V.
OLD AND NEW AMONG THE SILVER MINES.
A Mediæval Castle.—First Icicle.—Omatuska.—More about Pulqui.—A big Scare.—A Paradise.—Casa Grande.—A Sabbath in Pachuca.—A native Convert.—Mediæval Cavalcade.—The Visitors.—Mounting Real Del Monte.—The Castle of Real.—Gentlemanly Assassin.—Silver Factories.—Velasco.—A Reduction.—Haciendado Riley.—Mexican Giant's Causeway.—More Silver Reduction.—Horsemanship under Difficulties.—Contraries balancing Contraries.—La Barranca Grande.—A bigger Scare.—A Wedding.—Miner and Mining.—The Gautemozin.—The better Investment.
One need not go to Europe to find one of its best mediæval towns. Let him visit Quebec. So one need not go back to the Middle Ages to see a fine specimen of feudal times. Let him come to Pachuca. I have been pleased often at the ingenious way in which Mr. Hale contrives to get allusions to the Old and New in the introductory pages of his magazine. They are by far the best part usually of its contributions, and not the worst specimens of his own ability. But were he where I am to-night, and had he enjoyed what I have these last three days, he would have material for a most piquant page of his preamble. I have never seen there yet, to my surprise, Lowell's line,
"Old and new at its birth, like Le Verrier's planet."
Perhaps it has been quoted. This experience was old and new at its birth to those that were privileged to enjoy it.
The place where I am writing is a castle of the Middle Ages in its important features. Its huge door is kept closed. Beside the entrance armed men are constantly to be seen. An iron gate within prevents the passage of the enemy if the first door is penetrated. The roof is surrounded with a battlement, pierced with loop-holes and slit with turrets, and crowned with a tower, projecting into the sidewalk, and well adjusted to hurl grenades and shoot rifles at assailants below.
The open court, into which the entrance instantly leads, is often full of armed men and horses, called to accompany their leader on his official excursions. The rattling of spurs on its pavement, and clinking of the ornaments of the horsemen and their horses, are familiar sounds. The patio is European and antique; an elegant stairway to the upper story begins opposite the entrance; a balcony runs around that story, well faced with exquisite flowers of every tropical delight, and rooms open from it, spacious and elegant. Everywhere wealth and refinement prevail. The luxurious air of Mexico is about us, and the old times are yet more around us. How did we get here, and why? Thereby hangs a tale. Let the city walks and rides rest a while, as we unfold the panorama of this our first excursion into the country. That, as every thing else here, is attended with danger.
"Dangers stand thick through all the ground,"
we have to constantly sing, and not only sing it, but "sense" it, as the backwoods thinker strongly puts it. One must look sharp, or he will be in the condition of the lepers in Samaria, who were in danger of perishing whether they staid in the city or went without the walls. There seems to be about an equal danger of being robbed, kidnaped, and otherwise abused, whether you remain in the city or go into the country.
For instance, right opposite my hotel, a gentleman of a rich family was kidnaped a few months ago, as he was returning from the opera at an early hour of the night, not later than ten, and confined in a room not far from the Grand Plaza for nine days, being put in a hole in the ground, and knives so placed that any movement of his body would thrust them into him. So it is not without peril even to remain in the hotel, or, rather, to go to the opera, a possibility also elsewhere, but of another sort. He was discovered by the tell-tale of a woman, who had the sweet revenge of seeing four of her masculine comrades executed in twenty-four hours after her revelation.
But there is no less danger in leaving the city. The country is full of robbers. Stage-coaches are rifled on every road. The Government is powerless to protect life or property. Yet one might as well die by the robbers as be scared to death through fear of being robbed. "Faint heart never won fair lady," or any thing else.
"Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate,"
a great thing to say, if we mean all it includes, though many trip over the distich as though it were only pretty poetry.
Our point objective is Pachuca. You have heard of the silver mines of Mexico. Who has not? Curiosity and churchianity led our first steps to these treasures. We wanted to see what had made Mexico so attractive, and how she could be made more so. Miss Kilmansegg would not have been worth much without her precious leg, and Mexico would have been let alone as severely as the Central African governments, but for her precious legacy. But these treasures are useless to this country unless Christ go with them and before them. They have poured forth hundreds and thousands of millions into the lap of earth; they have enriched thrones and subjects in all lands; they control the merchandise of China and India to-day. Yet the nation that produces them is poor and ignorant and blind and naked; a nation peeled and robbed by its own masters; a nation of blood and strife and desolation. How its splendid ceremonials of service, and magnificent altars and vestments, and golden shrines, and silver altar railings, and unbounded pomp and parade are rebuked by this poverty and peacelessness of its people! Christ must come to Mexico. Even so, come Lord Jesus, and come quickly.
The text for this sermon was Pachuca and Real del Monte, or Royal Mount. If a pun were allowable, it might be anglicized into Mount of Reals, the silver York shilling of the country, or worse yet, and more Englishy, into the Real Mount, for most people would fancy that that mount only had reality which was a mount of silver. The two are properly one, Pachuca and Real del Monte, the former being the city, the latter the hills behind it, many of which are regularly and largely mined, and the topmost one of which, six miles from the city, and the seat of several mines, being known exclusively by that title.
Here, too, are about three hundred English people, seventy-five workmen, and overseers, with their families. Two Spanish Protestant congregations are here gathered. The threefold cord of silver mines, and English and Spanish Church work, was too much for revolvers and robbers to overcome, and so we are off for Pachuca.
That Saturday morning on which we started was January 18th, 1873. Perhaps you remember it where you lived. I doubt not that it was stinging cold, for even here it was cool enough for an overcoat when rushing along with the open windows of a tireless car. One of the party picked up an icicle of a hand's length and half its breadth, at a station a few miles from the city, the only bit of ice I have seen growing all this season. The sunny side of a house was pleasant that morning. That was all. Long before noon it was sultry. Overcoats were off and umbrellas up, and we wilted under the torrid sun. How was it up your way?
Pachuca lies about sixty miles from Mexico to the north, and a little to the east. Our railroad takes us forty miles to Omatuska, where a breakfast and a stage await us. The first ate—and a goodly one it was to eat—the second is mounted. The party is four: two ministers, and two railroaders, a general, and a banker, leaders in one of the projected Mexican invasions. The stage-ride is about forty miles, the distance this way being a third greater than straight across the country, but a third less of coach-ride. The morning is splendid. The sun has warmed to his work at this ten and a half o'clock, but not fierce in burning. The road passes through a landscape of beauty and wealth and emptiness. Two or three haciendas, or plantations, cover almost the whole of the distance. The first stretches for six or eight miles, and is given up almost entirely to the culture of pulqui.
