“I don’t think I ever heard the name of the place before,” replied Sheridan.
“It contains the greatest mine of quicksilver in the world,” added the doctor. “It was worked in the time of the Romans, and is still deemed inexhaustible. Four thousand men are employed here during the winter, for they cannot labor in the summer because the heat renders it too unhealthy. The men can work only six hours at a time; and many of them are salivated and paralyzed by the vapors of the mercury.”
“Is this the same stuff the doctors use?” asked Murray.
“It is; but it is prepared especially for the purpose. These mines yield the government of Spain a revenue of nearly a million dollars a year.”
The country through which the tourists passed was not highly cultivated, except near the towns. On the way they saw a man ploughing-in his grain, and the implement seemed to be a wooden one. But every thing in the agricultural line was of the most primitive kind. In another place they saw a farmer at work miles from his house, for there was no village within that distance. Though there is not a fence to be seen, every man knows his own boundary-lines. In going to his day’s work, he may have to go several miles, taking his plough and other tools in a cart; and probably he wastes half his day in going to and from his work. But the Spanish peasant is an easy-going fellow, and he does not go very early, or stay very late. Often in the morning and in the middle of the afternoon our travellers saw them going to or coming from their work in this manner.
“Now we are out of La Mancha,” said the doctor, half an hour after the train left Almaden.
“And what are we in now, sir?” asked Murray.
“We are in the province of Cordova, which is a part of Andalusia. But we only go through a corner of Cordova, and then we strike into Estremadura.”
In the afternoon the country looked better, though the people and the houses seemed to be very poor. The country looked better; but it was only better than the region near Madrid, and, compared with France or Italy, it was desolation. The effects of the mesta were clearly visible.
“Medellin,” said Murray, when he had spelled out the word on a station where the train stopped about half-past two.