Deseret Weekly | 1898-05-21 | Page 12 | Down the Andes on a Hand Car

DOWN THE ANDES ON A HAND CAR copyrighted 1898 by frank G carpenter lima peru april 16 1898 down the andes on a hand car coasting over the steepest railroad af the world dashing Do shing through clouds to find clouds betow you hanging to preci precipice precipices flying on bridges over frightful chasms whirling about curves now in the midnight darkness dan dar knoss of winding tunnels and now where the light of day makes you shudder at the depths below you this will give you a faint idea of 0 the last part of a trip from which I 1 have just returned during it I 1 have as aate ended bended to the very top of the mountains and have come back again to this point which is just six miles from the sea my trip was over the famous orem railroad the most wonderful wondern ul piece of railroad engineering ever con or planned the road is all told only miles long but it clibbo up the steepest mountains of the globe in less than miles it ascends mom than three miles and at its highest point it la in feet above where it atea tir at the port of callao on the pacific ocean at the top it is still 2000 tenet fet below the summit of mount beiggs s it cuts right through this peak by a tunnel which carries it to the other bide sade of the andes it then descends to the valley of the jauja fauja through the rich silver mining region of baull and finally ends at oroya aroya an indian market town feet above the sea it is 4 one of the most expensive roads ever built it was dear in both money and men seven thousand lives were it Is 18 said lost during its construction and the first eighty six miles of it cost or over per mile between the coast and the summit there to is not an inch of down grade and the speed boded of our liand hand oar car in my journey over it was only regulated by the pressure on the brake in the hands of the indian who acted as conductor on natany of the road the grade ls Is ov ivr 4 pter cent and at such grades the track winds about and up the andes passing through cuts in the solid rock ano and th through 1 ugh sixty three tunnels some of augh which are of the shape of a letter EX it to is of the standard gauge its track te Is well laid and is in excellent condl tio alon chis this road was built by an american though it we was suggested by a peruvian the man who constructed it was henry meg laid out the road acted as aa its engineer in chief raised the money thoner to build it and in tact fact IS T entitled to all the credit of its construction the road was originally intended to peach the cerro de pasco silver mines ines but the gave g ave out when about eighty six miles were built and the extension is still some forty odd tunes away from these famous moah ans of copper and silver the portion of the road aboe where gs left on off was construe constructed ted by the peruvian corporation under what to Is known ba the grace contract the ultimate iren ae 11 ton to is to extend it farther on into the verent ferene a rich fich coffee raising district dietrict and to the head of the steam navigation of the amazon at chan dacayo chacayo cha cayo the preliminary surveys fot foi this have half e already been made the total acance from the sea to the nav navigable amazon is I 1 am told not more than h 21 0 miles but there is at present no JW sig blan of the road being soon completed it to doubtful whether the rijk how pays much more than it its operating as ano and it will be long befth it will give dividends in m tion to its enormous cost only two passenger trains are run over it a week and the chief freight down the mountains is ore the usual trip over this road is ia taken on the regular passenger train which carries the traveler up the mountains one day and brings him back the next though the kindness of the influential american firm of grace co I 1 was taken up on a little engine and had my ride down on the hand car I 1 thus had a wonderful opportunity for studying both the railroad construction and the mighty mountains up which it climbs our special engine was called la favorita it was composed of the engine proper and a cab walled with glass and fitted up with comfortable seats this observation compartment was a part of the engine itself taking g the place that the ordinary engine uses for coal our little engine burned coal oil and it was peruvian petroleum that pulled us up the andes the party consisted of the american mints minister ter mr dudley the secretary of our legation mr neal mr sherman the managed of the house of grace at lima a frenchman named piper and mr pierson aon an electric street railway man from ohio who is out here to see whether the lima tramways tram ways are worth buying the engineer and his helper were peruvians we left at seven in the morning and spent the whole day on the road ff stopping tOPPIng to take photographs at the most interesting going on as fast or as slow blow as we wished lima you know ts is situated in the valley of the river it is right at the foot of the andes and our trip was up the mountains along the course of this river to its very coerce on the summit at lima the Is what lq in america would be called a good sized creek it Is nowhere navigable and is in fact a stream of foaming white water from the top of the andes to the sea the descent Is so steep