A Strong Man, Who Is Not
Accustomed To This Labour, Perspires Most Profusely, With
Merely Carrying Up His Own Body.
With this very severe
labour, they live entirely on boiled beans and bread.
They
would prefer having bread alone; but their masters, finding
that they cannot work so hard upon this, treat them like
horses, and make them eat the beans. Their pay is here
rather more than at the mines of Jajuel, being from 24 to 28
shillings per month. They leave the mine only once in three
weeks; when they stay with their families for two days. One
of the rules of this mine sounds very harsh, but answers
pretty well for the master. The only method of stealing gold
is to secrete pieces of the ore, and take them out as occasion
may offer. Whenever the major-domo finds a lump thus
hidden, its full value is stopped out of the wages of all the
men; who thus, without they all combine, are obliged to keep
watch over each other.
When the ore is brought to the mill, it is ground into an
impalpable powder; the process of washing removes all the
lighter particles, and amalgamation finally secures the
gold-dust. The washing, when described, sounds a very simple
process; but it is beautiful to see how the exact adaptation of
the current of water to the specific gravity of the gold, so
easily separates the powdered matrix from the metal. The
mud which passes from the mills is collected into pools, where
it subsides, and every now and then is cleared out, and thrown
into a common heap. A great deal of chemical action then
commences, salts of various kinds effloresce on the surface,
and the mass becomes hard. After having been left for a year
or two, and then rewashed, it yields gold; and this process
may be repeated even six or seven times; but the gold each
time becomes less in quantity, and the intervals required (as
the inhabitants say, to generate the metal) are longer. There
can be no doubt that the chemical action, already mentioned,
each time liberates fresh gold from some combination. The
discovery of a method to effect this before the first grinding
would without doubt raise the value of gold-ores many fold.
It is curious to find how the minute particles of gold, being
scattered about and not corroding, at last accumulate in
some quantity. A short time since a few miners, being out of
work, obtained permission to scrape the ground round the
house and mills; they washed the earth thus got together, and
so procured thirty dollars' worth of gold. This is an exact
counterpart of what takes place in nature. Mountains suffer
degradation and wear away, and with them the metallic veins
which they contain. The hardest rock is worn into impalpable
mud, the ordinary metals oxidate, and both are removed;
but gold, platina, and a few others are nearly indestructible,
and from their weight, sinking to the bottom, are left behind.
After whole mountains have passed through this grinding
mill, and have been washed by the hand of nature, the residue
becomes metalliferous, and man finds it worth his while to
complete the task of separation.
Bad as the above treatment of the miners appears, it is
gladly accepted of by them; for the condition of the labouring
agriculturists is much worse. Their wages are lower, and
they live almost exclusively on beans. This poverty must be
chiefly owing to the feudal-like system on which the land is
tilled: the landowner gives a small plot of ground to the
labourer for building on and cultivating, and in return has
his services (or those of a proxy) for every day of his life,
without any wages. Until a father has a grown-up son, who
can by his labour pay the rent, there is no one, except on
occasional days, to take care of his own patch of ground.
Hence extreme poverty is very common among the labouring
classes in this country.
There are some old Indian ruins in this neighbourhood,
and I was shown one of the perforated stones, which Molina
mentions as being found in many places in considerable
numbers. They are of a circular flattened form, from five to
six inches in diameter, with a hole passing quite through the
centre. It has generally been supposed that they were used
as heads to clubs, although their form does not appear at all
well adapted for that purpose. Burchell [3] states that some
of the tribes in Southern Africa dig up roots by the aid of a
stick pointed at one end, the force and weight of which are
increased by a round stone with a hole in it, into which the
other end is firmly wedged. It appears probable that the
Indians of Chile formerly used some such rude agricultural
instrument.
One day, a German collector in natural history, of the
name of Renous, called, and nearly at the same time an old
Spanish lawyer. I was amused at being told the conversation
which took place between them. Renous speaks Spanish so
well, that the old lawyer mistook him for a Chilian. Renous
alluding to me, asked him what he thought of the King of
England sending out a collector to their country, to pick up
lizards and beetles, and to break stones? The old gentleman
thought seriously for some time, and then said, "It is not
well, - _hay un gato encerrado aqui_ (there is a cat shut up
here). No man is so rich as to send out people to pick up
such rubbish. I do not like it: if one of us were to go and
do such things in England, do not you think the King of
England would very soon send us out of his country?" And
this old gentleman, from his profession, belongs to the better
informed and more intelligent classes! Renous himself, two
or three years before, left in a house at San Fernando some
caterpillars, under charge of a girl to feed, that they might
turn into butterflies.
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