For a long time several routes have been under discussion and some concessions have been granted, which mismanagement or the difficulty of getting capitalists to invest in so remote a field have rendered abortive. Therefore there is still discussion; and opportunities for construction are open. Beginning at the north the first cross line proposed is that in the Department Piura, continuing the road from the good port of Paita to Puerto Molendez, Calantura, or Limón, on the Marañon River below the Pongo de Manserriche. This plan has the great advantage of crossing the Andes at its lowest point, 6600 feet. An important consideration is that it would make practicable the export from Paita of rubber which is now carried from Iquitos by way of the Amazon and Pará; the far shorter journey by sea from Paita to New York, easily made within ten days, would more than counterbalance the rail freight from the river port 400 miles to Paita. It would surely be a better route for business men and offers other advantages; among these access to coal and iron mines en route. Another transcontinental route proposed is from some point connected with the Central Railway which has already surmounted the divide. A route on which much money has been spent for engineering investigation, surveys, and otherwise is from Cerro de Pasco or Goyllarisquisga to Pucalpa or some other point on the Ucayali. This central road for political reasons seems extremely desirable. It would open up the fine grazing lands of the Pampa Sacramento, and rich alluvial gold deposits in or on several streams, as well as the forest and rubber country. Another suggestion is to continue the road directly east from Oroya down to the Perené River and to Puerto Wertheman; a better may be to build 175 miles from Matahuasi, a station on the Oroya-Huancayo Railway, to Jesus Marie on the Ené River near the mouth of the Pangoa, where 12 feet of water would permit of commerce by large steamers by way of the Tambo and Ucayali. One important cross route would naturally be by the Southern Railway, from a point on the Cuzco branch, Tirapata, Urcos, or Cuzco, the earlier plans looking to a connection with the Madre de Dios River. But as this route would necessitate a long roundabout journey, as well as a passage through Bolivia and freightage on the Madeira-Mamoré Railway, the Government has recently undertaken for itself a line from Cuzco to Santa Ana on the Urubamba, by which the journey is greatly shortened and will be wholly within the Republic as far as Brazil, following down the Urubamba and Ucayali to the Amazon and Iquitos. The drawback to this route is that only very light draught steamers can come up to Santa Ana at any season of the year.