Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/460

452 from Austria, though there are mines of it south of the capital.

Entering the great gate,—for all the mines and works are surrounded by high stone walls,—we procured candles of the keeper at the mouth, and plunged into the dark tunnel of an "adit" There was a track over which the cars were drawn which carry the ore out from the shafts, but they were not then running, and so we walked the whole distance of five hundred varas,—nearly a quarter of a mile. At the end of the adit, in an uncanny hole, into which we climbed with difficulty, was a large steam-engine, puffing and sizzling, and rendering the place so hot that the remark was made that the engineer, if he went below when he died, would need an overcoat. These hills are honeycombed with shafts and adits; some of them, connecting with those of other mines, lead under the mountains a league. We passed over two shafts, each fifteen hundred feet deep, from which the miners were pouring, like flies out of the bunghole of a sugar cask. Probably over twelve hundred men are employed in this mine alone. They get, as wages, from six to ten reales per day, and one bag of ore out of every eight they break. The ore is sent up in small coarse bags, each one with the miner's mark on it, and dumped into small iron cars when it reaches the adit, and drawn out by mules.

When we had emerged into open air, the manager took me to the office and gave me some very rich specimens of ore, some containing native silver, and these, with others obtained later, made a most excellent series for cabinet and laboratory use. Most of them were obtained from the men as they came out of the mine. Each gang works twelve hours, and the work goes on night and day, without cessation, the month through. As the men come out of the mine and pass through the gate, they are searched—three times in all—for silver ore; yet they often manage to carry away a great deal in the course of a month, which they dispose of to the small haciendas in town, which "beneficiate" on their own account. Their methods of concealment are various and artful. One was to hollow the handles of their hammers, which they were permitted to carry out of the