were drilling by hand, one man holding a bar of iron a few feet long
which another was striking with a five-pound sledge that luckily never
missed its mark. This was indeed working in Mexico. It would have been
difficult to get farther into it; and a man could not but dully wonder
if he would ever get out again.

We were evidently very close to the infernal regions. Here, indeed,
would have been a splendid setting for an orthodox hell. Peons whose
only garment was the size of a postcard, some even with their hats off,
glistened all over their brown bodies as under a shower-bath. In five
minutes I had sweated completely through my garments, in ten I could
wring water out of my jacket; drops fell regularly at about half-second
intervals from the end of my nose and chin. The dripping sweat formed
puddles beneath the toilers, the air was so scarce and second-hand every
breath was a deep gasp; nowhere a sign of exit, as if we had been walled
up in this narrow, low-ceiled, jagged-rock passageway for all time.

My work here was to take samples from the "roof." A grinning peon who
called himself "Bruno Basques" (Vasquez) followed me about, holding his
hat under the hammer with which I chipped bits of rock from above, back
and forth across the top of the tunnel, every few feet. The ore ran very
high in grade here, the vein being some six feet of whitish rocky
substance between sheer walls of ordinary rock. It struck one most
forcibly, this strange inquisitiveness of man that had caused him to
prowl around inside the earth like a mole, looking for a peculiar kind
of soil or stone which no one at first sight could have guessed was of
any particular value. The peons, smeared all over with the drippings of
candle-grease, worked steadily for all the heat and stuffiness. Indeed,
one could not but wonder at the amount of energy they sold for a day's
wages; though of course their industry was partly due to my "gringo"