The noonday meal was taken at Matucana, in the railway station house, and a half hour later they were on the way again, and all three stood on the platform of the rear car, watching the scenery, which every moment grew in grandeur. As the train wound around a ledge, like a huge iron snake, they saw far beneath a little lake of blue, bordered by willows. Even as they looked, clouds rolled out and hid the water and the willows. So they were above the clouds! Yet above them were other clouds, of fleecy white, drifting and breaking against the gray masses of stone that rose ever and ever at the sides of them and in front of them!
For a long time they were silent, looking down into chasms so deep they could not in places see the bottom; at other points appeared a silver thread which they knew to be a river; or, they gazed up at smooth cliffs, towering as if to shut out the sun, and again at huge overhanging boulders that seemed to need but a touch to drop and obliterate train and passengers. While thus watching, Hope-Jones suddenly exclaimed:—
“Where Andes, giant of the Western star,
Looks from his throne of clouds o’er half the world.”
“Who wrote those lines?” asked Harvey.
“Campbell, I believe. I never appreciated them as I do now,” he replied.
They were soon joined by the conductor, who was much interested in the three adventurers. The road not having been constructed its entire length, it was seldom that passengers for the interior were on trains, and rarely indeed were met persons who intended journeying as far as did these three companions. Those who rode up the Oroya railroad were mainly tourists. So, in those years, the railway was operated at a loss; but it was government property, and the purpose was in time to connect the great interior with the seaboard.
The conductor was an American who had been five years in Peru, and he was always glad to meet any one from the States; so at once he fell into conversation with Ferguson.
“How often do you go over the road?” he was asked.
“Three times a week.”