—so that the men who mine it have only to take their little hoes, such as they use on their farms, and scrape it up just where they find it lying on the surface of the earth. I have never seen a shaft out of which the ore was being taken, but I have seen it being taken from the hillside as above stated.
The ore is carried to the smelting plant on the backs of ponies, oxen, and cows. To American miners this would doubtless be a funny sight—this train of ponies and cows loaded with iron ore moving slowly one after another along the hillside and down the path to the place where the ore may be dumped into a stream of running water, where the dirt is washed away, leaving the ore in better shape for the furnace. On each cow is a packsaddle with two poles across it, from each end of which hangs a small bag made of straw rope, into which the ore is placed so that the bags just balance each other on the saddle. These bags are so constructed that they are fastened at the bottom by means of a stick which, when drawn out, allows the ore to fall to the ground, thus making it easy to unload.
As for the smelting plant, I am quite sure that it would not meet the entire approval of the American Steel Trust, but it is nevertheless a smelting plant and turns out pig iron. It is indeed a crude affair, being only a wall built of stone and mud, about fifteen feet long and eight or ten feet high, with the furnace on one side and the bellows on the other. The wall is of no service except to protect the bellows and the men who operate it from the furnace. The bellows is very
