and what has been told me by others. I have been here three days
now, and I assure you, gentlemen, that my easiest course would be
to pack up my things and go home on the next steamer. I was sent
down here to take charge of a mine in active operation, and I
find--what? I find that in six months you have done almost
nothing, and that the little you have condescended to do has been
done so badly that it will have to be done over again; that you
have not only wasted a half year of time--and I can't tell how
much money--but that you have succeeded in antagonizing all the
people on whose good-will we are absolutely dependent; you have
allowed your machinery to rust in the rain, and your workmen to
rot with sickness. You have not only done nothing, but you
haven't a blue print to show me what you meant to do. I have
never in my life come across laziness and mismanagement and
incompetency upon such a magnificent and reckless scale. You
have not built the pier, you have not opened the freight road,
you have not taken out an ounce of ore. You know more of
Valencia than you know of these mines; you know it from the
Alameda to the Canal. You can tell me what night the band
plays in the Plaza, but you can't give me the elevation of
one of these hills. You have spent your days on the pavements in
front of cafe's, and your nights in dance-halls, and you have
been drawing salaries every month. I've more respect for these
half-breeds that you've allowed to starve in this fever-bed than
I have for you. You have treated them worse than they'd treat a
dog, and if any of them die, it's on your heads. You have put
them in a fever-camp which you have not even taken the trouble to
drain. Your commissariat is rotten, and you have let them drink
all the rum they wanted. There is not one of you--''