| Show the mining and other ki sources ces of mexico written loh for the milind 1 preview v by marcus E jones A M S 9 we are arc generally disappointed with any new country because those who write of such regi regions oils generally speak only of the pleasant features so s 0 o that we cannot obtain a correct estimate of things as they are in their true proportions on the other hand there are many timings things which are so different from ours that we have to rid ourselves of prejudice and provincialism before we can appreciate them for example mexico lies under or so near the tropics that it is for the most part hot very hot without winters as we know them and for the most part is a de desert s worse than any in utah where every shrub has hag a thorn and where the water is almost u uniformly n I 1 f 0 r in I 1 y bad warm rm alkaline or worse orse and flat to the taste these things the traveler must st expect everywhere and be grateful l when they are absent the greatest shock hock to a traveler is 11 the food he is required to eat which is as hot ot as the climate and necessarily so in raer der to counteract the debilitating effect of the climate on the digestive apparatus if the traveler is wise he will eat what the people of the region eat for they have round found by hard experience what is best for them there are two ways of reaching mexico the e santa fe and the southern pacific it if IL a person wishes to see the most he be will 90 S one way and return the other if he he has never taken either railroad he will find anil many things to interest him on the way the lucin cutoff cut off will be a revelation in the line of railroad engineering the beautiful sierras of california will well be worth a months sojourn at donner lake tahoe summit and blue canon with their magnificent scenery flowers and pure water the trip through the enchanted land of california will be another surprise especially at the golden gate and among the orange groves of the south which is as CITY OF manzanillo MEXICO near paradise as any land can be when he leaves the oranges behind and drops down on the eastern side of the sierras at yuma he gets the first touch of the mexican deserts and begins to see the peculiar styles of dwellings and the peculiar ways of living if he goes by way of the santa fe he will first take the rio grande from salt lake which is unsurpassed in scenery en route the wasatch the beautiful sculpturing on the desert the magnificence of the 13 black canon of the gunnison surpassed only by the grand canon of the colorado the scenery at marshall pass and the royal gorge are all his as he rides along the trip on the santa fe begins at pueblo soon one is out on the boundless plains with a ride of a thousand miles or more before before him ere he reaches el paso the terminus of this line the climb over the raton mountains is interesting the trip down the rio grande the greatest of the arid valleys of the west introduces him to the old civilization of the 7 WIN V M aw 7 Z K 10 K a pueblo indians and the newer life of the mexicans he sees the great coal mining industry of the batons the famous hot springs of las vegas the business enterprise of albuquerque the mining industry of soco socorro ro and the apparently parent ly limitless agricultural opportunities of this vast valley for the first time he tastes I 1 grapes and other fruits sweeter and richer than those of california and finds himself in the paradise of the watermelon the most grateful fruit of the hot regions el paso is reached at last the gateway of mexico with its immense smelting smelling sm elting industry and business push As we cross the bridge over the rio grande we find ourselves outside of the jurisdiction of the blue coats and in the land of the mandana ma nyana our nervousness over possible holdups hold ups by the custom officials is soon allayed by the most polite and gentlemanly tle manly men the traveler ever saw men who seem to vie with each other in making ones trip into mexico a pie pleasure asure the examination of baggage is thorough but no attempt at temptIs is made to tax anything that a person has any reasonable right to take with him as a traveler there is a trip of about twelve hundred miles before him from juarez barez or el paso to mexico city the first two hundred miles is over as barren a desert as one can expect to see then he drops down on the river that flows past chihuahua and the great city lies before him it is not an american city but it is greit great just the same the low gray houses mostly one story made of adobe and with flat mud roofs do not look inviting especially as nothing of them is visible but grated windows heavy doors and blank walls but after entering them we find each house is built around in a hollow square with a beautiful flower karden garden in the maddle ard dle and the rooms all opening on this garden but the houses of mexico are nearly all alike and the streets are the sewers there are no fences op or lawns outside the houses as in our country but the residences are coolness itself and