here and there with long deep scars. It was noticeable how character,
habits, dissipation, which show so plainly in the face, left but little
sign on the rest of the body, which remained for the most part smooth
and unwrinkled.

The peons were more than careless. All day long dynamite was tossed
carelessly back and forth about me. A man broke up three or four sticks
of it at a time, wrapped them in paper, and beat the mass into the form
of a ball on a rock at my feet. Miners grow so accustomed to this that
they note it, if at all, with complete indifference, often working and
serenely smoking seated on several hundred pounds of explosives. One
peon of forty in this gang had lost his entire left arm in a recent
explosion, yet he handled the dangerous stuff as carelessly as ever.
Several others were mutilated in lesser degrees. They depend on charms
and prayers to their favorite saint rather than on their own
precautions. Every few minutes the day through came the cry: "'Sta
pegado!" that sent us skurrying a few feet away until a dull, deafening
explosion brought down a new section of the vein. Not long before, there
had been a cave-in just beyond where we were working, and the several
men imprisoned there had not been rescued, so that now and then a skull
and portions of skeleton came down with the rock. The peons had first
balked at this, but the superintendent had told them the bones were
merely strange shapes of ore, ordered them to break up the skulls and
throw them in with the rest, and threatened to discharge and blackball
any man who talked of the matter.

By law a Mexican injured in the mine could not be treated on the spot,
but must be first carried to Guanajuato--often dying on the way--to be
examined by the police and then brought back to the mine hospital. Small
hurts were of slight importance to the peons. During my first hour