Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/315

 Rh side; only a ravine. We enter it, pass a mud village, pass men spooning water with a jerk upon an inclined plane of stone, covered with whitish mud. This is the last washing of the silver mud, and done, like gleaning, by the workmen out of hours, as their own private speculation.



Stone walls twenty and thirty feet high, and with a castellated look, inclose these reduction works. The hills grow closer together, as if to resist invasion. But the driver defies the hills, and dashes on, winding round, crossing and recrossing a shallow brook with no sign of a city, except now and then a gleam from a church high up the mountain-side, which increased the deception; for the city was not there; clinging now to the brook, now to the precipice, now to both together, narrowing and narrowing, like an old lady the toe of the stocking she is knitting.