Then you reach a place where a smelter sends its blasts up in the skies, and you begin to see what supports this road. A footpath or trail climbs the ravines, and you see scores of llamas bearing their burdens and driven by the native Indians. A hundred cascades, some of them with the beauty of Yosemite's Bridal Veil leap with their spray down the sheer cliffs. The lights and shadows paint the bare rocks delicate hues, such as you cannot see even in a sunset glow. You come to the famous Verrugas bridge, 575 feet long and 225 feet high, in its day the greatest feat of railroad engineering ever known. You are now in a belt twelve miles long where no tourist can live, for there the Verrugas fever rages. It is one of those strange local diseases found occasionally in the world peculiar to a small zone and baffling to medical science. You see crucifixes all along the route. Still you climb and climb and you see ragged edges of mountains above you which you know you will surmount. You come to a dead stop against the face of a mountain thousands of feet high. You back away up its side, and little by little, twisting and turning you lift yourself above another cloud layer. The air gets cold, a dash of rain comes as you pass through the clouds. At 10,000 feet high a sharp pain runs through your ears. You take several long gasps of breath and it passes away. A slight headache comes at 12,000 feet. It passes away and finally you reach the tunnel and emerge on the other side of the Andes with the snow all about you and you throw a few snowballs and start back. Your head begins to feel strange. At 13,000 feet it aches violently. The ache is as near like the morning-after headache as can be. In the official party not one person escaped it. Half a dozen strong men became sick at the stomach and had violent attacks of vomiting. The mountain sickness was on. Other men were laid out in the cars prostrate. At this stage came a complication. Heavy rains had been falling below and word was telegraphed that there were four washouts and the party would have to stay in the mountains all night. The faces of the railroad officials became grave. To keep that party at the height of 13,000 feet all night might prove almost fatal to some. It was this trip which brought on the illness that ultimately killed the late Dr. Nicholas Senn. Word was sent that by care the train might descend as far as 10,000 feet. A handcar was sent on as a pilot and in the darkness and snow that train was piloted down those mountain declivities, where the least slip of the earth would have sent it hurtling down cliffs thousands of feet. The pace was only five miles an hour.