REAL DEL MONTE. 



9 



75 



the ore and rubbish being raised to the surface by horse 

 power applied to a windlass. 



But now, if you choose, you may accompany us to the 

 mouth of the Dolores shaft, when, having garbed in 

 miners' dresses, with heads well defended with a kind of 

 felt helmet, we began our descent by ladders, accompa- 

 nied by two of the English captains or overseers, and 

 went down, down, down into the bowels of the earth. 

 We passed the mouth of the adit ; and, reaching the bot- 

 tom of the mine, in our progress from one shaft to an- 

 other, visited every part of the " workings." To gain 

 and examine some of these required a certain degree of 

 strength and resolution, from the defective and danger- 

 ous means of descent and exit. They were various in 

 appearance, sometimes a shapeless excavation, and at 

 other times wrought into the form of a gallery, according 

 as the rock had been rich or poor in the ore, which is 

 found in a quartz matrix, imbodied in the porphyry rock, 

 of which the whole chain consists. 



The system of mining struck me as peculiar. The 

 common miners are, for the most part, of the Indian race. 

 A few of them band together, to work in company, and 

 take their equal shares of the proceeds. They are paid 

 four rials a day by the company, and take, as their further 

 perquisite, one eighth of the ore extracted. 



On issuing from the mouth of the mine, the confede- 

 rates themselves divide the lumps of ore, rich and poor, 

 into eight heaps in the presence of one of the overseers, 

 and that overseer determines which of the eight shall be 

 given up to them. There are subterranean offices where 

 the tools and candles are kept, and regularly served out 

 and reclaimed, by an officer charged with that particular 

 duty. Blasting and other operations are carried on as in 

 other mines. 



There are upon an average about three hundred In- 

 dians constantly thus engaged in the different parts of the 

 mine ; and the scenes presented in those gloomy caves, 

 where they work by the red light of their tapers, with 

 scarcely any covering, are far beyond my describing. 



