"Art. 6. Please handle all the bright work. We have nothing to do but clean it.
"Art. 7. Don't spit on the ceiling. We have lost the ladder.
"Art. 8. Should the engineer look angry don't pay any attention to him. He is harmless.
"Art. 9. If you have no cigarettes take his. They grow in his garden.
"Art. 10. If he is not entertaining, report him to the superintendent and he will be fired at once."
On the second day the scene of my operations was changed to the eighth level, a hundred feet below that of the first. It was a long gallery winding away through the mountain, and connecting a mile beyond with another shaft opening on another hill, so that the heavy air was tempered by a constant mild breeze.
Side shafts, just large enough for the ore-cars to pass, pierced far back into the mountain at frequent intervals. Back in these it was furnace hot. From them the day-gang took out 115 car-loads, though the chute was blocked now and then by huge rocks that must be "shot" by a small charge of dynamite stuck on them, a new way of "shooting the chutes" that was like striking the ear-drums with a club.
The peons placed in each gallery either a cross or a lithograph of the Virgin in a shrine made of a dynamite-box, and kept at least one candle always burning before it. In the morning it was a common sight to see several appear with a bunch of fresh-picked flowers to set up before the image. Most of the men wore a rosary or charm about the neck, which they did not remove even when working naked, and all crossed themselves each time they entered the mine. Not a few chanted prayers while the cage was descending. As often as they passed the gallery-shrine, they left off for an instant the vilest oaths, in which several boys from twelve to fourteen excelled, to snatch off their hats to the Virgin, then instantly took up their cursing again. Whenever I left the mine they begged the half-candle I had left, and set it up with the rest. Yet they had none of the touchiness of the Hindu about their superstitions, and showed no resentment whatever even when a "gringo" stopped to light his cigarette at their improvised "altars."
Trusted miners hired to search the others for stolen ore as they leave the shaft were sometimes waylaid on the journey home and beaten almost or quite to death. Once given a position of authority, they were harsher with their own kind than were the white men. The scarred and seared old "Pingüico" searcher, who stood at his block three times each twenty-four hours, had already killed three men who thus attacked him. Under no provocation whatever would the peons fight underground, but lay for their enemies only outside. A shift-boss in a neighboring mine remained seven weeks below, having his food sent down to him, and continued to work daily with miners who had sworn to kill him once they caught him on earth. One of our engineers had long been accustomed at another mine to hand his revolver to the searcher when the shift appeared and to arm himself with a heavy club. One day the searcher gave the superintendent a "tip," and when the hundred or more were lined up they were suddenly commanded to take off their huarachas. A gasp of dismay sounded, but all hastily snatched off their sandals and something like a bushel of high-grade ore in thin strips lay scattered on the ground. But a few mornings later the searcher was found dead half way between the mine and his home.
Some of the mines round about Guanajuato were in a most chaotic state, especially those of individual ownership. The equipment was often so poor that fatal accidents were common, deaths even resulting from rocks falling down the shafts. Among our engineers was one who had recently come from a mine where during two weeks' employment he pulled out from one to four corpses daily, until "it got so monotonous" he resigned. In that same mine it was customary to lock in each shift until the relieving one arrived, and many worked four or five shifts, thirty-two to forty hours without a moment of rest, swallowing a bit of food now and then with a sledge in one hand. "High-graders," as ore-thieves are called, were numerous. The near-by "Sirena" mine was reputed to have in its personnel more men who lived by stealing ore than honest workmen. There ran the story of a new boss in a mine so near ours that we could hear its blasting from our eighth level, long dull thuds that seemed to run through the mountain like a shudder through a human body, who was making his first underground inspection when his light suddenly went out and he felt the cold barrel of a revolver against his temple. A peon voice sounded in the darkness close to his ear: