Having set forth two principal sources of Peruvian income, let us now proceed to a third. When los SeÑores Althaus and Rosas appeared in Paris last autumn as the representatives of the Government of Peru, among other national securities which those gentlemen offered for a further loan of money, were the railways of Peru. They are six in number, only one of which is finished according to the original contracts. The amount of mileage however is considerable, so also may be said to be their cost, for the Government has paid to one contractor alone no less a sum than one hundred and thirty millions of dollars. There are other railways whose united lengths amount to about 150 miles; with one exception they cost little, and without an exception they all bring in much.

These do not belong to the Government. The Government railways cost enormous sums and bring in nothing; and it may safely be said that they will never figure, honestly, in the national accounts, except as items of expenditure. The Government of the day would only be too glad to become cheap carriers of the national produce, if there were any produce ready to carry. But the Government built their railways without considering what are the primary and elementary use of railways. It is incredible, but none the less true, that the Peruvians believing the mercantile 'progress' of the United States to spring from railways, thought that nothing more was needed to raise their country to the pinnacle of commercial magnificence than to build a few of these iron ways, and have magic horses fed with fire to caper along them; especially if they could get an American—a real go-a-head American—for their builder. And they did so.

The railway fever has had its virulent type in all parts of the world where railways have appeared. In Peru from 1868 to 1871-2 this fever was perhaps more active and deadly than anywhere; than in Canada, even, which is saying much, for there it took the form of a religious delirium. The Peruvians believed that if they offered a great and wonderful railway to the deities of industry, great and happy commercial times would follow. Just as they believe that give a priest a pyx, a spoon, some wine, and wheaten bread, he can make the body and blood of God; so they believed that give a great American the required elements, he could by some equally mysterious power make Peru one of the great nations of the earth.

Mr. Henry Meiggs[7], of Catskill 'city' in New York State, was on this occasion selected as the great high-priest who was to perform the required wonders. Give this magician a few thousand miles of iron rails to form two parallel lines, and a steam engine to run along them, and the vile body of the Peruvian Republic should be changed into a glorious body[8] with a mighty palpitating soul inside of it; the body to be of the true John Bull type for fatness, and the Yankee breed for speed.

This new meaning of the doctrine of transubstantiation was preached to willing and enchanted ears. Ten thousand labourers of all colours and kinds were introduced into the country. 'By God, Sir, there was not a steamboat on the broad waters of the Pacific that did not pour into Peru as many peones as potatoes from Chile.' These ten thousand men all went up the Andes bearing shovels in their hands, and singing the name of Meiggs as they went. Millions of nails, and hammers innumerable, rails and barrows, sleepers and picks, chains, and double patent layers, wheels and pistons, with many thousand kegs of blasting powder 'let in duty free,' with all the other infernal implements and apparatus for making the most notable railway of this age[9], poured into Peru marked with the name of Meiggs. You could no more breathe without Meiggs, than you could eat your dinner without swallowing dust, sleep without the sting of fleas or the soothing trumpet of musquitoes. Meiggs everywhere; in sunshine and in storm, on the sea and on the heights of the world, now called Mount Meiggs; in the earthquake[10], and in the peaceful atmosphere of the most elegant society in the world. The wonderful activity on the Mollendo and Arequipa railway, carried on without ceasing, produced an ecstasy of hope, and also an eruption of blasphemy. Every valley was to be exalted; every Peruvian mountain, hitherto sacred to snow and the traditions of the Incas, should be laid low by the wand of Meiggs; the desert of course should blossom as the rose: no more iron should be sharpened into swords; ploughshares and pruning-hooks should be in such demand, that every blade and dagger or weapon of war in the old world would be required to make them. And a highway should be there, in which should be no lion, even a highway for our God. All this mixture of trumpery metaphors were poured into the ears of the enchanted Peruvians for the space of three years and more. The railway as far as Arequipa was at length finished, the Oroya railway was begun.

It will probably never be finished.

Robert Stephenson is reported to have said once before a Railway Committee: 'My Lords and Gentlemen, you can carry a railway to the Antipodes if you wish; it is only a matter of expense.' The Peruvians, aided by the archpriest Meiggs, 'the Messiah of railways, who was to bring salvation to the Peruvian Republic,' and steadfastly believing in the Meiggs' method of transubstantiation, commenced building a railway, not to Calcutta, but to the moon[11].

