The population is 35,000. There are a number of local industries, including a cotton factory and flour-mills, and it is the mining-centre for all the region that extends up to Lake Titicaca and beyond. It also is beginning to be a possible centre of the rubber export. The Inca Company, which controls the Santo Domingo gold-mines and which has valuable concessions for opening up the Inambari rubber region, has its headquarters in Arequipa. But the chief trade comes from the wool industry. All the alpaca and other wools are marketed here. The alpaca wools are divided into two grades, the production of the superior being about two and a half times as large as the inferior. Much of the wool is handled by American firms and is shipped to New York and Boston. The vicuña, or finer grade, is shipped to France, and some of it finds its way back to the United States in the form of expensive rugs.
The foreign colony of Arequipa includes a number of Americans engaged in mining, wool, railroading, and miscellaneous business. The Harvard Astronomical Observatory, half-way up the slope of El Misti, insures the presence of cultured Americans. During my visit Professor Bailey, the director, was off on a trip to the rubber country, and I did not have the privilege of meeting him.
The journey from Arequipa up to Lake Titicaca affords a day of varied mountain scenery. The valley of the Chili is like a green thread looped or knotted somewhere far down amid the volcanic mountains. Conical and domelike snow-peaks, cupolas, apexes, pagodas, and pinnacles are scaled, gorges entered, and cross-chasms passed. These do not have to be bridged. Since there is no rainfall and no snow-slides from the distant peaks, the abysses are filled in and ballasted for the roadbed. Besides the long viaduct at Arequipa and a bridge across the gorge at Sumbay, there are no bridges on this railroad, hardly any culverts, and no long tunnels. The earth’s surface is igneous soil, ridges of lava and plains of pumice stone. In some places the lava bowlders stand out in isolated, grotesque forms, the play of the fancy to name them. I amused myself for an hour in this manner. The sulphur deposits ought to have a distinct commercial value. There is brimstone enough for a continent.
The railroad, in the parlance of the South, “coons” the ridges at a maximum grade of 4 per cent. A gentle slope is reached, and we are on the edge of a plain intersected with clear streams over which hover many beautiful species of water-fowl. I have not seen elsewhere so great a variety. The pampa has some coarse grass and mosses, but no fir brush or even cactus. Patches of melting snow diversify it. Droves of llamas, alpacas, sheep, and even the rare vicuñas with their ruddy skins are seen; the latter seem to me more like red deer. The sun is bright, and though the air is sharp the cold is not penetrating; when the train pauses, one can step out on the platform without shivering.
A hill covered with brown bowlders in the background, rounded and sloping mountains a little farther away, an ordinary railway station house, some huts close by with groups of Indian women and children huddled in the doorways, and the sign-post says, “Crucero Alto—14,660 feet.” It is High Crossing, the summit of the Divide. From Vincocaya, at a height of 14,360 feet, to Crucero Alto, the distance is 20 miles, and the approach to the summit is so gentle that it scarcely is perceptible as an up-grade.
Several of the passengers have been complaining for an hour of headache and nausea, the unmistakable siroche, or mountain sickness. They tell those of us who are exempt that they always have it at this point. They are relieved when the descent has been begun. The railway follows through many turns and twists along the flanks of volcanic precipices until a chain of lakes lying in the basin breaks on the view,—a fine sight, the placid surfaces soothingly suggestive for irritated nerves and rebellious stomachs. No more siroche! These mountain mirrors are Lakes Saracocha and Cachipuscana, 13,600 feet above sea-level, 1,000 feet higher than Lake Titicaca. The smelter for the silver mines is located at Maravillas in this lake region.
At Juliaca the branch road runs off to Sicuani, 87 miles away, whence a cart-road, now traversed by a traction automobile, continues to Cuzco, the historic Inca capital and still the seat of all that is most interesting in Peru, both in ruins and in whatever relates to the descendants of the Incas. Ancient Cuzco’s future as a modern city will commence when it becomes a station between Buenos Ayres and Lima on the Intercontinental Trunk Line. An important step in this development was taken in 1905, when the government contracted with the Peruvian Corporation for the extension of the line from Sicuani and the first section, as far as Checcacupe, was finished. The route is along the river Vilcanota through a populous and well-cultivated valley, where the products of the temperate zone abound. There are rich tributary districts which will be benefited by the lowering of freight rates, and encouragement also will be given to immigration through the easier access to Puno and Mollendo.
Ruins of an Inca Fortress at Cuzco
The station of Tirapata is the starting-point for the Santo Domingo gold-mines in the Province of Carabaya, which have been developed by an American company, the Inca, composed of California miners and Pennsylvania oil-men. Some of the ore runs $4,000 to the ton. The journey to the mines occupies five days. The company, in opening up a through line of communication to the railway, has accomplished some daring engineering work in building cable suspension bridges across the chasms. They are narrow, and the newcomer who knows he is under observation and wants to show his nerve, rides his mule along the frail suspended framework and makes a pretence of looking with unconcern into the gaping abyss. But after one demonstration of his physical bravery he usually develops moral courage enough to get off and lead the animal.