BY H.
Up in the air I'm lifted high
Above the worshippers below,
Yet near their hearts I always lie,
As reverently they come and go.
I've many forms, like Proteus old,
But tell forever the same tale;
Men gaze, and see by me foretold
What sometimes makes their cheeks grow pale.
And through my secret winding course
There ebbs and flows a mighty tide;
Alas! what pangs of keen remorse
Are his who turns that stream aside!
Yet in the gay and festive throng
I am what many a maid may be,
While in the pauses of the song
Her lover pleads his cause in me.
Sometimes, a ship, I face the storm;
Sometimes beneath the earth I bide,
And then its beauty men deform
To find the secret that I hide.
But in the air, or in the breast,
Whate'er my form, like beast or bird,
I keep my secret from the rest—
By man my voice is never heard.
The quicksilver mines of Guancavelica, in Peru, are of a prodigious depth. In their profound abysses are seen streets, squares, and a chapel where religious mysteries are celebrated on all festivals. Thousands of flambeaux are continually burning in it. The miners suffer terribly from the mercurial vapors, which produce convulsions and paralysis. Thousands of workmen were condemned to forced labor in these frightful subterranean regions. These mines were discovered about 1566 by Henry Garces, a Portuguese, who was one day examining a red earth used by the Indians for making paint. He remembered that in Europe quicksilver was extracted from cinnabar, and with this earth he made some experiments which led to the opening of this mine.
QUACK!
QUACK! QUACK!