It is pitiful to see these miles and miles of acres surrendered to this pestiferous production. Yet it is pleasant to look upon, as was the fruit Eve tasted and Adam ate, man being generally greedier in crime than woman. The fields are laid out with mathematical exactness. The maguey plant, for that is the name of the pulqui bearer, is a large aloe, with grand, broad green leaves, very broad and very green. The plants stand about ten feet apart, in rows twenty feet from each other, so that the field looks like a nursery of dark, lustrous green bushes. You can see down these green alleys sometimes for miles in this clearest of airs. They radiate regularly from every plant, a perpetual chess-board of tropical luxuriance. They are of various stages of growth, from the infant of days to the patriarch of seven to ten years.
The latter is about to yield his white heart for the delight and ruin of the people. He is about four feet high, sometimes more, and spreads over as much or more from the short, thick, bulb-like stem. Sometimes he is ripe at eight years, more usually ten. The owners thus gather a crop from one-eighth to one-tenth of their shrubs annually. When it is ripe, they thrust the knife near or into the root, so as to prevent its farther growth. The leaves fall over, the bowl-like centre swells with the juices pressing into it. It looks of the capacity of a couple of water-pails. This is of a milky look, and sweet, it is said, at this time. It is taken out twice a day for four months, so that one good plant yields four or five hundred gallons of this substance.
This is put into ox-skins, a little of the old pulqui is added for fermentation, and the new is made worse. So delicate is this substance at the start, that a pinch of salt or any other mal-affinity will destroy the whole crop if it is put into one of these skins and gets passed from one to another. An overseer, being dismissed, took this sweet (or sour) revenge on his master, and by one drop of acid, or salt, spoiled a crop worth a thousand dollars. He was arrested and imprisoned for this petty but powerful revenge.
If it is so sensitive when young, it gets bravely over it, for a more disgustingly smelling and tasting substance than it is when old the depravity of man has never yet discovered. Rotten eggs are fragrant to its odor, and pigs' swill sweet to its taste. I wish that overseer would go into the business of spoiling the crops, and drive the whole iniquity from the face of the land and the face of the people. It has a sweet cider taste in the days of its youth, but rapidly corrupts as that does, only worse, the climate being hotter, into a sour, stinking, abominable beverage.
What would Dr. Bowditch do with this tropical drunkenness? He says lust is the vice of tropics, liquor of the temperate zones. As he would encourage, with modifications, the latter in Boston, of course he must the former in Mexico. Yet here is drunkenness as bad as any in Ireland, Germany, England, or the United States, and on a tropical plant of the country. He had better move his Board of Un-health here, and proceed to sit on this phenomenon. It will all be owed, I suppose he will say, to the lofty height of this table-land, which puts it in a temperate zone. "Logic is logic, that's all I say."
Another peculiar and proper quality of this plant is its animal productions; at least so I was informed, but I doubt the information. These are said to be three: a white rat, a white, and a brown worm. These nice creatures are made great, like Cæsar, by what they feed on; and, according to these people, are ahead of Cæsar, for they are not only great but good. They are served up as delicacies to rich and poor. Fried worms and broiled rat would make a proper accompaniment to pulqui. My informant rejoiced himself in the name of Julius Cæsar. He was also a famous cook. The punster of the crowd objected to this Diet of Worms. But it was rat-ional.
Hills rise on our left, as we move north by east, well clad in the hot and purple sunlight, well stripped of all other drapery; an aqueduct half a mile long strides across a deep gully, bearing water after the high Roman fashion, from Pachuquita, or Little Pachuca, to Omatuska. The half-way station is only a stopping-place under the trees, with a pulqui shop and a fruit-stand on the ground, of bananas, oranges, and pea-nuts. A cavalcade of horses drives up. Are they robbers? Here is where they congregate. They look enough like them "to fill the bill," as they say out West. Well got up in light-brown leather trowsers, with silvered buttons and loops closely running up the sides, wide, gray felt sombreros, silver trappings on horses; they evidently need money and have not much. Will they make our littles into their mickle?
They turn out protectors rather than robbers, a mistake made often in this doubting world. They are a blessing in disguise. The road is dangerous a few leagues onward, and they are sent as an escort. Poor escort they prove, for they gallop on ahead, and that is the last we see of the gay riders.
The next hacienda, where the danger chiefly lies, is owned by the governor of the State of Hidalgo; and, it is said, by way of slander undoubtedly, that he lets the robbers pillage the coach along the line of his farm, if they will leave that alone. Even so, I remember it was correctly reported at a seminary where I once served, that a shrewd old farmer of the neighborhood was said to have kept his orchards untouched by leading the students, who had too much of the old Adam and Eve in them, to the choicest apple-trees in his neighbor's orchards. At any rate, his splendid orchard never seemed touched by that school frost, and the others often were. Whether the story of this governor or that farmer is true or not, quien sabe?
All I know is, that his place, like the other's orchard, is by far the finest in the country. The maguey plant stretches for miles in perfect order and beauty. Barley and wheat, and other crops green with youth, or yellow with age, spread out lovely to the eye. A rich, dark hollow of earth, circled by a darker if not richer rim of earth, five to eight miles across, a piece of landscape held in the hollow of your eye, if not the hollow of your hand, made a gem in centre and setting, such as one rarely sees, especially when the flashing Southern sun, pouring through a brisk and stimulating atmosphere, in this rare ether over eight thousand feet above the sea, made the gem yet more radiant and transparent. I well-nigh envied the governor his spot, robbers and pulqui included.
A few miles round a spur brings us in sight of Pachuca. Real del Monte had long been visible, and the high, dark range of which it is a mere point of silver. A lowlier range hid the city. It appears now, lying along the base of that black and treeless mass, a collection of low, white roofs, with a church or two towering with dome and steeple; they use both always here, though the steeple never terminates with a spire. The only decent object in these cities, sometimes the only visible object seen from a distance, is the church. Every thing is unduly abased in order that that may be unduly exalted. Our school-houses, capitols, and tall dwellings and stores, make our beautiful spires chiefs among associates, not solitary masters of an enslaved population.
But Pachuca has one sight that outshines its churches. In front of it lies a valley of exquisite beauty. The trees and plants stud it thick with emeralds. A paradise the Persians would call it—why not we? The verdure spreads out for a mile or two, and perfectly completes the picture of the tall, brown mountains that overhang the town, and the white walls that hug their lower declivities. Brown, white, and green glow together in this summer afternoon of January. Oh, ye frozen and sepulchred home folks, a white cemetery of Nature, with icy winds raving over it, how rapturous this delicious landscape! How I regret that you are not here to enjoy it—that the North could not be transported, body and business, to this dulcet clime for six months of every year!
You are needed; for this exquisite paradise is as full of devils as the primal one, when man had gone over to the enemy. It is not very safe to walk its streets on Sunday, and hardly possible at mid-night. So "the trail of the serpent is over it all." You may prefer your icy atmosphere and snowy covering with peace, safety, comfort, and prosperity, a life in death, to this tropical glory, with its assassinations and robberies, a death in life. All things are equal, after all.
