Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/160

 150 basaltic rocks, that look like towers, laid in order far up into the air. At times these columns take possession of a stretch of ridge, and make a series of fortifications not unlike Ehrenbreitstein, or a range of towers like a cathedral. They had shot their straight, hot barrels up through the various molten rocks of porphyry and granite, and capped the climax with their rounded finish.

Velasco is a fortified hacienda, where the ores of Real del Monte are reduced. These ores, being less inclined to yield to water than those of Pachuca, are here calcined, ground to powder, dropped from hoppers through leather tubes into strong barrels, which are also filled with water, quicksilver, sulphate of copper, and other chemicals, and a quantity of round stones about the size of small paving-stones. These are sent whirling round and round until the dissolution of the silver from the soil is effected, when the contents are drawn off. Below you see the residuum of the barrel, flowing out over troughs into bowls slightly inclined, whose lower edge holds the heavy white quicksilver, and upper, the lighter and slower precious stuff which it costs so much labor to secure.

Attached to these works is a handsome house, deserted. No officer dare live in it. Not long since its walls were scaled by a robber band, though they could find but little booty. Its garden is full of flowers, and I pluck a half-dozen rose-buds and blossoms as a specimen of the middle of January, which I commend to my frozen brothers of the North. They may retort that that robber thorn is worse than their frozen buds. I do not deny it, but hope when the railroad and the churches of America get possession of the land that the Mexican will be changed into a Methodist, or better, if better there be, as most of these Englishmen have been, and you can then have no excuse for shivering below the zeroes, instead of enjoying perpetual spring and summer, from October to April, among these torrid altitudes.

Three leagues more over hill and dale, amidst an opening and entrancing landscape, now by barren water-courses, now along high uplands, over which canter our horses. I am on the back again,