As early as 1859 the Oroya Railway began to be thought of seriously, and the late President of Peru, with two other gentlemen of character, were appointed a commission to collect data and make calculations for a railway between Lima and Jauja. Nothing, however, was done until 1864, when Congress authorised the Government, Castilla then being President, to construct a railway to Caxamarca, with an annual guarantee of 7 per cent. for twenty-five years.

The railway fever now began to increase in force and virulence, and in 1868 the President of the Republic was authorised to construct railways from Mollendo to Arequipa, Puno and Cuzco; from Chimbote to Santa or Huaraz; from Trujillo to Pacasmayo and to Caxamarca; from Lima to Jauja; and others which the Republic might need—a very respectable order to be given in one day. The Oroya Railway was to be 145 miles in length, and to cost 27,600,000 dols. To Puno the length was to be 232 miles from Arequipa, and the cost 35,000,000 dols. From Mollendo to Arequipa, 12,000,000 dols., the length being 107 miles[12]. Ilo to Moquiqua, 63 miles, 6,700,000 dols. Pacasmayo to Caxamarca, or Guadalupe, or Magdalena, 83 miles, 7,700,000 dols. Payto to Piura, 63 miles. Chimbote to Huaraz, 172 miles, 40,000,000 dols.

Immediately after this small order was given, and Meiggs began to fill the world with the sound of his name, the Lima editors commenced their fulsome and disgusting eloquence, which day by day held all people in suspense. 'As puissant as colossal are the labours of the administration of Col. Don JosÉ Balta, who, without offence be it said, has a monomania for the construction of railways and public works—the infirmity of a divine inspiration in a head of the State.'

What the infirmity of a divine inspiration may be we will not stay to enquire. Goldsmith was called an inspired idiot: and perhaps this was what the learned editor meant to say of Col. Balta.

He goes on: 'The administration of Balta has converted the nation into a workshop. We say it in his honour that he has constructed rather than governed; but he has constructed well and firmly. He has done more than this, he has created and conserved the habit of work in all the nation, demonstrating by the argument of deeds that revolutions spring principally from idleness.' 'Balta has cast a net of railways over the country which has taken anarchy captive. Without any difficulty might it be argued that the time of Balta will be the Octavian Era of Peru[13].'

Enough of this. Suffice it to say that among all these oratorical colonels, generals, lawyers, ministers of state, and accomplished editors, there was not one who had the honesty or the pluck to stand up and declare that it was all false which had so eloquently been said of the Oroya and the Arequipa Railways. They are neither the railways of the age nor of the day. There is one short railway in South America, the construction of which called forth more skill, pluck, and endurance than all the Meiggs railways put together, and this one railway has already earned in the first quarter of the century of its existence more money than all the government railways will ever earn during the next age. Hundreds of these inflated colonels and generals, judges, ministers of state, and accomplished editors, must have passed over the railway, which, running through a tropical forest, connects the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean. Meiggs himself must have known it well; but neither he nor any of the inspired idiots who drowned him in butter had the valour to make mention of it by one poor word. The bridge over the Chagres river is of more utility, as it will win more enduring fame, than all the bridges on the Oroya, including those which 'are sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.' The Oroya bridges bear the same relation to those on the Panama Railway as the feat of the man who walked across the Falls of Niagara bears to the economy of walking. As Blondin was the only man who made any profit out of that performance, so Meiggs, the Messiah of railways, will be the only person who will for some time to come profit by the building of the Oroya and Lima line of railway. It is surely impossible that all the reports one has been compelled to give ear to of great silver mines and mines of copper existing on this line can be false. Yet mining, especially in Peru, is not free from danger; it is also not a little mixed up with lying and cheating, and it has a historical reputation for exaggeration. The copper mines on the Chimbote line, however, are quite another matter. If those on the Oroya can be demonstrated to be equally good, and the silver mines only half as good and as great, Peru may yet lift up her head. But he will be a bold man that shall apply to English capitalists for the first loan to Peruvian miners or to be invested in Peruvian mines, and the days of faith and trust will not have passed away when the money shall have been subscribed.

Although it was a poet who said that

yet it is as true as if it had emanated from the Stock Exchange, the Times monetary article, or any other recognised fountain of practical knowledge; and as for the native edge of Peruvian industry, it is about as dull as that of a razor not made to shave but to sell—as dull, in fact, as the edge of a hatchet made of lead.