We ride to the hotel, but are met by Mr. Comargo, the superintendent of the mines, who invites us to the Casa Grande, or Grand House, belonging to the company, at which place this story began.
We pass under its heavy portal of barred gates of wood and thin iron, and past the large guard that, armed and equipped, protects the entrance, into a large, square, open court. Up the broad stairs, with their gilt and burnished balustrades, among rich tropical plants and flowers, we ascend to the balcony. Here the conductor, as he is called, meets us, a small, gentlemanly person, and makes his house our own. Elegant apartments open on every side of this court, and abundant flowers line the entire balcony.
"We have lighted on our feet," exclaims one of the party. Nobody, for once, disagrees with the observation, the only point of agreement in all the journey.
Dusty garments are brushed, and dusty faces washed, and we mount horses for a ride up the side of the mountain to a mine. Horses before us, horses behind us, horses to the right of us, horses to the left of us; thus we march into the narrow streets and up the narrower slips of the hill-side. A cavalcade more numerous than attends a European monarch accompanied these every-day travelers. Reason why? Not that we were more than monarchs, but Pachuca is less safe to the conductor of its mines than Paris ever was to Napoleon. He would be a prize to the kidnappers.
We inspect the outside of the mine, from the crushing of the ore to the smelting of the silver, and return to a sumptuous dinner, a lively reunion, and a luscious bed. In its comfortable embrace we dream of Elysium, although
" We should suspect some danger nigh,
Where we possess delight."
Our first peril is past, Pachuca is reached. Our second cometh quickly.
Just after we reached the town, on Saturday afternoon, we passed a building near the little plaza with "Miners' Arms" over its door. It looked Englishy English to the last degree. Some equally Englishy English persons stood before the door. They noticed we were strangers, and one of them, a tall, plainly-dressed person, came across the street and spoke to us. He had heard that a Methodist preacher was coming to spend the Sabbath, and he made a dash at random at this couple, hoping to bag that game. He succeeded. It was a Mr. Prout, for whom I had a letter of introduction. He accompanied us to the Casa, and then sought out an elder member, Richard Rule, Esq., who for years had had preaching and class-meeting at his house. To show the peril of the place, that night he was sent for to come and see about arrangements for Sabbath services. Guards were sent to accompany him to the Casa, and to accompany him home again. Yet in the day-time there is but little if any danger.
The next morning I attended a class-meeting at Richard Rule's. It met at eight o'clock. But the long ride and the late night made me a little late, and the venerable leader was at prayer when I entered. It seemed strange to hear the voice of prayer in a Sunday-morning class in this far-off land in our own tongue. And yet it seemed not unnatural. A full and devout petition it was, covering all the ground, as if the fewness of the number present allowed larger liberty to each utterance. It was eminently Scriptural in form, as all English prayers are, and rich in faith, in humility, and in assurance. The one other English peculiarity it also exhibited, devotion to fatherland. He prayed for the "favored land of their birth" and "for the benighted land" in which they dwelt. That feeling is wrought deeper in English nature than in that of any other people. America unconsciously copies it, but does not surpass it.
Four members, all males, gave testimony to a present and a full salvation, and responses showed the warmth of the heart still on fire with God's love.
It was good to be there. No mine in all this richest district of the earth was so rich as this, nay, was infinitely less rich. These had searched for wisdom as for hid treasures, and had found her:
"Wisdom divine, who tells the price
Of wisdom's costly merchandise?
Wisdom to silver we prefer,
And gold is dross, compared with her."
How rich these poor men were. Only one possessed any means or mines. Yet all were rejoicing in eternal and infinite treasure-houses, laid up by the same Redeemer who stored these mounts with silver, in that Mount of God, His Royal Mount, the Real del Monte of the heavens and the universe, for all those who love and serve Him.
The house of Mr. Rule stands in a garden, with large, luscious plants blooming about. The oleander, banana, fig, and unknown trees and blooms fill the retreat with life and loveliness. High walls hide it from the passer's eyes. It is secluded and central. I have quite fallen in love with these dead walls without, and beauty, luxury, and comfort within. I am not sure that it is not an improvement on our system, more open without, and less secluded within. Not as you are in your winter-bound firesides,
"Shut in
By the tumultuous privacy of storm,"
but by a privacy which makes a perpetual summer for your private pleasure, though this sometimes shuts out a tumult worse than snow ever creates. It makes the street unlovely, but not the home. These rough walls and gates open on luxury and repose. The high wall is not needed to make this picture. The gardens might be open to all eyes, and the court-yard only be for home consumption.
At eleven o'clock Rev. Mr. Parks, the Bible Agent, preached to a goodly congregation on "The love of Christ constraineth us;" and at two, another full house gathered to attend the third service of the day. "Whom having not seen ye love," is the text dwelt upon, the counterpart and complement of the morning's discourse. The baptism of three infants, and the administration of the Lord's Supper to seven persons, prolongs the service till four o'clock. The full house sits solemn and reverent to the close.
A service in Spanish follows, conducted by Dr. Guerro, a physician of the place. It is not so full as usual, owing to the length of the preceding meeting, but there is a fair assemblage. Some fine-looking young men participated. The service has been compiled by him from that of Dr. Riley, and is entitled "El Culto de la Iglesia Reformada en Pachuca." It is orthodox and devout. But the service needs more liberty extemporaneously, and besides needs additions of prayer, and social and class meetings, and Sunday-schools. It is the seed, but not the flower nor fruit.
The conductor of the meeting is a Protestant against Romanism, and, like most of that class here, has not yet advanced much beyond the first principles of that protest.
The elaboration of the Christian system, independent of all the previous errors and formalities, into a life and being of its own—this work is yet to be done. It needs organization, Church order, breadth, life. It will come, and that speedily. It was delightful to find in this mountain town, and among this degraded and depraved population, a godly few casting off the shackles of a false culture, and forming a reformed Church. May they speedily regenerate the town.
We come back to our agreeable quarters across the plaza, which from our first crossing it in the morning until now has been crowded with sellers and buyers. The pavement is lined with rows of merchant-men and merchant-women with every sort of ware—fruit, fish, flesh, coal, grasses, trinkets, muslins, toys—a Vanity Fair of Sunday desecration. The stores under the arcade are equally busy. The church is open, and has its two services a day, but the crowds are in the market-place, and the devil holds his service all the day.
He is represented in a huge, gross picture in the church on the plaza with a smashing tail, a good deal longer than his body, driving the sinful ghosts to hell. He is out here in calico and cloth, in a white, dirty woolen blanket, dropping down before and behind, with a slit in the middle, through which the head is passed, in thin blue cloth mantillas that cover the woman's head and shoulders and mouth. Here he is buying and selling, and getting gain and loss. Let the true Church of Christ arise and abate this crime that smells to heaven.
