266 CENTRAL CHILE. [chap. xii. 



most profusely, with merely carrjang up his own body. With 

 this veiy severe labour, they live entirely on boiled beans and 

 bread. They would prefer having- bread alone ; but their 

 masters, finding that they cannot work so hard upon this, treat 

 them like horses, and make them eat the beans. Their pay is 

 here rather more than at the mines of Jajuel, being from 24 to 

 28 shillings per month. They leave the mine only once in three 

 weeks ; when they stay with their families for two days. One of 

 the rules in this mine sovmds very harsh, but answers pretty well 

 for the master. The only method of stealing gold is to secrete 

 pieces of the ore, and take them out as occasion may offer. 

 Whenever the major-domo finds a lump thus hidden, its full 

 value is stopped out of the wages of all the men ; who thus, 

 without they all combine, are obliged to keep watch over each 

 other. 



When the ore is brought to the mill, it is ground into an im- 

 palpable powder ; the process of washing removes all the lighter 

 particles, and amalgamation finally secures the gold-dust. The 

 washing, when described, sounds a very simple process ; but it is 

 beautiful to see how the exact adaptation of the current of water 

 to the specific gravity of the gold, so easily separates the pow- 

 dered matrix from the metal. The mud which passes from the 

 mills is collected into pools, where it subsides, and every now 

 and then is cleared out, and tlirown into a common heap. A 

 great deal of chemical action then commences, salts of various 

 kinds effloresce on the surface, and the mass becomes hard. After 

 having been left for a year or two, and then rewashed, it yields 

 gold ; and this process may be repeated even six or seven times ; 

 but the gold each time becomes less in quantity, and the inter- 

 vals required (as the inhabitants say, to generate the metal) are 

 longer. There can be no doubt that the chemical action, already 

 mentioned, each time liberates fresh gold from some combination. 

 The discovery of a method to effect this before the first grinding, 

 would without doubt raise the val.'ie of gold-ores many fold. It 

 IS curious to find how the minute particles of gold, being scat- 

 tered about and not corroding^ at last accumulate in some quan- 

 tity. A short time since a few miners, being out of work, ob- 

 tained permission to scrape the ground round the house and mill : 

 *hey washed the earth thus got togetlier, and so pr^)cured thirty 



