The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1881-07-02
Early Mines OF New Mexico.

The early colonists were all miners
but owing to the care taken in conceal.
ments of them by the natives, little is
left to indicate operations except miles
of earth cut into running galleries and
driven tunnels. Slavery everywhere
when applied to field labor is destruc-
tive to human life. What must it have
been when applied to mining under
taskmasters who did not value one life
at pins fee?
Even with the aid of science, machin-
cry, and the many humanities of the
Nineteenth Century, mining is the most
melancholy of trades. The task of him
who " hangs in midway air" to gather
samphire is not half so dreadful as work
done in danger from every element.
The ruins of large prison among the
placers of the Miembres Mountains,
abandoned mines reopened and tradi-
tions of Indians clearly show that the
conquered races were treated as though
they did not belong to the human fami-
ly. There is an infinite pathos in the
Punishment of the untamed Indian from
the free Sierras and the glad sunshine
to gloomy caverns where thousands
were actually buried alive. They were
driven to toll under the lash and at the
bayonet's point in the midst of dangers
from falling walls, deadly gas, sudden
floods, and the work was done by man.
ual labor alone. They broke the rocks
with miserable tools and insufficient
light, and mixed the ores slowly and
painfully with naked feet. Quartz was
ground in rude arastras or mills to
which men and women were yoked like
cattle. Every ounce of precious metal
was literally the price of blood.
So changeless are the Spaniard and
Indian that the description of a miner
near chihuahua, written last year, will
do tolerably well for the Pueblo of the
seventeenth century. Then, as now, the
Spaniard was the overseer. The peon
is the slave of to-day. As rule, Mexi-
cans, however intelligent and educated,
have no genius for machinery. They
blow, crush, and drill as their fathers
did before them, and for transportation
of ore they prefer train of mules to
train of cars. The miner in the sepul-
chral shades of San Domingo has never
heard of crushing-mills or carts. A
yard-square piece of untanned hide,
stretched on two sticks, is his wheelbar-
row. The drill, the pick, the crowbar,
are his only tools. Out of the back
door of the mine he steps quickly, light
ly, though weighted by sack contain
ing hundred and fifty pounds of ore.
A broad band of rawhide attaches the
burden to his forehead. He is naked as
when he came into the world. He neck
and limbs are like prize-fghter's. The
perspiration streams from his sooty face
and body and his breast heaves spas
medically. There are no air-shafts, and
for two hours he has been down in the
hydrogen of the mine. The path he
has travelled in ascending winds hither
and thither; now up, then down; now
in chamber of whose extent he has no
conception; now in gallery narrow as
the cavity of a sugar-hogshead-so
narrow that, to bear his cargo through,
he must double and crawl like a pan.
Their; now along slippery ledge, where
the slightest error in the placement of a
hand or foot is instant death, because
on one side is an abyss which for the
matter of vision might as well be faith
1
omless. Now it turns sharp corner;
now it traverses rough masses of rocks,
! which are not all debris from blasting.
for some of them have tumbled from
the roof, and may be followed by "com-
panion pieces" at any moment. Woe
to him whom they catch! Thus for
more than half an hour the poor wretch
has come. To such feat, performed
regularly six times day, what is cross
ing the rapids of Niagara on wire
What wonder that the breast heaves
and the sweat poursp Have you not
heard a man escaped from drowning
tell of the agony thrilling him the instant
the life-saving air rushed into the cells
of his collapsed lungsP Something like
that this poor miner and his comrades
say they suffer every time they pass the
door of the mine suddenly into the rari.
fled atmosphere of the upper world.
Horrible life! And how wretchedly re.
warded! Between mining and morals
there is no connection, still the question
comes; Was it for this God gave him q
soulp-lfrS. Co... Wallace, IN the N. Y,
Independent.