admirably adapted to the climate the fields are so small but under a high high state of cultivation it will well repay one to stop off here and visit the city with its many industries chief among which is the reduction of ores by taking a side trip of less than a hundred miles we get up into the heart of the sierra madras a flat topped mountain range about feet above the sei sea covered witha with a vast pine forest miles long and thirty miles wide with the most gorgeous display of wild flowers a boto botanist bot onist ever saw not excepting our own mountains at their best leaving chihuahua we continue on through the same desert for many miles passing an occasional river and city with its green fields amid the scorching heat till we reach a little place where the braan branch ah 1 leads out to the sierra tf fojada ojada mines M s ne s for vr s 1 I 1 i A years this one group of anines has produced a trainload of ore per day for american smelters shelters sm elters the ore is a soft oxide of iron dron and carbonate of lead and occurs jn in a great chute in limestone at the base of a precipitous escarpment aa of the sierra tierra mojada fojada range there is neither wood nor water in this region a desert of deserts and many of the people live in underground places like the cliff dwellers of old from the sierra the country is much the same till we approach zacate cas this is a conical uplift reaching feet altitude above the sea rising out of the surrounding plains the uplift is skirted by occasional forests of desert palms and cactus but otherwise has the usual tropical vegetation of the deserts the city Is placed in a series of ravines near the crest and spreads out over the adjacent hills the whole country around is a net work of mineral veins carrying silver and some lead mines are everywhere and you can look out on patios almost anywhere f each mine is surrounded surround ed by a wall and is approached through a massive gate many men women and children are seated around the walls under crude shelters sort ing ores the hoisting plants consists of a huge shed with a mansard roof under which I 1 is a vertical wooden drum ten feet or more in diameter mounted on on a large tree for spindle and with wilh several long sweeps coming down to which teams of mules are hitched the rope comes from the shaft over a sheave wheel and winds around this drum the whole is called a matacotta ma lacotta to the end of the rope is hooked a rawhide bucket this is the complete hoisting plant there is no cage nor modern appliance of any kind if you wish to go down in the mine you either walk down the ladders or straddle through an improvised sling at the end of this rope and dangle and spin around Isum bumping ping 00 Y IT f V 1 I pj af 3 S t Y 4 GROVE IN STATE MEXICO e t A I 1 t 1 against the sides as you go down I 1 went down SOO feet n this way in the veta grande gr i ande mine this camf camp has been worked for foi nearly a hundred and fifty years continuously and has ha s produced hundreds of millions in silver the method of working the mines min es is as primitive as the hoisting plants not notched c hed logs are everywhere used as ladders the stand at about 45 degrees angle running from one short landing to the next and the ore is often carried up to the surface in this way on the backs of men 1 I have climbed 1000 feet vertically on these ladders and consider them a decided improvement pro on our own as they can be climbed without the use of the hands the i men who carry the ore are called carga dores they generally carry to pounds at a load there are almost no tracks or cars in mexican mines all the waste and ore is carried on the backs of men the levels are seldom level this seems very wasteful from our standpoint it is 19 wasteful of human energy but as men hm are paid only 50 cents mexican per day men are cheaper than mules because of the high cost of horse feed and ten tell to thi thirty aty times as cheap as a skilled angieri american workman nearly every atti attempt ampt to displace the te mexican by the american way has resulted in failure from this cause as skilled workmen must be imported to run the machinery the method of working the ores is equally primitive it is the patio process the ore is is du dumped aped into a flat circular place floored with hard stones and other othe flat and hard stones are dragged over ibby it by a sweep at the end of which is a mule or two which go round and round till the ore is pulverized th this is outfit is called an at a certain stage mercury is added when the grinding is complete the pulp is either washed out and t the h e c quicksilver amalgam collected or the pulp is spread out on the a re r e I 1 floor of the patio mixed with dung copper sulphate acids etc and trampled by horses driven round and round and then it is handled hai idled over and over again in the same way till the silver will all amalgamate when it is recovered the horses are soon ruined by tho the eating away of their hoofs when fit tor for nothing more they are used in the bull fights and many