While Europe offers the most graphic illustrations of the engineer’s skill and ingenuity in overcoming rugged mountains by tunnelling through their bases, one must go to South America to discover the extraordinary methods he has adopted to negotiate similar obstructions by traversing their lofty crests. It seems somewhat strange, at first sight, that the “land of to-morrow” should have been the scene of such demonstrations of genius, but when the incalculable mineral wealth buried in the Andes is recalled, much of this surprise disappears.

The majority of the great mountain chains of the world appear puny in comparison with the mighty serrated backbone of the southern half of the American continent, which runs from the equator southwards to tumble abruptly into the sea at Cape Horn. Mont Blanc and other famous hoary European monarchs are insignificant beside Aconcagua and many other snow-clad peaks beetling to the skies in its vicinity. The Cordilleras present a compressed phalanx of pinnacles running in a fairly straight, even, and narrow line. As the equator is approached the needle points taper to bluntly rounded and rolling heads, but the general conformation is the same. The result is that the slopes are very steep, and to carry a railway through the mass entails tortuous winding among the cones, with steep gradients and tunnels through massive obstructions of rock. The cliffs of the Andes are probably unequalled in mountain topography for steepness and height, the flanks in places dropping down plumb for several thousand feet.

There is another peculiar characteristic which severely taxes the skill of the engineer. The range thrusts itself skywards very closely to the Pacific seaboard, so that the climb commences directly the coast is left, and the maximum heights have to be gained within comparatively short distances. For instance, in the case of the Oroya line, which is the railway wonder of the world, the traveller landing at Callao, in order to reach Oroya, 138 miles inland, has to toil 15,865 feet towards the clouds in the course of 107 miles—one of the highest points at which the piston of a railway engine throbs.

This South American line is not an ordinary mountain railway: it is an audacious marvel of engineering science. Nor does it merely offer facilities for sight-seeing among the impressive Cordilleras, but acts as a traffic highway between the coast and the mines on the high inland plateau.

As might be supposed, the difficulties which the engineers had to break down were numerous and stupendous. Moreover, the work was extremely costly. In the case of the Oroya road it averaged about £60,000, or $300,000, per mile, and altogether £8,500,000 ($42,500,000) were sunk in the enterprise—more than the total cost of the St. Gotthard railway, with its famous tunnel and 172 miles of track.

The first attempt to subjugate this range by the iron road was made in the ’sixties by a daring Philadelphia engineer, Henry Meiggs. His idea was ambitious in the extreme. He proposed to start from Callao, lift the metals over the crests of the mountains, drop down the other side on to the highlands, and to push across the plateau until he gained a point on the mighty Amazon which could be reached by steamer from the Atlantic. By this means the Pacific seaports of South America would be brought into closer touch with the markets of the Old World, avoiding the protracted and hazardous journey round Cape Horn. That the idea was never carried to success was one of the sorry tricks of Fate. Internecine strife and wars with neighbouring states sapped the financial strength of Peru to such an extent that there was not enough money to complete this grand scheme. Possibly some day the steel thread will be picked up again at Oroya and forced to its original objective.

For the first 107 miles this railway makes a continual ascent; there is not a single foot of downhill in the whole distance. Work was commenced in 1870, and was pushed forward so energetically that in the course of twelve months Meiggs had completed 20 miles of the line, and had the earthworks well advanced as far as Chosica, some 33 miles out of Callao. In order to ease his task as much as possible, the engineer decided to follow the Rimac River into the mountains. But as the innermost recesses of the Cordilleras are gained, the river narrows considerably, until it plunges merely through a slender defile, the walls of the peaks dropping down precipitously into the water. The result was that the engineer found it very difficult to find a natural lane for his metals, so he had to hew and blast galleries, to swing first from one bank to the other, in order to seize the slightest foothold.

He had plunged 47 miles into the mountains and had gained an altitude of about one mile, when he was brought to a dead stop. The mountain along which he had crawled laboriously broke off abruptly. Further advance was impossible. To have cut a tunnel would have been a herculean task, and as the mountain wall dropped straight down below, and towered to a dizzy height above him, he found himself in a quandary. A few feet immediately above him, however, he espied a ledge running parallel with that on which he had laid his track. He resolved to gain that upper gallery, but the crucial question was, How?

