MOVING A MANSION
When dining, we sit on improvised stools around a homemade table and just back of us crouch a group of attentive admirers—the famished family dogs, rough-haired, cadaverous, wolf-eyed, silent dogs they are. They watch with furtive intentness each morsel we put into our mouths, they instantly pounce upon each crumb and bone which falls within their reach. They never bark—only a shrill melancholy howl I sometimes hear breaking the stillness of the night; they never wag their tails, for these are always tucked between their legs. When we have finished, we toss to these wistful watchers the refuse of our meal. There is a silent scuffle, a hasty crunching and then each dog sits up as hungry and observant as before. Thus our friends breakfast and dine and sup with us, and so filled with suspicion and fear of man are they, that they never by any chance allow us to approach. “Veni aqui perro” (come here, dog) an Indian boy calls out, and immediately perro slinks out of sight. Descended originally from the wild coyote, which they much resemble, these dogs seem to have acquired little taming by contact with man.
Next up the creek above us lie the Azteca mines, long since abandoned, and then come the China (pronounced cheena) mines, the only group now being worked, the present superintendente being a member of the Castrejon family to whom they belong. The vein is a porphyry-and-quartz carrying copper, and is about three hundred feet wide and almost vertical. It is nearly with the watercourse, about one degree to the west, and how deep it may go no one knows. This whole region is full of holes, generally, say, four feet to six feet square, from which for centuries the copper ore has been taken. The rich pieces were carried away and the balance was thrown upon the ground. The entire country is filled with innumerable piles of this abandoned copper ore carrying two and three per cent of copper, and waiting for that distant day when railroads, modern machinery and efficient labor shall make this natural wealth profitable to modern enterprise. As it is, the present primitive Indian methods of mining and transportation on mules, unventilated pits, and awful trails climbing stupendous heights, destroy the possibility of profit even in working the richest ores.
Sunday we spent in riding over the hills which rise from three to five hundred feet above the stream. Up their easy, rounded slopes a horse can clamber almost anywhere. It is a country where cattle roam and where the Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) are the only human beings. In the afternoon, we went down to the San Pedro River, now a small stream, and bathed in the tepid water, where I surprised an old familiar friend, also watching the limpid water, a Belted Kingfisher.
BRINGING OUT THE ORE LA CHINA MINES
Monday, we spent from seven o’clock to ten, going through the China mines, which are worked by the Mexicans in the old primitive way. We went into the side of the hill by a short tunnel, which led to a black hole up out of which stuck a slippery pole. On one side of this pole notches are cut, and into these notches, if you want to descend, you must sidewise set your feet. Our guide clasped the pole with one arm, holding aloft his flickering light with the other, and slowly sank from sight into the blackness below. We all went down, not knowing what might be beneath us. At first, my feet would not hold in the notches, but it was a matter of setting in my feet or falling into unlimited darkness, so I clung tight and came slowly down. The distance was only about twenty feet. Here there was an off-set of eight or ten feet, and then another pole and more notches, blackness above as well as below, and the notches had grown slick through years of contact with shoeless Indian feet. Thus we went down and down, descending some two hundred feet to where the air lay hot and heavy and our breathing became stertorous and slow. We then followed a long narrow tunnel, and came to where naked Indians with steel wedges were sledging out the ore. The Indians descend in the morning, they work as long as the foul air permits, then they gather up all the rock they have dislodged, put it into a bull hide sack, load this on their backs and climb up the notched poles again to daylight. On issuing from the mines they stagger to an ore pile, under a thatched roof set on high poles, and dump their loads. Around this pile of ore squat twenty or thirty Indians, each holding a stone in his hand. Each has before him a large flat piece of rock. He reaches for the ore pile, takes from it a lump which looks fairly good and cracks it to powder between the two stones. The mean ore is thrown on a dump pile, the rich ore is all cracked up. This is the original of the modern stamp mill, and it is the only stamp mill the Indian-Mexican will probably ever know. The ore, after it is pulverized in this way by hand, is put into a wooden trough into which water is poured which has been carried up in bull hide sacks from the stream below, and the ore is thus washed and concentrated. It is afterwards put into sacks, about two hundred pounds to the sack, and taken fifty or sixty miles, over the frightful precipitous trails, to the railroad at Patzcuaro, whence it is shipped to the smelter.
WASHING COPPER ORE