This new meaning of the doctrine of transubstantiation was preached to willing and enchanted ears. Ten thousand labourers of all colours and kinds were introduced into the country. 'By God, Sir, there was not a steamboat on the broad waters of the Pacific that did not pour into Peru as many peones as potatoes from Chile.' These ten thousand men all went up the Andes bearing shovels in their hands, and singing the name of Meiggs as they went. Millions of nails, and hammers innumerable, rails and barrows, sleepers and picks, chains, and double patent layers, wheels and pistons, with many thousand kegs of blasting powder 'let in duty free,' with all the other infernal implements and apparatus for making the most notable railway of this age[9], poured into Peru marked with the name of Meiggs. You could no more breathe without Meiggs, than you could eat your dinner without swallowing dust, sleep without the sting of fleas or the soothing trumpet of musquitoes. Meiggs everywhere; in sunshine and in storm, on the sea and on the heights of the world, now called Mount Meiggs; in the earthquake[10], and in the peaceful atmosphere of the most elegant society in the world. The wonderful activity on the Mollendo and Arequipa railway, carried on without ceasing, produced an ecstasy of hope, and also an eruption of blasphemy. Every valley was to be exalted; every Peruvian mountain, hitherto sacred to snow and the traditions of the Incas, should be laid low by the wand of Meiggs; the desert of course should blossom as the rose: no more iron should be sharpened into swords; ploughshares and pruning-hooks should be in such demand, that every blade and dagger or weapon of war in the old world would be required to make them. And a highway should be there, in which should be no lion, even a highway for our GOD. All this mixture of trumpery metaphors were poured into the ears of the enchanted Peruvians for the space of three years and more. The railway as far as Arequipa was at length finished, the Oroya railway was begun. It will probably never be finished. Robert Stephenson is reported to have said once before a Railway Committee: 'My Lords and Gentlemen, you can carry a railway to the Antipodes if you wish; it is only a matter of expense.' The Peruvians, aided by the archpriest Meiggs, 'the Messiah of railways, who was to bring salvation to the Peruvian Republic,' and steadfastly believing in the Meiggs' method of transubstantiation, commenced building a railway, not to Calcutta, but to the moon[11]. As early as 1859 the Oroya Railway began to be thought of seriously, and the late President of Peru, with two other gentlemen of character, were appointed a commission to collect data and make calculations for a railway between Lima and Jauja. Nothing, however, was done until 1864, when Congress authorised the Government, Castilla then being President, to construct a railway to Caxamarca, with an annual guarantee of 7 per cent. for twenty-five years.