96 SELLING LATIN AMERICA 
generating electric light and power for tram 
systems. On the eastern side of Peru there 
are about 3500 miles of navigable rivers for 
light-draft vessels, drawing 8 to 15 feet, all 
of these streams ultimately emptying into the 
Atlantic. 
Iquitos with 20,000 inhabitants, on the 
Amazon, 2500 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, 
is the center of the rubber industry, and is 
more accessible from New York than from the 
capital of the Republic, Lima. 
Peru has 1840 miles of railway, 1300 being 
standard and 500 narrow gauge. Nearly 3500 
miles of road have been surveyed and are in 
various process of construction. Nominally 
about 1200 miles of these roads are owned 
by the Government but are operated and con 
trolled by the Peruvian Corporation, Ltd., 
an English organization, whose presence is 
very much in evidence in Peru, and which also 
operates a line of steamers on Lake Titicaca. 
Under the present contract with the govern 
ment this concern is to control the railways 
under it until 1973, a certain percentage of