Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala And Honduras Part 2

Some seventy-five cars pa.s.sed me during the morning. Under supervision the peons worked at moderately good speed; indeed, they compared rather favorably with the rough American laborers with whom I had recently toiled in railroad gangs, in a stone-quarry of Oklahoma, and the cotton-fields of Texas. The endurance of these fellows living on corn and beans is remarkable; they were as superior to the Oriental coolie as their wages to the latter's eight or ten cents a day. In this case, as the world over, the workmen earned about what he was paid, or rather succeeded in keeping his capacity down to the wages paid him. Many galleries of the mine were "worked on contract," and almost all gangs had their self-chosen leader. A peon with a bit more standing in the community than his fellows, wearing something or other to suggest his authority and higher place in the world--such perhaps as the pink s.h.i.+rt the haughty "jefecito" beside me sported--appeared with twelve or more men ready for work and was given a section and paid enough to give his men from fifty to eighty cents a day each and have something over a dollar left for himself. Miners' wages vary much throughout Mexico, from twelve dollars a month to two a day in places no insuperable distances apart. Conditions also differ greatly, according to my experienced compatriots. The striking and booting of the workmen, common in some mines, was never permitted in "Pinguico." In Pachuca, for example, this was said to be the universal practice; while in the mines of Chihuahua it would have been as dangerous as to do the same thing to a stick of dynamite. Here the peon's manner was little short of obsequious outwardly, yet one had the feeling that in crowds they were capable of making trouble and those who had fallen upon "gringoes" in the region had despatched their victims thoroughly, leaving them mutilated and robbed even of their clothing. The charming part of it all was one could never know which of these slinking fellows was a bandit by avocation and saving up his unvented anger for the boss who ordered him about at his labors.

It felt pleasant, indeed, to bask in the sun a half hour after dinner before descending again. Toward five I tied and tagged the sacks of samples and followed them, on peon backs, to the shaft and to the world above with its hot and cold shower-bath, and the Chinaman's promise, thanks to the proximity of Irapuato, of "stlaybelly pie." Though the American force numbered several of those fruitless individuals that drift in and out of all mining communities, it was on the whole of rather high caliber. Besides "Sully the Pug," a mere human animal, hairy and muscular as a bear, and two "Texicans," as those born in the States of some Mexican blood and generally a touch of foreign accent are called, there were two engineers who lived with their "chinitas," or illiterate _mestizo_ Mexican wives and broods of peon children down in the valley below the dump-heap. Caste lines were not lacking even among the Americans in the "camp," as these call Guanajuato and its mining environs. More than one complained that those who married Mexican girls of unsullied character and even education were rated "squaw-men"

and more or less ostracized by their fellow countrymen, and especially country-women, while the man who "picked up an old rounder from the States" was looked upon as an equal. The speech of all Mexico is slovenly from the Castilian point of view. Still more so was that of both the peon and the Americans, who copied the untutored tongue of the former, often ignorant of its faults, and generally not in the least anxious to improve, nor indeed to get any other advantage from the country except the gold and silver they could dig out of it. Laborers and bosses commonly used "pierra" for piedra; "sa' pa' fuera" for to leave the mine, "croquesi" for I believe so, commonly ignorant even of the fact that this is not a single word. In the mess-hall were heard strange mixtures of the two languages, as when a man rising to answer some call shouted over his shoulder: "Juan, deja mi pie alone!" Thanks to much peon intercourse, almost all the Americans had an unconsciously patronizing air even to their fellows, as many a pedagogue comes to address all the world in the tone of the schoolroom. The Mexican, like the Spaniard, never laughs at the most atrocious attempts at his tongue by foreigners, and even the peons were often extremely quick-witted in catching the idea from a few misp.r.o.nounced words. "The man with the hair----," I said one day, in describing a workman I wished summoned; and not for the moment recalling the Castilian for curly, I twirled my fingers in the air.

"Chino!" cried at least a half-dozen peons in the same breath.

Small wonder the Mexican considers the "gringo" rude. An American boss would send a peon to fetch his key or cigarettes, or on some equally important errand; the workman would run all the way up hill and down again in the rarified air, removing his hat as he handed over the desired article, and the average man from the States would not so much as grunt his thanks.

