PEONS COMING TO TOWN: HIGHLAND MEXICO 



The rural peon visiting the city for a day usually has what seems to him a good time. 

 The most essential requisite is enough money to buy pulque in sufficient quantity to produce 

 that hilaritv which makes one forget his work for the nonce. 



the Santa Rosa and San Miguel bonanzas 

 in the Rayas mine, was created Marquis 

 de Rayas, and Antonio Obregon y Alco- 

 car, the discoverer of the great ore shoot 

 of the Yalenciana, was made Count de 

 Valenciana. 



PROSPERITY - BEGOTTEN PIETY 



The munificence of these grandees 

 found expression in works of piety. Ob- 

 regon built the church of Yalenciana, al- 

 ready described. Rayas commemorated 

 the San Miguel bonanza by an enduring 

 monument at the mine, the sculptured 

 portal being surmounted by a statue of 

 the archangel Michael. 



In 1741 Guanajuato was made a city. 

 and had at that time nearly 100,000 in- 

 habitants. 



The deepest shaft on the Mother Lode, 

 until very recent years, was the Tiro Gen- 



eral, at the Yalenciana mine. It was sunk 

 by Obregon at a cost of one million pesos, 

 but the bonanza it uncovered yielded over 

 three hundred times its' cost. It is 1,807 

 feet deep, 32 feet in diameter, octagonal 

 in section, and lined with solid masonry 

 for the first 100 feet. In striking con- 

 trast to our modern shafts, not a stick of 

 timber was used to support the walls. 

 Hoisting was accomplished by mule 

 power. Eight malacates, or horse whims, 

 one hoisting from each face of the octa- 

 gon, raised the broken rock to the sur- 

 face in rawhide buckets. Water now 

 stands in the shaft 600 feet below the 

 collar, and during the summer solstice, 

 when the sun is directly overhead, rain- 

 bows play in the mist above the water. 

 There is something strangely weird about 

 this great hole. 



The Rayas shaft, 1,400 feet deep, also 



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