Vagabond life in Mexico/The Miners of Rayas
The Miners of Rayas
CHAPTER I.
The Hand upon the Wall.—Desiderio Fuentes, the lucky Miner.—Don Tomas Verduzco.
Hardly a century ago, Guanajuato was a town of very little importance. Before the sudden change in its fortune, which resulted from the rich yield of silver in the Valenciana and Rayas mines, the mining industry of Mexico had concentrated its activity in the works of Tasco, Pachuca, and Zacatecas. The title of ciudad (city) had been borne by Zacatecas since 1588, while Guanajuato, though founded in 1554, did not attain that rank till seventy-eight years later, in 1741. It was not known that the mountains inclosing it on all sides, and on the slope of which it was built, held within their stony bosom the Veto Madre (Mother Vein), the richest lode of silver in the world. The situation of Guanajuato is, besides, doubly advantageous. The city is situated at once in the richest mining district in Mexico, and in the best cultivated part of the fertile plains of the Bajio.[1] It is thus the inhabitants call that large extent of country, about eighty leagues in circumference, which is bounded toward the side of Guanajuato by the Cordillera.
Alternately parched and inundated, the Bajio presents at all seasons an aspect singularly picturesque. During the rainy season, the winter of those favored climes, the sky, which loses its blue without losing its softness, floods the plains with fertilizing torrents. For several hours a day the Bajio is a vast lake, studded with tufts of verdure, with blue hills, with groups of white houses and enameled cupolas. On this sheet of water the green summits of the trees alone reveal to the traveler the capricious meanderings of the inundated road. Soon, however, the thirsty soil has imbibed the moisture through the innumerable cracks that eight months' drought has left in its surface. A layer of slime, deposited by the heavy rains and the torrents from the Cordillera, has enriched the impoverished earth. The heavens are clear and cloudless as before. The springs freed from the crust which obstructed them, gush out more abundantly from the foot of the ahuehuetl.[2] The Peruvian-tree, the gum-tree, the golden-flowered huisache, amid whose blossoms the scarlet-plumed parrots scream, shade and perfume the now consolidated roads. The songs of muleteers and the bells of mules resound in the blue distance, mingled with the shrill creaking of cart-wheels. It is the time when the Indian laborer returns to his toils. Like the shepherd in the Georgics, with his leathern buskins, his short tunic, and bare legs, he lazily goads the oxen at the plow. And such is the fertility of this soil, that splendid crops cover the ground which the plow has scarcely furrowed. Still, it is not in the rich plain alone that nature has been most indulgent to the happy dwellers in the Bajio. Over the fertile valleys in the vicinity of Guanajuato, the Cordillera rears its metalliferous crest, whose sides are veined with lodes of gold and silver, and which delivers to the mattock of the miner the immense treasures of the Veta Madre.[3] The striking contrast that is visible between the laborer and the miner is nowhere so strongly apparent as in this part of the Bajio. Humble and submissive, the Indian husbandman is at every one's mercy. The miner, haughty and independent, takes a higher rank; and this claim is justified, we must admit, by the importance of the duty he performs. Obliged to submit to labor which yields him only limited results, the husbandman finishes his work in silence, while the pickaxe of the miner resounds, so to speak, to the end of the world, and is constantly adding, at every stroke, to the riches of mankind. Prosperity is not long in coming to the indefatigable miner. The slopes of the hills, the ravines, and the summits of the mountains swarm with a dense population, among whom the lucky finders of a new lode scatter their hard-earned money with thoughtless liberality, and squander in one day the earnings of six months. From the French miner Laborde, who lavished thousands upon Cathedrals, down to the meanest peon, the history of this bold workman has been always the same. Fortune is the only god he worships. He goes to his dangerous occupation as if specially sent thither by Divine Providence; and this proud thought is favored by the laws of the country, old privileges according the title of nobility to the worker in the mines. Even at this day he cannot be dispossessed by his creditors of his mine, if he can afford to work it. It appears that there is a tendency to respect the descendants of a privileged race. Besides a knowledge of metals to guide him in his search, the miner must be endowed with a number of rare qualities; from that vigorous strength indispensable to one who has to raise heavy burdens, and support all day, on scanty wages, the enervating fatigue of under-ground work, down to activity and pliancy of limb, united with un daunted resolution and coolness. These qualities, it must be owned, are never found in the same man with out corresponding defects. A capricious and undisciplined being, the miner only employs all his tact and energy if interested in the success of his enterprise. Sometimes, after toiling for a month, during which he has hardly earned enough to live upon—in a week, or even in a day, he recompenses himself for his long privations. The miner then thanks Dame Fortune. He scatters his gold with a lavish hand, and returns to his work only after all his gains are exhausted. At times he enriches himself by secretly pilfering the ore which really belongs to the proprietor of the mine, and the miners are but too expert at this species of theft.