I was not a little wearied with this long day's work. From eight to five, with scarce an intermission, had I been attending to the Lord's business. A summer day, sultry as August, yet not oppressive, it has been a day of delights, "where no crude surfeit reigns."
The hills look soft in that sacred setting, and the fields did not strive in vain to look gay. They looked so without striving. The air was blessed, and I rejoiced to think that this ancient and rich realm would yet be the mount of the Lord, and its silver flow forth for the salvation of the world.
Monday comes, and with it the old again, to offset the new of yesterday. The champing of bits and trampling of steeds below is a signal that we are invited to a ride. A ride is a small affair ordinarily in America, and even in Europe to-day, but not at the Casa Grande. The lord of the casa, Señor Comargo, descends the stairway, with pistol in his belt and a girdle of ball-cartridges about him. His horse has gun and sword hanging at its saddle-bow. Five visitors follow—two less powerfully armed, and two with no weapons save their tongues. Three horsemen precede this company, and twelve follow. A carriage and four mules are provided for any two of the party that may wish to accept the new style instead of the old. Thus protected and equipped, we ride through the awakening town.
Why all this display? Not for display. This is the old, because here the old still exists. This city is full of robbers, and so is the country. It is the chief mining centre of this region, and has only one equal in all this country. The building is the headquarters of the mining company. It has two hundred thousand dollars in its vaults every fortnight. This it must transport sixty miles to Mexico. The reckless marauders of these hills long for these hid treasures more than for those still concealed in the earth all about them. They have attacked the building once and again, and sometimes in large force, three to four hundred men. They would attack the commandant, or conductor, as he is the chief representative of the company, and his capture might be worth many thousands to his kidnapers. Only last week, in company with four of his horsemen, he broke through a band of thirty-five robbers, under a famous bandit leader, killing one and wounding several others.
This company has some valuable nuggets for such marauders. Here is the president of the nearly finished Vera Cruz Railway, Mr. Gibbs, of England, as witty as he is wise, and wise as he is witty, one of the least "stuck up" of well-educated Englishmen I have ever met. He is a representative of Oxford scholarship and London business. He can scan Greek lines or Mexican landscapes with equal accuracy. He confesses to England's aristocratic detestation of the Yankee until the war compelled her to see, first, that we had pluck; second, success; and third, and logically, that we were right. That is the usual construction of an Englishman's syllogism, pluck first, principle last. Then, of course, we ceased to be whittling, nasal Yankees, and turned into gentlemen. He breaks forth at the mouth, like all punsters, and makes fun for the million (of dollars) that rides at his side.
The head of the house of Rosecrans, a rival railroad enterprise, is also here—General Palmer, self-contained, ready to thrust the point of an argument into his antagonist, as whilom the point of his sword, and that as this without malice, though now as then unto the death.
Mr. Parish, the learned and traveled member of the party, is at home equally in the best modern languages and modern society. It is a striking evidence of the union of culture and business, these polished and highly-educated gentlemen on railroad thoughts intent. It shows, what ought to be the case more and more, the best university training a preliminary to the entrance into every profession.
The agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, a Congregational clergyman, is the fourth; whom, as he is lying awake on his bed in the room where I am now writing, it will not answer to say much about, or I should see the sheeted living, as Cæsar did the "sheeted dead," walking the floor and squaring off. England and America, despite Geneva decisions and the peace societies, would be at war. He is well satisfied with England, at least when talking with an American, though I doubt not he will set forth all those American arguments as to Britain's conditions and needs when he gets back to "Our Old Home," and will forget, perhaps, to put in the quotation marks. He is doing an excellent work here in planting the Bible over the land.
The last who mounts the horse, and who rides muy mal (you do not know but that that means very good, and I shall not tell you that it means very bad), is not, perhaps, representing his fellow-ministers so much in their horse-riding reputation as in eating and enduring. He is seeking out this land for the Church, as his associates are for the Bible and the railway, a threefold cord which is not easily broken, and which will yet make this beautiful clime "bound with gold chains about the feet of God."
The road ascends the mountain side. For two thousand feet and two leagues it winds and climbs. The basin of Pachuca lies below, soft in the brown morning, yet unkissed of the sun, which yellows the eastern sky, but does not glow upon its mountain-tops. The green trees, flowers, and maguey plant make a garden of beauty of that basin, lying low in the hollow of treeless hills, "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun." It is less luxuriant than the woods and ferns of the Hot Lands, but its contrast with the inclosing hill sides and the brisk September air makes its verdant loveliness all the more lovely.
The mountains are without forest, but a purple verdure covers them—a royal mantle of sunlight and shadow, dewy, tender, velvety. Not since I looked on Hymettus and Pentelicus have I seen such a rich hue clothe barren mountains. The composition of the rock has something to do with it; the purple of porphyry imparts its color to the hills.
Iztaccihuatl glitters on the point of its snowy lance. There is some debate as to which of the three ice mountains it is, and so the poet of the company—for "we keeps our poet," like Day & Martin—breaks forth in rhymes on each of the trio. First, he exclaims, Why all this palaver
About Orizava?[1]
Then adds, toastingly and drunkenly,
We'll tip the brandy-bottle
To old Iztaccihuatl.
And teetotally concludes,
We'll drain our water-kettle
To Popocatepetl.
Of course he would have gone on thus all day had he not been held in. He was pouring forth the terrible rhymes as if they were avalanches. "Slaver" it was found would rhyme and reason with this Orizava, and "throttle" had to be put to the voluble neck of this Iztaccihuatl; while a lot of mispronounced rhymes, such as "settle," "met ill," "nettle," and so on, were being mustered into the service of the grand old monarch of Mexico. It was time to stop the rhymed nonsense, and it stopped. Sober debates on temperance and other good themes came to the front.
The light slides down the mountain ("coasts," as a Yankee ought to say), down its smooth and lustrous sides, and soon fills all the hollow of the hills with splendor. The soul sends its shafts of light upward as those of the soulless world fall downward, and in silent prayer and praise ascribes the honor, and glory, and dominion, and power thus seen, and the infinitely more and greater not seen, unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb forever.
One side of the roadway leaps down sheer and profound, and the other opens ravines, or descends in mountain slopes, where easily "the robber rends his prey" from the slowly-climbing coach and rider. There is a thicket of bushes at one of these bends, which is their favorite haunt, and yet no one thinks of the simple remedy of cutting up that ambuscade. Fifteen minutes and a hatchet would destroy that fortification. Why is it not done? Quien sabe?
Two hours of such slow and steadfast climbing bring the feudal cavalcade to the Real Castle, or the Castle of the Real.
