Deseret Weekly | 1898-06-25 | Page 1 | In the Heart of the Andes

IN THE HEART of THE ANDES puno peru may 30 1898 1 I 1 write this letter in the attle attic of the south american continent I 1 am in the heart of the andes mountains on what with the exception of thabet is in the loftiest loft iest table land of the globe at my feet feel is ia the western shore of the highest water of the earth upon which steamboats sail and looking down upon me to is the snowy peak of illampu which next to Acon cag in chile is the highest of the andes during the past week I 1 have been traveling among the most wonderful mountains of south america and I 1 am now in a region which has not its counterpart upon the planet here and in other parts of the mountains of peru are am the highest places where peo pl pie elive live during my trip up the oroya aroya Ira railroad proad I 1 found a village of about souls at an altitude of more than three miles above the sea there to is a mining camp in the peruvian andes which la in more than feet high and in crowing crossing the desolate plain known as the pampa de barrieros arrieros Arri eros I 1 stopped some time at Vinc ocya where there is a locomotive round house higher up in the air than the top of pikes peak in coming here I 1 traveled for two days over one of the steepest railroads of the world and now at a distance of more than miles from the pacific I 1 am on the great plateau which lies between the two ranges of the andes varying in altitude from to 13 feet above the sea I 1 km am hundreds of miles south of the point where I 1 crossed the great moun talib from ibi 4 a and nd in a region where the andes anore M grand than at any point to in a 1 wmiles miles of their length think which towers into jf s a mountain up the te skies so 09 that its ragged snowy t to is four miles above the level of the ocean ocean Imai imagine gine if you can others v which ai arp rp over 2000 feet high malre make a wall of such mighty hills ind and paint them in the wonderful colors shades and tints of df the ande andean skies and you dan can got a taint idea of my surroundings I 1 have with me many books boo upon south Am america elrica but I 1 fall fail too to find in hem any descriptions of the effects of these mountains this is taft ahr region of all others for the artist and as an yet ket no BO great artist has attempted t aft 04 transfer these wonderful irful pictures to canvas advas my trip over the andes was a con panorama let me give you ajr W votes poles of 0 akie the scenes along the route r as 1 E jotted them down on the way I 1 began at Mollen db on the pacific ocean it is in ragged town on the ragged coast a of the peruvian desert the ship lies alea rout rot in the harbor and the surf rolls rolli in with mith great giat force striking the rocks and sending nor its dia diamond mofid spray fifty feet upward into the air the harbor iff rougher heIr than that of jaffa and my baggage is lowered into a boun bounding dlug tk bolt t over the side of the ste steamer alner I 1 have to jump into theli the boat oat when it is on the crest of the waves a and 1 ud I 1 feel ay my tOi mach rise as an I 1 sink down into the dp T the he landing ls 0 o bad that men and baggage are often thrown into the water and I 1 am told that the insurance companies always charge one eighth ot of a per cent more on all goods shipped to mollendo Mol lendo I 1 am rowed to the shore by colored boatmen through huge rocks now we run ran into a lighter which is bringing out cargo for the steamer and are nearly capsized now we graze a great boulder and at the wharf I 1 ba hae we to jump when the boat is on the crest of the wave to get a footing on the steps my baggage ag gage cannot be landed except by means of a crane and I 1 pay four men two dollars to carry my heavy trunks up the hills to the custom house A little later on I 1 am seated on a oar on my way to arequipa which though only about miles from the coast to is higher up in the air than the top of mount washington our train first skirts the coast and then shoots off into the bare hills of the desert there is in not a shrub not a vestige of take green en we climb up a four ner cent grade winding about in horseshoe curves at places we see the tracks over which we have passed running parallel without with but far below us now we are on the side of the mountain facing the ocean the sky blue pacific hazy and smoky Ar stretches bretches etches out towards the west until its delicate blue fades into that of the sky A patch of reddish gray skirts the foot of the brown velvet hills and this is divided from the sky blue water by the silvery strip of surf which is dashing its waves on the shore the scenery changes at almost every turn of the wheel there is no place dulace where nature clothes the earth in such royal garments as here at times dines the andes jire are great masses of blue and brown tha clouds of the sky though of a fleecy whiteness paint jel velvet spots of many colors on the hoary hills and at times it seems as though all alf the ink bottles of the heavens had bad ben scattered over the mountains with the most delicate blues which fade into lighter tints of blues in the distance tiu the whole horizon seems a billowy billOW 3 waving sea of blue dusted du apted with silver which meets kno and loo looses itself