Incaland: A Story of Adventure in the Interior of Peru and the Closing Chapters of the War with Chile

The three who thus had barely escaped death were explorers from Callao, Peru, in the year 1879, and this day they were eight hoursâ walk beyond Chicla, the highest point to which the Oroya railroad had been built, and to which terminal they had journeyed by train from the main seacoast city of Peru.

Harvey Dartmoor was seventeen years of age, the birthday which marked his passage from sixteen having been celebrated a week before his departure from home. His father had been a wealthy iron merchant in Peru, but the reverses which that country had sustained in the few months of the war with Chile, and which are described in detail in âFighting Under the Southern Cross,â had forced Mr. Dartmoor, as well as many others in Lima and Callao, to the brink of the financial precipice beneath which yawned the chasm, ruin.

Harvey had been more in the confidence of his father than Louis, who was a year older. This was perhaps due to the younger ladâs resemblance to his father, in face and in personal bearing; or, perhaps, to the fact that he was more studiously inclined and therefore passed more time at home than did Louis, who was fond of outdoor sports, and preferred a spin in Callao Bay, or a dash over the pampas on his pony, with his chum Carl Saunders as a companion, to poring over books in the library.

It was in this mannerâby being frequently at home and in the officeâthat Harvey had learned of his fatherâs distress of mind, caused by financial difficulties, long before other members of the family had realized the true state of affairs; and this observance by the lad and his inquiries had as a sequel his appearance in the great Andes chain, or the Cordilleras of Peru.

His companions were an Englishman and an American, who had resigned clerkships in offices to undertake this journey. Horace Hope-Jones, the senior, had been five years on the Peruvian coast, coming to Callao from Liverpool, and John Ferguson had lived in Ohio until 1875, when he was offered a very good salary to enter the employ of a large American house which had branch establishments in several cities on the southwest coast. One was twenty-three, the other twenty-two.

They were well known in the cities, and were popular in amateur athletic circles, both having been members of a famous four of the Callao Rowing Club, that had wrested victory from fours sent from Valparaiso, Panama, and other cities. Harvey Dartmoor was a junior member of this club, and it was while serving as coxswain that he became acquainted with Hope-Jones and Ferguson.