Here a yet more feudal incident increases the delusion. We draw up to a high, huge dead wall without a window. The gate opens, and we enter. The warder draws near and makes his obeisance to the conductor, a gracious action on the part of each. A low room, not loftier than those usually seen in the ruined castles of the Rhine, welcomes us, and refreshments are served up. The company then proceed to inspect the castle. They kept saying to each other, "How completely feudal!" "Was there ever any thing more perfect?" "This is the real article." "As it should be on the Real," keeps up the execrable punster.
At the entrance of the building proper is a well with a windlass over it. To the ropes of this windlass were attached pieces of maguey or hemp sack, a quarter of a yard wide, made into a sort of seat. In this seat sat the workmen, and, clinging to the rope, were let down ten or twelve hundred feet, "poco mas y menos" as they all say here to every thing ("a little more or less)." They are let down and dragged up every day.
Still fancying I had entered a castle, and a little bewildered by this mode of treating its inmates, I was led to a court with rooms long and wide opening out of it, and long benches stretching on either side against the walls, which had that horrid odor that belongs to the wards of a prison, and which is unlike any other smell. Another step, and a barred door, heavy and thick, made of cross-pieces that let in the light and air, but not liberty, revealed the fact that this mediæval castle was indeed a prison. So its looks did not deceive itself. That well was to let down criminals to work in the mines.
It took off the edge of our vanity a little to learn this fact. The castle is reduced in vocation, though not in manners. Don Quixote can fancy it a castle, though it be only a presidio. Those straps of maguey fibre, in which they were let down that thousand feet, were homeopathic in their nature. Pulqui brought them here, and the fibre of its leaf drops them there. I had seen pits like this in European castles, as black and bottomless seemingly, where they dropped their victims, to be brought up, not as these are at night-fall, but in the morn only of the Resurrection.
In two of the cells were three leading bandits of the country awaiting execution. I only saw one of them. He was a youth of twenty, fair-faced, smooth-faced, with calm manners and a mild dark eye: so pretty a lad one rarely sees. Is it possible that he is a chief murderer? Even so. Appearances here, as elsewhere, are deceitful. Yet not so. Leaders are rarely demonstrative men. Byron was not at fault in describing human nature when he painted his chief cut-throat as
"The mildest-mannered man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat;"
and describes him on a balmy eve as he leans over the taffrail and
"Looks upon the flood:
His thoughts were calm, but were of blood."
This youth's mien and meditation were alike calm and bloody. He would have put a shot through the warden as briskly and gayly as through a bird. He was trained in crime, and, though still beardless, was gray in guilt. How many of our worst offenders accomplish their end before they reach a ripe manhood! The gallows has more victims under thirty than over. Sin ripens fast, and the lad of fifteen who casts off parental restraint and plunges into vice, before he is twenty-five is apt to die a debauchee or a demon. Christ and the devil recruit their forces from the youth. A Christian or a criminal is the decision usually made before the twenties are touched. Despise not the converted boy. Nurse his childish piety, lest it become youthful impiety ere you are aware.
Sadly we left the fair young face, so soon to be mould and dust, and came into the bright sunshine. How gloomily glowered that sun! The prison was no longer a palace, but a tomb. We gladly mount and ride away from the grim recesses. You have had enough of the Old; now again for the New.
As we emerge into the outer air our eyes light on chimneys, tall and numerous, scattered up and down the steep hill-sides. My English companions thought they had seen the like in Yorkshire. Yet the chief if not only likeness is in the chimneys, and in the fact that they are used in running steam-engines of immense bulk, which are engaged in pumping water out of the mines. This was the New. No such contrivances had the cavalcades of the Old times ever seen. One of these engines, of two thousand horse-power, is beautifully lifting its ponderous arms, as polished and quiet as is its Manchester builder. It is an evidence of the superiority of our age. Two thousand horse-power there in that engine, twenty in this escort: one hundred times is the New above the Old!
It is a festa day, and the natives are idling round. But the engines are busy, being worked by Englishmen, who know no festas but Sundays and Christmas. A bull -fight is to come off, and especial stir among the natives is evident. If they would fight their sins, and idleness, and errors of faith, and other infirmities, half as zealously as they fight the harmless bulls, they would "get on," as our English friends say, vastly more; but religious error stifles all energy, order, and improvement.
These immense engines teach us the costliness of the mining business. It may be an easy matter to prospect a mine, but it is not so easy a matter to work it. That costs a fortune, and reduces this royal business to the common level of farming and shoe-making. After looking over the works at this spot, we take to our horses, I gratefully getting a seat in the carriage, and whirl down to Velasco.
Six miles of rapid descent it is, winding round and round the spurs of handsomely wooded hills, which woods the steam-devil, as the Mexicans call the steam-engine, is fast devouring. In its locomotive form it devours miles; in all forms, forests. The hills are not unlike those of Vermont, but steeper, deeper, and grander, with warmer, thicker-leaved, and darker-tinted woods. Some of the gorges are sublime. Opposite these ravines tower high, blank, black mountains, some of which are curiously crowned with basaltic rocks, that look like towers, laid in order far up into the air. At times these columns take possession of a stretch of ridge, and make a series of fortifications not unlike Ehrenbreitstein, or a range of towers like a cathedral. They had shot their straight, hot barrels up through the various molten rocks of porphyry and granite, and capped the climax with their rounded finish.
Velasco is a fortified hacienda, where the ores of Real del Monte are reduced. These ores, being less inclined to yield to water than those of Pachuca, are here calcined, ground to powder, dropped from hoppers through leather tubes into strong barrels, which are also filled with water, quicksilver, sulphate of copper, and other chemicals, and a quantity of round stones about the size of small paving-stones. These are sent whirling round and round until the dissolution of the silver from the soil is effected, when the contents are drawn off. Below you see the residuum of the barrel, flowing out over troughs into bowls slightly inclined, whose lower edge holds the heavy white quicksilver, and upper, the lighter and slower precious stuff which it costs so much labor to secure.
Attached to these works is a handsome house, deserted. No officer dare live in it. Not long since its walls were scaled by a robber band, though they could find but little booty. Its garden is full of flowers, and I pluck a half-dozen rose-buds and blossoms as a specimen of the middle of January, which I commend to my frozen brothers of the North. They may retort that that robber thorn is worse than their frozen buds. I do not deny it, but hope when the railroad and the churches of America get possession of the land that the Mexican will be changed into a Methodist, or better, if better there be, as most of these Englishmen have been, and you can then have no excuse for shivering below the zeroes, instead of enjoying perpetual spring and summer, from October to April, among these torrid altitudes.
Three leagues more over hill and dale, amidst an opening and entrancing landscape, now by barren water-courses, now along high uplands, over which canter our horses. I am on the back again, and likely to be on my back with this fierce and unused riding. So we go gayly on to Regla.
