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324 While majordomo of the Copiapo mines, he translated a volume a day of the sixty volumes of Sir Walter Scott's works, beside some other books. His reading in Valparaiso was very extensive, and these readings, enriched by several languages, spread out before him all the great discussions of philosophical, political, moral, and religious ideas, and to use his own expression, "opened the pores of his intelligence to imbibe them." When the labor of the mining day was over, he met, in a certain kitchen where they partook of refreshment, other Argentine majordomos, foremen, and laborers, exiles like himself, to discuss politics, and in the evenings assembled at the house of another, the only one who had a family establishment there, thus keeping up their habits of civilized life. At these reunions, in his miner's dress,—which consisted of doublet and hose, striped drawers, a red cap, and a broad sash, from which depended a purse capable of holding twenty-five pounds of sugar, but in which he always kept several bundles of tobacco, a dress he had assumed partly from fancy and partly from economy,—he was always the oracle to which all appealed for points of history, geography, or other book learning. Anecdotes are told of the astonishment of strangers at the little learned miner, who was supposed to be only a peon who had strayed into the company. Once, for want of the book, he recited a whole pamphlet he had written upon a plan for planting a colony on the Colorado River, and made converts too—for he was from his youth always eloquent upon the point of cultivating the soil. In the proper place we shall speak of his success in later life in showing to his countrymen the advantages of