Everybody has heard of Henry Meiggs, the partner of Ralston, the California banker, who drowned himself in the Golden Gate, the friend of Flood, O’Brien, Mackey, Sharon, and one of the princes of the golden era of ’49. Bret Harte has written of him, and Mark Twain has used him as a text. He committed forgeries in San Francisco years ago, and when his crime was discovered he took a boat and rowed out into the bay; but instead of jumping overboard, as Ralston did twenty years afterwards, he climbed upon the deck of a schooner, purchased her, and sailed away from the scene of his remarkable career. He went to Peru, bringing much of his wealth and all of his irresistible energy with him. These he applied to the difficulties that had staggered that country, and overcame them. He sent back money to California to reimburse with good interest those who lost by his forgeries, but remained away till he died, one of the richest, most influential, and famous men on the coast. From Ecuador to Patagonia, through Peru, Bolivia, and Chili, Meiggs’s enterprises extended, and the result is a series of railroads at right angles with the coast, connecting the interior of the country with the seaports, and giving the estates, and the mines in the mountains, the sugar haciendas, and the nitrate beds, easy outlets to the ocean. Nearly every port on the west coast has its little railroad, from twenty to two hundred and fifty miles in length, some of them reaching into the very heart of the Andes, the arteries of the continent’s commerce, and intended to make profitable possessions which would otherwise have no worth. The Oroya road, which Meiggs left incomplete, has been counted as the eighth wonder of the world, for there is nothing in the Rocky Mountains or the Alps which compares with it as an example of engineering science, or presents more sublime scenery. But neither scenic grandeur nor engineering genius can alone make a railroad pay, particularly if it goes nowhere. In this instance the money gave out, and Meiggs died when the road was only partially completed, there remaining fifty miles between the present terminus (Chicla) and the point which was aimed at--the mines of Cerro del Pasco, one of the richest and most extensive silver deposits in the world. Most of the grading and tunnelling between Chicla and the mines has been completed, and it only remains to lay the ties and rails and put in the bridges to send a locomotive over the Andes into the great valley which stretches north and south between the two Cordilleras. This Mr. Grace has agreed to do. The completion of the line to the mining regions will cost ten million dollars, but that portion already constructed and in operation, with all its rolling stock, station-houses, and equipments of every sort, he gets for practically nothing, as under the conditions of a ninety-nine years’ lease he has the use of the railroad and all that belongs with [Illustration: THE HEART OF THE ANDES.]