The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1882-08-02

alone by fact
word-juggiing tact =
He wound up with glowing scene" that
And took his seatEto mediate on his stupen-
dous lie.
-Centtsry Ma0dzine. Z
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MINES.
Weird Stories of the Supernatural Told
Among the Mexican and Indian Miners
of the Far West.
As a class, there are no more super
stitious men than miners, nor have any
class more strange and eerie concep-
tions. 1t has been so from the earliest
time. To the miners we owe some of
the most beautiful as well as some of
the most grotesque and horrible of the
many strange beliefs which have exist
ed among the uneducated. The men in
the far North invented the Trolls, odd
little beings supposed to act as guard
ians over the treasures of the earth.
These in Germany and the Hartz Mount
aims became the Mikes, the name being
changed while the beings remained the
same. In the Hartz the terrible
Demons or Spirits of the Mines were
supposed to live, beings who seemed to
unite in themselves all of the cruelty
and the malevolence the mind of man
could conceive. Farther south, in
Spain, the subtly-imagined Diablitas
peeped out of every globule of quick
silver at Almaden. We have to-day in
the divining-rod, so firmly believed in
by Cornish miners, relic, and one of
the few that remain to us, of the days
of the alehemists, of the search for the
philosophers stone, and the belief in
the subtle, and, one might almost say,
spiritual affinities of the metals.
The miners of the West represent q
strange conglomeration of men. The
English, Welsh and Germans brought
all of the Old World superstitions with
them, and found themselves among a
class of men in the Mexican camps who
could equal and in some cases surpass
theirs The Mexicans drew their tales
from two sources, their own Spanish fore
fathers, and the Aztecs and Toltecs,
found in the country when their fore
fathers conquered it Strange are the
beliefs and stories that have grown out
of the union of these superstitious ele-
ments. Things are lucky or unlucky
because possibly some worker in the
Hartz said SO 500 years ago, or some old
equally remote period. One of the
most commonly believed tales is that of
the "Step Devil" The men tell you
that in some of the oldest mines there
is an evil spirit which takes the form of
deformed dwarf. A peculiarity about
him is that he has immensely long arms,
arms so long that he can take off his
sandals without STOPPING. This dwarf,
when there is any danger in the mine.
such as cave. goes up the ladders,
lifting himself by his arms, with his
legs hanging free. As he passes each
rung he kicks or stamps it out of the
side pieces, so that the men when they
attempt to fly find that all means of
climbing out of the mine are destroyed.
In the very old mines, which were
worked by the Indians, there were no
ladders, but in their place trunks of
trees in which notches had been cut,
and the Indians climbed by inserting
the big toes in the notches. When the
Indians tell you of thess'Step Devip'
they say that he has on each big toe an
enormous nail and that as he climbs the
tree trunk he uses this 70 gouge the
notch cut by splitting off the part on
which the toe rests. The story is evil
IDENTIFY an Indian one, although altered
by Mexicans to suit the change in the
means of going up and down the shaft.
THE MADRE D'oRo.
A story about which there is fas-
cination which it is impossible to resist
when you hear men tell it is that of the
sHome of the Gold" Somewhere in
Southwestern New Mexico, in the Sierra
Madre, it is said there is a wonderful
valley. Small, inclosed by high, rocky
walls, and accessible only through Sc
cret passage, which is known to but few,
is this extraordinary place. 1t is about
ten acres in extent, has running through
it a stream which waters it thoroughly
and makes it a perfect paradise, with
its exquisite flowers and beautiful trees.
In it are thousands of birds of the most
brilliant plumage. Running across it
is ledge of pure gold about thirty
feet wide, which glistens in the sunlight
like a great golden belt. The stream
crosses this ledge, and as it runs, muir
murs around blocks of yellow metal as
other streams do among the pebbles.
This ledge of gold is supposed to be
solid gold and to run down into the GEN.
ter of the earth. The legend is of In
dian origin, and around it clusters a
name of the Inflated Monteztma occurs
frequently. The descendants of the
Aztecs believe firmly that the time will
come when Montezuma will return and
free them from the domination of the de-
scendants of the Conquistodores. They
believe that the money necessary for this
work will be taken from Madre d'Oro.
The secret of the entrance into the
valley is supposed to be carefully guarded
by tribe of Indians living near it, and
among them It is only communicated to
the eldest men amid the solemn cere-
monies of the medicine lodge. Having
such a story to work upon, there is little
wonder that the vivid Imagination of
We Mexicans should have built upon it
Yes of men who have found this won-
-yerful place. One is that a certain Jose
Avarrez, who, wandering through the
mountains in search for game, saw the
valley from the top of one of the walls.
Finding that he could not hope to enter
it by climbing down, he took up his
abode with the Indians who guard the
canyon leading into it. The daughter
of the chief fell in love with him and be-
trayed the secret to him. Exactly how
she found it out they do not tell. Hav-
ing beeen shown the entrance, Jose
went in and would possibly have got
away with some of the gold had he not
weighted himself down to such an ex-
tent that he could not get up the declivi-
ty at the lower end of the passage He
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