The engineers on whom our lives depended as often as we descended into or mounted from the mine, had concocted and posted in the engine-room the following "ten commandments":

"Notice To Visitors And Others

"Article 1. Be seated on the platform. It is too large for the engineer anyway.

"Art. 2. Spit on the floor. We like to clean up after you.

"Art. 3. Talk to the engineer while he is running. There is no responsibility to his job.

"Art. 4. If the engineer does not know his business, please tell him. He will appreciate it.

"Art. 5. Ask him as many questions as you like. He is paid to answer them.

"Art. 6. Please handle all the bright work. We have nothing to do but clean it.

"Art. 7. Don't spit on the ceiling. We have lost the ladder.

"Art. 8. Should the engineer look angry don't pay any attention to him. He is harmless.

"Art. 9. If you have no cigarettes take his. They grow in his garden.

"Art. 10. If he is not entertaining, report him to the superintendent and he will be fired at once."

On the second day the scene of my operations was changed to the eighth level, a hundred feet below that of the first. It was a long gallery winding away through the mountain, and connecting a mile beyond with another shaft opening on another hill, so that the heavy air was tempered by a constant mild breeze.

Side shafts, just large enough for the ore-cars to pa.s.s, pierced far back into the mountain at frequent intervals. Back in these it was furnace hot. From them the day-gang took out 115 car-loads, though the chute was blocked now and then by huge rocks that must be "shot" by a small charge of dynamite stuck on them, a new way of "shooting the chutes" that was like striking the ear-drums with a club.

The peons placed in each gallery either a cross or a lithograph of the Virgin in a shrine made of a dynamite-box, and kept at least one candle always burning before it. In the morning it was a common sight to see several appear with a bunch of fresh-picked flowers to set up before the image. Most of the men wore a rosary or charm about the neck, which they did not remove even when working naked, and all crossed themselves each time they entered the mine. Not a few chanted prayers while the cage was descending. As often as they pa.s.sed the gallery-shrine, they left off for an instant the vilest oaths, in which several boys from twelve to fourteen excelled, to s.n.a.t.c.h off their hats to the Virgin, then instantly took up their cursing again. Whenever I left the mine they begged the half-candle I had left, and set it up with the rest. Yet they had none of the touchiness of the Hindu about their superst.i.tions, and showed no resentment whatever even when a "gringo" stopped to light his cigarette at their improvised "altars."

Trusted miners hired to search the others for stolen ore as they leave the shaft were sometimes waylaid on the journey home and beaten almost or quite to death. Once given a position of authority, they were harsher with their own kind than were the white men. The scarred and seared old "Pinguico" searcher, who stood at his block three times each twenty-four hours, had already killed three men who thus attacked him. Under no provocation whatever would the peons fight underground, but lay for their enemies only outside. A s.h.i.+ft-boss in a neighboring mine remained seven weeks below, having his food sent down to him, and continued to work daily with miners who had sworn to kill him once they caught him on earth. One of our engineers had long been accustomed at another mine to hand his revolver to the searcher when the s.h.i.+ft appeared and to arm himself with a heavy club. One day the searcher gave the superintendent a "tip," and when the hundred or more were lined up they were suddenly commanded to take off their _huarachas_. A gasp of dismay sounded, but all hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed off their sandals and something like a bushel of high-grade ore in thin strips lay scattered on the ground. But a few mornings later the searcher was found dead half way between the mine and his home.

Some of the mines round about Guanajuato were in a most chaotic state, especially those of individual owners.h.i.+p. The equipment was often so poor that fatal accidents were common, deaths even resulting from rocks falling down the shafts. Among our engineers was one who had recently come from a mine where during two weeks' employment he pulled out from one to four corpses daily, until "it got so monotonous" he resigned. In that same mine it was customary to lock in each s.h.i.+ft until the relieving one arrived, and many worked four or five s.h.i.+fts, thirty-two to forty hours without a moment of rest, swallowing a bit of food now and then with a sledge in one hand. "High-graders," as ore-thieves are called, were numerous. The near-by "Sirena" mine was reputed to have in its personnel more men who lived by stealing ore than honest workmen. There ran the story of a new boss in a mine so near ours that we could hear its blasting from our eighth level, long dull thuds that seemed to run through the mountain like a shudder through a human body, who was making his first underground inspection when his light suddenly went out and he felt the cold barrel of a revolver against his temple. A peon voice sounded in the darkness close to his ear:

"No te muevas, hijo de----, si quieres vivir!"

