Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/258

 238 It is doubtful whether mining has ever been pursued to better advantage, made more productive and regular, and more effectively freed from the element of wild-cat speculation, than in New Spain of the period considered.

There were decrees to prevent miners, especially those of affluence, from wasting their substance. Negligence in tunnelling, imperfect ventilation, and the like, by which life and health are endangered, were severely punished.

Criminals and vagabonds were made to labor in the mines, but the main bulk of laborers in early times consisted of the Indians, apportioned to proprietors as repartamientos, and held in a kind of slavery.

The gorgeous Count of Regla was a great mine-owner here in his day. It was hence that he would have taken the ingots for the King of Spain to ride upon from the coast to the capital, should they have been called for by an actual acceptance of his splendid invitation before mentioned.

His ancient beneficiating hacienda of Regla, say eighteen miles from Pachuca, is of great interest. A most excellent wagon-road, constructed by the Real del Monte Company, at large expense, leads to it. As many as eighty heavily loaded ore-wagons, each drawn by from eight to a dozen mules, traverse it in a single day.

Señor Llandero y Cos kindly provided us, for this and the remaining part of our expedition, with horses and a mozo, to be kept at our convenience. White posts of substantial masonry dotted the abrupt slopes, by way of locating the various claims. Some lonesome-looking wooden structures, not unlike Swiss chalets, generally marked the shafts of the smaller mines as we went on- `