TIBERIUS SMITH
and its treasures. But it was not until we had hit the stubby Central Railroad at Callao for a one-hundred-and-thirty-six-mile ride over a tunnel-infested route across the Central Cordilleras to Oroya that he opened his heart and explained we were bound for the Cerro de Pasco silver-diggings. He had learned in port that several English nabobs were kicking because they suspected somebody was passing things out of the window in their absence. So Tib intended to loll about in the middle distance and get a bird's-eye view of the situation, and then hop in at the right moment and plank down our baseball receipts and buy out the disgruntled capitalist, and then camp right there and watch the investment grow.
"You see, the mines in the Cerro district separate mother-earth from about a million ounces of white junk every year, and if any speculator should decide his share of the loot was too microscopic we stood a chance of buying into a good thing.
"Thus we jumped the stunted railroad and were pleased on reaching Oroya to find a choice and convivial cluster of Yankees and Johnny Bulls, all civil engineers, busily endeavoring to explain to the directorate of the Peruvian Company why vast sums of coin spent in an attempt to connect Oroya with the Pichis River had failed of any radical results. I'll talk guide-book sufficient to say the Pichis is
240