Another light was struck and he made out some twenty peons, each with a sack of "high-grade," and was warned to take his leave on the double-quick and not to look around on penalty of a worse fate than that of Lot's wife.

Bandit gangs were known to live in out-of-the-way corners of several mines, bringing their blankets and tortillas with them and making a business of stealing ore. Not even the most experienced mining engineer could more quickly recognize "pay dirt" than the peon population of Guanajuato vicinity.

Though he is obsequious enough under ordinary circ.u.mstances, the mine peon often has a deep-rooted hatred of the American, which vents itself chiefly in cold silence, unless opportunity makes some more effective way possible. Next on his black-list comes the Spaniard, who is reputed a heartless usurer who long enjoyed protection under Diaz. Third, perhaps, come the priests, though these are endured as a necessary evil, as we endure a bad government. The padre of Calderon drifted up to the mine one day to pay his respects and drink the mine health in good Scotch whisky. Gradually he brought the conversation around to the question of disobedience among the peons, and summed up his advice to the Americans in a vehement explosion:

"Fine them! Fine them often, and much!

"Of course," he added, as he prepared to leave, "you know that by the laws of Mexico and the _Santa Iglesia_ all such fines go to the church."

Intercourse between the mine officials and native authorities was almost always sure to make it worth while to linger in the vicinity. My disrespectful fellow countrymen were much given to mixing with the most courteous Spanish forms of speech asides in English which it was well the pompous native officials did not understand. I reached the office one day to find the chief of police just arrived to collect for his services in guarding the money brought out on pay-day.

"Ah, senor mio," cried the superintendent, "Y como esta usted? La familia buena? Y los hijos--I'll slip the old geaser his six bones and let him be on his way--Oh, si, senor. Como no? Con muchisimo gusto--and there goes six of our good bucks and four bits and--Pues adios, muy senor mio! Vaya bien!--If only you break your worthless old neck on the way home--Adios pues!"

After the shower-bath it was as much worth while to stroll up over the ridge back of the camp and watch the night settle down over this upper-story world. Only on the coast of Cochinchina have I seen sunsets to equal those in this alt.i.tude. Each one was different. To-night it stretched entirely across the saw-toothed summits of the western hills in a narrow, pinkish-red streak; to-morrow the play of colors on mountains and clouds, shot blood-red, fading to saffron yellow, growing an ever-thicker gray down to the horizon, with the unrivaled blue of the sky overhead, all s.h.i.+fting and changing with every moment, would be hopelessly beyond the power of words. Often rain was falling in a spot or two far to the west, and there the clouds were jet black. In one place well above the horizon was perhaps a brilliant pinkish patch of reflected sun, and everything else an immensity of clouded sky running from Confederate gray above to a blackish-blue that blended with range upon range to the uttermost distance.

There was always a peculiar stillness over all the scene. Groups of sandaled mine peons wound noiselessly away, a few rods apart, along undulating trails, the red of their sarapes and the yellow of their immense hats giving the predominating hue. In the vast landscape was much green, though more gray of outcropping rocks. Here and there a lonely telegraph wire struck off dubiously across the rugged country. Rocks as large as houses hung on the great hillsides, ready to roll down and destroy at the slightest movement of the earth, like playthings left by careless giant children. Along some rocky path far down in the nearer valley a small horse of the patient Mexican breed, under its picturesque, huge-hatted rider, galloped sure-footed up and down steep faces of rock. Cargadores bent half double, with a rope across their brows, came straining upward to the mine. Bands of peons released from their underground labors paused here and there on the way home to wager cigarettes on which could toss a stone nearest the next mud puddle. Flocks of goats wandered in the growing dusk about swift stony mountain flanks. Farther away was a rocky ridge beaten with narrow, bare, crisscross trails, and beyond, the old Valenciana mine on the flanks of the jagged range shutting off Dolores Hidalgo, appearing so near in this clear air of the heights that it seemed a man could throw a stone there; yet down in the valley between lay all Guanajuato, the invisible, and none might know how many bandits were sleeping out the day in their lurking-places among the wild, broken valleys and gorges the view embraced. Down in its rock-tumbled valley spread the scattered town of Calderon, and the knell of its tinny old church bells came drifting up across the divide on the st.u.r.dy evening breeze, tinged with cold, that seemed to bring the night with it, so silently and coolly did it settle down. The immense plain and farther mountains remained almost visible in the starlight, in the middle distance the lamps of Silao, and near the center of the half-seen picture those of Irapuato, while far away a faint glow in the sky marked the location of the city of Leon.

