Across South America / An account of a journey from Buenos Aires to Lima by way of Potosí, with notes on Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru

by Hiram Bingham

intending passengers and friends of expected arrivals. But it was late in the afternoon, almost dark in fact, before the belated little train pulled into the station and the runners from the three Huancayo hotels had the satisfaction of greeting their “friends.” We were informed that the train would not leave before six o’clock the next morning so we tried to possess ourselves in patience at our comfortable little hotel.

We were on hand, bright and early, just in time to see the train pull out of the station. Happily it was only a false alarm, and the train soon backed down to the platform again and waited for three quarters of an hour for intending passengers to arrive. At length the conductor decided he could wait no longer, and at 6:40 we pulled out, just before the sub-Prefect and his friends arrived on the scene. A young politician on the train, who thought that the sub-Prefect wanted to go to Lima, pulled violently at the bell-rope. The engineer, accustomed to that form of stopping the train, had detached the ropes from the locomotive so that all that the friends of the sub-Prefect were able to do was to pull several yards of it into the rear coach. Rather characteristically, the only four people who were on hand at six o’clock ready for the train to start on time, were all Americans. The two besides ourselves were artisans from the great copper mines of Cerro de Pasco who were enjoying a week’s vacation.

At Jauja there is a spur track which runs from the main line a mile or more back to the historic old city, celebrated in the annals of the Spanish Conquest and the Wars of Independence. The good people of Jauja, not yet accustomed to the necessary rules of a railroad train service, flocked on board the train to say “good-by” to their departing friends and chat as long as possible. Taking no heed of the screams of the engine and the cries of the conductor, more than twenty ladies, who had no intention of leaving town, were still on board when the train pulled out of the station. The conductor took them a mile and a half down the track to the main line; then, fearing that the mere fact that they would have to walk home would not sufficiently impress them, he made each one pay for riding! Twenty more sheepish-looking individuals than the garrulous ladies, whom the conductor lined up in the field a short distance from the tracks and charged for their short ride, would be hard to find.

At eleven o’clock we came to a wash-out and had to cross the Oroya River on planks hastily thrown over the unfinished new railroad bridge. A train was waiting for us on the other side, and with very little delay, all the passengers and luggage were safely carried across and we reached Oroya before four o’clock that evening.

Although there are rich mines in the vicinity and it is the terminus of the new line, built by American capital, to the great Cerro de Pasco smelters, Oroya is chiefly famous as the terminus of “the highest railroad in the world,” and we looked forward with interest to our journey on the morrow.

The magnificent great viaduct which has frequently been pictured as formerly one of the highest railroad bridges in existence, had come to grief only a short time before, in a rather tragic manner. A car, loaded with bridge-construction material and occupied by several American engineers, was standing on the bridge to which repairs were being made. A run-away engine came flying down the grade, struck the car, jumped into the air, crashed back on the frail viaduct, which gave way and allowed a tangled mass of men and metal to fall into the cañon two hundred and twenty feet below.

This accident necessitated many delays, as all the passengers and freight had to be transferred by mules or on foot down into the cañon and up the other side to the train for Lima.

The ride from Oroya to Lima has been so frequently described by many travellers and the excitement of coasting down from the summit tunnel where the altitude is 15,666 feet to the Lima station, which is only a little above sea level, is so well known, that I will not attempt to give my own impressions here. Suffice it to say that the excitement was increased if anything by the fact that besides the bridge accident another had occurred only a few days previously in which a locomotive had left the tracks and rolled down an embankment.