Then he hit upon a brilliant idea. It was something new and untried in railway engineering, but as he had already tested all existing methods to gain the point at which he now stood, there was no alternative but to devise new ways and means of overcoming perplexing situations as they arose, despite the apparent novelty of the solutions. He resolved to lift the track from the lower to the upper ledge by a “V-switch.”

The embankment on the outside of the track at the point he had gained was levelled off, and a small turntable was erected. From the latter two short lines were laid down at an angle to the track in the form of a widely opened “V,” with the turntable at the apex. The main line cuts across the top of the “V,” forming a triangle, and continues a short distance beyond. The manner in which the train is lifted from the one level to the other is as follows. The engine pulls it up the lower line on to the section crossing the top of the V, and in such a way as to be between its two angular limbs. The engine is uncoupled, and runs down one leg of the V on to the turntable, which is then swung round until the engine faces the other arm of the V, up which it passes until it gains the main line. It is now at the rear of the train which it was pulling a few minutes before. The engine is coupled up, and the train is pushed backwards until it is over the switch connecting with the upper level. It then proceeds forward in the usual manner. In reality it makes a zigzag course up the mountain-side.

This ingenious means of overcoming such a difficulty was tried first at San Bartholomé, and proved so very economical and simple a solution of a grave difficulty that it was freely introduced by the inventor whenever similar conditions were encountered. True, the process of uncoupling and recoupling the engine occasions a little delay, but the switch was cheaper and quite as effective as a loop, even if the latter could have been built, for it was found possible to lay the turntable between two tiers of metals on a gradient not exceeding 1 in 25. Altogether there are 22 of these switches on the system. The majority of them are of the simple type as we have described above, but in some cases there is a double zigzag when the difference in level was extreme, and did not permit of the connecting bank line being raised at an easy grade. The adoption of the “Meiggs V-switch,” as it is popularly called, saved the engineer thousands of pounds.

In one case the switch is set in a very precarious situation, for the climbing line winds along a perilous ledge blasted out of the solid flank of the peak, and the traveller’s heart thumps every time the train lurches as he looks down upon the curling river far, far below on the one, and the mountain wall combing some 2000 feet above him on the other, hand. The Oroya line has been described as a railway of sensations, and it is an apt description. During the process of “V-ing” a train the voyager has ample opportunity to contemplate his peculiar situation at leisure.

“Highly ingenious and simple,” was the verdict of the railway world when they realised Meiggs’ handiwork. “But what is going to happen if a descending train runs away at one of these switches? Will it make a bee-line for the bottom of the canyon through the air, or pile up against the dead-stop?”

Meiggs, however, did not anticipate trains running amok in this manner, but he guarded against any such contingency, because brakes sometimes will fail to act on a descending grade. Consequently, at the end of each line in a V-switch he provided a substantial bank of earth. This was a fortunate precaution. Some years ago a train, in proceeding from the upper to the lower level, did run away on the falling bank. It crashed into the solid embankment at the dead-end, and came to a stop in an ungainly, heterogeneous mass of twisted ironwork and splintered wood. Nobody was hurt, the debris was removed, and the runaway engine was recovered, overhauled, replaced in service, and is running to-day, little the worse for its misadventure.

Owing to the peaks of the Cordilleras being separated from one another by yawning ravines, extensive bridging became imperative. Some are short, insignificant spans; others are lofty, spidery structures, which were completed at the expenditure of many human lives from disease and accident. As a matter of fact, the railway earned an unsavoury reputation owing to the high mortality that attended its realisation.

The Verrugas bridge was the greatest offender in this respect. It was the greatest undertaking of its type on the line. It is 575 feet in length, and cleaves the air 225 feet above the bed of the ravine. There are bigger and loftier bridges in other parts of the world, but few have been so troublesome to erect. At the time it was undertaken it was the most remarkable structure of its kind, and by the time it was completed £12,600, or $63,000, had been expended. It lies at an altitude of 5,839 feet, and was carried on three masonry piers, the centre and main support being built up from the bed of the gorge. This pier measured 50 feet square at the base, and was of solid masonry, thus forming a substantial plinth for the slender iron superstructure.

All the component parts of this bridge had to be kept within certain limits of dimension and weight, to enable them to be hauled up from the coast and set in position on the site. Large gangs of workmen were crowded upon the work, because, until this bridge was set in position, material could not be transported to the other side of the gorge for the continuation of the grade.