Excitement burst upon the mess-table one night. Rival politicians were to contend the following Sunday for the governors.h.i.+p of the State, and the "liberal" candidate had a.s.sured the peons that he would treble their wages and force the company to give them full pay during illness, and that those who voted for his rival were really casting ballots for "los gringos" who had stolen away their mines. All this was, of course, pure campaign bunco; as a matter of fact the lowest wages in all the mines of Mexico were in those belonging to the then "liberal" President of the republic, and accident pay would have caused these insensible fellows to drop rocks on themselves to enjoy its benefits. For several mornings threatening political posters had appeared on the walls of the company buildings. But this time word came that "liberal" posters had been stuck up in the galleries of the mine itself. The boss sprang to his feet, and without even sending for his revolver went down into the earth. An hour or more later he reappeared with the remnants of the posters. Though the mine was populated with peons and there was not then another American below ground, they watched him tear down the sheets without other movement than to cringe about him, each begging not to be believed guilty. Later a peon was charged with the deed and forever forbidden to work in the mines of the company. The superintendent threatened to discharge any employee who voted for the "liberal" candidate, and, though he could not of course know who did, their dread of punishment no doubt kept many from voting at all.

Work in the mine never ceased. Even as we fell asleep the engine close at hand panted constantly, the mild clangor of the blacksmith-shop continued unbroken, cars of rock were dumped every few minutes under the swarming stars, the mine pulse beat unchanging, and far down beneath our beds hundreds of naked peons were still tearing incessantly at the rocky entrails of the earth.

Though the mine throbbed on, I set off one sunny Sunday morning to walk to town and the weekly ball game. It was just warm enough for a summer coat, a breeze blew as at sea, an occasional telephone pole was singing as with contentment with life in this perfect climate. Groups of brownish-gray donkeys with loads on their backs pa.s.sed me or crawled along far-away trails, followed by men in tight white trousers, their striped and gay-colored sarapes about their bodies and their huge hats atop. Over all was a Sunday stillness, broken only by the occasional bark of a distant dog or a c.o.c.kcrow that was almost musical as it was borne by on the wind. Everywhere were mountains piled into the sky. Valenciana, where so many Spaniards, long since gone to whatever reward awaited them, waxed rich and built a church now golden brown with age, sat on its slope across the valley, down in which no one would have guessed huddled a city of some 60,000 inhabitants. Much nearer and a bit below drowsed the old town of Calderon, home of many of our peons, a bright red blanket hung over a stone wall giving a splash of brilliancy to the vast stretch of grayish, dull-brown, and thirsty green. The road wound slowly down and ever down, until the gullies grew warmer as the rising mountains cut off the breeze and left the sun in undisputed command. Along the way were flowers uncountable, chiefly large, white, lily-like blossoms growing on a bush, then thick patches of orange-yellow. Hors.e.m.e.n, Mexicans on burros, peon men, women, and children afoot were legion. There were no Americans, though I pa.s.sed one huge Negro with a great black beard who gave me "Good morning" from his horse in the tone of a man who had not met an equal before in some time. At length appeared the emerald-green patch of the upper Presa, with its statue of Hidalgo, and the cafe-au-lait pond that stores the city's water, and over the parapet of which hung _guanajuatenses_ watching with wonder the rowboat of the American hospital doctor, the only water craft the great majority of them have ever seen.

A natural amphitheater encloses the ball-ground in which were gathered the wives of Americans, in snowy white, to watch a game between teams made up chiefly of "gringoes" of the mines, my one-time cla.s.smate still at short-stop, as in our schoolboy days, thanks to which no doubt Guanajuato held the baseball champions.h.i.+p of Mexico. Like the English officials of India, the Americans in high places here were noticeable for their youth, and, at least here on the ball-ground, for their democracy, known to all by their boyhood nicknames, yet held almost in reverence by the Mexican youths that filled in the less important positions. At the club after the game the champion Mexican player discoursed on the certainty of ultimate American intervention and expressed his own att.i.tude with:

"Let it come, for I am not a politician but a baseball player."

