hile convicts were trudging along under heavy burdens of ore, which
they supported on their backs by a broad strap across their foreheads.
As we passed among these well-behaved gangs of men, I was a little
startled by the foreman remarking that one of those carriers had been
convicted of killing ten men, and was under sentence of hard labor for
life. Far from there being any thing forbidding in the appearance of
these murderers, now that they were beyond the reach of intoxicating
drink, they bore the ordinary subdued expression of the Meztizo.
According to custom, they lashed me to a stanchion as an intruder; but,
upon the foreman informing them that I would pay the usual forfeit of
cigaritos on arriving at the station-house, they good-naturedly
relieved me. Then we journeyed on and on, until my powers of endurance
could sustain no more. We sat down to rest, and to gather strength for
a still longer journey. At length we set out again, sometimes climbing
up, sometimes climbing down; now stopping to examine different
specimens of ores that reflected back the glare of our lights with
dazzling brilliancy, and to look at the endless varieties in the
appearance of the rock that filled the spaces in the porphyry matrix.
Then we walked for a long way on the top of the aqueduct of the adit,
until we at last reached a vacant shaft, through which we were drawn up
and landed in the prison-house, from whence we walked to the
station-house, where we were dressed in our own clothes again.

REFINING SILVER.

When my underground wanderings were ended, and dinner eaten, it was too
late in the day to visit the refining works; but on the next morning,
bright and early, I was in the saddle, on my way to visit the different
establishments connected with this mine. First, upon the river, at the
mouth of the adit, was a stamping-mill, where gangs of stamps were
playing in troughs, and reducing the hard ore to a coarse powder. A
little way farther down the stream the ore was ground, and then, in
blast ovens or furnaces, was heated until all the baser metals in the
ore became charged with oxygen to such a degree that they would not
unite with quicksilver. The ore was then carried and placed in the
bottom of large casks, and water and quicksilver were added, and then
they were set rolling by machinery for several days, until the silver
had formed an amalgam with the mercury, while the baser metals in the
ore were disengaged from the silver. T