carloads were dumped into bins at the top of the mill.

The nature of the country had been taken advantage of in the building,
which hung twelve stories high on the steep hillside, making gravitation
the chief means of transportation during the refining process. Rocks
were screened into one receptacle and broken up by hand. The finer stuff
went direct to the stamps. Stones of ordinary size were spread by
machinery on a broad leather belt that passed three peon women, who
picked out and tossed away the oreless stones. Their movements were
leisurely, but they were sharp-eyed and very few worthless bits got by
the three of them. A story below, the picked material went under
deafening stamps weighing tons and striking several blows a second,
while water was turned in to soften the material. This finally ran down
another story in liquid form into huge cylinders where it was rolled and
rolled again and at last flowed on, smelling like mortar or wet lime,
onto platforms of zinc constantly shaking as with the ague and with
water steadily flowing over them. Workmen about the last and most
concentrated of these were locked in rooms made of chicken-wire. Below,
the stuff flowed into enormous vats, like giants' washtubs, and was
stirred and watered here for several days until the "values" had settled
and were drawn off at the bottom. There were three stories, or some
thirty, of these immense vats. The completed process left these full of
white sand which a pair of peons spent several days shoveling out and
carrying down into the valley.

The "values" were next run down into smaller vats and treated with zinc
shavings, precipitating a 50 per cent. pure metal, black in color, which
was put into melting-pots in a padlocked room overseen by an
American. Here it was cast in large brick molds, these being knocked off
and the metal left to slack, after which it was melted again and finally