in a silver blue sky winding in and out among such hills bills we ra dee to a great desert known as the pampa de islay here everything to Is gray and dazzling white there are hundreds of huge mounds of moving sands which are traveling slowly but surely over the pw bones of animate which have died in trying to cross the desert waste and the only apparently living things are the mirages which now and then decle deceive ve the traveler with the idea that they ey are cool lakes Inver inverted teo cities or oases of vegetation ngar near at hand at the lit tle tie town of victor a all above the 1 we reach the ond end of the pampa and aad again begin to ascend we are again in ragged hills and soon axe are traveling trave linc among the clouds we pass pase through deep cuttings in the mountains m oun and end the first days daylis travel at fee above the sea I 1 this road is said bald to have greater excavations cavat ions than any other line ot of similar length it is one of the most moat expensive roade reads a ever ver overbuilt built having cost for a lindof miles oran or an average of a mile the road reaches an altitude of feet in crossing the andes to the plateau of lake Titi caca and here where it ends the altitude la Is higher than the top of th the 9 sacred snow capped peak of japan it has a branch line of 1 miles going over the plateau to within two days of cuzco the famed faed capital of the incas this railroad was built when peru was rich and when she was squandering fortunes on such things itle lt is the work of the american engineer meiggs and is one of the great engineering feats of the world there is talk of extending it into bolivia and it way may sometime be a part of a transcontinental line reaching to Para paraguay guby and the argentine at present it belongs to the peruvian corporation the english syndicate which took perus railroads in consideration of relieving the country of its foreign debt but it ts is managed by who keeps it in almost as good con condition di as any road you will find ip in the united states all of the rolling stock te in Amer american ioan in pattern though of late the cars and engines have been made by peruvians in the companas comp anys shops at arequipa arequipa to Is the ehte halfway half halt way station on the road to lake Titi caca and it is there that the general offices of the road are situated it I visited the railroad shops and found peruvians engaged in all kinds of car construction they make engines asgood as any used in our country and have some which are specially adapted to the heavy grades of the andes the shoeb are in charge of an american a mr beaumont of new jersey but all odthe of the men amen are peruvians mr beaumont told me that of the he am hands employed in one capacity or another ton on the road there were not more than ten foreigners it ma interest our railroad men to know the wages which their kind receive down here I 1 give them anAn in amerlean american gold values and not in the silver in which th they eyare are paid Trac kmen receive 75 76 cents a day and brakemen a similar amount engineers get a month and conductors are paid fro frore 30 to 65 66 a month according to position and length of service men employed in the shops get from 76 cents and upwards per pec day there are no trades unions and the men never strike they work nine hours a day and with those who are out on the road the day lasts without extra pay until the cars come in arequipa Is in the second d city of P peru eru it has about people and to Is still light lighted edby by cool oll oil though ate an electric lighting plant Is now being beine put oat in the town lies in the little valley of the chile river which makes ag of green in the midst of the desert and gives arequipa about fifty odd square miles of irrigable land arequipa Is the commercial capital of tiie the southern part of the country and a great part of the trade of bolivia passes through it most of the business Is in done by the germans and and there la Is not an Arner american leah house in the efty city it Is the neatest prettiest and brightest town I 1 have yet seen in south amer lea it Is odd years old and la is bat and knocked up by the earth quakes of the past but as you go through it you get the impression impressio in that the town ts is almost brand new it looks as though it had come from A band box the housed are mostly one story stone boxes but their walls are painted in the most delicate tints of blue pink cream green waa told gold I 1 posted my letters in a post postoffice office tinted in ashes of roses I 1 bought the fruit I 1 ate for breakfast in a sky blue fruit store and cashed a draft on london in a bank baak which bad outer walls the color of gold another peculiarity of arequipa Is that most of its rooms are made in the shape of vaults the stores are vaults ten to fifteen feet wide anufrom and from ten to thirty feet deep with doors looking out upon the streets in many cases there Is no way out at the back and the only light except that from the door comes ln in through holes in the roof I 1 ate my dinner at the hotel in arequipa in a vault I 1 was shaved in a vaul tand my sleeping room had a vaulted roof I 1 went out on the roof once or twice to look over the city these vaulted roofs gave it the appearance of a chinese graveyard bather