It was in the midst of a population like this that I found myself at Guanajuato, after the dangerous and useless search recorded in the preceding chapters. I did not wish to let this opportunity escape me of observing upon this theatre of action a class of men, of whom the gambusinos, or gold-seekers of the Sonora, give one only an imperfect idea. After spending a day in repose, which the many painful events I had encountered rendered necessary, I went out next morning to visit the mines in the neighborhood of Guanajuato. While crossing the great square, and keeping myself on my guard, my attention was arrested by an unusual object. Nailed against the wall, and under a small pent-house, was a human hand cut off by the wrist. I stopped my horse to assure myself that it was not a plaster cast. A moment's examination was sufficient to convince me that it was indeed a human hand, once strong and muscular, but now blanched and withered by the wind, the sun, and the rain. Under the pent-house some half-burned candles told that pious souls had been touched by this strange exhibition, which seemed destined to perpetuate the remembrance of some bloody deed. After seeking in vain upon the wall an explanatory inscription, I continued my journey; but, during my short stay, a horseman had approached, and seemed determined to keep close by me. At any other time I would have accepted with a bad grace the company of the unknown, but I had come out, you must remember, in quest of a guide. I stopped my horse, and put some questions to him. The stranger bowed courteously.
"You are a stranger, Señor Cavalier," said he, with a smile.
"How do you know that?" I replied, a little astonished at his abrupt way of beginning a conversation.
"The curious way in which you gazed upon that withered hand sufficiently convinced me that you have not been long in the town, and had not much time to lose. I must say that, for me, who am looking out for a companion, our meeting is a lucky one."
I was not quite sure if I ought to accept with much cordiality the companionship so familiarly thrust upon me. He seemed to observe my hesitation, and exclaimed, with a certain degree of haughtiness, "You do not know me, and I am unwilling that you should for a moment suppose that you have got to do with some of those poor devils who are always ready to offer their services to the first stranger they meet. My name is Desiderio Fuentes. I am a miner; and, in the profession I exercise, there are some days on which fortune is unkind, and others on which you amass so much money that you do not know how to get rid of it. I am in the latter condition at present; and my invariable custom, on an occasion of this kind, is to procure some jolly companion who can share in my pleasures. If I can't get one, I take up with the first cavalier of good appearance I meet, and I confess that I have never had occasion yet to blame Fortune for the comrade she sent me."
This frank declaration reassured me completely. I told Desiderio, however, that I could not accept of his cordial offer. I had come to visit the silver mines in the immediate vicinity of Guanajuato, and was unwilling to waste in his company the time that I intended to devote to such a purpose, supposing always that he would not serve me as a guide. Desiderio preferred doing this rather than relinquish my society, being but too happy to escape from his own thoughts, were it only for a few hours. This bargain made, we spurred our horses, and a few minutes afterward got clear of the town.
On the road my guide informed me that he had made a lucky hit the night before, and that he could take his far niente for several days to come from the proceeds of a partido.[4] He added that it would be a delightful recreation for him to visit the mines in the neighborhood as an amateur, and he desired me to choose the one I had a mind to visit, premising only that he would rather not go to the Valenciana, as he happened to have a quarrel with one of the administrators. He wished to keep away from the Mellado, because he owed some money to one of the workmen there; and as for the Cata, certain misunderstandings of recent date caused him to avoid it with the greatest care. In spite of the apparent liberty of choice he had granted me, I saw no other way of accomplishing my object but by going to inspect the Rayas the only one open to me. The precautions which Desiderio Fuentes was forced to take did not say much in his favor. My new friend was evidently very quarrelsome. He had certainly no love for paying his debts, and in his misunderstandings (désavencias) his knife had doubtless played no unimportant part. I began to entertain but a very indifferent opinion of my companion. One expression especially that escaped the miner caused me to reflect.
