Seddenly our train looped back among the high sand hills, and moving parallel to its former direction, sought the sea. Here lay the little summer resort of Ancon, a huddle of bungalows and shacks by the store with a few trees and palms mira-culeusly springing from the sand. again rose black hills covered with coarse dark rubble.
We near" huge arena circled Stony hills, the boulders of which grew the hairy: spikes of cactus.
Beyond this entered upon desolate sweeps, sand, furrowed and rippled by the leading upward to a headland. We timed the milestones. The train puffed over this monotony at the dizzy rate of 21 kilometres an hour, Always the Desert For the last four we hud skirted the flat shore of an immense bay, until we came to Salinas, a spot with shallow salt lagoons encrusted vith salt and heaped up, with salt A series of wooden houses Fishing boats, surrounded by hungry had been. built round an. oblong noisy pelicans, were bringing loads space in the sand, and that of fish to a tiny pier.
Salinas. A God-forsaken place, with Ancon was the terminus of the] waste of waters in front and me from Lima, and we had an hour waste of desert behind.
We pitied to spare before changing into rose doomed to live there. narrow-gauze railway bound for the After leaving Salinas. the train sea-port of Huacho. We sought the mounted the next headland, and Grand Hotel for lunch, which con-wound in and out in spiral bend:
ied of an almost solid soup, a dish We caught glimpses of ttle bays some sort of vegetable poultice, a and a fishing boat at sea, and here tough and bloody steak, washed down and there a black eross upon a cliff. by black bitter Peruvian coffee. began to grow uneasy. The hour Memories of the War was late, we were nearing the time of our arrival at Huacho, yet we The line frst went by the sea, were not in sigiat of it, past a naval encampment where m you see any signs of Hua-there were Peruvian sailors dressed cho? he asked, as I was next tha in the uniform of Uncle Sam. Be- window. T scanned the horizon, cause Chile had her navy modelled "Not a sign, only the telegraph on the lines of the British, and her poles stretching far away to in-army drilled by German' officers,] finity!"
Peru has resorted to the States for val instructors, and patterned her} army after that of France.
Formetly the Huacha railway ran along by the east, but in the war with. Chile, it was unmercifully shelled by the Chilean warships.
it now Leaves the shore. Curving nto the sandy desert, the train tilted Devpair settled upon us.
When would the eternal desert end?
But surely, surely those crosses and the fishing smacks meant we were near some sort of habitation, We hopefully watched the manoeuvres of the train, It passed another bay with anoth boat, neared a head. land, mounted tina through the air their spread wings at a perilous angle as it made an curves, topped the ascent, and tipped with white making a fine! enormous loop in the gray scrub rounding a bend,—! ook, took!" we decorative effect. ascended the huge slope of sand both eried at once.
Adobe tuts with white-washed of hairpin bends. At exch A Vision of Civilization walls stood in a field of beans. ud we could see the engine p Lit drew uy at a tiny ho lay before us, There grove Wirt came forthe oot, station "lone "in" the] stretched "teen oils Delow us long. friaxy.ocka and boom of te sand. A' creeper, of] the valley fom the sen, and In the washing, clothes like Josoph's coat} naga Features tung out the family] edgy willow and a catoraitre barely and plaaay, with stsety and villas, and an esplanade! of many colours.
A nigger boy Oerrie tater from large' steamer lay superbly food next a white-faced south with] nourished surplus water from) si on fect of sulling boats blonde hair watching the train. railway nestled con.fortubly in a bay just Suddenly we passed into desert,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.