The South American Tour

by Annie S. Peck

Chorillos. With sufficient time at one’s disposal a few days may be pleasantly spent in visiting the shore resorts near the capital. The electric cars which pass on the calle de Abancay, the third street southeast from the Maury, are the means of transit to Miraflores, Barranco and Chorillos, all pleasant places of residence, though Chorillos is especially fashionable. The last named, before the Chilian war, was the most frequented summer resort in South America, but after the battle of Chorillos in 1881 it was completely destroyed by the invaders. Rebuilt during the last quarter of a century, it is again beautiful with many charming homes. The town is located 100 feet above the beach of a sheltered cove, which is partly enclosed by a cliff. A promenade along the edge is a fashionable resort for tourists and townspeople, to enjoy the cool breezes, and the sunset in the broad Pacific. Close at hand an eminence of 2000 feet called Morro Solar enhances the beauty of the scene. A shady pathway leads down to the beach, which affords excellent bathing with a moderate surf. The regular population of 3000, greatly increased in the summer, is daily further augmented by those who come for the bathing and the other diversions of a watering place: boating, music, dancing, etc. At the Casino are held many fashionable social affairs; and the Regatta Club gives frequent entertainments when the bay, covered with boats of various descriptions, presents a pretty spectacle. Worthy of a visit is the Military School here located, a fine institution for the education of army officers, and an excellent training school for the Indian soldiers.

Beyond Chorillos the electric cars continue by a tunnel through Morro Solar to La Herradura, another bathing resort. Barranco and Miraflores, nearer to Lima, are almost continuous with Chorillos and are connected by pleasant, shaded driveways. Magdalena, a shore resort still nearer Lima, is reached by a different electric car line.

A very popular resort with a fine new hotel, the Eden, is La Punta, down beyond Callao, whence electric cars, connecting with those from Lima, for five centavos carry passengers to the extremity of the sandy point ever refreshed by cool breezes. Here the Naval School’s excellent new building is located.

Ancon. Twenty-five miles north of Lima, on the opposite side from Chorillos, is Ancon, more especially a health resort, its sandy soil and dry atmosphere making it especially desirable for persons with pulmonary and bronchial affections. There is good bathing, a tennis court, one or two hotels, the Grand said to be comfortable, and many cottages; but it is less attractive than the resorts at the south. It has, however, an allurement peculiarly its own in being renowned as a necropolis of prehistoric treasures. Ancon is reached by a steam railway from the Desamparados station in an hour and a half or so, and the ride gives one a view of the genuine unirrigated desert. The journey may now be pursued to the town of Huacho, about 90 miles farther.

Pachacámac. Persons who are interested in antiquities should make the excursion to Pachacámac, whose ruins are believed to antedate any others in Peru and to go back two or three thousand years. The place is not accessible by rail, carriage, or boat, yet it may be visited in a single day by a vigorous, enterprising person who is able to make suitable arrangements in advance. The site of this ancient sanctuary and city is nearly 25 miles from Lima, in the direction of Chorillos. Thither one should go by the earliest morning car, to be met there by a guide and horses with which to pursue the journey. Dr. Max Uhle made extensive excavations in this region. The ruins are in the Lurin Valley, the loveliest south of Lima, watered by a stream smaller than the Rimac but of constant supply. In the period of the invasion it was the more thickly populated of the two. Wars, and the efforts for the conversion of the natives by religious orders caused the ancient city in the course of the century following the Spanish invasion to become a scene of desolation.

Provisions for a substantial luncheon should be taken in saddle-bags, though fodder for the animals may doubtless be procured at the hacienda near by of Don Vicente Silva. A desert called the Tablada de Lurin is crossed between the Rimac and Lurin valleys. Barren islands are in view on the right with myriads of pelicans and other sea-fowl. The desert sands drift over the ruins, on the north side of the valley, 600 yards from the ocean. A few tillandsia plants show a little green in winter. The hooting owl, the lizard, and a small viper are the only forms of life. The neighboring hills rise 150 to 250 feet above the desert. In the distance two villages with their church spires may be seen, Pachacámac three miles back from the sea on the other side of the river, and Lurin near the coast, a mile and a half from the ruins. To the south beyond is desert; to the east, 45 miles away, the outlying bulwarks of the Andes rise 9000 feet. In an early period the coast for 120 miles from Supe to Huaman was under the sway of Pachacámac. There are extensive remains in many places about, and traces of an ancient road with a wall along the center, one side for the ruler and his retinue, the other for common people, each section 16 feet wide. The place was conquered by the Incas 170 years before the invasion of the Spaniards, when all its wealth of gold had already disappeared. The ancient city, 2½ miles long and 1⅓ broad, included four hills, on one of which in the center of the town the Incas later erected a temple to the Sun. The original sanctuary to the Creator god, not to be confounded with the Sun god of the Incas, stood at the foot of a hill on the north side of the town nearly on a level with the city. The temple which faced the coast to the northwest was 400 feet long and 180 wide with terraced sides leading to a plateau above, 330 by 130 feet. There are rooms supposed to be for the reception of envoys, others for sacrificial purpose. They were gorgeously decorated with frescoes of bird and animal designs, with doors incrusted with coral, turquoise, and crystal. Pilgrims who came a thousand miles with offerings were obliged to fast for twenty days before entering the first court, and a year before ascending to the holier shrine of extraordinary sanctity above. The cemeteries naturally furnished many valuable relics, mummies, bones, and skulls, fragments of cloth, and a great variety of articles. The cemetery connected with this temple was the most crowded, though burial here was reserved for princes and pilgrims who brought rich offerings. Many objects have a strong resemblance to those of Tiahuanaco. A slab of Chavin de Huantar and a richly ornamented poncho at Ancon are of similar style. It is estimated that there were from 60,000 to 80,000 graves here, some in open cemeteries, some in dwellings, besides those in the temple. Most of these were rifled ages ago. This is thought to be a seat of the earliest civilization of the coast, perhaps extending to Ecuador, while the Chimu culture either descended from it or was influenced by it. The city wall was from 11 to 13 feet high and 8 feet thick. There was an inner as well as an outer wall. The streets were 13 to 16 feet wide. There were large detached edifices, resembling ruins at Huatica near Lima, and one group of crowded buildings. The term Pachacámac is of Quichua origin, the earlier name being different, perhaps Irma the same as Wiraqocha. The Sun temple half a mile from the sea is on a terraced rocky height a mile and a quarter in circumference; but it does not compare with the Mexican pyramid Cholula. The rooms may be traced, and the stairway with steps four inches high and one foot four inches wide. A convent for the Sun maidens, accommodating two hundred, fronts the green fields. The cemetery on the southeast terrace of the Sun temple shows that all were women who had been strangled in obvious sacrifice; thus suffered also many children of all ages for the propitiation of their cruel deity.