The hills are well stripped by the charcoal vender and the steam-engine devourer, and look like some of the brown, barren, rocky sides of New Hampshire in July. The sun pours a midday torrid heat upon us, and makes us like that too-willing lass of whom it is said that, when her lover said '"Wilt thou?' she wilted. "So did we, though the heat that wilted us was from without, and not within. San Miguel shone out on the plain below, said to be one of the prettiest of Mexican towns. Our road lies to the left, and its beauty is left also. The plains in which this beauty lingers stretch far away to the east and north, bounded by tall dark mountains that seem to jealously guard the sleeping beauty below. At the hour of noon our tired steeds and more tired selves enter the gates of the hacienda of Regla.
This hacienda lies in a ravine, with a high wall going up to and on its outer edge, and with entrances well barred and guarded. Before its gate is a fine fountain, set in the side of the hill, flowing through a lion's mouth inserted in the rocks. Around the carved stone rim of the basin women and children are filling their water-pots. The water tastes delicious after our hot and dusty ride; far better, I doubt not, than the brandies and other "hot and rebellious liquors" would have done, which are still too freely offered, and far too freely imbibed.
The English have brought valuable money and men to this country, but have not yet brought total abstinence; and too many Americans are still ashamed of that teetotal excellence which, though it has not entirely conquered that land, has given its laborers and leaders more than half the prosperity and comfort they enjoy. If it could come here and drive out the legion of devils which the cup of inebriety introduces, it would be a blessing of blessings to all the people. Amen, so let it be!
Leaving our horses at the gate, we are led by the house where dinner (they call it breakfast here) is awaiting us, under vast arches, alongside of a paved brook, now nearly waterless, and whose blocks look like Broadway, so smooth and even and slippery are their shape and aspect. A few rods farther, and we reach the upper section of the chasm.
The Mexican Giant's Causeway is before us. We had regretted that Britain had one advantage of America in her celebrated Fingal's Cave, and now we are satisfied. Even that crown is transferred to our favored land. The columns of basalt rise on each side of the ravine from seventy-five to one hundred feet in height. The opening is a few hundred feet wide at the mouth, but comes together at the upper edge, with only a slight chasm, which lets out the waters of the river, that tumbles, a pretty cascade, some twoscore of feet into a pretty pool below. You are fifty feet or so above the pool. The columns rise one hundred feet sheer over your head. They are five-sided, and fit each to each as close as bricks. Some of the outer ones are split and otherwise marred; one or two seem to have lost both their head and their heels, and hang to their place by a sort of attraction of adhesion. If that gave way, the attraction of gravitation would topple them over upon our heads—a not very attractive attraction. The débris of their fallen fellows lies all about us. Each reveals a round core of light slate-color, that seems to have been built around after the pentagonal model. Where that core came from, and how it was grown around, I leave to those who find sermons in stones to ascertain. I prefer less hardened subjects.
There seems to be no end inward to the serried ranks. They are packed close, and each shaft reveals others that inclose it, and that are ready to take its place should sun and shower cause it to fall. If they could be utilized by some Yankee for house or monument building, we should soon see an end of the exquisite ravine. They are slaughtering the like tall living shafts that have stood together these centuries and centuries from Maine to Michigan, and Michigan to Mexico. Thanks many (muchas gracias, to be very Mexic) that they can not cut these down, saw them into stone lumber, and cart them away for Chicago and Boston burnings. Just penalty was that, for that sin of ourselves and our fathers?
THE PALISADES OF REGLA
This spot, unheard of by me unto this hour, unmentioned by any tourist I have read (and I never read one on Mexico), is now formally introduced to the American public. If you come to Mexico, come to Pachuca; and if to Pachuca, to the basaltic ravine of Regla.
We lean over the balcony of our hospitable quarters, awaiting breakfast, and see the horses tread out the silver. A yard eighty rods square, poco mas y menos, is laid down to this work. Beds of black mud are located over it, to the untrained eye precisely like the earth about it. But how different to the eye that is trained! This black mud is silver, mixed badly with other earths, mixed also with salt, sulphate of copper, and quicksilver, that, under the painful pressure of tramping steeds, are to liberate it and make it the beauty and joy of man—and plague also, as are most beauties and joys. Two hundred horses are engaged in tramping out the silver. Their tails are shaven, the mud has splashed up on their heads and backs, and they look so woe-begone, as if their labor were degrading, that it is hard for the uninitiated eye to believe they are horses at all. Mules, and even asses, they get degraded to. The making of silver seems to be as debasing as much of the spending of it is. Eighty of these march round one circle, five abreast, close together. Four such circles employ over two hundred horses and mules. Over three hundred and fifty are owned by the company, and sometimes all of them are put into service at once. The barrel system of Velasco is also employed, and water, barrels, and horses make the ore into silver.
After a most sumptuous breakfast, served by Mr. Rule, the Superintendent of Regla, a breakfast cooked in the best English fashion (and there is none better), we start for the last and not least of the points of interest that have drawn our feet and eyes this way. The horses that are brought out for us, how different from the shorn-tailed nags that are swinging around those circles! The gayest and handsomest is most unwisely but generously offered to me. He is a fine sprinkled white sorrel, and he has been in the stable many days.
The best seat at the table, and the best dishes upon it, a minister may get used to. A Methodist minister certainly ought to be ready to accept the best horse, for has not much of his success come from his gifts and graces in that favorite department of human enjoyment? He has abolished the parson's jog, which was as well known as the parson's coat, and made the "Gid-up" of Holmes's "One-horse Shay" as dusty a nothing as the shay itself. When the first itinerants drove into the country village on their smooth, fleet steeds, the eyes of the loafers about tavern and store were opened very wide. "Who is this feller who rides such a handsome critter?" was the general inquiry. And when they found he was a preacher, their amazement grew like Fort Garry wheat in July. They had never seen it after this fashion. They would go and hear the minister, whose horse could beat the fastest racer of the Corners, and they did go and hear, and found he could preach as well as he could ride. The way to a man's heart is through a horse, as those fathers found.
I ought, too, to have been inspired by modern examples. I bethought me of that presiding elder way down East, whose little beast used to leave all meaner things behind; and who (the man, not the mare) was accustomed to say to all gayly-dressed horsemen, who rode up in buckskin gloves, shiny hat, horse and harness and all, as if to leave their dust upon his sorry team, ere he quickly passed out of their sight, "I beg pardon, sir, but I treat all alike."
Alas! that this dear, delightful brother so suddenly fled to the world above. Riding into his yard from his wide circuit, struck there with death, disembarking, and pausing by this companion of many a long journey, he drops suddenly, never to rise again. The Pale Horse and its paler rider bear him swiftly away. Nay, the flaming chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof sweep him heavenward.
I might also have bethought me of that other presiding elder in the Far West who, when his black ponies in an unwashed buggy slid by a costly, stately team, newly bought and burnished, turned to their crest-fallen owner as he passed, and suggested that he put those horses in the lumber-yard.
