QUICKSILVER MINE. 55 from thirty to forty per cent., even by the rude and inadequate process which is adopted by the miners, although all the quicksilver might be casily disengaged from the ore. The process is as follows: Large whalers' try-pots are inverted over a heap of ore laid on an iron grate, beneath which a stream of water is made to pass. The edges of the pots being luted to the hearth in which the grate is fixed, a fire is made on the outside of the pots, and the dense mercurial vapors, evolved from the ore as it bakes, finding no vent save through the interstices of the grate, is condensed, and falls, in its metallic form of quicksilver, to the bottom of the little well or stream beneath. The vein is very rich, and the whole surrounding hills appear, from their reddish color, as if they contained inexhaustible quantities of ore. The cavity in the mountain, of about twenty cubic feet, was at this time worked by two Indians, with picks, who threw out quantities of the ore as fast as it could be broken up. This place has been resorted to by the Indians from time immemorial, for vermillion, to apply to their interesting persons; but the value of the deposit was first ascertained by Señor Castillero. This gentleman'was educated at the school of mines in the city of Mexico; and, having visited California, his superior knowledge enabled him to detect the value of this mine, which he at once "denounced,' and commenced working. When the truculent and doughty Don José Castro, alarmed at the first gleam of the bayonets of our tars, took refuge in inglorious flight from his entrenched camp of La Mesa, at Los Angeles, he first directed his furtive steps to the neighboring province of Sonora, to demand arms and money from the governor thereof, with the avowed purpose of rescuing California from the clutches of the Any one who discovers a mine, although it be on land not his own, may, by the law of Mexico, denounce it (as it is called) to the authorities. If he works it, the produce becomes his, under cer tain restrictions. 56 A COMMERCIAL OPERATION. "injusto opresor." Old Zack's victories, however, had knocked all the calculations of the Mexican "benemeritos de la patria" into a cocked hat, and the governor of Sonora was inclined to "acknowledge the corn" and give in. But if Castro's patriotic blustering was at a discount, he had still one possession which was above par, and that was his interest in the quicksilver mine. The commercial house transacting business in Tepic, under the name and style of Barron & Forbes, is a shrewd establishment with a vigilant eye to the main chance. Little cared they who governed the country, what faction was up to-day or down to-morrow; their thoughts were intent on the quicksilver, and they commissioned a score of Mercuries to get hold of it in their behalf and at their expense. Their emissaries and correspondents in California were instructed to hunt up Castro, and in the most benevolent and disinterested manner to furnish him money and other facilities to reach with all despatch the city of Tepic, and especially that quarter thereof in which the aforesaid commercial house exhibited its shingle. This mercantile hue and cry proved more efficacious than military pursuit, and Don José was picked up one fine morning with all his suite, in the town of Mazatlan, then closely blockaded by our fleet. To say that in a financial point of view, this discomfitted patriot was decidedly "short," is hardly to do justice to the abhorrent vacuum which existed in his pockets; and it may easily be imagined that in his straitened situation he looked with complacency upon the thousand hard dollars with which he was kindly and unexpectedly furnished on the simple condition of visiting the pleasant city of Tepic. He did not therefore stop to be asked twice, but pocketed the money with avidity, and spent the whole of it in one day, between champaigne and monte. All great men have their faults, and if Don José had one besetting sin more inveterate than any other, that sin was a devotion to the game of monte. But he was a man of nerve, and with a coolness not to be |