The great Valenciana mine at Guanajuato, of which mention has been made as the scene of ruthless oppression practised upon the natives by the Spaniards, which terminated in bloody vengeance, left a monument to the fabulous wealth extracted from it. This was built by a miner, one Obregon, who, the chronicles of the city state, became the "richest man in the world." With that almost fanatic and inexhaustible credence and energy which has often characterised the Spanish miner, he drove his adit year after year into the bowels of the great "mother lode"; penniless, ruined at last, without credit, and earning by his losses and persistence the name of _el tonto_--"the fool." But--almost as if his patron saint had resolved to teach his detractors a lesson--the reward came. The richest _bonanza_ that the "mother lode" ever yielded he struck. From the results of this great treasure--a mere fraction of it--he caused the fine Valenciana church to be raised, whose handsome facade still draws the traveller's attention and marks the romantic episode of mining lore which gave it birth. The building of the temple was begun in 1765; its cost was a million dollars. Ancient and, in many cases, ruined churches, especially in some of the northern states, lie scattered throughout the regions where great mining communities dwelt--now dead and gone. But religion--or the barbaric custodian of religion, the Inquisition--claimed her victims among the workers of mines. At the beginning of the seventeenth century it was that a rich mine--the Monoloa, in the State of Jalisco--was being worked by one Trevino and his partner, who, having been denounced to the Holy Office by jealous neighbours, they were accused of invoking the aid of the devil in their work. The unfortunate mine-owner was brought to the capital in consequence in 1649 and burned alive! The Mexican miner, like his brothers of Peru or Chile, not content with the churches and shrines above ground which his religion afforded, often formed chapels and set up images in the subterranean caverns to whose habitation his daily toil condemned him. Shrines and crosses are frequently encountered in the galleries and chambers of Mexican mines now, as ever. Often, candles are kept burning before them throughout the eternal night, which they illuminate, and in some cases the devout among the miners go through these underground labyrinths in their daily toil in the dark, saving their candles to light the shrine! As they pass this bright spot their accustomed hand comes up to make the sign of the cross, and wearied knees humble themselves in a genuflexion. In one of the mines at Guanajuato there is an elaborate underground shrine where as many as two hundred candles burn at times, shedding a radiance which contrasts weirdly with the gloomy depths of worked-out caverns which surround it.