It was election day, and I pa.s.sed several doorways, among them that of the company stable, in which a half-dozen old fossils in their most solemn black garb crouched dreamily over wooden tables with registers, papers, and ink bottles before them. Now and then a frightened peon slunk up hat in hand to find whether they wished him to vote, and how, or to see if perhaps he had not voted already--by absent treatment. The manager of one of the mines had come into the office of the jefe politico of his district the night before and found the ballots already made out for the "liberal" candidate. He tore them up and sent his own men to watch the election, with the result that there was a strong majority in that precinct in favor of the candidate more pleasing to the mine owners. The pulquerias and saloons of the peons had been closed, but not the clubs and resorts of the white men. In one of these I sat with the boss, watching him play a game of stud poker. A dissipated young American, who smoked a cigar and a cigarette at the same time, was most in evidence, a half Comanche Indian of an utterly impa.s.sive countenance did the dealing, and fortunes went up and down amid the incessant rattle of chips far into the morning. At three the boss broke away, nine dollars to the good, while the proprietor of the place ended with an enormous heap of chips in front of him; another American, making out to him a check for $90, and calling for his horse, rode back to his mine to earn it--the shoes of the horse clanking on the cobbles in the silence of the night and pa.s.sing now and then a policeman's lantern set in the middle of the street, while that official huddled in his white uniform in a dark corner, ostensibly keeping guard.

On another such a day I turned back about dusk up the gorge on the return to the mine. The upper park where the band had played earlier was now completely deserted. The road was nearly five miles long; the trail, sheer up the wild tumble of mountains before me, little more than two. This was vaguely reputed dangerous, but I was not inclined to take the rumor seriously.

Black night fell. Soon I came upon the vanguard of the day-s.h.i.+ft from "Pinguico," straggling down the face of the mountain, shouting and whistling to each other in their peculiar language. Some carried torches that flashed along the mountain wall above me and threw long quaint shadows of the tight-trousered legs. The grade was more than forty-five degrees, with much slipping and sliding on unseen rocks. Two or three groups had pa.s.sed when one of the men recognized me and with a "Buenas noches, jefe!" insisted on giving me the torch he carried, a mine candle with a cloth wrapped around it as a protection in the strong wind. I had soon to cast this away, as it not only threatened to burn my hand but left the eyes unable to pierce the surrounding wall of darkness. In the silence of the night there came to mind the a.s.sertion of by no means our most timorous engineer, that he never pa.s.sed over this trail after dark without carrying his revolver c.o.c.ked in his hand. My fellow countrymen of the region all wore huge "six-shooters" with a large belt of cartridges always in sight, less for use than the salutary effect of having them visible, in itself a real protection. Conditions in Mexico had led me to go armed for the first time in my travels; or more exactly, to carry one of the "vest pocket automatics" so much in vogue--on advertising pages--in that season. My experienced fellow Americans refused to regard this weapon seriously. One had made the very fitting suggestion that each bullet should bear a tag with the devise, "You're shot!" An aged "roughneck" of a half-century of Mexican residence had put it succinctly: "Yer travel scheme's all right; but I'll be ---- ---- if I like the gat you carry." However, such as it was, I drew it now and held it ready for whatever it might be called upon to attempt.

A half hour of heavy climbing brought me to the summit, with a strong cool breeze and a splendid view of the spreading lights of Guanajuato in the narrow winding gully far below. The trail wound round a peak and reached the first scattered huts of Calderon just as a number of shots sounded not far away. These increased until all the dogs for miles around took up the hue and cry. The shots multiplied, with much shouting and uproar, soon sounding on both sides and ahead and behind me, while the whistling language shrilled from every gully and hillside. Evidently drunken peons were harmlessly celebrating their Sunday holiday, but the shots sounded none the less weirdly out of the black night as I stumbled on over the rocky, tumbled country, for the only smooth way thereabouts was the Milky Way faintly seen overhead. Gradually the shooting and shouting drifted behind me and died out as I surmounted the last knoll and descended to bed. It was only at breakfast next morning that I learned I had serenely strolled through a pitched battle between bandits that haunted the recesses of the mountains about Calderon and the town which, led by its jefe politico, had finally won the bout with four outlaw corpses to its credit. It was my luck not to have even a bullet-hole through my cap to prove the story. There were often two or three such battles a week in the vicinity.

