Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/204

198 sabres hung at the belt and always a nuisance?—we started off, at sunrise, up the winding streets and alleys, and over the rugged hillsides to the mine and town around it.

At the crossing of a deep, dry arroyo we crossed over a bridge, which bore an inscription, "For more than three centuries the people of Guanajuato crossed here without a bridge. Behold progress!" In another part of our journey we passed a bridge on which there was this inscription: "This bridge was built here, etc., etc.;" as it is of solid stone, I don't wonder at its having been built there instead of having been built somewhere else, and sent there ready made by express.

An immense church with an elaborately carved and sculptured front, worn and defaced by the storms and convulsions of centuries, but still with unshaken walls of massive stone, stands in the center of a town, which must once have contained from ten to twenty thousand people, all dependent on the working of the great Valenciano mine. The church is unfrequented, save by a few squalid and destitute devotees; the town is in ruins; and desolation reigns sole mistress of the scene. We galloped through the deserted streets, and entered the gate-way of the enclosure out of which have been borne, in times past, enough mule-loads of treasure to sink the largest ship now afloat on the seas. Little boys received our horses, and walked them up and down, while we went through the vast enclosures, where men and animals by thousands, once toiled and suffered, but where now the grass grows and silence reigns.

The extent of these works above ground cannot be adequately described. They cover acres on acres of