"My first impulse is always very good," he said, "but I own my second is detestable."
We had now come to the extremity of a ravine whose precipitous sides had till now obstructed the view. A beautifully level plain lay stretched before us. Long strings of mules, laden with ore, were slowly making their way to one of those metallurgic establishments known in Mexico as a hacienda de platas. High chimney-stacks, from which volumes of smoke and leaden vapors rolled, now appeared; the stone patros also, on which the fluid metal is poured a day before its formation into ingots. The noise of the hammer pounding the argentiferous rock, the clattering of the mules' hoofs, and the cracking of whips, were mingled with the hoarser sound of the falling water that moved the machinery. I had stopped my horse to gaze on this animated scene, but my attention was soon attracted elsewhere. A few paces distant, but half hidden from us by a hollow in the road, I espied two men dragging along with ropes the carcass of a mule. Having arrived at a place where Desiderio and I could alone see them, one of them stooped over the dead mule, and seemed to examine it curiously, casting at the same time a suspicious glance around. The moment he caught sight of us, he flopped down on the carcass that he had been dragging a minute before, while his companion immediately disappeared in a dense thicket of low trees and brushwood.
"Well, I thought I was right," said Fuentes. "It is my friend Planillas; but what the devil is he doing there?"
At the name of Planillas I shuddered involuntarily, and, preceded by Fuentes, made my way directly to the place where the man was seated on the mule. I hoped to obtain some information from the friend of Don Tomas Verduzco as to the part the bravo had played in the murder of my friend Don Jaime. Planillas, his elbows on his knees, and his head on his hands, appeared overwhelmed by violent grief. The noise of our approach drew him at last from his abstraction, and he looked up at us, but with an expression of uneasiness rather than of sorrow.
"Ah! Señores," cried he, "in me you behold the most miserable man in all New Spain."
"You are doubtless thinking," I replied, "of the young cavalier whom Don Tomas assassinated two days ago, and whose blood is on your head, since you might have saved his life by stopping the hand of your friend of that Don Tomas who had been paid to kill him, you told me."
"Did I say that?" cried Florencio; "then, by the life of my mother, I lied. I am a terrible liar when in drink; and you know, Señor Cavalier, I had drunk a great deal that day."
Florencio paused, visibly embarrassed. Fuentes thereupon asked him why he was in such a state of grief when we came up, and why he persisted in taking the carcass of a mule for a seat.
"This mule is the cause of my sorrow," replied Planillas. "Although I was tenderly attached to her, I had sold her in my misery to the hacienda de platas you see in the valley below. I got employment in the work-shops to be near her; but, alas! the poor beast died this morning, and I have dragged her to this lonely place in order to mourn over her undisturbed."
Planillas again plunged his head between his hands with the air of a man who will not be consoled; then, doubtless, to turn the conversation, "Ah! Señor Cavalier," he said, "that is not my only misfortune. Yesterday a fight took place between the miners of Rayas and those of Mellado, and I was not there."
"I see nothing so unfortunate in that."
"Nothing unfortunate!" vociferated Planillas. "Ah! it was not one of those vulgar encounters that one sees every day; and you would never guess how it—terminated by a shower of piastres which the miners of Mellado poured upon their adversaries to prove the superiority of their mine. Ah! the beautiful eagle piastres!" he added, with a broken-hearted air; "and I was too late in the field."
I could better understand Planillas's grief for this last disappointment; but I should have doubted this excess of arrogant prodigality on the part of the Mellado miners had not Fuentes confirmed, with proud satisfaction, the truth of the tale. My companion would again have questioned Planillas, of whose lamentations he appeared suspicious, but a sudden cracking of branches in the brushwood behind us attracted his attention. A little thick-set man, a sort of dwarf Hercules, with a somewhat stern expression of countenance, stood before us. He saluted us politely, and sat down on the ground beside Planillas. His mouth tried to smile, but his glance, sinister and piercing as that of a bird of prey, belied the feigned gayety. We were silent for a few moments. The new-comer was the first to speak.
