The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-03-15
Amid Andean glaciers, 15,665 feet above the sea

Amid Andean glaciers, Copyrighted, 1914, by F. G. Carpenter.)
 Ticlio, Peru. "7AM dictatng this letter an IIl oil-burnning engine on the very
 4 top of the Andes. My secretary tssYsSJ sits by my side in the cab and takes down the notes. The air is so rare l can hardly talk, and it is only the great flames of petroleum in the fur mace below that take the chill from our bones. We are a short distance from Ticlio. above the pass which crosses the mountains from the Pacific ocean the way to the Atlantic. and at the very highest railroad point of the world. We are higher up in the air than any noun tain in the United States outside of Alaska. We are 100 feet above the top of Mont Blanc and 20@i feet higher than the sacred peak of Fujiyama, in far-off Japan. If I could fly on this plane north to Pkes peak I should have to drop three times the height of the Washing ton monument before l could land on its summit, and if I fell 1000 feet l should still be far above the height of Mount Whitney.
 Our actual altitude .s 15s65 feet above the sea, and all about us are mountains that rise several thousand feet higher Over there is Mount Meiggs, whose alti- tude is 7000 feet, and not far away is another mountain that ascends to 20,00O and more.
 As l write we seem to be in a great fertilization on the very roof of the world. We are in basin surrounded by gigantic walls of blue, black, white. red and gray rock. We are also in great glacier garden. l can count half dozen mighty ice rivers from where l sit ting, and there are glaciers so near that l could almost throw stone in the ice as 1 stand up in the cab.
 moment ago the sky was bright blue. Now the wind has come up and the clouds hang low over the glaciers. The black masses rest on the ice. and it seems to be flowing out of the clouds down the hills Some of the glaciers are of enormous extent. I can see one that seems to be the whole top of the noun tain; and near 1t another has burst out of the rocks and half fallen in an icy veil down the valley. The top of that glacier is covered with snow, but the face toward the train is this veil of icicles through which you can see the ice wall behind. We have here the sun of the tropics. It fights with the cold of the highlands and the battle goes on all the time. You can never be sure of the weather. It may be clear for week and 1t may snow day and night. In the winter the mountain blasts are so fierce and the glare so great that the trainmen use smoked glasses to keep from becoming snow blind.
 But before I describe the scenic won- ders about me let me tell you something of this road from the sea to the clouds. It is the worlds greatest wonder in the way of railway construction. It begins on the Pacific ocean at the port of Cal lao, and in 100 miles It climbs up the mountain to an altitude of 15,S65 feet. It crosses the pass at POO feet lower, and then goes down to the Indian market town of Oroya on the north side of the range. Oroya is not great distance from the navigable tributaries of the Amazon river and the day will probably come when this road will form part of a steam route across South America. Leaving Lima for this 100 miles the track steadily rises. From the sea to the top of the pass the average grade Is about 1 per cent: and there is no place where a train a car, if left the main track, would not slide by gravity clear down into the ocean, The road is of standard gauge, and it's rolling stock is largely American. The engines burn fuel oil, which comes from northern Peru and the journey throughout is accomplished without dust or cinders. The system of brakes, which assures safety, is both British and American, and in the descent pilot gar always goes fn advance of the train.
 This road is known as the Central Railway of Peru. It belongs to the gov ernment and is under the management of the Peruvian corporation, a British company that has control of the rail- ways of the republic The railway runs from Callao, the Pacific, to Huan- cayo, 27O miles distant, on the Atlantic side of the Andes. It crosses the coast range at 15,665 feet with branch of nine miles to the Morocoeha mines, upon which the altitude is almost 16,- 0o0 feet The road was suggested by .s Peruvian, but the man who laid 1t out and constructed the greater part of 1t was Henry Meiggs, an American. Meiggs raised the money to build it, and. in fact, he is entitled to the credit of its construction. He began to work on it away back in 1870. and in 1876. when he d ed he had completed it E- Far as Chicla, a point more than two ard one-half miles above the sea. By that time the s27,000, 900 or $2S, 1000, 900 which he had raised for its construc- tion was exhausted and :. the work stopped. It was resumede'som years later and fin 1893 was completed to Oroya. distance of 13S miles from the coast. The extension to the rich valley of Huancayo was finished only six years ago.
 The road was originally planned to reach the rich silver and copper mines Of Cerro de Pasca, but after going over the pass at an altitude of 15,665 feet. 1t came down about 5000 feet and stopped at Oroya. Then the mines were bought by American syndi- cate, and this syndicate has built a standard gauge railway from Oroya along the high plateau of the Andes to its mining center. which is still at an altitude of 14.20S feet. I ex- pect to go over that road within a few days and shall write of 1t later. The Central Railway of Peru Is con- sidered by experts the most wonder full piece of railroad engineering on earth, It reaches the highest point r ever crossed by rail. and Its course from the sea to the tops of the moun- tains is almost straight up into the air. The distance as the crow flies from the Morococha Pass to the ocean cannot, I should say. be 50 miles, and, with all the windings of the road, with its loops, twists and turns, its sigzags and its tunnels and its other