THE FIRST VERRUGAS VIADUCT, WHICH WAS DESTROYED BY A CLOUDBURST AND ROCK-SLIDE
Men died like flies while building this bridge, owing to the outbreak of an obscure disease known as “Verrugas fever.”
Five miles beyond Tamboraque another remarkable achievement had to be accomplished. The line tunnels a peak, to emerge upon the brink of a drop into the river below as straight as a brick wall. On the opposite side is another towering pinnacle. To span the gulf a heavy bridge was necessary. It is called Infiernillo Bridge, and never was a name more fittingly bestowed. Its erection by false work or scaffolding was out of the question, as in this region not a tree exists. It had to be built out from the sides, the men being suspended in cradles and loops dangling from ropes attached to brackets driven into the solid rock above. The builders found swinging the tools from such crazy footholds to be perilous in the extreme, but there were no other means by which the bridge could be erected. It is a frail link between two dark yawning mouths in opposite towering crests, and the traveller as he rattles across scarcely can quell a shudder.
THE HIGHEST TUNNEL IN THE WORLD UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The Galera tunnel, 3,855 feet in length and 15,665 feet above the level of the Pacific Ocean, on the Oroya railway.
So energetically did Meiggs pursue his self-appointed task that in six years he had carried the line 88½ miles into the Andes, and had gained an altitude of 12,215½ feet. All the men that he could possibly procure were pressed into service; at one time the railway gave employment to 8000 labourers. The amount of blasting necessary to prepare the road-bed for this single line of standard track was enormous, something like 500,000 pounds of explosives being used every month. The strain inseparable from such an enterprise told its tale at last upon the bold engineer, whose iron constitution could not withstand the anxieties and worries of the Verrugas fever, and the exposure to a rarefied atmosphere, without receiving an indelible mark. The first signs of a complete breakdown appeared as the railway was approaching Chicla, and when this point was gained in 1877 he succumbed.
The removal of the guiding spirit brought the whole undertaking to a stop. Meiggs had completed two-thirds of the undertaking, and had broken the back of the difficulties. For fourteen years not another foot of line was graded. At last the Peruvian Corporation of London, which had taken over the railway, settled a contract for its completion with William Thorndike, who also hailed from Philadelphia.
The new engineer carried the line a further 3,450 feet above the sea, following the surveys of Meiggs, and then became confronted with his greatest obstacle—the piercing of the summit crest. Thorndike had to hew his way through the bosom of a pinnacle for over 3,855 feet at an altitude at which such work never had been attempted before. The trying character of the situation was augmented by the rarity of the atmosphere, and the fact that he had to force his way through the region of the terrible mountain sickness, with a low prevailing temperature such as is encountered in the region of eternal snow and ice. Such conditions retarded the boring of the Galera tunnel, as it is called, more than the stern resistance of the rock. The workmen invariably fell victims to the sickness, though the undertaking was not accompanied with the heavy mortality that characterised the building of the Verrugas bridge far below. Mountain drilling, blasting, excavating, and the removal of the heavy spoil proved exacting and fatiguing, and a man could work only for a few hours at a stretch. By skilful organisation and careful husbanding of his forces, however, the engineer succeeded in forcing the metal track through the mountain at record speed.
The Galera tunnel is the crowning point of a magnificent achievement. In the centre you stand on the Great Divide of the South Americas, nearly 16,000 feet above the ocean. When a bucket of water is upset, one half of the liquid runs eastward towards the Atlantic, while the other flows westward to the Pacific. Oroya is 31½ miles distant from the eastern portal of the tunnel on the great inland plateau of the continent, and only a little less than 3,500 feet below it. On this section construction was very rapid, as there were no untoward difficulties to be overcome.