| Show COAL MINES OF THE ANDES I 1 Pada amayo april 4 1898 1899 1 find the americans very much in evidence in pru peru I 1 came new york to panama witly with A party of miners who were on their way here to the caravayo Cara bayo gold regions in the southern part of the country 1 amet met further lil th a mr forbes who told me that he had just doured secured a concession conc easlon for john of new york for the right to wid electric street rall railways ways in and bout about lima and here at pacasmayo Pacas mayo ta corps of american civil engineers are laying out the route for the pacific 9 oal pany to valuable coal mines in the interior this company hea has leased the ider here of the peruvian government i dm the term tenn of ten years yea and it is in the idea to make this the terminus of the taU Toad the Amer american icem party at Paca amayo of mr G clinton gardner superintendent of the penn sylvania syl yania vanla rall railroad road and the builder of the mexican national who is the general manager of the company major wm M af phillips of philadelphia another well known pennsylvania railroad iman who is acting as chief engineer jar F 8 rook of new york end and mr al 21 B H kauffmann and son who have abt r many years been in business in south america and who now do the chief shipping and import busan business of two ma part of peru in addition to these linen hea there is an english engineer mr ME 5 V herbert wood and also several pe mm evians the surveying party has been in the mountains for the past three months it returned the night before I 1 landed and I 1 am able to give the latest and fullest news from my talks with the engineers but first let me tell you something about the concession which this company has and its probable effect on south american affairs if the scheme be carried out as is now contemplated it will result in putting america to the front in peru and it will I 1 be believe lievi make some americans rich the pacific company has an authorized capital of and a number of the leading business men of new york philadelphia and lima are interested in it it has concessions for valuable coal mines which lie up in the andes at a distance of from 76 75 to miles back from the coast and has the exclusive right to build and operate railroads running to these mines its corI concession cession was granted in 1892 to cuthbert B jones and lasts for twenty years the country covered by it and in which it can have no compete competitors runs rune for about one hundred milea along the coast and to Is about as big as the ehg state of maryland the company la Is I 1 am told prosecuting its work with its own means and it is said that there is plenty of money behind it these american coal mines of the andes with a good railroad would be more valuable than gold mines there to is practically no good coal on the west pacific coast of south america of the tons used every year the bulk comes from australia england japan and british columbia chile has some mines but none that are very good the coal sold on the coast brings all the way from 7 to 20 a ton and the demand will extend as far north as san francisco which now buys much of its fuel from australia indeed it is said that the largest fleet on the pacific ocean is the coal fleet mr gardner tells me that when this road to la completed he will be able to mine and land coal at the coast at a cost coat of 2 a ton and that he sees no reason why he should not supply tons a year he hopes to extend the road later on to the maranon river a navigable branch of the amazon which compares to it as the missouri does to the mississippi this he says will require less than miles of additional road building and will bring the steamers of the to within about miles of the pacific coast by this extension the great amazon country with its thousands of miles of navigable will be reached and the andean coal will be furnished to the eastern coast of south america I 1 the coal fields of the andes include both anthracite and lignite coal the company now owns about forty anthracite properties the anthracite Is practically unlimited land tt it has been tested and found to be as aa good as that of the famous lehigh valley there to Is some soft coal on the west slope of the mountains but the anthracite lies on the east slope about 1600 1500 or 2000 feet below the divide and it will have to be lifted that height on the railroad before it can take its long shoot down the andes to the pacific the andes ande are you know nowhere very low an and the railroad to the top win be expensive but the civil engineers tell me entirely practical the road will have to climb up the andes to an altitude of feet and it will at that point not be more than seventy five miles in a straight line from the coast it will probably cost more than any similar mileage ml leage in the united states but mr gardner says it will pay almost from the start leaving the pacific it will go up a river valley which is sunken to in among the sands of the peruvian desert this valley has haa a number of sugar estates and other plantations and there are other valleys which could be tapped later on the road winds a about like a snake on its way up the mountains crossing the andes the railroad will reach a number of good sized towns and some rich agricultural country