|l4p INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



Don Juan Bardh had been superintendent of the Que- 

 brada del Ingenio for about three years. The Company 

 which he represented was called the Anglo Costa Rican 

 Economical Mining Company. It had been in opera- 

 tion these three years without losing anything, which 

 was considered doing so well that it had increased its 

 capital, and was about continuing on a larger scale. 

 The machine, which had just been set up, was a new 

 German patent, called a Machine for extracting Gold 

 by the Zillenthal Patent Self-acting Cold Amalgamation 

 Process (I believe that I have omitted nothing), and its 

 great value was that it required no preliminary process, 

 but by one continued and simple operation extracted 

 the gold from the stone. It was an immense wheel of 

 cast iron, by which the stone, as it came from the mount- 

 ain, was pounded into powder ; this passed into troughs 

 filled with water, and from them into a reservoir con- 

 taining vases, where the gold detached itself from the 

 other particles, and combined with the quicksilver with 

 which the vases were provided. 



There were several mines under Don Juan's charge, 

 and after dinner he accompanied me to that of Cor- 

 rallio, which was the largest, and, fortunately, lay on 

 my road. After a hot ride of half an hour, ascending 

 through thick woods, we reached the spot. 



According to the opinion of the few geologists who 

 have visited that country, immense wealth lies buried 

 in the mountain of Aguacate ; and so far from being 

 hidden, the proprietors say, its places are so well mark- 

 ed that all who search may find. The lodes or min- 

 eral veins run regularly north and south, in ranges of 

 greenstone porphyry with strata of basaltic porphyry, and 

 average about three feet in width. In some places side- „ 

 cuts or lateral excavations are made from east to west, 



