at the end of trade routes to the interior. The result was that the mining companies had to maintain troops and mules in readiness for an emergency; and with them they also supported asses, because in the worst seasons and the worst localities these were preferable to mules, since they could live on coarse wild herbage while the mules required alfalfa.
Mining Types
The nomadic types associated with Chilean mining are in- teresting, for the usual privations of a mining life here find one of their most intense expressions. The liberal Chilean mining laws with their democratization of mining property have favored the development of the cateador—the mine pros- pector; the tireless searcher of the hills, who, ‘‘migratory as the condor or huanaco, has the frugality of the saints and the iron frame of the conquistadores.”[1] In former days min- ing owed practically everything to the cateador working on his own account, but now with the introduction of capital he is chiefly engaged on the account of others, from whom he receives a share of his discoveries and by whom he is equipped and his family supported in his absence. He sets off on his journeys supplied with chargut (dried beef), water, a few sim- ple tools, and his own stock of empirical knowledge. Often he is cheated out of his rightful rewards; and even if he is suc- cessful he will surely dissipate his fortune. Practically all the discoverers of rich mines have died in extremest poverty.
Isolation and the predominant part played by chance has saturated Chilean mining with superstition and tradition. The derroteros,[2] or descriptive plans showing the locations of mines, are fascinating as the fiction writer’s hunt for buried treasure: the desert abounds with the “‘cerro encantado” and the “‘cerro de plata.” Resembling the cateador in many re- spects is the desert guide, the vagueano. He possesses the cateador’s powers of endurance and the sense of topographic detail that comes of long practice and familiarity. His re-
