Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/205

Rh ground, and cost millions of dollars. All around, you see walls from three to eight feet in thickness and solid as the rocks of the mountains, radiating in every direction. There are many shafts sunk deep into the bowels of the earth, each with its separate enclosure and outworks, and the chambers and drifts underground, now filled with water, measure miles in extent. At the main shaft the works resemble a vast fortress, and are on a scale of extent unprecedented in the history of mining in America. The mule-yard surrounded by a high wall, with mangers of cut stone running all around it, must contain, at least, three or four acres of ground, and all the other enclosures and out-buildings are on a proportionate scale.

The extent of the works under ground cannot be seen at this time, as they are filled with water; but it is affirmed by engineers, that the galleries, chambers, and drifts, are longer in the aggregate than all the streets of the city of Guanajuato, and incredible as the statement looks it is probably correct. We went to the mouth of the "tiro general" or great perpendicular shaft, out of which so many millions of tons of ore have been hoisted in years gone by, and laying down upon our faces, looked into the yawning depths below. This shaft is the largest on the American Continent, and nothing in the mining line to be seen in the United States, will bear a comparison with it. It is 687 varas deep,—say 1939 1-4 feet of our measurement—thirty-six feet wide, and eight-sided. The walls of this shaft are exactly perpendicular, and for the protection of the work, men below, laid up in cement, as smooth as the ceiling of an ordinary dwelling-house in the United States. The water now comes up to within 125 varas or about 344 feet of the surface of the ground.