But the task was dogged by ill-luck. Work was in full swing, when a mysterious and malignant disease broke out. So furiously did it rage that the men were swept off like flies. There was no means of checking its ravages. It became known far and wide as the “Verrugas fever.” It resisted diagnosis and treatment, but there was no denying its deadliness. As a result labour gave the district a wide berth. It struck down natives and white men indiscriminately. Just how many men succumbed to the attacks of this epidemic probably never will be known. Men contracted the malady, died, and were buried all within the space of a few hours after reaching the site; indeed, it is chronicled that one man fell a victim after crossing the bridge only once.

This mysterious and terrible scourge threatened to stop the whole enterprise, though Meiggs spared no effort and money to bring about its completion. The most attractive inducements were held out to workmen to come up and risk their lives, but only the more adventurous, fascinated by the high wages, dared to face death in an uncanny form. It was mainly through the efforts of such happy-go-lucky spirits that the gorge was spanned ultimately. Meiggs himself appeared to bear a charmed life, for he haunted the fated gorge day and night. But the awful experience seriously undermined his health, his constitution was wrecked, and he was changed into an old man.

Still he clung tenaciously to his enterprise. The gorge crossed, he found himself among the wildest fastnesses of the Andes. The mountains became steeper, the intervening gulches deeper and more difficult to cross. Landslides were of such frequent occurrence that they might well have struck terror into his heart. Yet he fought his way forward. Blasting became heavier and heavier, wide sweeping curves more frequent, the ascent steeper and steeper, and tunnelling through projecting spurs more frequent.

In these upper reaches the trains play a gigantic game of hide-and-seek, darting in and out among the labyrinth of tunnels. In a distance of 50 miles he had to drive his path through no less than 57 of these obstructions, while altogether there are 65 tunnels in the 138 miles of the railway’s length. The line doubles and redoubles upon itself in the most bewildering manner in order to gain points on the mountain-sides. In the course of 11 miles between Matucana and Tamboraque this scaling by means of the zigzag was exceedingly heavy. Standing at the latter station and looking down, one can see tier after tier of the gleaming metals, until they are lost to sight far below.

Five miles beyond Tamboraque another remarkable achievement had to be accomplished. The line tunnels a peak, to emerge upon the brink of a drop into the river below as straight as a brick wall. On the opposite side is another towering pinnacle. To span the gulf a heavy bridge was necessary. It is called Infiernillo Bridge, and never was a name more fittingly bestowed. Its erection by false work or scaffolding was out of the question, as in this region not a tree exists. It had to be built out from the sides, the men being suspended in cradles and loops dangling from ropes attached to brackets driven into the solid rock above. The builders found swinging the tools from such crazy footholds to be perilous in the extreme, but there were no other means by which the bridge could be erected. It is a frail link between two dark yawning mouths in opposite towering crests, and the traveller as he rattles across scarcely can quell a shudder.

So energetically did Meiggs pursue his self-appointed task that in six years he had carried the line 88½ miles into the Andes, and had gained an altitude of 12,215½ feet. All the men that he could possibly procure were pressed into service; at one time the railway gave employment to 8000 labourers. The amount of blasting necessary to prepare the road-bed for this single line of standard track was enormous, something like 500,000 pounds of explosives being used every month. The strain inseparable from such an enterprise told its tale at last upon the bold engineer, whose iron constitution could not withstand the anxieties and worries of the Verrugas fever, and the exposure to a rarefied atmosphere, without receiving an indelible mark. The first signs of a complete breakdown appeared as the railway was approaching Chicla, and when this point was gained in 1877 he succumbed.

The removal of the guiding spirit brought the whole undertaking to a stop. Meiggs had completed two-thirds of the undertaking, and had broken the back of the difficulties. For fourteen years not another foot of line was graded. At last the Peruvian Corporation of London, which had taken over the railway, settled a contract for its completion with William Thorndike, who also hailed from Philadelphia.