That morning I was given a new job. The boss led the way, candle in hand, a half mile back through the bowels of the mountain, winding with the swinging of the former ore vein. This alone was enough to get hopelessly lost in, even without its many blind-alley branches. Now and then we came upon another shaft-opening that seemed a bottomless hole a few feet in diameter in the solid rock, from far down which came up the falsetto voices and the stinking sweat of peons, and the rap, rap of heavy hammers on iron rock-bars. But we had only started. Far back in the gallery we took another hoist and descended some two hundred feet more, then wound off again through the mountain by more labyrinthian burrowings in the rock, winding, undulating pa.s.sages, often so low we must crawl on hands and knees, with no other light than the flickering candles half-showing shadowy forms of naked, copper-colored beings; the shadows giving them often fiendish faces and movements, until we could easily imagine ourselves in the realms of Dante's imagination. In time we came to a ladder leading upward into a narrow dark hole, and when the ladder ended we climbed on our bellies some forty feet higher up a ledge of rock to another "heading." Along this we made our way another hundred yards or more to where a dozen naked peons were operating compressed-air drills, then wormed our way like snakes over the resultant debris to the present end of the pa.s.sage, where more peons were drilling by hand, one man holding a bar of iron a few feet long which another was striking with a five-pound sledge that luckily never missed its mark. This was indeed working in Mexico. It would have been difficult to get farther into it; and a man could not but dully wonder if he would ever get out again.

We were evidently very close to the infernal regions. Here, indeed, would have been a splendid setting for an orthodox h.e.l.l. Peons whose only garment was the size of a postcard, some even with their hats off, glistened all over their brown bodies as under a shower-bath. In five minutes I had sweated completely through my garments, in ten I could wring water out of my jacket; drops fell regularly at about half-second intervals from the end of my nose and chin. The dripping sweat formed puddles beneath the toilers, the air was so scarce and second-hand every breath was a deep gasp; nowhere a sign of exit, as if we had been walled up in this narrow, low-ceiled, jagged-rock pa.s.sageway for all time.

My work here was to take samples from the "roof." A grinning peon who called himself "Bruno Basques" (Vasquez) followed me about, holding his hat under the hammer with which I chipped bits of rock from above, back and forth across the top of the tunnel, every few feet. The ore ran very high in grade here, the vein being some six feet of whitish rocky substance between sheer walls of ordinary rock. It struck one most forcibly, this strange inquisitiveness of man that had caused him to prowl around inside the earth like a mole, looking for a peculiar kind of soil or stone which no one at first sight could have guessed was of any particular value. The peons, smeared all over with the drippings of candle-grease, worked steadily for all the heat and stuffiness. Indeed, one could not but wonder at the amount of energy they sold for a day's wages; though of course their industry was partly due to my "gringo"

presence. We addressed them as inferiors, in the "tu" form and with the generic t.i.tle "hombre," or, more exactly, in the case of most of the American bosses, "hum-bray." The white man who said "please" to them, or even showed thanks in any way, such as giving them a cigarette, lost caste in their eyes as surely as with a butler one might attempt to treat as a man. I tried it on Bruno, and he almost instantly changed from obsequiousness to near-insolence. When I had put him in his place again, he said he was glad I spoke Spanish, for so many "jefes" had pulled his hair and ears and slapped him in the face because he did not understand their "strange talk." He did not mention this in any spirit of complaint, but merely as a curious fact and one of the many visitations fate sees fit to send those of her children unluckily born peons. His jet black hair was so thick that small stones not only did not hurt his head as they fell from under my hammer, but remained buried in his thatch, so that nearly as many samples were taken from this as from the roof of the pa.s.sage.

