172 



THREE TEARS IN THE PACIFIC. 



were built about it, with loose stones and branches of the cac- 

 tus. Amongst these were perhaps twenty women and children, 

 seated upon stones, surrounded with small heaps of ore, which 

 they were breaking up, and sorting and throwing away the 

 stone which adhered to it. They used double flat faced ham- 

 mers, of about three pounds weight. Three or four boca 

 minas," or entrances to mines, opened near each other, and 

 before them were piles of ore, thrown by those employed in 

 bringing it up. The whole scene was one of wretchedness. 

 The women and children were coarsely dressed in woollen, and 

 without the slightest shelter from the hot sun. 



We descended to the bottom of one of the mines. A miner 

 carried a small, dirty, smoking lamp, and led the way. About 

 forty feet from the entrance, it turned to the left, and we found 

 ourselves in a spot where the sides of the mine were lined 

 with thin plates of quartz crystal, which dip into the joints or 

 cracks between the pieces of ore, and our lamp seemed sudden- 

 ly to multiply its light a hundred fold. If the walls had been 

 hung with cut glass drops, it could not have been more 

 beautifully irridescent. When I arrived near the bottom, the 

 guide suddenly left me to return for some one of the party, 

 who had not progressed so fast. He was absent a half minute, 

 and I was in total darkness. Close to me I heard a man snor- 

 ing, and almost under my feet, the blows of a hammer, accom- 

 panied by that subdued short breathed sound of " ha !" at every 

 blow. To one unused to such circumstances, there was some- 

 thing appalling and unpleasant to the feelings. The light soon 

 returned, and another turn through a hole just large enough 

 to pass, brought us to a miner lying with his side against the 

 earth, in a bent position, breaking out large pieces of ore from 

 above his head, with an iron chisel, and heavy hammer. It was 

 he whom I heard when alone in the dark. He handed us a 

 piece of the ore, which he had just broken out, for examination, 

 and broke us a neat specimen of what he termed the best. This 

 was the dark heavy oxide, with a thin laminum of quartz 

 spread over one side. 



The course of this mine falls very little below a horizontal 

 line, and is about ten feet in diameter in some places, and in 