that quiet pools axe are nowhere to be found and the river is a succession of waterfalls foaming churns and rushing rapids during the ride we could often see the river above and below us at the same ume teene and we went up up climbing the sides of the mountains cheered on our way by the rushing of the waters we first passed through the sugar and cotton plantations which filled the valley above lima the me fields look like gardens gair dens gotten up for show they are surrounded by mud walls and the crops are as green as those of the united stites states in june now we pass a sugar hacienda in which on one side ot at the track two steam engines are pulling a cable plow through the field while on the other side men are plowing with oxen and wooden plows urging their beasts onward with goads fifteen feet long in the cotton fields gangs of indian workmen are working under overseers on horseback the me cotton plants are in blossom and the fields look like vast gardens of pink and yellow roses the men weed the plants and they are as clean as adv rose garden at home there is a cotton mill and farther on we pass a sugar factory which grind out ont thousands of pounds of sugar a day there Is no better sugar land anywhere than this and we learn in passing that it produces from two to six tons of sugar per acre and after once started will keep on producing for fo as long as six si years we notice nodee that all of the land is used the water catl r is taken from the now we are in the foot hills of the andes andea how bleak and bowe and gray they look th ID the earl early mo morning forhing q there here Is not a green spot aby anywhere where to be seen on these vast walls which here face the sea we shall find it different as we rise to the mountains behind here they are of soft silver gray velvet where the sun casts its shadows and of dazzling white where it strikes full in their faces the only green to is the little strip along the put pui ther on we notice a thin f uz of green cropping out of the gray it is as though the velvet was sprinkled with a dust of ground emeralds here there is a little cactus and there a small bunch of weeds As we rise higher the mountains grow greener until at the level of mount washington we find them covered with a thin coat of vegetation eta tion As aa we near the altitude of leadville there is plenty of grass and at one point we count forty different kinds of flowers at EL a stopping of our engine there are buttercups butter cups without number silver gray mosses and flowers of all colors the names of which I 1 do not know As I 1 remark upon the vegetation saying that it is still very scanty mr sherman tells me that the fact that there to is any green at all to be seen is due to the rainy season and that at other times of the year this whole western side of the andes to is bleak dry and almost absolutely sterile the foot hills which in fact are mountains in themselves looked as though they were of dirt and gravel further up you come into a region of rocks where only bits of soil are to be seen here and there in such placer every inch of ground is cultivated the mountains are terraced clear to their tops and some of them axe are covered with steps ot of green built up with rocks and so BO graduated that a man can stand on one of the lower steps or ledges and plant the seed or weed the crops of the next ledge without stooping over some of the fields axe are not as big as a bedspread and some on the opposite side of the mountain do not look as big as a pocket handkerchief some patches of corn seem almost inaccessible and remind me of the fann ers em of west virginia who are said to have to plant their crops with a rifle as the hills are so steep that they are unable to stand long enough on the sides to drop the corn in the rows we see indians planting and working in the fields and pass numerous little callages val lages of one story houses made of sun sundries dried bricks and roofed with thatch or sheets of corrugated iron IT in most cases the iron plats plates are not nailed to the huts they are merely laid on the rafters batters and kept there by covering them with stones many of the houses are not larger than dog kennels and quite aa a squalid as an american pigsty and their inhabitants who gather around us at the stations pre are of the peon variety dark faced indian men women and children I 1 frightened some of the children very much by posing them for my camera they had evidently never heard of photographs and cyna little fellow howled like a cherokee indian when I 1 pointed the instrument at mm I 1 have been over every scenic route in the united anted states I 1 have traveled over the railroads of mexico and h have visited those parts of europe which jhb world calls grand I 1 have ell clin iben the himalayas and have watched etched the sun set on the mountains of north I 1 china but nowhere have I 1 seen anything like the scenery of the andes I 1 win will not slay say that it Is more beautiful or of more impressive than the alps the or the Uima himalayas layas but it sur passes them in some respects and its wonders are its own here the mountains rise almost abruptly upward abo ride for or miles between walls walla of rock rocc which kiss the sky thousands of affet above you some of the rocks take the shapes of gagan gigantic fic