OLD SPANISH MINES IN NEW MEXICO. 181 



nels, no timbering, no precautions against caving of the mines; entire dependence 

 having evidently been placed in the solidity of the rock. The tunnels are many 

 of them several feet in width, and high enough to admit of entering without 

 stooping, but others are much smaller and very circuitous, and resemble the bur" 

 rowings of animals in the earth. As to the depth of the mines, or the extent of 

 the tunnels, nothing is now known, and any estimate would be but the wildest 

 conjecture. The debris covers an area of fully twenty acres around the " crater " 

 to a depth of from five to fifteen feet. How long it required the peons to bring 

 this vast accumulation of rock to the surface can scarcely be imagined, even though 

 a large force of them was employed. With modern appliances for hoisting, it 

 would require many years; with the crude means I have described, a century. 

 On the top are growing cedar trees two feet in diameter, which establish the 

 antiquity of the mines. 



History states that in 1680 a land slide occurred, which buried twenty-five 

 Indian miners. The Spaniards ordered the neighboring pueblo of San Marcos to 

 supply laborers to take their places, which demand was refused. The Spaniards 

 resorted to force, and the result was the great insurrection which drove them from 

 the country. When they returned, thirteen years afterwards, no efforts were made 

 to re-open the mines which the Indians had filled up and sought to obliterate. 

 There is a tradition that this was a part of the stipulation when the Indians sur- 

 rendered. It is certain that since the second conquest the Spaniards and Mexi- 

 cans have directed their attention almost exclusively to pastoral and agricultural 

 pursuits. 



It is recorded that two unusually large and valuable specimens of turquoise 

 were taken from Turquoise mountain, sent to the Emperor of Spain, and placed 

 in the royal crown. Our party secured a few inferior specimens, together with 

 some fragments of the ancient ladders and several beautiful "pin cushion" cacti 

 as mementoes of the trip. 



The view from the top of the mountain is remarkably fine. In the immediate 

 vicinity are the Bonanza and Monitor silver mines, now being actively worked; 

 a little farther away Carbonateville, a promising mining camp ; beyond these an 

 open plain covered with scrubby cedar and pirion, and beyond this, to the north, 

 the city of Santa Fe, with the white summit of Old Baldy shining above it against 

 the blue sky. To the east and south the Cerrillos range, and to the west, low 

 down a distant valley, a narrow band of emerald that outlines the Rio Grande. 



A few miles southeast of Cerrillos station are the ruins of the Aztec pueblo o 

 MoUa, a walled town that was flourishing at the time of the Spanish conquest. 

 Unlike other ancient pueblos, this was walled with stone, the remains of which 

 are plainly to be seen at the present time. It must have been a mining town, as 

 old furnaces, piles of slag and cinders are seen on every hand. In the neighbor- 

 ing mountains are numerous shafts and excavations, from whence the ores were 

 derived. There is a tradition that when the Spaniards were driven from New 

 Spain in 1680 they buried $10,000,000 near Molla; but the cache has never been 

 discovered. 



