Show RICHEST SILVER MINES ON EARTH oruro bolivia june 25 1898 oruro Is one of the great mining centers of bolivia there are rich deposits of silver and tin in the andes all about it and the work goes on an in the mines night and day there are rich copper mines on the desaguadero river not far from here and the whole country in fact seems to be a bed of valuable minerals in the wah nah ne tin district there is a conical mountain which has a network of tin thi veins in some of which the pure vre oie has been followed down from the top of the mountain a distance of fett in the district arthis ne the tin thi lodes are from one to three feet thick mick lind and now and then contain great masses of bf solid tin ore other veins are an from six to eight feet wide in place and some of the ore it is so pure that it la in shipped to shiroye as it COVAN comes from the mines minem other ore is crushed by means of rocking racking stones ana is smelted smelter on the spot in little blast 1 furnaces and run into fifty pound pigs all of these tin mines are situated at least feet above the sm sea bolivia has perhaps the richest silver e mines on earth she has produced I 1 k vast amount of the silver now no w in the word and did the price of silver rise v she would again flood the markets with her product there are today in the 5 dumps of the abandoned mines of this 1 country millions upon millions of ounce of silver which machinery maa some time reduce at a profit methods of mining have been waste wasteful full in the extreme and the high freight rates ra tes now prevent anything but the c richest ores being touched the itla anh Z and silver hilver bearing territory of is about 1500 miles long and milea wide it runs clear through the moun gainous parts of the country from south to north and every everywhere eblem throughout it at distances from nt teea to twenty miles milea apart may be seen these abandoned mines which we were re worked by the spaniards in 1848 tha th number of these mines was estl matea i at few such mines were e ebe hausted the spaniards forced indians to labor in them and they b butr 1 rowed through the earth taking ossice only the richest parts orf of the velia the owners gave one fifth of what t 3 mined to the spanish crown and it ital known that between the time of li coming of the spaniards to bolivia anft 1 the year 1800 the country produced produce a more than three and one third b belmo colars in silver from 1800 to when bolivia secured her independent of spain sixty seven million dellaa doll were taken out of the mines and up bol the present it must be I 1 should as a very low estimate to say that BO bollal has given the world the enorio ama amount of four billion dollars worth i silver the greater part of this me meto came from the famous silver mou mounts moun of potosi the mines of which have TU deuced more than three billion doi dolar worth of silver today the potosi ml are to a large extent exhausted a the town which had at one time m than people has now has h one fourth of that number at present oruro is far greater au mining center than potosi there some very rich mines here and one far from the city has netted the prea pre president of bolivia a fortune 1 mine is called the san jose it waw am told discovered by EL a named andrew penny who cama caage here years ago as a common mee mecha ec he was a drunken sot of a fellow 4 was by no means particular as to character of his female friends frieri dg least he m married aar led an ind indian ia n and ana d living with her when his mine b to produce fabulous amounts it linued good and soon made hina him wealthy he invested some of hiss his plus in an estate in the old brou count and then died by the bolivian S his estate went to his wife and to ta adl adopted opted I 1 son who was a halt half b bit the widow concluded to go to to sk land and see it if she could not bafit the estate there she tailed failed hut but lawyer who seems to have been as aa tle tie particular as was waa the old scot S man made the ancient indian alti a proposal of marriage and came hi with her to bolivia to live the old li soon died and the now presidents bolivia was the lawyer who sett settled estate he did this in such a way dav for a consideration the scotch I 1 lav husband withdrew leaving the bah of the estate including the the president and the adopted son aon president I 1 am told now owns eighths of the mine and h chaa r 4 I 1 it an income of something uke me 4 I 1 thousand bolivian dollars dolla a a a weel more than fifty thousand of lars jars j a month the mine haasl sight for a long time to aa his excellency Is the president there IS little danger of his title being disunited oruro Is a mining town of people it makes you think of the larger villages of the valley of the nile save that there is no green surrounding it it lies iles at the edge of bare gray hills in a desert the streets are narrow most of them are and most of the house are of one story thatched with straw the town water works are mules who carry barrels of this previous fluid about on an their backs and a large part of the population is made mo UP of quichua keech wa indians the most of the miners are half breeds chalos and as mining la Is the chief industry or you see chalos everywhere there axe are also saloons everywhere