The new engineer carried the line a further 3,450 feet above the sea, following the surveys of Meiggs, and then became confronted with his greatest obstacle—the piercing of the summit crest. Thorndike had to hew his way through the bosom of a pinnacle for over 3,855 feet at an altitude at which such work never had been attempted before. The trying character of the situation was augmented by the rarity of the atmosphere, and the fact that he had to force his way through the region of the terrible mountain sickness, with a low prevailing temperature such as is encountered in the region of eternal snow and ice. Such conditions retarded the boring of the Galera tunnel, as it is called, more than the stern resistance of the rock. The workmen invariably fell victims to the sickness, though the undertaking was not accompanied with the heavy mortality that characterised the building of the Verrugas bridge far below. Mountain drilling, blasting, excavating, and the removal of the heavy spoil proved exacting and fatiguing, and a man could work only for a few hours at a stretch. By skilful organisation and careful husbanding of his forces, however, the engineer succeeded in forcing the metal track through the mountain at record speed.

The Galera tunnel is the crowning point of a magnificent achievement. In the centre you stand on the Great Divide of the South Americas, nearly 16,000 feet above the ocean. When a bucket of water is upset, one half of the liquid runs eastward towards the Atlantic, while the other flows westward to the Pacific. Oroya is 31½ miles distant from the eastern portal of the tunnel on the great inland plateau of the continent, and only a little less than 3,500 feet below it. On this section construction was very rapid, as there were no untoward difficulties to be overcome.

About the same time as the Oroya railway was commenced another great line was undertaken some miles to the south. In this instance the port of Mollendo was the Pacific terminus, the inland objective being Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, that remarkable inland sea nestling among the crests of the Alps some 14,660 feet above the Pacific. The total length of this line is 332 miles, and it divides with the Antofagasta railway to the south the traffic between La Paz and the seaboard. Though it does not compare with the Oroya or Central railway of Peru as an engineering achievement, yet it possesses certain individual characteristics, the tumbled mountain country experienced farther north giving way to open expanses of bleak, dismal desert.

This line in its ascent of the Andes skirts the base of that most majestic of mountains, the smoking El Misti, whose snow-topped crater rises like a grim sentinel far above the other visible points of the mountain chain. Here the mountains are nobler and wider apart, so that one can grasp better their magnificent proportions, while their flanks are not so scarred, and there is an absence of those fearsome, yawning ravines. In making the ascent the line describes broad sweeping curves to avoid projecting peaks, and throughout the whole distance there is a notable relief from the zigzags and switches so frequent on the sister line.

On this road, however, the moving sand threatened to be an implacable enemy. In the higher altitudes the sand is piled up into quaint little cones ranging from ten to twenty feet in height, and from the distance their incalculable number and regular lines present the appearance of a vast army of men grimed and covered with the dust, which illusion becomes emphasised when they are seen moving across the plains in a steady, rhythmic manner under the influence of the wind. When the railway was built it was anticipated that elaborate precautions would be requisite to keep the track clear of this encumbrance, but it was found that the trains could plough their way through the mass with little difficulty.

In the higher levels the sand gives way to a country of broken rock—a land absolutely void of any sign of life. This monotonous waste continues to the shores of the lake, where the dank water-grass and limpid water offer a welcome relief to the aridity experienced for so many hours. This railway was constructed with remarkable rapidity for the Land of Paradoxes, as the whole 332 miles were built in five years, and thus the isolated waters of Titicaca were linked with the Pacific by the iron road.

Not only was this railway much cheaper to construct than the Central or Oroya line, but its maintenance is not so harassing as the former system. The engineers of the Oroya road are engaged in a constant war with the elements. The landslide is the most relentless foe that has to be combated. A big slip on a slope, an avalanche of snow, huge boulders, and miscellaneous debris rattle down the mountain-sides with terrific fury, blotting out the track and sweeping bridges away in their mad career.

The Verrugas bridge was dogged by ill-fortune after its completion, for in one of these visitations the whole structure was demolished through the main central pier being knocked away. The tangled and twisted metal was left rusting in the ravine, for the bridge-builders’ art had advanced considerably since the old bridge was designed, and in reconstruction it was found possible to span the gorge on the cantilever principle without the central support. All the other bridges on the railway are being rebuilt gradually on these lines, and when this task is completed the engineer will have one danger the less to fear—the collapse of the slender link of communication across the gulches.

One can enjoy a most exhilarating experience on this railway. This is the descent from Galera tunnel to Callao on a small hand-car. It is a glorious coast downhill for no less than 107 miles. One rushes down inclines, swings round curves, threads tunnels, and whisks across gorges at the exhilarating speed of 45 miles an hour. It is a unique sensation—one of the many marvels associated with this remarkable railway, which is not merely a striking evidence of civilisation, but a perpetual monument to the 7000 lives devoted to its construction.