numbers hasten to their native plains and
mountains to recruit.

Their homes are chiefly scattered about.
Estremadura, Andalusia and Portugal.
Crowds of Portuguese, after harvest,flock
to obtain employment at Almaden, selling
not their labour only but their health. The
most robust cannot work in the mine longer
than for about fourteen days in succession,
generally eight or nine days make as long a
period of such labour as can be endured
without rest. Those who exceed that time
are obliged eventually to give up work and
breathe unadulterated air for perhaps two
months together. If they work without due
precaution, and almost inevitably if they
indulge in wine, miners at Alrnaden aged
between twenty-five and thirty waste away,
lose hair and teeth, acquire an insufferable
breath, or become sometimes afflicted with
tremblings that render them unable to supply
their own wants; they have to be fed like
infants. If the disease be not checked vigorously,
cramps and nervous attacks of the most
agonising kind follow upon these symptoms:
and lead on to death. They who work within
due bounds, and live moderately, using a good
deal of milk, if they take care always to
cleanse their persons thoroughly after each six
hours of work—the full day's labour—live not
seldom to old age. These diseases afflict the
miners only. The men engaged upon the ore
and quicksilver outside the mines, in smelting
and in other operations, do not suffer.

Storehouses, magazines, and workshops, are
the leading features of the little town. Everything
manufactured that is used—even to the
ropes—is made upon the spot; and the
workshops, like the whole engineering details of
the mine itself, are planned in an unusually
massive way, and carved out of the solid rock.
The quicksilver mine belongs to the Crown
(under which it is let out in four year leases
to contractors rich enough to pay a very large
deposit), and its details are all somewhat of a
legal character. There used to be disasters
frequently occasioned by the sinking of the
works, and by fires. The last fire raged for
upwards of two years and a half. The
employment of wood, except for temporary
purposes, has therefore been abandoned, and
magnificent arched galleries of stone are built
through every one of the new cuttings. The
deposits are almost vertical; and great pains
are taken to supply the void left by the
removed ore, with a sufficiently strong body
of masonry. Half the ore is, however, everywhere
left standing as a reserve in case of any
future accidents; and the whole yearly supply
drawn from the mine is limited to twenty
thousand quintals. This supply is drawn by
mule power from the bowels of the hill
through a grand shaft constructed on the
usual impressive scale. There is not much
trouble given by water in the mine. What
water there is has to be pumped up by means
of an engine built for the place by Watt
himself, which would be a valuable curiosity
in a musem.

The ore lies, as I have said, in a lode, almost
perpendicular. There are three veins of it,
called respectively St. Nicholas. St. Francisco,
and St. Diego, which traverse the length ot
the hill and intersect it vertically; at the point
where they converge galleries connect them all
together. The thickness of the lode varies
between fourteen and sixteen feet; it is much
thicker where the veins intersect, and seems
to be practically inexhaustible; for as the shaft
deepens, the ore grows richer both in quality
and quantity. The yield consists of a
compact, grey quartz, impregnated with cinnabar
and red lead. Associated with it, is a
conglomerate called by the miners Fraylesca,
because in colour it resembles the blue grey
of the familiar cassock worn by frayles (friars)
of the Franciscan order.

The chief entrance to the mine is out of
the town, on the hill side, facing the south,
the town itself being on the hill-top. The
main adit leads by a gallery to the first
ladder, and by galleries and very steep ladders
the descent afterwards continues to be made.
Though the mine is one of the very oldest in
the world—the oldest I believe of any kind that
still continues to be worked—the workings
have not up to this time penetrated deeper
than a thousand feet.

The quicksilver is procured out of the ore
by sublimation over brick furnaces about five
feet in height, and as the furnaces are fed
with the wood of cistus and other aromatic
shrubs, this part of the process is extremely
grateful to the senses. There are thirteen
double furnaces and two quadruple ones,
partly erected at Almaden, partly at
Almadenejos—Little Almaden—in the neighbourhood.
The minerals having been sorted, are
placed in the chambers over the furnaces
according to their quality in different proportions
and positions, the best at the bottom.
The whole mass, piled upon open arches in
the form of a dome, is then roofed over with
soft bricks made of kneaded clay and fine
particles of sulphuret of mercury, a free space
of about eighteen inches being left between
the ore and roof, in which the vapour can
collect, and circulate. The mercurial vapour
finally conducted along stoneware tubes luted
together, condensing as it goes, is deposited in
gutters, which conduct it across the masonry
of a terrace into cisterns prepared to receive
it. The quicksilver there carefully collected
is then put into jars of wrought iron, weighing
about sixteen pounds a-piece, and each
holding about twenty-five pounds English of
the finished produce of the mines.

As for the antiquity of the mine at Almaden,
that is immense. Pliny says, that the
Greeks had vermilion from it seven
hundred years B.C., and that the Romans in
his day were obtaining from it ten thousand
pounds of cinnabar yearly, for use in their
paintings. The working of the mine fell of