HISTORY OF THE NEW ALMADEN MINES 



177 



Capitancillos Ridge knew of a "red cave" to which 

 their forefathers had retreated to paint their bodies 

 with vermilion. The red paint made from the rock of 

 the cave caused skin eruptions, and the Indians, believ- 

 ing it possessed of an evil spirit, thereafter shunned it. 

 This legend is somewhat strengthened by an interest- 

 ing report by W. V. Wells (1863, p. 28) who visited 

 the New Almaden mine in its early days. He claims 

 to have been shown an irregular tunnel between 50 

 and 100 feet long, which was first thought to have 

 been a natural opening, but which, when cleaned out 

 and lengthened, was found to contain several Indian 

 skeletons, together with rounded boulders that might 

 have been used in making the crude excavation. 



In contrast to the legendary tale of the Indians' dis- 

 covery of ore on Mine Hill, the detailed story of its 

 rediscovery in 1824 by a Mexican named Luis Cha- 

 boya is well authenticated. Possibly because he saw 

 some native mercury in the cinnabar, Chaboya be- 

 lieved it to be a rich silver ore, and with Antonio 

 Sunol and a man named Robles he began mining the 

 red ore at what they termed the "Chaboya mine" and 

 erected a mill in the nearby Almaden Canyon. They 

 then sent to San Luis Obispo for a flask of quicksilver 

 to use in amalgamating the silver they expected to 

 extract from the ore, but on failing to recover any 

 silver they abandoned the mine. Eleven years later, 

 in 1835, a second unsucceessful attempt to recover sil- 

 ver was made. For 10 years thereafter the heavy red 

 ore remained a well-known curiosity, but no one real- 

 ized that it contained the valuable mercury-bearing 

 cinnabar. 



Late in 1845 a Mexican army officer, Don Andreas 

 Castillero, who had been sent from Mexico to attempt 

 to purchase Sutter's Fort for that country, paused in 

 his journey from Monterey to the fort at the Santa 

 Clara Mission, about 15 miles from the mine. His 

 curiosity was aroused by a piece of the ore shown to 

 him, and after visiting the mine from which it came 

 he returned to the mission, where, on November 22, 

 1845, he "denounced" 16 the mine, naming it the Santa 

 Clara and claiming that it contained "a vein of silver 

 and a little gold." Castillero may have taken a piece 

 of the ore along with him on the rest of his trip to the 

 fort to ask those he met what it was. At any rate, on 

 December 3, 1845, he returned to the mission, where 

 he proved that the heavy red rock contained quick- 

 silver by the following experiment, described by Jacob 

 P. Leese (in Becker, 1888, p. 9) : 



16 At that time a denouncement was not quite equivalent to the filing 

 of a claim. No real claim c&uld be made, as ore-bearing land, like other 

 land, was the property of the governing country until bestowed upon 

 one as a gift by its king or governing official. 



He [Castillero] got up from the table and ordered the servant 

 to pulverize a portion of this ore. After it was pulverized he 

 ordered the servant to bring in a hollow tile full of lighted coals. 

 He took some of the powdered ore and threw it on the coals. 

 After it got perfectly hot he took a tumbler of water and sprin- 

 kled it on the coals with his fingers. He then emptied the 

 tumbler and put it over the coals upside down ; then took the 

 tumbler off and went to the light to look at it ; then made the re- 

 mark that it was what he supposed it was quicksilver. He 

 showed all who were there the tumbler, and we found that It 

 was frosted with minute globules of metal, which Castillero 

 collected with his finger and said it was quicksilver. 



After this demonstration Castillero of course claimed 

 that quicksilver occurred in the ore of the Santa Clara 

 mine, and on December 30, 1845, he was awarded pos- 

 session of the mine property by Antonio Maria Pico. 

 Castillero immediately formed a mining company, 

 and issued 24 shares of stock according to Mexican 

 custom. He retained half of these for himself, and 

 gave four shares each to the mission priest and a gen- 

 eral at Monterey, and two apiece to two brothers 

 named Robles. The new company employed William 

 Chard, of New York, to develop the mine, and as ac- 

 tual production was required to hold title, Chard al- 

 most immediately attempted to recover quicksilver, 

 using the crudest of methods. His first retort con- 

 sisted of a battery of gun barrels, which were charged 

 with small pieces of cinnabar, and, with remarkable 

 persistence in the face of the small recovery, he used 

 this crude apparatus for some 4 to 6 weeks. Soon, 

 however, to increase the size of the charge, he made 

 use of whalers' trying pots, placing them upside down 

 over a pile of ore and building a fire on top. Although 

 a large part of the quicksilver must have been lost as 

 fumes, Chard is credited with having recovered some 

 2,000 pounds of metal by this ingenious method. By 

 this time the priest of the Santa Clara mission had 

 apparently received some word of how quicksilver was 

 recovered in Spain, for he supervised the construction 

 of an 8- by 10-foot furnace with an ore chamber above 

 and a firebox below. This structure was made of 

 adobes (sun-dried bricks), and must have been similar 

 to furnaces built by prospectors in Mexico until recent 

 years, but it apparently was poorly constructed, for it 

 exploded at its first firing and salivated several work- 

 men. 



Castillero, as soon as the mining was started, re- 

 turned to Mexico City, where he requested and was 

 granted a governmental loan of $5,000 to cover the 

 cost of developing the mine. War between Mexico 

 and the United States broke out at this time, how- 

 ever, and being unable to collect any money on the 

 loan, Castillero sought capital from Barren, Forbes. 

 & Co., an English banking firm doing business in 