of them are gored to death by the bulls we are accustomed to brag of our great ore but at zacatecas Zacate cas I 1 saw that would eclipse anything we have in utah in our camps if we have a few pro mines we think we have a great camp but in zacatecas Zacate cas there are something like mines mexican cities are filthy beyond all ex J A a sewage system is practically un j known and smallpox and typhus fever aberl araj rampant As we go south toward mexico city we many raining mining camps the greatest of pass pas then bein ging g guanajuato a larger camp even than zacatecas Zacate cas at san luis potosi on the mexican national is a modern smelting smelling sm elting plant of immense proportions there is no great change in the country we approach mexico city except that the lw low mountain ranges are not so far away and the climate is a little less arid the pity city itself lies feet above the sea in the center of an extinct crater whose mountain walls rise several thousand feet above it and supply it with water the vegetation is tropical the evergreen mango is the principal fruit tree palms mescal and cactus plants flourish the city has about people beautiful plazas and cathedrals it is picturesque and beautiful as awhile a whole the mexican central is the railroad on which we have gone so far we now retrace our way to where the guadalajara branch begins and then start for the pacific coast over a much the same as before but better watered here we meet many of those peculiar in closures which we have seen before made by the a tree cactus which gro grows ws in a single trunk without bran hees from ten to thirty feet high and which the mexicans plant side by side around their dwellings forming squares which are impenetrable and presenting a wall of thorns As we approach guadalajara we enter a vast region of waving grain so different from what we have seen at guadalajara we find the boston of mexico a mat great caly with the most beautiful plazas and a cathedral of great beauty the people are more cultured than we have seen so far the city is on the western edge of the great plateau where it soon breaks down toward the sea in the most stupendous and rugged canons from here we took the stage for capot lan it was drawn by ten mules five abreast two drivers one on foot the country was rougher but almost as arid as the plateau at Za we took mules and climbed the rugged tapalpa tapalla mountains and passed through their beautiful forests and fertile parks to visit the great iron mines and the copper and silver deposits with their unique reduction furnaces having a capacity of pounds each on in returning we took another stage to sayula cayula and from here we had to use mules addles and pack animals to go over the camino real the royal road of the country this countr country y is a part of the paradise of mexico the summer rainfall is plentiful the he date palm paim flourishes the sugar cane is P anted in large f fields elds and the banana grows like e corn corn and beans are raised here 1 I immense quantities as elsewhere for this is the e native place of the corn and bean aa s we drop arop down off the great plateau we iter er the top forests groaning over their j load d of orchids and ferns which hang from th e en 1 I in ill masses mases no one can even imagine ae beauty of a mass of orchids ju in full bloom in their natly native e haunts the great mahogany t trees rees g grow row here along with many other hard woods in ill profusion this is also the home of the rubber trees and coffee plants the forests resound with the noise of the gorgeous tropical birds chief among them being the parrots at tequila we are just under the lofty volcano of colima and only a few miles away As we sit in the plaza we can see the perpetual column of smoke drifting away from its summit every two weeks a column of fire shoots op two to three thousand feet from the crater then spreads out like a cypress tree and showers of white hot boulders rain down on its sides and bound along in streams to the base of the cone or oc occasionally ca sio nally fall farther out among the settlements one of these eruptions I 1 saw after a three days ride of sixty miles we reached our journeys end at colima the capital of the state of colima this is the great coffee center where they produce the caracal illa coffee which surpasses the best mocha from colima it is but a few hours ride to manzanillo the seaport of the state along the road we pass through extensive cocoanut coco anut groves and forests and pass by fields of pineapples which do not grow on pines but on herbs like the flag or gladiolus two to three feet high from manzanillo we take a coasting steamer and run up the gulf of california stopping at san blas bias Maz atlan and guay mas from each of which we can take trips into the interior almost as attractive as the one just described and more profitable from a mining standpoint at guaymas we take the train for nogales benson and home passing through or near some of the most productive mining camps campp of the west MARCUS E JONES |