A branch will extend to cajamarca Caja malca the city where pizarro held the inca king atahualpa in prison and where he later on had him put to death you remember the story atahualpa was the ruler of the whole western coast of south america he had it is estimated about people subject to him and this region had then a higher state of civilization than it has today when the spanish freebooter pizarro entered the country with a handful of soldiers and a few horse he was met at cajamarca Caja malca by atahualpa and kindly kindl treated pizarro asked him to dine with him and when unarmed he came into the house or palace which pizarro by his favor was occupying he captured him and the spanish soldiers slaughtered his attendants attendant gL the person of the inca king was so sacred that this event paralyzed the nation and at pas pals request war was not made then atahualpa said that if pizarro would release him he would fill the chief room in the palace in which he was confined with gold to a point as high as he could reach this was agreed to and for several weeks gold was brought in great loads from all parts of peru the room was wa seventeen feet long by twenty two feet wide and the point up to which it was to be filled was designated by a red mark nine feet above the floor the gold was in all sorts of shapes some of it was composed of gold plates torn from the temple of the sun gun at cuzco there was a great variety of golden basins drinking cups and other dishes there were vases of all kinds and many pieces of beautiful carved workmanship when the room was almost filled up to the mark indicated pizarro ordered the indian goldsmiths to melt the whole into ingots ingols and there was so much gold that they worked day and night for a month in doing so then pizarro refused to let atahualpa go and with a mock trial had him put 10 to 0 death there is a stone in cajamarca Caja malca which the indians say is stained with blood A prison now covers the spot where the palace stood and it is in one of the rooms of this prison that the stone to is shown the ro road adwill will also pass through the rich mining town of hualgayoc where the silver veins are rich beyond deft dea and from whre where the with which Pl Pi soldiers shod their horses probably came there ther are copper and lead mines along the route and as fat far as I 1 can learn the region to is full of undeveloped nit mineral wealth the workings of the silver mines so tar far have been after the rudest methods the silver being reduced to a sulphide and carried on mules down to the seacoast to be shipped to england or germany for reduction As I 1 write this I 1 see a dispatch in the lima paper which has just reached this is especially so of the english ment of rails for this road had been shipped from philadelphia rt it is in to be hoped that the work of construction wil be rapidly pushed for the other foreigners here are very jealous of any american In ovations and will block the wheels of yankee progress here stating that the first install who through the peruvian bor corporation pora now control most of the railways railway of peru the development of this concession will make the american influence very strong and it may possibly result in our getting a coaling station for our navy in this part of the pacific the pier which has been reared here tor for the terminus of the railroad Is one of the finest in south america it cost I 1 am told to build it it to is made of iron and is about forty feet wide and just half a mile long ions it extends that distance out into the harbor and forms one of the principal shipping places of this part of the world the steamers do not come to the pier but lie some distance away and the goods are taken out to thern them in lighters this is a cattle growing country and a large amount of livestock is shipped cattle are loaded by raising them in slings by means of derricks torn the end of the pier and dropping them into the lighters when about fat beeves have been thus dropped a lighter is full and it is taken away to the ship there is now a railroad track upon the pier and the cars of the railroad which goes up this valley bring their shipments of sugar coffee and hides out to the ships over it paying the american company tor for the privilege all along the coast above here I 1 saw signs signa of the oil fields of peru at one port we stopped and took on an thousands of boxes of petroleum for lima and at another we saw the refineries on the edge of the sea there seems to be an almost continuous strip of oll oil territory running down the pacific coast from ecuador for some distance into peru the ecuador oil fields I 1 learned of in Gu ayaquil they have not been touched as yet and hardly prospected so 80 that the information concerning them is in indefinite and hazy I 1 wax was told however that flowing wells of crude petroleum au are e found all along the ecuadorian coast from cape st helena southward and that in many places the flow of on oil ta Is such that when the weather to Is calm it covers the sea gea for a distance out from the shore with a greasy film north of cape st helena wells have been sunken by ecuadorians Ecuador ians and some of the output has ben sent to td guaya aguaya quil to be used for fuel in the boilers of the steamers on the guyas