But not the fathers nor the brothers could give me courage. I preferred to fall into the extravagance of Bishop Soule, of whom Bishop Roberts once remarked that he heard "he had sold his horse down South, and was coming home in a stage-coach," and he regretted the degeneracy of the Church, and the passing away of its heroic epoch. But that epoch had its vices as well as its virtues, and the perils of horse-jockeying worry the Conference now in the passage of the ministers' characters far less than of yore.
I get on my star-dusted steed—silver-dusted I ought to say in this country—and he leaps, and dances, and whirls, and plays his fantastic tricks. And I pull on the curb, and that cuts and maddens and makes him more antic, for that is the purpose of the curb here.
Every thing goes by contraries. You unlock your door by turning the key to the lintel, and not away from it; you open it outward. Your boots are made so that left seems right, and right left, and look so after they are on. You take the same side in the street as your opposite, and so does he, and thus you go bowing and bobbing, neither able to get on or away. You eat your breakfast at noon, or later, and take your midday dinner about seven in the evening. So the curb, instead of steadying the horse, sets his mouth a-bleeding, and that makes him dance, which is very beautiful to riders and lookers-on. A knife thrust into his belly by the spurs, and into his mouth by the curb, gets up just the right degree of pain and madness that makes him lively and lovely.
Mine has no spur, for which all thanks. The curb is enough. He scampers up the hill, among the rocks, regardless of rider; flies down a steep rock slide, as if he would never stop; caracoles along the edge of a ravine, or barranca, five hundred to a thousand feet deep, "like he knew," as they say in my Southern country. I was "awfully scared," lest he would just shake himself when on the edgiest edge, and drop me overboard. But when we got up, and down, and up this rough lane alongside of the gorge, and the splendid park opened out for miles, hard, smooth, carpeted with short, dry grass—how he did fly! So did my coward lips from their color. I was in no danger of witching this world with my horsemanship. "Muy mal" (very bad) was the muttered judgment of my score of Mexican escorts, and so was it mine.
A MEXICAN GENERAL.
There was a general in our troop—called Heneral here (another specimen of the contrary style of this people, for Cock-eral would be by far a more proper designation). This G — , H — , or C — eral was a cavalry officer all through the war. He had noticed what fine horses I had got, and how poorly I rode them, and he had had a suspicion that this one would fall to him; so he had offered early to exchange his easy pacer for my furious charger. In a fit of vain glory I had declined. But that park, grass, and gamboling were enough for me. I was willing to swap horses in crossing this stream. I dismounted and gave my wayward steed to the Heneral. He rode him well. They flew together, mile and mile. I can not say that I felt very bad when I saw him, on returning, dismount and lead his horse for a long stretch, almost over the very ground where it had tossed me so. The frisky fellow was blown. The high altitude and his high spirits were too much for him, and he had run himself out. The short-lived glory died away, and this very short horse was very soon curried.
That park on which we ascend is engirted with high purple hills. It is level, and hard as a dancing-floor, and the horses all dance as they touch it, and have a gay gallopade over it. It was my ignorance, probably, of that sort of floor practice that made me make so poor a display. The Coloradoist of the party said it was very like the parks of that country. It is fine for grazing, though I judge it is too high and dry for most other culture. A half hour brings us to its abrupt close.
La Barranca Grande opens at our feet. You do not know what a barranca is? Nor did I till that day. I wish you could learn it the same way. Conceive of a level plain forty miles wide, with a border of mountains. Ride along over it leisurely and rapidly, a little of both, chatting or singing as the spirit moves, when you halt, without reason so far as you can see. You move on a rod or two slowly, and down you look two thousand feet (ten times the height of Trinity steeple or Bunker Hill Monument), down, down, down. That is no black chasm into which you are peering, but a broad garden, green and brown. Here a hill rolls up in it, a mole scarcely noticed on its handsome face. There a bamboo cottage hides itself without being hid. The green forests are full of deer. Bananas, oranges, every delight is flourishing there. A river trickles through it, picking its glittering way down to the Gulf, two hundred miles away. The walls on the opposite side rise into wild, rocky mountains, and both sides come seemingly together forty miles above—though it is only seeming, for the cañon takes a turn, and goes on and up between the mountains. Eastward it has no visible end. It descends, it is said, through to the Gulf.
The sunlight of a warm September afternoon, so it feels, pours over the whole, glowing grandly on these mountains, pouring a flood of light on the upper terminations where the hills clasp hands over the valley, and glistening sweetly from the home-like landscape below.
One would not tire of gazing, or of going down, though the latter is an hour's job, the former a second's. It is wonderful what great gifts God spreads out on the earth for his children, and how solitary the most of them are. Bryant could not make solitude more solitary than in those lines of his,
"Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings."
So here sleeps this wonderful ravine, with its towering mountains, in sun or moon, in midnight blackness or midday splendor, and rarely looks on the face of man. Does not the Giver of every good and perfect gift enjoy His own gifts? "For His pleasure they are and were created." Then the Barranca would be satisfied if no mortal eye ever took in its beauty. It smiles responsive to the smile of its Lord.
Long we hang above the picture. At risk of life we creep to the outermost twig, and gaze down. It stands forth a gem of its own. No rival picture intermeddleth therewith. "It is worth a journey of a thousand miles," said a distinguished traveler to me to-day, "to see the Barranca Grande and the Regla Palisades." And I say "ditto" to Mr. Burke.
We are back to Regla and off to Pachuca none too early, for it is four and one-fourth of the clock ere we leave our too-hospitable friends of the valley, and turn homeward our horses' heads and our own—well-turned these latter be already by what we have seen. It is dark at six, and the ride is five hours, and the country full of robbers. Dark falls on us before we reach Velasco—thick, soft, warm. We begin to climb the mountains and pass the lower entrance of Real del Monte, when I get a bigger scare by far than that which frighted us near Omatuska.
I had just been talking with the builder of the Vera Cruz road. He had expressed fears of an attack, and as he had been long in the land, his fears were well grounded, at least to me. He had been describing how a French friend of his was lately cut to pieces on the hill we were soon to cross. So I was in an excellent condition for a fright. He had ridden ahead a rod or less, and was chatting Spanish with the conductor, Mr. Comargo. It was pitch-dark. Horsemen had been passing us quite frequently, lively with pulqui, and the bull-fight of the day. They were all in good fighting trim. Suddenly a number of them rode in among us, wheeled round their horses, and drove up to the conductor. I heard them speak his name. "It is come now, I am sure of it," I thought. These fellows are going to seize the conductor, and pistols and rifles will instantly flash and fire. As I had neither rifle nor pistol, I was not expected to take a very prominent part in the mêlée. I could see them dimly speak to the leader, and awaited the fire. It did not come. What does it mean? One second—ten—thirty elapsed, and no cry, no grapple, no shot. I turned to one of the escort at my side, and summoning up all the Spanish at my command, I said, "Nosotros ombres?" "Si, señor," was his calming reply, and the scare was over. They were gentlemen from Real del Monte, who had ridden down to escort us through the town. My escort, who said "Yes, sir," did not rebuke me for my bad Spanish. But when I got back to Mexico, and was telling the adventure to some Yankees, they laughed at my language, and said my question meant "We friends?" instead of "Our friends?" which I meant to say, and that I ought to have said, "Nuestros ombres?"
