Although every possible care has been taken to prevent the mercurial fumes from injuring the smelters, still a great deal of it is necessarily inhaled, most injurious to health. Clearing out the furnace is the most hurtful process, the men employed working short spells, and resting a day or two between. A furnace charged with ore, I am told, takes about eight days to sublime and cool. It is difficult to obtain a correct statement of the absolute yield of this mine; proprietors, for many reasons, deeming it inexpedient to let the world know the extent of their riches. The export of quicksilver from San Francisco, a few years back, may, I think, be averaged at 1,350,000 pounds of mercury per annum, valued at 683,189 dollars; and this, together with the large amount consumed in California, was the sole produce of the New Almaden mines. There are fourteen furnaces, arranged with passages ten feet wide between them, the whole covered with a roof sufficiently high to allow a current of air to circulate freely. Between the furnaces and on all the open spaces are innumerable bricks, just as we see them in a brickyard to harden before baking. On inquiring what these were made for, I discover that all the fragments and dust-cinnabar are pounded together, mixed with water, and made into bricks: in this form the ore can be conveniently built into the furnace, securing intervening spaces for the flame and heat to act on; thus more perfect sublimation is secured, and a great saving of metal effected. There are blacksmiths’ and carpenters’ shops and a sawmill adjoining the furnaces. Until recently all the ore was brought down from the mine packed on the backs of mules, a most costly system of transport as compared to the one now in use. The vegetation only suffers immediately round the chimney, and even there not to any alarming degree. The flue, being of great length, carried at a moderate slope up the hill, and terminating in a very tall chimney, completely condenses all mercurial and arsenical fumes. Before this flue and stack were constructed, even the mules and cattle grazing in the pastures died from the poisonous effects of the mercurial vapour; and its deadly action on vegetation was like that of the fabled upas-tree. The workmen now, as a rule, enjoy very good health, and are admirably cared for; the village boasts a capital hotel, and stages run daily to San José and San Francisco. A spring of native soda-water, bubbling up in the centre of the village, protected and fitted like a drinking-fountain, is said to work wonders as a curative agent in all maladies arising from the effects of mercury. This spring is supposed to be under the especial care of a ‘Saint Somebody,’ a lady whose image, attired in very dirty finery, figures in niches cut in the rocks at the mine. No miner ever leaves or enters the mine without prostrating himself before this dirty effigy.