river the parties working the wells however were natives and as an is in usual in many such cades no practical tests were made from what I 1 was told at gudya guaya quil I 1 should think it might pay to investigate this territory the land on which the oil exists belongs to the government ern ment and any one has the right to denounce it by denounce I 1 mean to take i it up for mining purposes one man under the law would have the right to take up twenty claims each about three eighths of a mile long by 1800 1900 feet wide after this a yearly tax of 4 in gold on each claim would have to be paid if the territory should produce largely the properties would be very valuable on account of the oil lying near the surface and right on the dge of the sea where it could be almost piped into the steamers the oil fields of peru have been known to exist for the past thirty years but it is only recently that much development has been attempted the oil is in found at distances varying from to feet below the surface and both flowing and pumping wells have been exploited the oil found at north of palta paita yields about thirty per cent of kerosene and to is said to be good fr for both lighting and lubricating purposes pox it does not furnish as good a light ass as our american oil and brings about half as much in the markets here I 1 am told that a large number of the companies who have tried the peruvian wells have lost money and the english consul at lima estimates that about has been spent without return still there are english and nd italian companies which claim they are working at a profit and one italian armed dr glo is now producing bout about barrels a month while the bondon 1 london ondon and pacific company has tank and operates the largest larg est drefin arv v on the coast at present almost all of tho oil nil need in south america is sup bif rHod aba bv ohp Sta standard dard oil company ohp scenes here are unlike gnap nf any part of ohp th world I 1 can show how you some of them in giving you a ride with me through this winding valley to the foothills of the andes we go on a railroad built by an american a couple of decades or more ago but now owned by the english syndicate known as the peruvian corporation the cars came from the united states and the ties are from oregon the telegraph poles are discarded rails to which supports have been bolted to uphold the wires these iron poles are used on account of the little ants which here eat anything wooden but do not seem to bother the ties the conductor of the train is a little peruvian in a linen suit and on board with us we have a traveling postmaster who sells stamps takes up the letters from the various small villages and estates as we stop and hands out mall mail to the people who come to the train notice the little farms which we are passing the fields are fenced in with thick walls of mud as high as your waist and irrigating ditches carry sparkling water here and there through them the water comes from the river but the irrigation is carelessly done and a great part of it goes to waste there is a rice field this to is one of the best paying crops of this part of peru and there axe are large mills at pacasmayo Pacas mayo where the rice is hulled polished and prepared for shipment we go through large estates devoted to the raising of sugar this Is perus greatest crop the most of the estates are owned by foreigners and some in the past have paid very well the whole of the coast valleys are adapted to sugar raising and the cane grows much more easily here than in our states about the gulf of mexico I 1 visited the lura pico estate the other day this was managed and built up by mr B H kauffman it paid large dividends until the fall in prices of some years ago when the heart was cut out of the sugar business many of the plantations changed hands and lura pico is now owned by an english syndicate which has tens of thousands of acres of sugar lands the factory of lura pico fico made tons of sugar last year and it will make more this thel the factory alone cost and the improvements on the estate have footed I 1 up more than a million the most of the machinery was imported from I 1 philadelphia and the machine shops shop and foundry are awo using steel plates which they import from the united states this is so notwithstanding the tact fact that the owners are english the estate uses steam plows harrows and cultivators and I 1 noticed that the plow points were made at hartford the cane is hauled from the fields to the factories by steam engines over a portable railroad and all sorts of modern economical machinery is employed there are now over sixty sugar factories on the coast region of peru and in the neighborhood of to is invested in the business the amount produced to is about pounds a year the labor to is the native peruvian indian who receives from fifty to eighty cents in silver a day or from 25 to 40 cents of our money I 1 wonder how an american tenant would look if he were offered a place on one of these peruvian farms I 1 refer more especially to those on the smaller estates I 1 went into one of the houses on a plantation near here today it is a sample of thousands all through peru the hut but was made of canes and you could see out through the cracks on all sides the floor was of dirt and |
