The old and the new Peru

by Marie Robinson Wright

THE PICTURESQUE CURVE OF SAN BARTOLOMÉ, OROYA ROUTE.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE OROYA RAILWAY, THE HIGHEST IN THE WORLD

CHOSICA BRIDGE, OROYA ROUTE.

The central mining region of the sierra is connected with the chief national seaport by the Central Railway, or, as it is popularly called, the Oroya Route, one of the most important lines of Peru and the most remarkable in the world, not only because of the altitude attained at its highest point, sixteen thousand feet above sea level, but as a colossal feat of engineering unequalled in railway construction. No other railway route compares with that of Oroya as an example of daring enterprise in the face of tremendous obstacles; and it stands a great monument to the awakened spirit of progress which began to be shown as soon as militarism declined in Peru, and which has become especially evident in the moral and material development of that country within the past decade.

The building of the Oroya railway was begun in 1870, under the direction of a North American engineer, Mr. Henry Meiggs, with whom the contract for its construction was signed by the Peruvian government. Within six years, the line was opened up to traffic as far as Chicla, ninety miles from Callao, at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet, and was graded and placed under construction from that point to Ticlio, near the summit of Mount Meiggs, where the Galera tunnel pierces the peak at an altitude of sixteen thousand feet, the highest place along the line. In 1877, Mr. Meiggs died, and the work was suspended, having already cost nearly five million pounds sterling. The war with Chile followed, bringing a train of evils in its wake, and the government found it impossible to continue the construction until 1891, when the line was taken over by the Peruvian Corporation and completed to Oroya, being opened in 1893. A branch line had been built by Mr. Meiggs from Lima to Ancón soon after beginning his work, and to this have been added the Morocochu branch, from Ticlio to Morococha, and the Cerro de Pasco line, the property of the Cerro de Pasco Mining Company, from Oroya to the great mining centre. The Oroya Route has recently been extended to Huancayo, and is under construction to Ayacucho. It will be continued to Abancay and Cuzco, to unite with the line connecting Cuzco with Puno, which is to be extended to the Desaguadero River on the boundary between Peru and Bolivia, where it will join the Guaqui and La Paz railway, to form part of the great Pan-American system. From Cerro de Pasco northward, the trunk line has been built as far as Goillarisquisga, and is under construction from that point to Huánuco, to join other links in the chain which, when completed, will extend, in Peru, from the border of Ecuador to Lake Titicaca.

CHOSICA, A HEALTH RESORT ON THE OROYA ROUTE.

From Callao to Oroya, the distance is less than a hundred and fifty miles, but along this short route the railway passes through every variety of scenery and climate, from the sandy level of a tropical coast to the frozen peaks of the lofty puna, far above the limit vegetation. Between these extremes lie the flourishing sugar plantations and maize fields of the coast; orchards of chirimoyas, paltas, peaches, apricots, granadillas, oranges, lemons, etc., that grow on the lower slopes of the sierra; all the flowers, ferns, and mountain shrubs that nourish in rocky glens and shady ravines under nature’s most favorable conditions, up to a height of ten thousand feet; and, above this limit, the bare, bleak aspect of the puna, where mining establishments mark the locality of rich veins of precious metal, and the circle of the horizon is everywhere limited by snow-clad summits. Along the valley of the Rimac River, from the sea to its source, the Oroya railway climbs the sierra with innumerable curves and yet without a single decline throughout its length until the highest altitude is passed in the Galera tunnel, and the descent begins on the slope of the inter-Andean valley. More than twenty bridges cross the river along the course of the railway; the mountain side is tunnelled in many places, and in others the line hangs over precipices projecting so far out that a stone dropped from the car as it curves along the brink falls on the opposite bank of the river below.