Thus the sweat-dripping days pa.s.sed, without a hint of what might be going on in the world far above, amid the roar and pounding of air and hand-drills, the noisy falling of ma.s.ses of rock as these broke it loose, the constant ringing of shovels, the rumble of iron ore-cars on their thread-like rails, cries of "'sta pegado!" quickly followed by the stunning, ear-splitting dynamite blast, screams of "No vas echar!" as some one pa.s.sed beneath an opening above, of "Ahora si!" when he was out of danger; the shrill warning whistling of the peons echoing back and forth through the galleries and labyrinthian side tunnels, as the crunch of shoes along the track announced the approach of some boss; the shouting of the peons "throwing" a loaded car along the track through the heavy smoke-laden air, so thick with the smell of powder and thin with oxygen that even experienced bosses developed raging headaches, and the Beau Brummel secretary of the company fell down once with dizziness and went to bed after the weekly inspection.

When the first day was done I carried the ten sacks of samples--via Bruno's shoulders--through the labyrinth of corridors and shafts to be loaded on a car and pushed to the main shaft, where blew a veritable sea-breeze that gave those coming from the red-hot pockets a splendid chance for catching cold which few overlooked. In the _bodega_, or underground office, I changed my dripping garments for dry ones, but waited long for the broken-down motor to lift me again finally to pure air. In the days that followed I was advanced to the rank of car-boss in this same level, and found enough to do and more in keeping the tricky car-men moving. A favorite ruse was to tip over a car on its way to the chute and to grunt and groan over it for a half-hour pretending to lift it back on the rails; or to tuck away far back in some abandoned "lead"

the cars we needed, until I went on tours of investigation and ferreted them out.

During the last days of October I drew my car-boss wages and set out to follow the ore after it left the mine. From the underground chutes it was drawn up to the surface in the iron buckets, dumped on "gridleys"

(screens made of railroad rails separated a like width) after weighing, broken up and the worthless rock thrown out on the "dump," a great artificial hill overhanging the valley below and threatening to bury the little native houses huddled down in it. A toy Baldwin locomotive dragged the ore trains around the hill to the noisy stamp-mill spreading through another valley, with a village of adobe huts overgrown with ma.s.ses of purple flowers and at the bottom a plain of white sand waste from which the "values" had been extracted. The last samples I had taken a.s.sayed nine pounds of silver and 23 grams of gold to the ton. The carloads were dumped into bins at the top of the mill.

The nature of the country had been taken advantage of in the building, which hung twelve stories high on the steep hillside, making gravitation the chief means of transportation during the refining process. Rocks were screened into one receptacle and broken up by hand. The finer stuff went direct to the stamps. Stones of ordinary size were spread by machinery on a broad leather belt that pa.s.sed three peon women, who picked out and tossed away the oreless stones. Their movements were leisurely, but they were sharp-eyed and very few worthless bits got by the three of them. A story below, the picked material went under deafening stamps weighing tons and striking several blows a second, while water was turned in to soften the material. This finally ran down another story in liquid form into huge cylinders where it was rolled and rolled again and at last flowed on, smelling like mortar or wet lime, onto platforms of zinc constantly shaking as with the ague and with water steadily flowing over them. Workmen about the last and most concentrated of these were locked in rooms made of chicken-wire. Below, the stuff flowed into enormous vats, like giants' washtubs, and was stirred and watered here for several days until the "values" had settled and were drawn off at the bottom. There were three stories, or some thirty, of these immense vats. The completed process left these full of white sand which a pair of peons spent several days shoveling out and carrying down into the valley.

The "values" were next run down into smaller vats and treated with zinc shavings, precipitating a 50 per cent. pure metal, black in color, which was put into melting-pots in a padlocked room overseen by an American. Here it was cast in large brick molds, these being knocked off and the metal left to slack, after which it was melted again and finally turned into gray-black blocks of the size and form of a paving-brick, 85 per cent. pure, about as heavy as the average lady would care to lift, and worth something like $1250 each. Two or four of these were tied on the back of a donkey and a train of them driven under guard to the town office, whence they were s.h.i.+pped to Mexico City, and finally made into those elusive things called coins, or sundry articles for the vainglorious, s.h.i.+pped abroad or stolen by revolutionists. On this same ground the old colonial Spaniards used to spread the ore in a cobbled patio, treat it with mercury, and drive mules round and round in it for weeks until they pocketed whatever was left to them after paying the king's fifth and the t.i.thes of the church.