Then came a dip, with a great open, verdurous cañon in front of us. The steam of the engine was shut off, and the train seemed to free-wheel into the valley. We jumped and rocked and curved in the most exciting way. There was no protecting fence. We gave a start when, swinging round the bend, we came across a couple of scampering horses. We held our breath, for it seemed certain we should crush into them. One animal gave a violent jump amongst the adjoining boulders, and then, when we were within a dozen yards of the other horse, it swerved, and we just missed hitting it.
Again we started climbing. We ran past tiny stations, and on the hillsides, where there was vegetation, we could see little chalets and horses and cattle about. Once we had to cross a bridge very slowly, for it was under extensive repair. The chief engineer was a young Englishman, and he ran up and exchanged a few words with friends. We went through long black tunnels, and the experience was eerie, for the engine shrieked like a maniac that was being chased.
Still we kept fairly close to the Mendoza River. At one spot the hills widened out where a tributary, the Rio Blanco, ran into the main stream. At the joining place there was a chasm which it would have required an enormous bridge to span. We avoided that difficulty by the line running a little distance on one side by the Rio Blanco to where the valley narrowed so we could cross by a small bridge; and then the train started going the other way on the other side of the fall, and proceeded with the Mendoza River on the right, having dodged the chasm by a sort of V-shaped loop.
By the side of the chasm was a melancholy little cemetery. There was no grass, or trees, or flowers; just a group of uneven headstones telling of the last resting-place of the men who had died years before whilst engaged in constructing the line.
We now seemed to be running along a scooped-out way over a great height of shingle. We knew it was here that some of the hardest work was done in building the line. For after the melting of the snows and the torrential rains, great masses of shingle rolled, breaking the line, and on one occasion throwing a whole train and the engine right into the bottom of the river. One felt that the engine itself was trembling with fear as it made a path across this dread hillside. It was bitterly cold. The wind cut with icy blast upon us from the precipices. Higher still we climbed to where there was no vegetation, nothing but scarped rocks and strange shaped and strangely coloured mounds, reminding us of the volcanic origin of the Andes.
Reaching another flat level we ran into the mountain station of Zanjou Amarillo. Here were engine sheds, for it is necessary to change the engine at this place. We dismounted from the "cow-catcher," and, shivering with the cold, watched a heavy black engine attached. From this point until the other side of the Andes is reached part of the way is covered by the use of a rack rail. The railway is too steep for an ordinary engine to climb. Accordingly, in the centre is a third line with cogs. The engine has an extra wheel with cogs, so that it does not run but grips its way to further heights.
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