as of no value to his people save for
the making of ornaments. But when the process had been discovered by
which this metal could be hardened, and so made serviceable for all
manner of useful purposes--and this the more because, by the
manufacture that then ensued of tools wherewith the rock could be easily
worked, mining in a large way became possible--the development of the
mine upon a great scale had been begun, and had been continued upon a
constantly increasing scale from that time onward. All the earth beneath
where we then were, he said, was honey-combed with passages which
followed the several veins; and of these there seemed to be no end at
all, for ever as each vein was exhausted another not less rich was
found--and thus is seemed as though all the substructure of that great
mountain range were one huge mass of gold.

What the measures of weight were with which he estimated the annual
output of the mine, I could not clearly understand, but the matter was
made approximately plain to us by his statement that the daily product
of the mine never was less than one of the great bars of gold that we
had seen upon the pier in process of carriage to the Treasure-house; and
that sometimes, when veins of extraordinary richness were encountered,
even so much as four of these bars had been smelted from the ore that
the mine yielded in a single day.

"Those bars don't weigh an ounce less than two hundred pounds apiece,"
Rayburn said, when I had translated to him what Tizoc had told me. "That
makes the output of the mine not less than three tons a month, and, in a
rough way, a ton of gold is worth just about half a million of dollars.
If the Colonel isn't mixed in his figures, and if you've translated him
straight, Professor, these fellows are taking out somewheres in the
neighborhood of twenty millions a year."

Young gave a long whistle. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "that just is an
all-fired big pile of money t' be wasted on a lot of barelegged heathen
critters like these, who don't know th' Ten Commandments by sight, an'
who've never even heard of a cocktail! D' you know what I'm goin' t' do,
Rayburn, when I realize on this investment? I'm goin' t' buy th' Old
Colony Railroad, just for th' sake of bein' able t' bounce th'
Superintendent. He bounced me after that freight smash-up--and it wasn't
my fault that th' operator got mixed an' gave me th' wrong orders--and
I'll give him a taste o' th' same kind. Won't it just pa