Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/248

220 having made known his acquisition to the government, and conveyed the necessary apparatus to the ground, he sunk a shaft, which produced large returns. He reared the ornamental cross and archway above the spring—I wonder it did not prove a convent with a splendid endowment—to record alike his gratitude and great success.

There are other stories current, which have more than a foundation in fact. Poor Indians, whose whole apparel and worldly possessions would not amount to the value of the smallest coin in the republic, have discovered rich veins of silver ore, while crossing the mountains on some nefarious expedition; and have made such beneficial treaties with the government administradores, that the Indians have become wealthy and considerable men for many months—indeed, until their prodigality and drunkenness have left them as poor as they were when their good fortune found them. Wretched charcoal-burners, also, while tracking the precarious and stunted vegetation which such districts afford, for the purpose of procuring stray pieces of timber for their fires, have found such specimens of another growth as have excited the envy, and