HISTORY OF THE NEW ALMADEN MINES 



181 



FIGURE 104. Drawing made In 1854 shows the Mexican miners peti- 

 tioning at an underground shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe for 

 success and safety. The Virgin is reported to have been made In 

 Sienna, Italy, from a 700-pound block of cinnabar from Idria, in Yugo- 

 slavia. Such shrines are a common feature of old Latin American 

 mines, and In most of these there is a shrine near the main entrance 

 to the mine at which the miners offer devotion and a petition for care 

 before each day's work. The Virgin of Guadalupe was in a working 

 extending from the Main Tunnel and is reported to still be there in 

 an area now inaccessible. From Harpers Monthly Magazine. 



FIGURE 105. Labor, or stope, in the upper levels of the New Almaden 

 mine in 1854. Drawing shows the large leather backpacks in which 

 the Taqul Indians carried 200 pounds of ore up the notched log lad- 

 ders to the Main Tunnel a hundred feet above. These large chambers 

 in the central stope area of the mine were excavated in silica-carbonate 

 rock and required virtually no timbering. Most of them were still 

 open In 1946 when the mine was remapped for this report. From 

 Harpers Monthly Magazine. 



Fossat. In spite of the fact that these grants in- 

 cluded overlapping land, all of them apparently were 

 approved by the Board of Land Commissioners be- 



FIGURE 106. Reduction furnace in use at the Hacienda In 1854. The 

 furnace Is built of brick and consists of 11 chambers. The first of 

 these is the firebox, the second holds the charge of rich ore, and the 

 rest are condensing chambers. The liquid metal flows into the flume 

 along the side. From Harpers Monthly Magazine. 



tween 1852 and 1854, leaving the title to the mining 

 property as muddled as before. In 1854 Fossat sold 

 a three- fourths interest in his title to Henry Laurencel 

 and James Eldridge, who later sold their interest to 

 the Quicksilver Mining Co. This company, which 

 eventually acquired the mine, consisted of a group of 

 eastern capitalists, who incorporated in March 1859 

 with a capital of $10,000,000 but no quicksilver mine. 

 To straighten out the title muddle in California, 

 early in 1858 the Attorney General under President 

 Buchanan sent Edwin M. Stanton to San Francisco. 

 With characteristic vigor Stanton began immediately 

 on his arrival to try to invalidate Castillero's title. 

 The ramifications of the resulting trial are described 

 by Browne (1865, p. 548) as follows: 



The arguments occupied weeks, and comprehended every ref- 

 erence, illustration, and authority that bore the remotest rela- 

 tion to the subject. Perhaps since the beginning of the Gov- 

 ernment no cause had been presented for adjudication in the 

 courts involving greater interests, or graver or more compli- 

 cated questions, embracing as they did the learning of the 

 French jurisconsults, the principles of law of nations, the 

 history of all mining countries, ancient and modern, the doc- 

 trines of the Common Law of England as to the rights of 

 miners and the tenure of the soil, and the language, literature, 

 and law of Spain and Mexico. 



As a result of this trial Castillero's title, and conse- 

 quently that of Barren, Forbes, & Co., was declared 

 void, and an injunction was levied on the mine by the 

 Federal Court, stopping all work on October 31, 1858. 

 To the time of its closing the New Almaden mine had 

 yielded about a quarter of a million flasks of quick- 

 silver, which had been sold for more than $10,000,000. 

 Nearly all the ore that had yieded this great produc- 