cathedrals very temples of the gods their spires hidden in n the c loudd clouds others look like vat fortifications walls alls of rock to shut t the 14 nations of 0 the west away fj from o tho ta j riches of this great continent there there f axe are no pre pretty tty bits of scenery such as f you see in other mountains here all 3 Is on the grandest and most terrible scale in our ride along the sides of f these walls now we pierce them by bk a tunnel high up in the ajr air and higher still atin see another tunnel which we shall reach later on we cross gorges in going from one tunnel into another avex ovex an iron network of a bridge which looks awfully frail as the favorita passes over it we pierce a wall of rock where a river has been turned aside that it may not interfere with the road and by a winding tunnel dash out into what it called the infernillo Infer nillo or hell it is a slender iron bridge two miles above the sea high up between walls of rock far down below you 3 see waters rushing and out of the wall y we have left a great torrent of foaming w water plunges before us at the other y end of the bridge there is another wall r of rock in which there is a black hole pierced by the track and as we look y upward between these walls we see as t through a narrow silt the blue sky ot yi heaven bove above e this andean hell there are a number of these hanging y bridges on the route we stopped at the Veru guas bridge which opens a eua chasm feet long hanging to tunnels feet above the Veru guas river thlu bridge was waa swept away some time ago A and n d for months both passengers and freight were carried across on a cable the little car hanging to the rope stretched from wall to wall across this rightful frightful chasm at times we saw BMW tunnels above and below us the track goes up its steepest places in a zigzag route so that at one time we counted five tracks running almost parallel below us almost the whole line W was blasted butof out of the mountain rocks on many places along the line the hills are so steep that men had to be lowered in ropes over the edges of the precipices to drill holes for the powder which blasted away the ledges to fo the track falling rocks killed some landslides up others and many died ot fever ever you can imagine something of a sensation of going down such a road on a band car the reality is wilder and sume inore exciting than anything you can conceive the hand hamd car on which I 1 rode was of the rudest order it was merely a platform five feet long and a attle wider than the track upon four ordinary car wheels on the front part of the platform a strip of wood two inches thick ano and about that wide was ce nailed and at the back was a seat much uke like that on a farm wagon the at seat had a railing two inches high and j jt it was just wide enough for three the f conductor a brown faced indian sat to in the middle with his hand on a brake extending down through the center of af the h platform mr sherman and I 1 sat r on the right and left our feet braced against the strip on the bed ot of the car and our hands on the side and back of the seat holding on for dear life as we rushed down the mountains our only means of stopping the car was 1 by the brake and the danger as we I 1 zt rushed through the tunnels was not anly that of the car jumping the track on going around the curves but also fe the possibility of meeting a donkey or e an indian coming through the rocks in many mamy places are loose and the danger of a landslide is such at this ume of the year that a hand car to is al 41 ways sent five minutes ahead of 0 the regular passenger train to see that the road is free at one time we chased j cow for about a mile and at another two lamas blocked the track for a t yew few moments at times the road seemed to us to go down at an angle caf at forty five degrees and many of ft the severest grades were along the edges att 1 tle the precipices or where we e seemed to te e clinging to the walls of rock I 1 cannot say that I 1 was waa not afraid nor that my heart was not often in my throat but I 1 will say that the experience was such that knowing what I 1 now do I 1 would take the jo journey again to feel the same exhilarating sense of pleasure and danger combined the sensation of standing on the top of the andes was worth having As we climbed up and up above casapalca Casa palca the air grew colder and rarer we rode out of a heavy rain into a dense snowstorm soon we were in banks of snow now the mist and clouds surrounded us so that we could not see twenty feet beyond the car we rode through the storm and saw the clouds sweep down the andes below us As the mist disappear we caught a glimpse of the country through which we had been passing and shuddered at the pre over which we had gone mount meiggs was also straight above us and we stopped the engine a moment in front of thia black mouth of the galera tunnel on the very roof of the south american continent behind us all the waters were flowing into the pacific c ocean on the opposite side of the tunnel all of the waters find their way through the amazon into the atlantic the dividing of the waters is in fact within the tunnel itself and you could readily stand at a certain point in the galera tunnel and spit on both oceans without taking a step to one side or the other I 1 did