Ignacios, from the villages _primero--segundo--or tercero_ (there were
three mining villages) under his government. He could distinguish them
not only by their flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs. Gould looked
all alike, as if run into the same ancestral mould of suffering and
patience, but apparently also by the infinitely graduated shades of
reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the two
shifts, stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps, mingled
together with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered picks, swinging
lamps, in a great shuffle of sandalled feet on the open plateau before
the entrance of the main tunnel. It was a time of pause. The Indian
boys leaned idly against the long line of little cradle wagons standing
empty; the screeners and ore-breakers squatted on their heels smoking
long cigars; the great wooden shoots slanting over the edge of the
tunnel plateau were silent; and only the ceaseless, violent rush of
water in the open flumes could be heard, murmuring fiercely, with the
splash and rumble of revolving turbine-wheels, and the thudding march
of the stamps pounding to powder the treasure rock on the plateau below.
The heads of gangs, distinguished by brass medals hanging on their bare
breasts, marshalled their squads; and at last the mountain would swallow
one-half of the silent crowd, while the other half would move off in
long files down the zigzag paths leading to the bottom of the gorge.
It was deep; and, far below, a thread of vegetation winding between the
blazing rock faces resembled a slender green cord, in which three lumpy
knots of banana patches, palm-leaf roots, and shady trees marked the
Village One, Village Two, Village Three, housing the miners of the Gould
Concession.

Whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in the
Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work and safety had spread over
the pastoral Campo, forcing its way also, even as the waters of a high