continually offending their lazy good-nature and their pride. He
treated the rich planters, who owned the land between the mines
and the harbor over which the freight railroad must run, with as
little consideration as he showed the regiment of soldiers which
the Government had farmed out to the company to serve as laborers
in the mines. Six months after Van Antwerp had taken charge at
Valencia, Clay, who had finished the railroad in Mexico, of which
King had spoken, was asked by telegraph to undertake the work of
getting the ore out of the mountains he had discovered, and
shipping it North. He accepted the offer and was given the title
of General Manager and Resident Director, and an enormous salary,
and was also given to understand that the rough work of
preparation had been accomplished, and that the more
important service of picking up the five mountains and
putting them in fragments into tramp steamers would continue
under his direction. He had a letter of recall for Van Antwerp,
and a letter of introduction to the Minister of Mines and
Agriculture. Further than that he knew nothing of the work
before him, but he concluded, from the fact that he had been paid
the almost prohibitive sum he had asked for his services, that it
must be important, or that he had reached that place in his
career when he could stop actual work and live easily, as an
expert, on the work of others.

Clay rolled along the coast from Valencia to the mines in a
paddle-wheeled steamer that had served its usefulness on the
Mississippi, and which had been rotting at the levees in New
Orleans, when Van Antwerp had chartered it to carry tools and
machinery to the mines and to serve as a private launch for
himself. It was a choice either of this steamer and landing in a