Peru

The men and machinery arrived at Callao, the port of Lima, in January of 1815 to a government gun salute. There then followed a tortuous twelve to eighteen month trek  inland  through  difficult  terrain  over  which  no  wheeled  vehicle  could  travel  to  reach the Andean town of Cerro de Pasco. Situated on a plain surrounded by low hills, Cerro de Pasco lies on the snow-line some 14,206 feet above sea level.  The discovery of silver is the only rationale for settling in such a hostile environment.  Temperatures at  Cerro  rarely  rise  above  13  degrees  centigrade  in  the  warmest  months  (December-March),  falling  to  sub-zero  temperatures  at  night.  Rain,  hail,  thunder  and  lightening  can be expected daily and in the cold months the thermometer regularly plummets to -10 degrees centigrade. From the mid seventeenth century miners had poured into the area resulting in the haphazard growth of the town, the adobe miners’ dwellings with their thatched roofs in many cases built precariously close to the mine workings that literally  honeycombed  the  ground  beneath.    By  the  late  eighteenth  century  Cerro  de  Pasco  was  reported  to  have  around  116  mines,  with  some  85  in  production,  and  a  population  of  about  5,000,  although  with  people  arriving  during  boom  periods,  this  figure was prone to fluctuation.44

https://projects.exeter.ac.uk/cornishlatin/A%20Professor%20in%20Peru%20new.pdf