While visiting at La Ascension on our return trip we saw about a dozen Mexicans extracting silver from ore by a method which is as old as that mentioned in the Bible. The rich ore, showing probably two hundred and fifty dollars to the ton, had been taken out of the vein with crowbars and by rough blasting, and then brought to the town on the backs of burros. Here the huge rocks were first crushed with sledge hammers until they were about the size of one's fist and could be easily handled, then broken again with smaller hand hammers until almost as fine as coarse sand. This was reduced to a complete powder by being beaten in heavy leather bags. After these operations it was mixed with water and thrown into an _arastra_, a cross between a coffee mill and a quartz crusher; in other words, consisting of four stones tied to a revolving mill-bar and turned by the inevitable mule. This makes a paste rich in granulated silver, which is mixed with salt and boiled in a little pot, as if they were making apple butter instead of working one of the richest veins of silver in a country celebrated for its valuable silver mines. The resulting mass is washed out in a pan, as a prospecting miner washes for signs of gold, with the exception that quicksilver is put in to form an amalgam with the now liberated metal. The latter is pressed out with the hand, and the little ball of amalgam, as bright as silver itself, has the mercury driven off by a furnace only big enough to fry the eggs for a party of two. The pure silver ball, glistening like hoar frost in the sun, is now beaten down to the size of a big marble to prevent its breaking to pieces. It is exasperating in the extreme to see such ignorant methods of man applied to the rich offerings of nature.