vJoi CENTRAL CHILE. [CHAP. xtr. 



up about 200 pouuds weight of stone. With this load they have to 

 eliinb up the alternate notches cut in the trunks of trees, placed in 

 a zigzag line up the shaft. Even beardless young men, eighteen 

 and twenty years old, with little muscular development of their 

 bodies (they are quite naked excepting drawers) ascend with this 

 great load from nearly the same depth. A strong man, who is not 

 accustomed to this labour, perspires most profusely, with merely 

 carrying up his own body. With this very severe labour, they live 

 entirely on boiled beans aud 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 Jajucl, 

 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 sounds 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 powdered 

 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 thrown 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 pro- 

 cess may be repeated even six or seven times ; but the gold each 

 time becomes less in quantity, and the intervals 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 value of gold-ores many fold. It is curious to find how 



