The mine is about a mile and a half from the smelting-works, on the side of a mountain; an admirable road leads to it by a gentle ascent, down which waggons drawn by mules bring the ore to be smelted. On reaching the summit I rested on a level plateau, on which the upper works are built; I am to descend presently into the depths of the mine to see how the ore is deposited, and trace, step by step, the various processes it has to go through before it is marketable. The main entrance is a tunnel ten feet high, and about an equal width throughout, in which runs a tramway leading to the shaft. At the end of this tunnel a small steam-engine does the work of the poor ‘tanateros,’ or carriers, who, until very recently, brought the ore and rubbish from the bottom of the mine on their backs, a system still adopted in Spain and Peru, each man having to bring up a load of two hundred pounds, in a bag made of hide, fastened by two straps passing round the shoulders, and a broader one across the forehead, which mainly sustains the load. It was fatal work to the poor Mexicans who had to do it, the terrible muscular strain soon producing disease and death! On reaching the engine I am undressed and rigged as a miner, a costume far more loose and easy than becoming. Three dip-candles dangled from a button on my jacket by the wicks, and one enveloped in a knob of clay for my hand, completed my toilet. The next process is to be lowered down into the mine. Squeezing myself into a huge kind of bucket, and assuming as near as practicable the shape and position of a frog, my candle lighted, ‘All right!’ says somebody, and I find myself rapidly descending a damp dismal hole, dripping with water like a shower. Of course I shudder, and have horrible ideas of an abyss, ending no one knows where; the candle hissed, sputtered, and went out; the bucket swang as the chain lengthened, and bumped unpleasantly against the rocks; now a sudden stop, and a lively consciousness of being dragged bodily out like a bundle of clothes, discloses the fact of my safe arrival at the bottom. The swarthy Mexican miner deputed as guide leads the way along a narrow gulley, and down an incline to the mouth of another hole, the descent to which has to be effected on a slanting pole, with notches cut in it, very like a bear-pole, called by the miner an _escalera_, requiring a saltatory performance that would not have been so bad if I had only known where I should have landed in case of falling. After this we scramble down a flight of steps cut in the rock, and reach the lowest excavation, about one thousand feet from the surface.