rat flier than that of an american town the streets are narrow slid and paved with cobbles down one side of each street there Is a rusti rush ing stream of mountain waiter which carries off on the sewerage sew wage and which as it gurgles tarbush the streets at nigh tt mikes makes you dream of rain and go to the window as poem iw as you wake 0 to o see if ft t really Is clear oaf not it rains only a part of thil tha year in arequipa but when it does rain IT sometimes pours at such aoh times the sits greets are flooded and the water from the roots roofs Is carried out by catle tan pipes as big around as a broomstick to just juat over the middle of the sidewalk where it goes goe a down the backs of the necks 0 ot the unwary by in walking through arequipa you might get the idea that the city was full of burglars every house faces the sidewalk and every window is covered with iron bars the houses them selves look like fori fortresses and the kocics on the doors are of mammoth size the barred windows and locked doors aie are not tor for the burglars they are not to keep thieves out but to cage the girls in the windows have seats behind the bars ban but no peruvian beau stops to chat at these with his lady love the bars bara of iron axe are as thick as your finger and so BO close together that the most ardent lips could not meet between them this thib seclusion of the women VV by the spanish people Is probably a relic of their admixture with the moors moore centuries ago the up of the heads in black clothes was originally so done that on ay tyne one eye showed out it was worse thin than the veils of egypt or constantinople now the whole face is displayed and many of the better class girls wear h hats at s A peruvian parent however never lets let his girls go out alone upon the street there are no moonlight drives and walks with lovers here and when you call upon your sweetheart you have to entertain the whole family mid and it if you go with your girl to the bull fight you take mamma papa auntie and od nd maid sissy with you the ite most moat interesting thing in are hulpa however is the harvard college observatory just about bo ut twenty years ago urith uriah IEL borden died and left DOO to harvard college with the understanding that the moxey money be used to tg establish an observatory at the very best place that could be found in the whole world for study of them the stars stara a and nd meteorological I 1 condit conditions lims the college authorities first tried points tn in colorado and california and then sent gent an expedition itigan to boutt america this expedition first established a sta tion feet above the sea in the andes back of lima on what is now called mt harvard in 1890 they i changed the station to arequipa and have since made this one of the great i scientific centers of the world arequipa is feet above the sea and it has more clear days and nights it is said than any other place on earth there are about nine months of the year there when the sky is perfectly clear you people who pride yourselves on beautiful skies and glorious sunsets will not dot know what the words mean until you have visited south america these are especially fine at arequipa which has in addition the advantage of being south of the equator at one of the best beat points for viewing the southern heavens there is you know nothing duplicated in the sky and there are here wonderful stars and constellations which we never see the milky way south of the equator is in fax far more brilliant than it Is in our heavens and there are mazy many other different stars with different movements you lave bave all heard of the southern cross which my friend dr talmage says looks to him like the handwriting of god on the face of the sky I 1 dont think much of it it to Is a measly cross at ait best there are only four stars in it that are sot not at all bright and you have to look hard to find them there are however wonderful things outside of this and the best observations so far made in recent years of the southern heavens naive have been made by the harvard scientists they have tour four great teles telescopes colbs pea at arequipa which I 1 night after night through the nine I 1 clear months of the year axe are pointed at I 1 the stars connected with each of these telescopes is a photographic apparatus I 1 I 1 which records the movements of such stars stan as the scientists wish to study and which by fine machinery move along with the stars stare until their images and those of their surrounding are registered on the photographic plate the truce telescope for instance I 1 Is I 1 believe the largest of its ita kind in the world though I 1 am not 1 sure of this it if has a lens 24 inches in diameter and gives photographs on plates 14 by 17 inches in size I 1 took a look through the bruce telescope dirl dir d l i ing my visit to the observatory the tube of the instrument must weigh more than a ton but it is so no delicately hung that a child could move it it runs by a clook clock and a heavy weight the chief part of the work done at the observatory is the li heavens eavens five photographic inatsu menta mants are kept going and about fifty plates are made every night TA last year more than live five thousand plates were exposed and developed the negatives are shipped at once to the the