LAKE TITICACA 133 



twenty miles from the great mining centre, is a remark- 

 able piece of engineering ; you climb up round spurs of 

 mountains and over mountains at an inclination which 

 is fearful. But like many things done by our English 

 friends, the whole thing is spoiled by the absurdly broad 

 gauge they have adopted, as broad as that of the Erie 

 Railroad, to do a little two-penny business of one train 

 a day, which a diminutive railroad like some of the 

 mountain railroads of the United States would do at 

 half the cost. What a pretty country this coast range 

 would be were it only green, but you see only here and 

 there a few green bushes ; to be sure they say that in 

 spring it is covered with wild flowers, but as in Cali- 

 fornia it lasts but a very short time. Some of the trans- 

 verse valleys, where a little water still winds its way 

 among the pebbles, are masses of green, and give you 

 an idea of what this country might be with irrigation. 

 There must have been water here in plenty in olden 

 times, for the town of Ovalle and the terminus of the 

 railroad from Coquimbo are placed in the broad bed of 

 an ancient river, and high above the town rise the old 

 ten-aces over two hundred feet high, through which the 

 former river once cut its way and has now left the huge 

 masses of pebbles and cobble stone which compose the 

 surrounding hills. You do not see, even in the Con- 

 necticut Valley, better river terraces than found here, 

 only here they are due to the gradual rising of the whole 

 of the Chile coast, so plainly seen by this sort of forma- 

 tion, and by the old beaches high above the present 

 level which you find all along the coast. 



I am now beginning to experience some of the pleas- 

 ures of travelling in out of the way places, and that in 

 Spanish places which beat the worse phases of the French 



