Perhaps the devotees of exaggerated feminine fashion in Europe to-day might usefully ponder these occurrences!
[CHAPTER VI]
ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST
IN PERU, BOLIVIA AND CHILE
Our course still lies southward. The steamer, at times approaching sufficiently near the coast or calling at the small seaports to set down passengers or to embark merchandise—of ores, cotton, sugar, cattle and so forth—permits glimpses of the littoral, the long stretches of desert alternating with fruitful vales, irrigated by the rivers descending from the Cordillera. Here and there the curious médanos, or moving sand-dunes, arrest the eye;[15] here and there are olive-groves and vineyards and other cultivation of Southern Peru, where excellent wines are produced. Soon we shall pass the Chilean frontier, and away in the interior lies Bolivia, among the distant Andes, whose grey and solemn wall looks down eternally upon the seaboard.
Let us ascend from the coast by one of the railways here, that running from the Peruvian port of Mollendo, an exceedingly bad and exposed roadstead, in which, at times, it is difficult to gain the shore at all from the heavy surf.
