Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/185

Rh delightful recreation for him to visit the mines in the neighborhood as an amateur, and he desired me to choose the one I had a mind to visit, premising only that he would rather not go to the Valenciana, as he happened to have a quarrel with one of the administrators. He wished to keep away from the Mellado, because he owed some money to one of the workmen there; and as for the Cata, certain misunderstandings of recent date caused him to avoid it with the greatest care. In spite of the apparent liberty of choice he had granted me, I saw no other way of accomplishing my object but by going to inspect the Rayas the only one open to me. The precautions which Desiderio Fuentes was forced to take did not say much in his favor. My new friend was evidently very quarrelsome. He had certainly no love for paying his debts, and in his misunderstandings (désavencias) his knife had doubtless played no unimportant part. I began to entertain but a very indifferent opinion of my companion. One expression especially that escaped the miner caused me to reflect.

"My first impulse is always very good," he said, "but I own my second is detestable."

We had now come to the extremity of a ravine whose precipitous sides had till now obstructed the view. A beautifully level plain lay stretched before us. Long strings of mules, laden with ore, were slowly making their way to one of those metallurgic establishments known in Mexico as a hacienda de platas. High chimney-stacks, from which volumes of smoke and leaden vapors rolled, now appeared; the stone patros also, on which the fluid metal is poured a day before its formation into ingots. The noise of the hammer pounding the argentiferous rock, the clattering of