30 



CHILT. 



he fairly bewildered us amongst the mountains ; 

 and every trace was lost of the entrance into this 

 wild labyrinth. At length he led us, by a high 

 narrow neck of land, to a solitary hill, in the 

 middle of a plain, round which the road wag 

 turned in a spiral manner, till it reached the 

 mouth of La Santa Clara, a silver mine. Here 

 we dismounted, and prepared for the descent, by 

 taking off our coats and hats, and providing our- 

 selves with candles. As the mine was inclined to 

 the horizon, at an angle of about twenty-five de- 

 grees, and its roof, at some places, was not above 

 three feet high, it was both difficult and disagree- 

 able to proceed. The seam, which originally 

 contained the silver, had been wrought to a great 

 extent, so that there was left a wide space he/- 

 tween two strata of the rock. The surface, forr 

 tunately, was irregular, but so worn by the min- 

 ers^ feet, when bearing their load upwards, and ag 

 much polished by their sliding down again, that 

 we found it no easy matter to avoid slipping at 

 once from the top to the bottom. The guide had 

 excited our curiosity by the account of a lafeii 

 which, he said, lay at the bottom of one of the 