you know them by the little red tags which are stuck in balls over their doors just above the city on the mountain Is the chilean mine called sa cavon ra la virgen this is a famous old silver oliver mine which has produced and te is still producing vast quantities of silver ver it has a capital of a million and r its stock is worth I 1 am told per cent above par I 1 visited it today the mine is managed by englishmen but the work in it is al all I 1 done by bolivians Bolivier ians ns the miners labor half naked in the tunnels nels as the mine is like an oven and the means of ventilation are poor they take out only the best of the ore this when brought to the surface yand alt broken broken into little pieces by indian I 1 who sort out th ebest and fromen en IM throw the poorer pieces away there were several hundred of these women at t work at the mouth of the mine at tue the time of my visit they asuat on the ground and break the ore with ham iiii ners ers nea nearly arly every one of them was chewing coco and I 1 could see the fat auids sticking out of the cheeks of i them ahem they work from daylight until vt daak for what would be about 17 cents day the miners re i abour of our money per hedve alve about twice this amount in all ii 7 and this not WO 0 hands axe are employed withstanding that a great dea deal I of the work Is done by machinery one of the t V odd things about the mines is the fuel tale Is mine is ml miles les from the coast y i and miles from the coal mines of australia Nu the result is that the eight on an coal makes it cost per hundred weight which is too expensive hoffr tb use its place is taken by the fuel v sf the country which is llama manure hafs is brought in on the backs of in bags it costs about 60 cents cent tw for pounds and pounds are to run a forty horsepower horse power for twenty four hours in com ellaine ell gine bany with one of the managers of the I 1 joe if I went into the llama fuel pit where here pounds of this stuff was stored ed I 1 did not smell at all bad and liuro vieb ji gravel ng over it was like tramping I 1 i 4 A abe silver mines 0 of f peru are almost r rach as those of bolivia there are chave been told about 2000 different nolyer er mines ines in that country but ow al WK toche to the 16 w price of silver only a very few are now being worked at K in north northern erV peru just over 1 tit western ra range uge of the he andes there N aw four hundred silver mines within r furty square leagues some of these jj produce as much as ounces ayk silver anver to the ton and the waste 0 will average I 1 am told at least I 1 pounces ounces per ton the ore is mined by who are paid about forty cents f nsf sw aur money per day their only 1 oate are hammers ham imers drills and rawhide bt 7 sacks they have neither picks nor ete and they burrow through the like rats taking out only richest parts of the ore they almost naked wearing only ca cloths claths gibout their waists and work they utter weird and toly cries all of the ore is out upon their backs an in 11 carry pounds he will climb up ladders or notched sticks with such a load of ore upon his back and will go off on a dog trot with his burden the ore is broken up into small pieces with hammers by children it is then ground by circular stones being rolled about over it and then mixed with quicksilver atter after the patio process by driving mules males around through it these hualgayoc mines are the ones which humboldt says produced 33 worth of silver in thirty years much of the ore is now reduced to a and taken on mules to the coast and shipped to europe for further treatment the same sort of work goes on at the famous cerro de pasco mines in the andes above lima and in fact in nearly all of the silver regions of bolivia and peru the cerro de pasco mines which are now in active operation number about and there are silver mines being worked at baull yauli on an the oroya aroya railroad about sixty miles away cerro de pasco has always been thought to be the crater of an extinct volcano it to is situated about feet above the sea in one of the bleakest blea kest parts of the andes the town which to la now only on of about people lies in a basin surrounded by barren rocks the deposits consist ot of a great body of low grade silver ore over a mile and a half long by three quarters of a mile wide this has been worked down to a depth of about feet and numerous tunnels have been run in at that level to drain the mines the great trouble is the water and further mining can only be done by lower tunnels or heavy pumps henry meiggs the american engineer who constructed so many great works in peru years ago began a tunnel feet below the present levels the work was stopp d however at a distance of feet from the surface and at present nothing is being done the tunnel will need to be extended from to 1800 feet further before ore is struck and at the present low price of silver there Is little prospect of this being attempted within a short time there has been something of a revival of the silver industry at cerro de owing to the copper ores lying under the low grade silver ores and the camp today is more one of copper than of silver in the past the cerro de pasco mines have produced enormous quantities between am and 1824 tons of pure silver were taken out of them