The Oroya Railway. Whatever else may be omitted from one’s programme of sight-seeing in Peru, a journey over the Oroya road should on no account be missed. Long enjoying the reputation of the highest railway in the world, it affords an opportunity to climb with ease in a few hours to a height as great as that of the summit of Mont Blanc, to behold scenery of wonderful grandeur, and a historic region of remarkable mineral wealth, the second of the three great longitudinal divisions of Peru. Farther on, with a little more trouble, one may most conveniently obtain a glimpse of the third and by far the largest of Peru’s three natural divisions; as yet thinly peopled and little known, but ultimately, perhaps, to prove the richest. The practically rainless coast region from 50 to 100 miles wide, all desert except where irrigated, we have already seen. Next comes the sierra district of mountains and tableland, from one to three hundred miles wide, where, beyond the Coast Range, there is plenty of rain and snow. Varying in height, width, and in the number of parallel mountain chains, the greatest altitude is in the southern and central portions, decreasing north of 7° S. Lat. The lofty snowclad mountains, the multitude of lesser peaks, the lakes, small and large, the countless streams, the delightful valleys, the desolate plateau sometimes called the puna, cut by narrow gorges, present a marvellous variety of scenery, climate, and productions. Here are two-thirds of the inhabitants of the country. The forest region on the eastern slope of the mountains with the lowlands beyond, all called the montaña, is at first wonderfully beautiful with soft, genial climate, though below an altitude of 2000 feet it becomes rather warm, in a few spots unhealthy.

By the Oroya Railroad a great elevation is attained in fewer hours than can be duplicated elsewhere in the world except in balloon or aeroplane. Indeed, the time of the ascent is so brief that some persons suffer from the sudden change in the pressure of the atmosphere. This fact has given rise to alarming representations, on the part of many native and foreign residents, of the danger involved in the journey, so that many tourists are frightened out of the excursion to whom it would be a genuine delight. The truth is that of the thousands who each month go over the road, the majority suffer from soroche, mountain sickness, not at all, or with little and temporary discomfort. A slight headache is common; it may be severe, or accompanied by nausea and vomiting. A few have become dangerously ill and deaths have occurred, as on Pike’s Peak. Two classes of people should not take the risk, those with weak hearts and those who are both stout and full blooded. Persons merely delicate in a general way are less likely to suffer inconvenience than some vigorous athletic persons. One doubtful about his heart should have it examined. Apprehensive persons who would be sure to avoid trouble may get off at Matucana, and a day or two later comfortably pursue the journey. It will be easier for every one to go the day previous to Chosica to spend the night, thus avoiding an unreasonably early start in the morning. Ordinary prudence may suggest that one should be careful not to over-eat the day before, and be very abstemious on the trip, especially as to alcoholic liquors. At the highest points one should move slowly or not at all. A brisk walk may produce dizziness or worse.

The Central Railway of Peru, a standard gauge line, was begun in 1870 by the American financier, Henry Meiggs, and completed to Chicla, 88 miles from Callao, in 1876. On account of the troubles resulting from the Chilian War it did not reach Oroya until 1893. For some years this was the terminus of the road and in one sense is so still, as the natural continuation would be east, over to the montaña country. There are, however, branches in two different directions, north and south; the former, an American line of the same gauge to Cerro de Pasco, the latter, a part of the Central system owned by the Peruvian Corporation, now open to Huancayo and being gradually extended to the southwest, ultimately to reach Cuzco, where it will connect with the Southern Railway managed by the same corporation. Both of the branches are on the line of the Pan American Railway, by which it will some day be possible, perhaps within a decade, certainly in two, to go by rail from New York to Buenos Aires, a wonderful journey through ever changing and delightful scenes. By the time these 250 miles from Huancayo to Cuzco are finished, which should be by 1918, all the southern part from Lima to Buenos Aires will be ready, as Argentina’s portion is now complete and Bolivia’s will be finished soon. The section from Quito to Panama will linger longest. When finished, the road in my opinion will be a far greater bond of union between North and South America than the Panama Canal.

The Oroya Railroad follows the Rimac Valley up to its culminating point, with an occasional detour into a side cañon to gain additional height. It was a man of courage and large ideas who forty years ago planned to climb with the iron horse, instead of the ancient burro and llama, the steep and lofty wall which, rising in its lower points to a height of from 14,000 to 17,000 feet, stretches for 1000 miles along the coast of Peru within 100 miles of the sea. With an average grade of four per cent it was the second road from the Pacific to cross the continental divide, though it still remains to be continued, as Meiggs planned, down to a point open to steam navigation on one of the branches of the Amazon.