Across the Andes

by Charles Johnson Post

It is a trifle staggering, when you think of it, that a nation that was able to solve engineering difficulties like these, to turn an arid desert into a teeming farm and to organize and administer a vast empire, should have been wantonly destroyed all for the lack of a little knowledge of the combination of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal. And the wretched waste! Think of that church-benisoned riffraff of the medieval slums, recognizing only the greed for raw gold, wasting a whole people in torture to satisfy the rapacious gluttony of a Spanish court.

Sometimes the train crawled along no faster than a bare walk, so steep were the grades and sharp the turns. There was nothing of the scenic splendor such as one may get in the railroads among the Alps of Switzerland and where, as one climbs, one may look down and back into the green landscape of a panorama. The scale was too great, the sense of proportion and distance was subdued; a stretch great enough for a Swiss panorama was one vast gorge twisting its way among the vaster masses of the Andes. The crest of the pass itself was higher than Mount Rainier.

Sometimes the train passed over high plateaus where occasionally in the distance could be seen the low house of some hacienda or the grouped huts of Indians while beyond in the great distance the plain was rimmed with a jagged line of snow-capped peaks. The winds swept across the level stretches, raising an assortment of sand-spouts and dusty cyclones. They were of all sizes, from tiny remolinos that died in a few puffs to towering whirlwinds that spiraled fifteen hundred feet in the air with a base of fifty feet that juggled boulders in its vortex like so many cork chips. They would move leisurely for a short space and then dart like a flash in an erratic path. Sometimes fifteen or twenty of these would be in sight at the same time. Herds of llamas grazed over the plain, sometimes a flock of sheep or an occasional horse, each with a wary eye on the whirlwinds; if one approached too near they galloped off. Not infrequently a herd of guanacos would gallop off at the approach of the train or could be seen grazing in the distance.

From beyond the high plain the grades lessened and the train rolled along at a fine speed—for South America. At rare intervals there was a station and a short stop, usually the lonely outpost of some mining company. Then the grades began to slope our way and in place of the dry bunch grass there were rolling hills and gentle valleys of soft green grass. Little lakes nestled in the hills, their cold waters black with wildfowl that scarcely fluttered up as the train shot by. We were making the slight drop down to that vast inter-Andean plateau that stretches from Bolivia on up into Ecuador.

A cold winter sunset sank beyond the cold purple of the western peaks; a couple of feeble, smoking and smelling oil lamps irritated the darkness and added their fragrance to the close atmosphere—for in the bitter winds and biting cold of the high altitude the windows had long since been closed.

Juliaca was reached, a junction by which one may connect for Cuzco, the old Inca capital. It showed in the blackness as a few dingy lights. Here the car emptied itself of all but half a dozen bound for Bolivia across the lake. Once again we wheezed under way and presently with a grand celebration from the engine’s whistle the train pulled slowly into the train yards of the terminal at Puno and as we climbed out there came the light, musical splash of freshwater surf and the unmistakable smell of water. Dimly under the starlight there loomed the form of a boat and the dim reflecting surface of the water was picked out by the dark patches of the native Indian craft. It was the great Lake Titicaca.

Down at the end of the stone dock lay the Yavari a slim, patched boat, twice lengthened, whose hull and engines had been packed piecemeal on the backs of burros, llamas, and mules over the Andes to the Titicaca shores over fifty years ago. It had taken a year to do it. It was the first steamer on the lake and wonderful was the amazement of the native population as they beheld this veritable monster of the seas—some sixty feet in length—shoot mysteriously through the water at the prodigious speed of some seven miles an hour.

Forward, on either side, was an array of tiny staterooms, each about the size of a wardrobe into which penetrated a most grateful warmth from the boilers. A scrap of tallow candle threw the suspicious looking bunks into shadow and it was not long before I was in one under my own blankets. From the little cabin aft came the clatter of the native travelers over a late lunch served by a bare-legged Quechua sailor; it was in the main some kind of a hash preparation loaded with aji, a venomous pepper that will penetrate the stoutest stomach. I had tried it and having been both warned and punished in the same mouthful, I was glad to seek the wardrobe bunk to weep it out of my system in cramped solitude.

In the first streaks of dawn the Yavari backed out from the long dock and swung out upon the crystal-clear, blue waters of Lake Titicaca. On the other side of the dock at a disabled angle and under repairs lay the more pretentious steamer Coya—literally the Inca Queen—with diminutive bridge and chart-house and all the trappings of a deep sea liner shrunk and crowded into small compass. Varieties of water fowl dotted the water’s edge in large flocks busily at breakfast and almost indifferent to the occasional straw or rather reed canoe of the Indians.

All day the Yavari skirted a coast that rolled back in long hills or at times came down to the lake in a steep bluff. Very slowly the lake is receding. Old Inca towns once evidently on the shore line are back from the water; since Pizarro’s time the distance is a matter of miles. In the little party on the boat the old tales of the Inca gold and Atahualpa’s tribute became naturally a leading topic. The country from the highlands of Colombia down to Chile are filled with legends of secreted treasure and lost mines or caches, for Pizarro did not wait for Atahualpa to pay his ransom—he burned him at the stake when he realized that the Inca emperor could actually get together a council chamber packed to the ceiling with raw gold.