CHAPTER XVIII. THE NEW MINERS.

The modern Mexican is true to the traditions of old Spain--jealous of foreigners, opposed to change, ever copying the past.

There is a legend across the waters that one morning, not a great while ago, the glorious angel who keeps the keys of the viewless gate gave Adam permission to come back and look after his farm. Watched by Gabriel, chief of the guard angelic, the spirit (oldest of all created, yet forever young) dropped through the silent starry spaces, among rushing planets and blazing suns, numbered only in Heaven, poised above the Alps, and looked over Germany. The men were smoking meerschaums, drinking beer, and talking metaphysics. Disgusted, he fled in swift flight toward France. There he saw nothing but polite frivolities. The soul of our common ancestor was saddened. France was even worse than Germany. He did not linger. Taking wing while morn still purpled the east, he crossed the mountains into Spain, and, resting incumbent on air, surveyed the kingdom. One glance across it sufficed. The spirit folded his radiant wings. “Ah!” he cried, enraptured. “Home again! Here all is just as I left it.” This old story well illustrates the influence of Iberian aversion to change, which has been felt wherever Spain has had a lasting foothold in the New World. The antiquated mining implements of the by-gone generations of New Mexico are the queerest things in the world to the Leadviller, used to the ponderous quartz mills, driven by invisible power, moving like a free intelligence.

When the mines in the Placer Mountains, thirty miles southwest of the City of Holy Faith, were in operation, they were worked by the old-fashioned Spanish _arrastre_, the rudest, most wasteful of mining machines. It consists in nothing more than two large flat stones, attached to a horizontal beam and drawn around by a mule (in the days of slavery by men and women), upon a bed of flat stones. The process of grinding the ore was slow, the amalgamation imperfect, and not more than one-third of the gold could be separated from the quartz.

There is good reason for believing that mines near Santa Fé were worked in this way before Hudson entered the river which bears his name. They were probably _en bonanza_ in the years when the great Queen, steering the English ship through stormy seas, paused amid the breakers to listen to the wooing of Robert Dudley.

The Spaniard in that day mined with stone hammers, and it is surprising to us they could sink deep shafts with such wretched appliances. They were ignorant of carbonates of silver, and took nothing but the argentiferous galena from the vein, throwing away nine-tenths of the best-paying mineral. There is little statistical knowledge of the working of any one mine in this territory, but old Church records are said to show that the ten per cent. in tithes collected for it amounted to about ten millions. This was realized from mines adjacent to Santa Fé. In each of the ravines running into the Cañada de las Minas (Glen of Mines) more or less of “float” is found. This is silver-bearing galena ore, washed from lodes crossing the ravines, and is certain indication of silver leads in close vicinity.

In 1846, when Gen. Kearney took possession of Santa Fé nearly all the miners left the placers, never to return. Many reasons are given for their hasty flight, one of which is that, being Mexicans, they feared impressment into the American service, and escaped while they could. It is believed that mining operations in the height of prosperity then suddenly stopped, as the abandoned and decaying town of Francisco near by shows; and but little has since been done to revive the business until within the last few years.

Los Cerillos Mines, now being rapidly opened up, are in a chain of low conical mountains north of the Galisteo, twenty miles from the capital city. In these ranges are found syenitic rocks, carboniferous limestone and sandstone formations, the latter containing coal. They are traversed for thirty or forty miles with valuable lodes, the veins running from the northeast to the southwest, and almost daily fresh “Spanish traces,” old workings, come in sight, to cheer the heart of the prospector. After the rebellion of 1680 the Indians returned to their pueblos and submitted to the foreign yoke, on condition that mines should not be reopened. It would appear the treaty was kept in good faith, and that the very ancient mines remained untouched during the subsequent period of Spanish rule. Some of these old diggings in Los Cerillos have been so carefully concealed that it requires the keenest scrutiny to find them. The shaft of the Santa Rosa Mine, on reöpening, was found to have been sunk fifty-five feet. One shaft is one hundred and sixty-five feet to water. How much deeper no man can tell. The _débris_ and precious mineral were carried up on the backs of _peones_, and the notched cedar trees which were their only ladders two hundred years ago are still the means of descent to the venturesome traveler, exploring the rediscovered galleries.

The early proprietaries followed no rules in prospecting. They were led by whim, or most frequently by dreams, the medium of communication preferable to the patron saints. The most prejudiced observer can not help admiring the boldness and energy of their movements. And the fields are just as rich to-day. If they paid under such feeble, unskilled management, they must be much more profitable now, with the help of science and delicate machinery. For three hundred years and more the sands have been washed out at the base of Los Cerillos; but not until very recently have those washing for precious grains of metal thought of looking to the _source_, the core of the mountains, for the best deposits. This was the process of experiment and experience in the great California Gulch at Leadville.

In these volcanic hills, still bearing marks of the fiery lava flow, are the Montezuma Turquoise Mines, which are marvels of deep excavation. In one instance half a mountain is cut away by Indians of the pre-historic period, in their search for the coveted, the priceless _chalchuite_, the Aztecan diamond.

The tradition runs that anciently the gold and silver-bearing ores were borne on the backs of _burros_ to Chihuahua, Mexico (six hundred miles away), for reduction; that long trains of the patient creatures, lean, thirsty, and beaten with many stripes, were perpetually coming and going along the Valley del Norte, curtaining it with clouds of yellow dust.

