Not infrequently in the days to come some accident to the hoist-engine
above left us to stand an hour or more packed tightly together in our
suspended four-foot space in unmitigated darkness. For this and other
reasons no peon was ever permitted to ride on the platform with an
American. Twelve hundred feet down we stepped out into a winding, rock
gallery nearly six feet wide and high, where fourteen natives were
loading rock and mud into iron dump-cars and pushing them to a near-by
chute. Even at this depth flies were thick. A facetious boss asserted
they hatched on the peons. My task here was to "sacar muestras"--"take
samples," as it was called in English. From each car as it passed I
snatched a handful of mud and small broken rock and thrust it into a
sack that later went to the assay office to show what grade of ore the
vein was producing.

Once an hour I descended to a hole far beneath by a rope ladder, life
depending on a spike driven in the rock above and a secure handhold, for
the handful of "pay dirt" two peons were grubbing down out of a lower
_veta_, a long narrow alleyway of soft earth and small stones that
stretched away into the interior of the mountain between solid walls of
rock. No inexperienced man would have supposed this mud worth more than
any other. But silver does not come out of the earth in minted dollars.

In the mine the peons wore their hats, a considerable protection against
falling rocks, but were otherwise naked but for their sandals and a
narrow strip of once white cloth between their legs, held by a string
around the waist. Some were well-built, though all were small, and in
the concentrated patch of light the play of their muscles through the
light-brown skins was fascinating. Working thus naked seemed so much
more dangerous; the human form appeared so much more feeble and soft,
delving unclothed in the fathomless, rocky earth. Many a man was marked