WHOLE VOL. THE WEST INDIES — VAZQUEZ DE ESPINOSA 625 



evening without coming out of the mine ; their wives bring them food, 

 but they stay constantly underground, excavating and carrying out 

 the ore from which they get the silver. They all have tallow candles, 

 lighted day and night ; that is the light they work with, for as they 

 are underground, they have need of it all the time. The mere cost 

 of these candles used in the mines on this range will amount every 

 year to more than 300,000 pesos, even though tallow is cheap in that 

 country, being abundant ; but this is a very great expense, and it is 

 almost incredible, how much is spent for candles in the operation 

 of breaking down and getting out the ore. 



These Indians have different functions in the handling of the silver 

 ore ; some break it up with bar or pick, and dig down in, following 

 the vein in the mine ; others bring it up ; others up above keep separa- 

 ting the good and the poor in piles ; others are occupied in taking 

 it down from the range to the mills on herds of llamas ; every day 

 they bring up more than 8,000 of these native beasts of burden for 

 this task. These teamsters who carry the metal do not belong to the 

 mita, but are mingados — hired. 



Chapter X 



How They Grind and Treat the Silver Ore. 



1654. The mills to grind the ore are run by water, like water mills 

 (acenas) or gristmills ; for that purpose they have around the range 

 or at some distance from it 16 reservoirs ; the most remote, called 

 Tavaconuno, is 3 leagues off. In these they collect the water which 

 falls in the rainy season ; the mills are all built and arranged in order, 

 and when the grinding is to start, they let the water into a channel 

 passing from one to another, for as soon as it issues from one, it 

 goes into another ; the whole Potosi range is like that. Most of the 

 mills have two heads (of water?), with great heavy stone hammers 

 which pound the ore, the ones rising and the others falling, just 

 as in a fulling mill, until the ore, hard as flint though some of it is, 

 has been reduced to meal ; then they sift it through sieves set up for 

 that purpose ; in 24 hours they will sift over 30 quintals. 



They set great store on the water in these reservoirs ; as soon as 

 one is empty, they start on another, for although they are all divided 

 up and apportioned, they are arranged in such a way that each dis- 

 tributes its water to the first mill, and from that on in order. This 

 Potosi range is the larger ; most years, when the water gets low, they 

 have processions and prayers for rain to fill the reservoirs ; and 

 according as the year is wet or dry, they run the mills a longer or 

 '11 