I insert this, so that if you are equally frightened you may be sure and be grammatical, otherwise your stay-at-home friends, who know just a bit more than you, and not your Spanish comrades, will be sure to make fun of you, even as those who never write a book or an article can cut up the grammar of those who do. Lindley Murray did not write Shakspeare, nor Goold Brown edit the Atlantic; but how much more they know about correct writing than mere geniuses!
Down hill, on the box with the driver, I go, for my friend, the general, begs the loan of my horse; and, pitying his ill-luck with the former steed, I relent and grant the second favor. The driver responds to my American Spanish with a ceaseless "Si "—not "sigh," as you might properly suppose, but "see." Especially when I say "Ablaro" (another blunder) "Espagnol muy mal" ("I speak Spanish very bad"), you ought to have heard him put the emphasis on that "Si, señor."
We wind around the gulfs of the mountain-side. A white rim about a black sea the road appears. Robberless, and now fearless, we greet the lights of Pachuca, drive through its narrow streets, and, at nine and a half, ride under the fortified arches of the Casa Grande.
The Old and the New accompany us even after we get within the safe and luxurious inclosure; for I am no sooner seated at our ten-o'clock dinner than word comes that a couple await my presence at a wedding, and the guests also. So the dinner is left half done, so far as the appetite goes, and the guard is followed to an English residence, that of the superintendent of the mines. Here we wait two hours for the arrival of the clerk of the city, who must be present to make the clerical work of any value. A supper of English tea, cheese, bread, and buns breaks that two hours in pieces, and half an hour after midnight the Cornwall youth and maiden are duly and truly married by a Mexican officer of state and an American clergyman. So ended the day, when the clock struck one, and I struck the couch, satisfied with this full cup of the Old and the New.
And now, having taken you over the ride, you may like, as practical Yankees, to know what all this is for. You can not be much of a Yankee not to know. Look at that silver dollar! Ah, I forgot! You live in a country where the silver dollar is unknown. A country that pays off its debts, has good credit everywhere, pays its employés regularly, soldiers and clerks and officers, and yet does not clink the silver. Here all is silver and bankruptcy. No currency but coin, and no credit at home or abroad. General Butler's argument for a paper currency based on the credit of the government is the practice of America, whatever be its theory. Mexico has sent out three thousand millions of silver, and is still a silverless country. The Real del Monte mines, as all this group is called, have been known almost from the invasion of Cortez. They have been regularly and valuably worked for over a hundred and fifty years, though with some intermissions, caused by the water getting into the mines.
The most successful operator was Pedro Terreras, a muleteer, who found a shaft about 1762, worked it, and grew so rich that he gave Charles IV. of Spain two vessels of war, and promised him, if he would visit America and Regla, that he should never put foot on the New World, but only on the silver from his mines. He was made Count of Regla, and his family are still among the wealthiest Mexicans. The present yield of the mines is about four millions annually.
We went into an "adit," or passage by which the tram-way drags out the ore. It is the Gautemozin mine, and properly named for the last Aztec emperor, who bravely but vainly sought to keep these riches from the European clutch. It is the richest in the country. A mile or so by mules, careful not to put out your arm and to get too lifted up in your head, and you come to a higher hole in the mountain, and a deeper one also. Here ladders descend for fifteen hundred feet. We take that for granted, climb a hundred feet, and see the steam-engine working in the bowels of the earth. I had heard that this was an English invention. I find it an American discovery. Here we see it growing. It looks strange, this fierce fire in the heart of the mountain, and some of our companions fear it as typical of the place we do not go up to.
These engines everywhere are to draw off the water. They are run by Englishmen entirely. The ore comes up in long iron boxes, is dumped into carts, is divided off in bags, one in ten of which goes to the miner, besides six reals a day. The ore is worth about as much more; a dollar and a half a day is quite a fair day's wages. They search every workman three times as he leaves the mine, from hair to shoes. He has only two garments—a short linen jacket, and a pair of trowsers without pockets. These are carefully shaken. His hat and slippers are pulled off, and equally searched.
The ore does not look very lustrous, but yields about one hundred dollars to the tun. It is crushed, then washed in circular troughs by mules, then trodden out, as at Regla, with chemicals, then baked, then shipped to Mexico, where it goes through a half-dozen bakings and brewings and rollings and stampings before it gets into your pocket for a moment. The other minerals, zinc, copper, antimony, etc., give it more or less difficulty of reduction, but in a country where transportation is cheaper, and the markets nearer, would themselves be preserved, and made to pay in their own value the cost of reducing the richer minerals.
But few of the mines are valuable, and though from three to four millions is the annual product, there are no dividends. The Real del Monte mines proper have not paid expenses within two hundred thousand dollars a year for the past ten years. Those of Pachuca do better, but do not do much. Many mines are worked at a loss. Much expense is necessary for drawing off the water. Miles and miles of "adits" run under the mountain. So that the vast receipts are swallowed up in the vaster expenditures. Yet they expect the costly works will be paid for, and then we will all be changed from mule-driving Pedros to Counts of Regla. If it were not for hope, the heart would break, and silver-mining companies also. They do in spite of hope, as more than one poor minister has found, from Massachusetts to Minnesota.
The conductor says, "Do not invest your money in silver mines. A share or two, if you can lose it, may be well enough; but it is a less certain crop than wheat." He is a good man to follow. Yet one success carries a thousand failures, and a millionaire a century ago will make beggars of all the generations following, as they attempt to discover what he discovered without any attempt. Motto for silver mines: "Be content with what stock you have."
Our ride to Pachuca was for veins of ecclesiastical silver, richer than all this ore. These we found, and were well repaid. Four churches already exist, the fruits of that trip and the subsequent faithful followings of better men. A lady from the States has opened a Spanish and an English school, and Pachuca bids fair to be the silver circuit of the Mexican Conference not many days hence.
Invest in these operations. They are as Old as God and as New—from everlasting to everlasting. Put your money and your prayers into the soul silver mines, and you will lay up treasures in heaven, where no Mexican robbers nor thieves of worldliness ever break through or steal, and where you shall be receiving increasing and immeasurable interest on these human and earthly and present investments for ever and ever.
- ↑ "B" and "v" are pronounced exactly alike by the natives; so the word Orizaba is pronounced as in this couplet.