Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/292

 *tain," said a rich possessor of mines with whom we had arrived, "stands there like an enchanted castle (como si fuese un castillo encantado)." The Gualgayoc reminds the beholder in some degree of a cone of dolomite, but still more of the serrated crest of the Monserrat Mountains in Catalonia, which I have also visited, and which were subsequently described in so pleasing a manner by my brother. The silver mountain Gualgayoc, besides being perforated to its summit by many hundred galleries driven in every direction, presents also natural openings in the mass of the siliceous rock, through which the intensely dark blue sky of these elevated regions is visible to a spectator standing at the foot of the mountain. These openings are popularly called "windows," "las ventanillas de Gualgayoc." Similar "windows" were pointed out to us in the trachytic walls of the volcano of Pichincha, and called by a similar name,—"ventanillas de Pichincha." The strangeness of the view presented to us was still farther increased by the numerous small sheds and dwelling-houses, which nestled on the side of the fortress-like mountain wherever a flat surface permitted their erection. The miners carry down the ore in baskets by very steep and dangerous paths to the places where the process of amalgamation is performed.

The value of the silver furnished by the mines in the first thirty years (from 1771 to 1802) amounted probably to considerably above thirty-two millions of piastres. Notwithstanding the hardness of the quartzose rock, the Peruvians, before the arrival of the Spaniards (as ancient galleries and excavations testify), extracted rich argentiferous galena on