The Newtown bee., 1906-03-23
WILLIAM L. FILLER

WILLIAM L. FILLER
 WRITES TO HIS FRIEND, PROF ROSS
 JEWELL, OF LIFE IN PERU.
 Morococha, Peru, February Il, 1906. My Dear MT Jewell: received your letter the day after Christmas, but we were having some strenuous times up at the San Miguel mine then and since then I h ve been down to Lima for a vacation, so haven't had a chance to answer it before now. l forget where l left off in the last chapter of the hiS- tory of my life, so if repeat you will have to excuse me.
 | From about the middle of April '05, to the last of November, I was the whose paper am writing, at the San Miguel mine. The company, although it has taken Spanish name, is an American company headed by James B. Haggin of New York. Among oth- CTS interested in the company are: Prick, the Vanderbilts, Twomblys, and A. w. Nc Cune. The same com pany owns some very large interests in Cerro de Pasco, camp about eighty ullleS lIOm ueIe. lucy udVo opeuV nearly fifteen millions of dollars there buying and
 DEVELOPING MINES, BUILDING RAIL- ROADS, A SHELTER, ETC.
 In March and April the same com pany bought most of the largest mines, or at least a control in them, here in Morococha. The San Miguel mine was one of them. They purchased 60 per cent of the latter about the first of April ('O5) but owing to some compli- cations they had to allow the man who owned the remaining 40 per cent to manage the mine until the first of Mo- vember, when his contract with the 1 other parties ran out, and then he was to have turned the management of the mine over to the %. However. when the time came, he refused to do it. MT Nc Cune, the General Superintend ent, and a stock-holder in the com pany, has had considerable experience with the courts in this country and knew that it would take at least year to get possession of the mine, so he decided to take it by force and fight it out in the courts afterwards. As knew all the men up there and the conditions, the affair was put in my hands. Everything went through without hitch and on Thanksgiving Day, (the very day your letter was written),
 SIX OF US "YANKs" TOOK COMPLETE POSSESSION OF THE MINE
 and all of the buildings. Not shot was fired and work in the mine was not interrupted single moment. However, we weren't to get off quite so easy as that, for when the men there recovered from their surprise they began to make trouble. When they found that they couldn't do any, thing by themselves they tried to in- cite the 'Cholos" Indian workmen). They partly succeeded in this, and as there were about three hundred of the Cholos it began to look serious, until down from the cOmpany'S mines in CerrO de PaScO. That was on the fourth day and until then I hadn't l had wink of sleep since the trouble started. We kept armed men on guard | night and day until the end of Decem- Der, when everything had quieted down. On the 9th of January l went down to Lima for my vacation, and stayed little over two weeks. The life up here in the mountains is pretty hard
 
 to get down to sea-level once in every l five or six months. Did I tell you that i the
 SAN MIGUEL MINE IS OVER SIXTEEN THOUSAND FEET ABOVE
 the level of the sea? The bathing season had just commenced when l got to Lima and 1 enjoyed it lot the last week l was there.
 A couple of days after returned to the mountains picked up all of my things and moved down here to Tuctu, the headquarters of the company. The climate and the accommodations here are much better. The reason for the former is that Tuctu is over if teen hundred feet nearer sea-level: At San Miguel I was a sort of "Jack-of- all trades" but now l have engineer ing work only to do and like it much hetter. There is plenty of the latter | to do too, for we have got to make map showing all the mining claims, ] etc., of district over six square miles | in extent. Then on that we will have to place plan of the underground workings of some twenty mines. As there are seven of the mines which have from
 THREE TO TWELVE MILES EACH OF TUNNELS
 and other underground workings you will see that we have plenty of work laid out for us.
 However all this is really on the side you might say. l think l told you in my last letter that Guyer and had succeeded in getting hold of one or two promising prospects, on our own account. For the last few months we have had some men working on one of them and Guyer writes me that it is looking better with every shot that goes into it. Guyer is putting up a shelter for a Peruvian near this mine of ours and we have shipped quite a little ore down there. The smelter is finished now and will start up in a few days. We will be able to make a nice little thing out of the mine, but as Guyer can run over every few days and look at the work, there is no need of either of us being there all the time. And besides $15O month and all expenses isn't to be laughed at.
 Frank Wildman is threatened with
 typhoid fever. Dr Wales is caring for |, hinn