and the dumps of the mines it if they were scientifically worked would bring a fortune twenty years ago cerro de pasco was turning out more than EL a million ounces of silver a year and I 1 am told that worth of sliver silver was taken out from under the ground on which the town of cerro de pasco now stands these mines were discovered in the seventeenth century by a an n indian he camped out one night ne near ar the site cerro de pase pasco 0 before going to sleep he built a fire upon some stones and awoke to find that his stones had melted and that a lump jump of silver slag hid had aken their place the biggest yankee enterprise I 1 have found in a mining way south of the equator is the smelting smelling sm elting works of the backus and johnston company at casapalca Casa Case palca peru this company Is composed of mr J backus a brooklyn man who to Is a nephew of the famous engineer meiggs mr J H johnston johnme of bath who ca came me out here to work on the meiggs rad and capt H guyer the owner 0 of f the guyer springs in I 1 idaho who la is well known as a pre cical miner and mining engineer in our estern states backus and johnston Juh mad a nice thing in estah 1 ashing a brewers brewer at alwa L apa they III nn ported for it from the unit ed states and made money from the they sold the brewery some years ago to an all english syndicate for in gold they rhey have since been dealing in tuinen and have put a great deal of money into their smelter this is situated at Caa Cam palca on the oroya aroya railroad away up in the andes ninety five miles from the sea and feet above it the works run night and day and I 1 am told that they smelt to as good advantage as any establishment of the united states the superintendent in of the smelter is mr frank pierce the son of richard R pierce of the well known argo smelting smelling Sm elting works of denver and the smelting smelling sm elting to la done after much the same plan aji as that of the argo the company also have extensive silver mines at casapalca Casa palca capt guyer told me that the profits of the mines and works during the past year wera more than while the profits of the year preceding were even greater about men are employed and the company controls the town casapalca Casa palca which has grown up about the works the smelter was originally started on a small scale to work over the dumps of the ryo and other silver mines of which there were something like tons at this point then the company bought the ryo copper and silv silver r mine and an d took to oka a ten years lease of the caros francisco mine both of these mines had been worked from the surface for many years backus and johnston decided to run a tunnel into the mountain and strike the ore body 1700 feet below the upper workings they did this but failed to find pay dirt in the ryo A few ago the tunnel was pushed on into the francisco vein and here a very rich body of ore was struck I 1 was waa shown specimens of the ore at casapalca Casa palca the vein is seven feet wide and twenty inches of it as says J 1 am told ounces of silver to the ton the tunnel is feet below the outcroppings outcrop pings of the ore and it is beloved that some rich pockets will be struck in working upward this mine is worked atter after the approved american fashion the tunnels have railroad tracks in them and the ore when brought to the surface to is sent to the mills mill tj on a gr gravity amity tramway 1 in addition to their own ore the fhe backus and johnston company do a large business in smelting smelling sm elting for the mines of baull and of cerro de pasco the ore to is carried from forty to seventy five miles to the smelters shelters sm elters on the backs of llamas each orf of the ilams carries about pounds and they are driven here by the indians indiana in herds of from twenty to fifty it is not an uncommon thing for 1200 llamas to be unloaded in a day at and the yards of the smelter were full of these curious beasts during the whole of my stay it I 1 takes the llamas ten days to make m A ke the round trip from fro m cerro de 4 e pasco and about two days from baull yauli it is one of the curious features of freighting in the andes that although yauli bauli is on the line of at the railroad just twenty five miles from the smelting smelling sm elting works the ore can be brought that distance more cheaply on llama back than on the cars in the same connect connection joh edgr egga and vegetates vege tabes are sometimes carried down the mountains to the markets of the lowlands on llamas 11 amas although the railroads almost parallels the route of the llama trail there is another larger smelter at the end of this 1 railroad at antofagasta Antof aasta agasta on the sea this smelter belongs to the famous huanchaca Huan chaca silver mining cont coma pany which produces the greater part pan of the silver of bolivia today the smelting smelling sm elting works are of vast extent comparing in size with any in the united states they have cost about two and one half balf milion american dollars and smelt the ores of this company ex elusively clu it is a magnificent ment and to is now well managed I 1 have already said something about gold goad mining in bolivia there to is one thing which I 1 failed to mention and this applies to silver mines as well |