small boat, or riding along the line of the unfinished railroad
on horseback. Either route consumed six valuable hours, and
Clay, who was anxious to see his new field of action, beat
impatiently upon the rail of the rolling tub as it wallowed in
the sea.

He spent the first three days after his arrival at the mines in
the mountains, climbing them on foot and skirting their base on
horseback, and sleeping where night overtook him. Van
Antwerp did not accompany him on his tour of inspection through
the mines, but delegated that duty to an engineer named
MacWilliams, and to Weimer, the United States Consul at Valencia,
who had served the company in many ways and who was in its
closest confidence.

For three days the men toiled heavily over fallen trunks and
trees, slippery with the moss of centuries, or slid backward on
the rolling stones in the waterways, or clung to their ponies'
backs to dodge the hanging creepers. At times for hours together
they walked in single file, bent nearly double, and seeing
nothing before them but the shining backs and shoulders of the
negroes who hacked out the way for them to go. And again they
would come suddenly upon a precipice, and drink in the soft cool
breath of the ocean, and look down thousands of feet upon the
impenetrable green under which they had been crawling, out to
where it met the sparkling surface of the Caribbean Sea. It was
three days of unceasing activity while the sun shone, and of
anxious questionings around the camp-fire when the darkness fell,
and when there were no sounds on the mountain-side but that of
falling water in a distant ravine or the calls of the night-