Still higher than the village—indeed, on the very summit of the mountain—was the mine, which was worked in rude and primitive fashion. The ore extracted from the earth by the labour of the negroes was smelted, after the manner of the Indians, in a large oven made of clay, and placed in such a situation that the strong mountain-winds seldom failed effectually to fan the furnace. The gold thus obtained was transmitted twice a year to the intendant of Nasca, who accounted for it to his lord, Don Marcio Serra de Leguisano. Some strong motive was certainly necessary to make a lengthened residence in such a spot tolerable to a free man, who could go elsewhere if he would. The intendant, Diego Rascar, his four Spanish and two Creole servants, were bound to their post by the strong cords of avarice. But Fray Fernando had no such tie. His life was very empty; there was neither the love of gold, nor, to speak truth, the love of souls, to fill it. He did his duty, so far as he understood it, to his dusky flock. He baptized the infants; he married the young men and maidens; he buried the dead. He even tried to repress gross crimes amongst the negroes, and to prevent gross cruelties on the part of the Spaniards: he sought to keep the latter from lapsing into utter heathenism, and he taught the former to hasten to the little chapel at the sound of the bell, and to fall on their knees at the elevation of the host. It did not occur to him that he ought to teach them anything more, or that it would be possible to do so. The negro slaves were savages, but one grade removed from the lowest type; a type differing very greatly and very sadly from the imaginary picture of the “noble and virtuous savage” which a sickly and sentimental civilization has amused itself by delineating. With these degraded beings—whom, in his pride, he accounted scarcely human—Fray Fernando had nothing in common; and he felt nothing towards them save contempt and disgust, sometimes mingled with pity, stirred by their sufferings. How could it have been otherwise? With deep truth has it been said, “There is but one Mediator between man and man, as well as between God and man—the man Christ Jesus.” But Fray Fernando knew the man Christ Jesus not at all as Mediator; he only knew him as Judge. He could not therefore say, with the noble Las Casas, “I have left in the Indies Jesus Christ our Lord, suffering stripes and afflictions and crucifixions, not once, but thousands of times, at the hands of the Spaniards.” The love that embraces all men for the sake of Him who took man’s nature upon Him, and delighted to call Himself the Son of man, was as far above Fray Fernando’s comprehension as the brilliant stars of the Southern Cross were above his head. And thus it was that in that barren lonely place no love, human or divine, came to soothe and soften his heart, and to efface the deep, jagged characters graven there by the iron pen of pain.