A Pre-Columbian Mine. 241 



human industry was hushed, but silence did not 

 prevail. A thousand crickets chirped in the weedy 

 wilderness, squirrels were astir in the heaped-up 

 rocks, birds, although dreaming, sang sweetly 

 through the woods, and when, at last, we too 

 wandered, in our thoughts was it strange that the 

 many sounds we still heard were not, in truth, 

 voices of the night, but the cries and clamor of 

 strange men who toiled and wrestled with the 

 unyielding rock of this pre-Columbian mine ? 

 q 



