. The earth and its inhabitants ... g-places. The Peruvian Grovernment, owner of the giianeras, and the speculators of allnations who acted as its intermediaries with the European buyers, saw in thisindustry nothing but present profits from a turn-over exceeding £4,000,000yearly. Sale prices rising to thirty times the cost of production left the directors TOPOGEAPHY OF PERU. 329 ample scope for rigging the market, for distributing favours and sinecures, forpeculation and frauds of all kinds. Like the legacy of the old gold-mines, theguano-beds proved a baneful windfall for Peru, and the demora
. The earth and its inhabitants ... g-places. The Peruvian Grovernment, owner of the giianeras, and the speculators of allnations who acted as its intermediaries with the European buyers, saw in thisindustry nothing but present profits from a turn-over exceeding £4,000,000yearly. Sale prices rising to thirty times the cost of production left the directors TOPOGEAPHY OF PERU. 329 ample scope for rigging the market, for distributing favours and sinecures, forpeculation and frauds of all kinds. Like the legacy of the old gold-mines, theguano-beds proved a baneful windfall for Peru, and the demoralisation causedby it may have largely contributed to the humiliating defeat of the nation in thewar with Chili. Not a shovelful now remains, and henceforth Peru will have todepend on the honest labour of her citizens. Arequipa—Carmen Alto. Some 60 miles south-east of the Chinchas follow San Nicolas and San Juan,two of the best havens on the Peruvian seaboard. But harbours can be of little Fig. 127.— 1 : 330, In \,.^#^^fe , v,/M^ 7l40 WeîlopGreenwcIn 6 Miles. use on a desert coast, where the Tanga wastes offer nothing but bare rocks for aspace of over 400 square miles. Farther on follow Camanû, Quiica, Iskuj andMoUendo, which were, or still are, maritime outlets of the important city ofArequipa. Mollendo has been chosen as the seaward terminus of the trunk linewhich already connects South Peru and Bolivia with the coast. It is supplied withwater by a conduit 116 miles long, which descends from the Arequipa valley overhills and precipices down to the sea. Next to that conveying water from Pica toIquique, it is the most remarkable work of the kind on the seaboard. 330 SOUTH AMERICA—THE ANDES REGIONS. The railway climbs the slopes in zigzags, a distance of 100 miles, to Arequipaat an altitude of 7,650 feet, the mean incline scarcely exceeding half an inch inthe yard. After turning the Caldera hills on the west it curves round east, andcontinues the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectgeography, bookyear18
