Other considerations press themselves upon us. In the midst of the crisis, the President published a decree, announcing that he would avail himself of the resolution of Congress which enabled him to acquire the nitrate works in the province of Tarapaca. A commission of lawyers was at once despatched to the province to examine titles, and to fix upon the price to be paid to each manufacturer for his plant and his nitrate lands. In an incredibly short time no less than fifty-one nitrate makers had given in their consent to sell their works to the Government, and the price was fixed upon each, and each was measured, inventoried, and closed. The total sum to be paid for these establishments was 18,000,000 dols. But they remained to be conveyed. The civil power had displayed considerable activity; now that the law had to be applied things became as dull as lead, and as heavy as if they had all been made of that well-known metal. Negotiations had also to be entered into with the Lima Banks, which is an operation as delicate and as dangerous as negotiating with so many volcanoes, or any other uncertain and baseless institutions of which either nature or a civilisation supported by bits of paper can boast. Still the world was comforted by the promise that next week all would be well, or the week after, or say the end of the month, in order to be sure. In the midst of this, General Prado, the possible future President of Peru, is despatched to Europe on a mission, the nature of which was kept a profound secret for three weeks. Simple men, who believed in the despatch of the finance minister, knew for certain that General Prado had gone to England to raise more money on nitrate, in order that the Oroya Railway might be finished, and a station-house built somewhere in the Milky Way, which it is destined probably this marvellous line shall ultimately reach. And if London would only lend Peru, say another £10,000,000, then Lima would rejoice, and the whole earth be glad; the mountains would break out into psalms, and the valleys would laugh and sing, for would not Don Enrique Meiggs, the Messiah[5] of the Andes, once more return to reign?