Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/574

541 On the 25th of September, we screwed down the cylinder; on the 11th of October, hove the beam into the house; and by the middle of November the engine was completely fixed, and ready to work. The shaft, however, was not ready to receive the pumps before the 15th of January, 1824, when I began to put the work in: from the collar, or mouth of the shaft, to the water measured two hundred and forty-eight yards English; yet by the 20th of April we were quite prepared to start the engine. It is a great awkward shaft, and I had, moreover, a great deal of it to repair, and no one to assist me but the natives. The only Englishman that came with me was an engineer, by the name of Newhale, he was addicted to daily fits of intoxication, which rendered him totally incapable of attending to his business; the consequence was, that his duty devolved on me six days out of seven, and were it not that I was fully acquainted with the different parts of the machinery, our proceedings must have suffered a great deal more delay than they actually did. People who embark in undertakings of such a nature as the one we are engaged in, cannot be too particular in the selection of individuals, either for the managing or operative arrangements, on whose experience, activity, and skill, success in a great measure depends. We found on starting the engine that the water rose with difficulty; the pumps were defective, and notwithstanding my binding them as strong as possible with iron, the greatest part of them burst, on the water attaining a moderate height. We consumed full three months in this ineffective trial: I had repeatedly, during this period, assured Colonel Martinez that we never should succeed in draining the mine with wood-pumps: in the first place, the timber was bad, and before it reached the mine all the bark was rubbed off, and the tree left bare: besides, the great distance (one hundred and forty miles) which it had to be brought, subjected it to the heat of the sun for weeks together, and after boring in this altitude, where the quicksilver in the barometer stands at twenty degrees and a quarter, the air was so extremely rare and dry, that it extracted all the substance, and occasioned the pumps to crack and split in all directions. I tried to remedy the evil by dividing the column of water, by this means reducing a considerable degree of the pressure; but this plan, however, did not remove the