"You were talking just now," he said, "if my ears did not deceive me, of one Don Tomas. Could it be of Don Tomas Verduzco you were speaking?" He said this in a soft and silky tone, that contrasted strongly with the evil expression of his countenance. This simple question, coming from a man who had at once inspired me with the strongest repugnance, sounded very much like an insult.
"Precisely," I replied, exerting myself to keep cool; "I accused Don Tomas of the murder of a young man whom he did not even know the night before."
"Are you sure?" said the man, with a sinister glance.
"Ask this wretch!" I replied, pointing to Planillas.
On hearing this, Planillas bounced up as if he had been touched by a spring. He appeared to have recovered all his assurance. "I never said any thing of the kind. But your lordship," cried he, in an ironical tone, "is surely not acquainted with the respectable Don Tomas Verduzco, since you speak so in his presence."
I looked at the man thus denounced to me, and whom I now beheld for the first time. Imagination placed before me the bleeding body of Don Jaime, his agony, his last moments, and his happy future, all cut off in an instant by the knife of the man before me.
"Ah! you are Don Tomas Verduzco—" I could not finish. A sort of faintness came over me, and, without accounting to myself for what I was about to do, I cocked one of my pistols. At the click of the lock the stranger's face became livid, for Mexicans of the lower classes, who will not wince at the glitter of a knife-blade, tremble at the sight of a fire-arm in a European hand. He never stirred, however. Fuentes threw himself between us.
"Gently, Señor! gently, Cascaras! how you take the customs of the country!"
"The deuce take that Planillas," said the stranger, with a forced laugh; "he is always playing off some joke or other. But the idea of passing me off as Don Tomas is too absurd. Has your lordship any interest, then, in this Don Tomas?"
My passion appeared to me ridiculous, and passed away as by enchantment.
"I do not even know him," I replied, somewhat confusedly, but with all my former coolness. "I can not tell how he has got mixed up in my affairs; but I think I owe it to my safety to show no mercy to such assassins when chance throws them in my way."
The stranger muttered some unintelligible words. I thought the opportunity a good one to get rid of my new friend Desiderio, whose companionship was becoming somewhat burdensome to me, so I saluted the group and rode off; but I had not counted on the idleness of Fuentes, for, before I had gone a hundred yards, he had overtaken me.
"I was perhaps wrong," he said, "to interfere in this affair, and to prevent you from lodging a bullet in the head of that ill-looking knave; for, judging from the revengeful look he cast at you, I presume the first stroke of a knife you will receive will be from his hand."
"Do you think so?" I replied, rather startled at this unpleasant prediction.
"I yielded, in truth, too readily to my first impulse," continued Fuentes, who seemed in a reverie. "What if we went back?" he said. "You might then resume the affair at the point at which you left it, and, in case of need, I would help you."
It was quite clear that Fuentes regretted having let slip this nice opportunity for a quarrel. I dryly refused his offer, and thought to myself that, decidedly, his second impulse was worse than his first.
"You won't! Well, it's no great matter. After all, who cares for a knife-thrust more or less? I have received three in my time, and am not a bit the worse."
I did not deem it necessary to make any reply to this remark, which did not place my guide's character in a very favorable light, and cut short his revelations by asking him some questions about the mine whose buildings were coming gradually into sight as we approached.
- ↑ Literally, bottom of a valley.
- ↑ The name of a species of cedar, whose presence almost always indicates the vicinity of a hidden spring. In Indian, ahuehuetl means lord of the waters.
- ↑ The Veta Madre, wrought by the four mining companies of Valenciana, Cata, Mellado, and Rayas, was discovered by the French miner Laborde, and has yielded, between the years 1829 and 1837, ore to the value of almost six million two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling.
- ↑ The miners are said to be in partido when a share of the proceeds is given them as wages. In this case the employers furnish them with tools, gunpowder, and candles.