus, a railway to Jerusalem, 

 and a steamer on the Nile, are startling innovations ; but 

 it seems harder to believe that a train of Troy cars, drawn 

 by a New Jersey locomotive, runs regularly from the coast 

 over the Cordilleras to the very shore of that lofty, myste- 

 rious lake, hitherto almost unapproachable. 



In many respects it is a more wonderful achievement 

 of engineering than the Pacific Railroad or the Mont Cenis 

 Tunnel. It is the longest railway in the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere, being 325 miles long, the distance from the sea to 

 the lake in a straight line being 175. It is also the loftiest 

 railway in operation (the Or6ya will be a thousand feet 

 higher), and no other road in the world can show so many 

 cubic yards of excavation. It was built for the govern- 

 ment by Henry Meiggs, at a total cost of $44,000,000; 

 and, as we might expect, almost every thing is American, 

 from Ames's shovels to the superintendents. 



It was my good fortune to be the first traveler to go by 

 rail from the Pacific to Lake Titicaca, and I propose to 

 give a sketch of this unique journey. 



The western terminus is the village of Mollendo, just 

 south of Islay, a sudden creation of the railway. Before 

 it is the unbroken ocean ; behind it is a perfect desert. 

 There is no harbor. The rocky coast is simply notched 



