; 
\ 
OF NEW ALMADEN. 57 
\ words of her language, she readily complied; and in a 
few hours, I obtained a most satisfactory vocabulary. 
| In the afternoon, we took the stage for New Alma- 
den, thirteen miles distant. Our route lay through a 
valley of unequalled beauty, the entire distance being 
dotted with large oaks and sycamores, with an occasional 
clump of firs and red-woods, the latter towering high 
above all others. There are some clusters of these red- 
woods of enormous size between here and Monterey, 
- of which we heard much, and regretted that we had no 
time to visit them. On reaching the town, I drove at 
once to the house of Mr. Young, the superintendent 
of the quicksilver mines, to whom I had a letter of 
introduction from Captain Hallock, U. 8. A. of San Fran- 
eisco, one of the officers of the Company. 
April 4th. New Almaden consists exclusively of 
the buildings belonging to the company which owns 
the quicksilver mine. It embraces furnaces, store- 
houses, dwelling-houses for the officers and laborers, 
offices, mechanics’ shops, &c. Many of them are of 
wood; but a large and fine range of substantial brick 
buildings is now in the process of erection, to take the 
place of the wooden ones. ‘The novelty of the business 
of extracting the quicksilver from the cinnabar, required 
a number of experiments, involving a very heavy ex- 
penditure ; for there was but one other mine in the 
world, that of Almaden in Spain, where the operation 
was carried on on a large scale, and it could not be 
expected that a rival company like this, whose opera- 
tions would effectually destroy the monopoly the latter 
had for ages enjoyed, would be permitted to derive 
any information from their long experience. Machine- 