It seems a baseless tradition. If the gold-hunters could reduce their ores in Chihuahua, why not in Santa Fé as well? In 1867 the larger portion of El Palacio, then standing, was cleared away, and, among many curious relics brought to light, after long burial, was a clumsy smelting furnace, thoroughly bricked up on every side and worn with long and hard usage. From its ashes were taken out bits of charcoal, showing clearly that ages ago, time out of mind, the Spaniards discovered and used it in smelting their ores.

The ancient method of washing for silver was a very simple process. The operator required nothing but a crowbar, a shovel, and a tanned skin. This last he fashioned into a water-tight basin by stretching it upon a square frame. Filling it with water, he stood over it, rocking in it a little tub holding sand and grit, from which, washed free of clay and earth, he separated the worthless pebbles, and selected the valuable particles.

In old ranches through the country we occasionally see an antique candlestick of beaten silver, or a salt-cellar of hammered _plata_--heirlooms proving that in long-gone generations silver was found and in quantities.

Ask how old they are, and the ever-ready “_Quien sabe_” is the answer.

From the beginning of the seventeenth till the eighteenth century there was a rapid succession of rebellions and civil wars, with Santa Fé as the field and the important strategic point. In 1680 the Pueblos allied with the Teguas--described as a nation of warriors--and routed the Spaniards, driving them from the land as far south as El Paso del Norte.

Another army was mustered and sent up from the City of Mexico, but feared to take the offensive, and for twelve years the land had rest, was quiet, as before the foreign invasion. It was in this interval of twelve years that the ancient mines were hidden. All the old mineral workings were covered and carefully concealed, and death was the penalty for any who should reveal to white men where precious metals or stones were to be found. After 1692 mining in the province was abandoned, and to this day it is the rarest thing for a Spaniard or an Indian to engage in mining. They seem to have forsaken it forever.

It is said that in the whole compass of East Indian literature there is not a single passage showing a love of liberty. The millions appear created for the gratification of one man. If the West Indian be, indeed, his brother, then were brothers never so unlike. To the North American, freedom is the very breath of his nostrils, and the degradation of slavery worse than slow torture or sudden death.

In irrepressible yearning for liberty the Pueblos escaped from mines, such as I have attempted to describe, to inaccessible mountain fastnesses, the steeps of distant cañons and hiding-places in dens of animals. How many perished in these realms of silence and despair none but the recording angel can testify. The polished armor of the invaders covered hearts hard as triple brass, and silken banners floated over knights whose avarice was equalled only by their cruelty. The fugitives were tracked and hunted down with bloodhounds, as though they were beasts of prey.

As has been written of the same tragedy then being enacted in Peru: “It was one unspeakable outrage, one unutterable ruin, without discrimination of age or sex. From hiding-places in the clefts of rocks and the solitude of invisible caves, where there was no witness but the all-seeing sun, there went up to God a cry of human despair.” The Bishop of Chiapsa, himself a Spaniard, affirms that more than fifteen millions were cut off in his time, slaves of the mines. On the Northern Continent history is but an imperfect guide. That the rich valleys of the Rio Grande and the Pecos once held a dense population is plainly proved by the ruins of cities slowly crumbling away. We have only dim glances into long, dark spaces; but there is light enough to see the conqueror’s daily walk was on the necks of the conquered natives, who swiftly declined to an abject and heart-broken race.

So great was the horror of the first conquest that the memory of it has been kept alive through ten generations. The Pueblo mother still shudders as she tells the story of ancient wrong and woe to her children; and the unwritten law yet binds the red race to secrecy, and is a hindrance in the opening of mines in the territories.

Princely fortunes were made, and, if tribes, whole nations, were swept off the face of the earth; they were but so many heathen less to cumber the ground and drag the march of conquest. To understand how valueless human life was then, look down the steep sides of the old mines reopened. Rows of cedar pegs serve, you see, as ladders along the black walls, from the bottom to the entrance. Imagine a man climbing up, weighted with a sack containing a hundred pounds of ore, fastened to his back by a broad band of raw-hide across his forehead. The slightest error in the placement of hand or foot must miss the hold, and the burden-bearer be dashed to pieces; but it could have been no loss, else better means would have been provided. There must have been hundreds at hand to take his place.

When did Spain stretch forth her hand, except to scatter curses? It is part of my faith, derived from the study of history--in fact, it is the great lesson of history--that nations are punishable, like individuals, and that for every national sin there is, soon or late, a national expiation. Does not Spain place the doctrine beyond question? No European power has had such opportunities for noble achievement; yet what good has come through her? What grand idea or benign principle, what wholesome impression upon mankind? She was the Tarshish of Solomon; her mines were the subject of quarrel between the Roman and Carthagenian; in the day of Christ she still supplied the world with the royal metals. Such were her resources in the beginning. Afterwards, when commerce reached out through the Pillars of Hercules and drew the West in under its influences, a people of masterful genius sitting where Europe bends down so close to Africa, would have stretched a gate from shore to shore and by it ruled the earth.

Yet later she received the gift of the New World. Where is the trophy marking her beneficent use of the gift? She had already ruined the civilization which had its sea in the pillared shades of the Alhambra. In her keeping were placed the remains of the Aztec and the relics of the Incas, only to be destroyed. Drunk with the blood of nations, she who ruthlessly subjected everything to the battle-ax, the rack, and the torch is now dying of slow decay.

Could the breath blow from the four winds and breathe upon the Indians, reckoned by millions, who perished under Spanish rule; if their dust could but come together, and all those slain live again and testify, alas! for Castelar, wisest of visionaries, awaiting the Republic of Europe to bring about the resurrection of his country.