Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/283

Rh with warm water. Whether they thanked me or not I do not know, but I had my reward, for I saw a lovely face, and long afterward I remembered the touching expression of her eyes, as she turned toward me, and listened to the advice I gave her mother.

At ten we resumed our journey. The road had been much improved lately, but the ascent was steep, wild, and rugged. As we toiled up a ravine, we heard before us a loud noise, that sounded like distant thunder, but regular and continued, and becoming louder as we advanced; and at length we came out on a small clearing, and saw on the side of the mountain a neat frame building of two stories, with a light and graceful balcony in front; and alongside was the thundering machine which had startled us by its noise. Strangers from the other side of the Atlantic were piercing the sides of the mountain, and pounding its stones into dust to search for gold. The whole range, the very ground which our horses spumed with their hoofs, contained that treasure for which man forsakes kindred and country.

I rode up to the house and introduced myself to Don Juan Bardh, the superintendent, a German from Friesburg. It was about two o'clock, and excessively hot. The house was furnished with chairs, sofa, and books, and had in my eyes a delightful appearance; but the view without was more so. The stream which turned the immense pounding-machine had made the spot, from time immemorial, a descansadera, or resting-place for muleteers. All around were mountains, and directly in front one rose to a great height, receding, and covered to the top with trees.

Don Juan Bardh had been superintendent of the Quebrada del Ingenio for about three years. The Company which he represented was called the Anglo Costa Rican Economical Mining Company. It had been in operation these three years without losing anything, which was considered doing so well that it had increased its capital, and was about continuing on a larger scale. The machine, which had just been set up, was a new German patent, called a Machine for extracting Gold by the Zillenthal Patent Self-acting Cold Amalgamation Process (I believe that I have omitted nothing), and its great value was, that it required no preliminary process, but by one continued and simple operation extracted the gold from the stone. It was an immense wheel of cast-iron, by which the stone, as it came from the mountain, was pounded into powder; this passed into troughs filled with water, and from them into a reservoir containing vases, where the gold detached itself from the other particles, and combined with the quick-silver with which the vases were provided.

There were several mines under Don Juan's charge, and after