And now the powerful _Blanco Encalada_, one of the Chilean ironclads, closed in. A shell from her guns at six hundred yards took off the head of the _Huascar's_ second in command and wounded the third officer. Scarcely had the fourth had time to take his place when he was injured by a shell, and the junior lieutenant assumed command of a ship littered with the dead and dying. Yet though the guns in the tops were silent and those below disabled, the turret injured, the deck strewn with mutilated bodies, the Peruvians kept up the fight, the dying _Huascar_ striving at least to ram one of her enemies before she sank. But at length, being utterly disabled, the vessel hauled down her flag.[16] [16] See the Author's _Peru_, in the South American Series; also Markham's _History of Peru_. Thus ended this epic sea-fight, and with it went the sea-power of Peru. Thus, moreover, was the value of the ironclad demonstrated--the armoured vessel, the forbear of the _Dreadnought_. The torpedo was also used in this fight, one fired by the _Huascar_ turning back upon the vessel itself, where it would have caused disaster earlier had not a sailor jumped overboard and diverted its course. The attack on Lima by the Chileans and its defence by the Peruvians, and other episodes of the war following on the above events, make terrible reading--a history of which, however, we cannot here enter upon. We continue to pass the coasts of the nitrate-bearing lands, whose working and export yield the Republic of Chile their greatest source of revenue. It was off the Chilean coast, it will be recollected, that another and more modern engagement between vessels of war took place, when a weaker British squadron was overpowered by the German Pacific Fleet--a disaster amply wiped out off the Falkland Isles, a little later on. The railway that ascends from the port of Antofagasta also enters upon the nitrate pampas, and there are copper-bearing districts tributary to the line. At 10,000 feet elevation the River Loa is crossed, and beyond we approach the ever-smoking, snow-capped cone of San Pedro, one of the Andean volcanoes here. Then the gleaming surface of the borax "lake" of Cebollar, the largest borax deposit on the face of the globe, catches the eye. The great snow-clad Cordillera, with the giant Ollague, 20,000 feet, on the border of Chile and Bolivia, is passed, and the railway reaches the Bolivian plateau, the southern portion of the Titicaca basin, and passes the town of Unini, with its rich silver mines, skirts Lake Poopo, and reaches the town of Oruro, famous for its tin. Beyond, this interesting line reaches La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. The same place is now served by the railway recently built from Arica, and thus the interior of the mountainous Republic of Bolivia is rendered more accessible. Recent construction has effected a juncture with the railway system of Argentina, thus affording a further transcontinental route.