At one of these towns the whole army of Chili was concentrated--forty thousand men--preparing for the invasion of Peru. The Peruvian gun-boat _Huascar_ (pronounced _Wascar_) came into the harbor, and with a few shots might have destroyed the reservoirs and the condensing establishments, and left these forty thousand men to die of thirst, for there was no fresh water within two hundred and fifty miles of them. But the commander of the _Huascar_ had a heart. He was a noble, generous German--Admiral Grau--and he sent word to the Chillano commander that he presented his army with their lives. He said he would not attack defenceless men, and sailed off in pursuit of some Chillano gun-boats which had run away when they saw the _Huascar_ coming. [Illustration: A STATION ON THE ROAD.] The present terminus of the Bolivia railroad is at Puno, a little town of five thousand inhabitants, at an elevation of twelve thousand five hundred feet; but it is proposed to extend it farther up the valley, through another pass of the Andes, and then down the eastern slopes to the head of navigation on the Amazon--neither a difficult nor an expensive undertaking. An expedition has recently started from Buenos Ayres to make an exploration from the head of navigation on the Paraguay River into the mountains of Bolivia, for the purpose of constructing a cart-road, and ultimately a railroad to connect the mining regions of the latter republic with the Atlantic ports of the continent, and great hopes are entertained of its success. The little town of Puno owes its origin to the rich mines that surround it, and some of them are producing generously. It has a small amount of other commerce in hides and wool, coca-leaves, and cinchona. It is the centre of the alpaca wool trade, and considerable is exported. To reach La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, from Puno one must cross Lake Titicaca, sailing its full length, and, reaching its southern shores, mount a mule and ride twenty-five miles along the ancient highway of the Incas, a wonderful road, nearly four thousand miles long, built eight hundred years or more ago, and still in a good state of preservation, notwithstanding the neglect of the Spaniards to keep it in repair.