The Average Load Is
Considered As Rather More Than 200 Pounds, And I Have Been
Assured That One Of 300
Pounds (twenty-two stone and a half)
by way of a trial has been brought up from the deepest mine!
At this time the apires were bringing up the usual load
twelve times in the day; that is 2400 pounds from eighty
yards deep; and they were employed in the intervals in breaking
and picking ore.
These men, excepting from accidents, are healthy, and appear
cheerful. Their bodies are not very muscular. They
rarely eat meat once a week, and never oftener, and then only
the hard dry charqui. Although with a knowledge that the
labour was voluntary, it was nevertheless quite revolting to
see the state in which they reached the mouth of the mine;
their bodies bent forward, leaning with their arms on the
steps, their legs bowed, their muscles quivering, the
perspiration streaming from their faces over their breasts,
their nostrils distended, the corners of their mouth forcibly
drawn back, and the expulsion of their breath most laborious.
Each time they draw their breath, they utter an articulate
cry of "ay-ay," which ends in a sound rising from deep in
the chest, but shrill like the note of a fife. After staggering
to the pile of ore, they emptied the "carpacho;" in two or
three seconds recovering their breath, they wiped the sweat
from their brows, and apparently quite fresh descended the
mine again at a quick pace. This appears to me a wonderful
instance of the amount of labour which habit, for it can be
nothing else, will enable a man to endure.
In the evening, talking with the _mayor-domo_ of these
mines about the number of foreigners now scattered over
the whole country, he told me that, though quite a young
man, he remembers when he was a boy at school at
Coquimbo, a holiday being given to see the captain of an
English ship, who was brought to the city to speak to the
governor. He believes that nothing would have induced
any boy in the school, himself included, to have gone close
to the Englishman; so deeply had they been impressed with
an idea of the heresy, contamination, and evil to be derived
from contact with such a person. To this day they relate
the atrocious actions of the bucaniers; and especially of
one man, who took away the figure of the Virgin Mary, and
returned the year after for that of St. Joseph, saying it
was a pity the lady should not have a husband. I heard
also of an old lady who, at a dinner at Coquimbo, remarked
how wonderfully strange it was that she should have lived
to dine in the same room with an Englishman; for she
remembered as a girl, that twice, at the mere cry of "Los
Ingleses," every soul, carrying what valuables they could,
had taken to the mountains.
14th. - We reached Coquimbo, where we stayed a few
days.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 273 of 402
Words from 140813 to 141317
of 208183
