Their coming was a great event in the history of the mines. Kirkland, the foreman, and Chapman, who handled the dynamite, Weimer, the Consul, and the native doctor, who cared for the fever-stricken and the casualties, were all at the station to meet them in the whitest of white duck and with a bunch of ponies to carry them on their tour of inspection, and the village of mud-cabins and zinc-huts that stood clear of the bare sunbaked earth on whitewashed wooden piles was as clean as Clay's hundred policemen could sweep it. Mr. Langham rode in advance of the cavalcade, and the head of each of the different departments took his turn in riding at his side, and explained what had been done, and showed him the proud result. The village was empty, except for the families of the native workmen and the ownerless dogs, the scavengers of the colony, that snarled and barked and ran leaping in front of the ponies' heads.
Rising abruptly above the zinc village, lay the first of the five great hills, with its open front cut into great terraces, on which the men clung like flies on the side of a wall, some of them in groups around an opening, or in couples pounding a steel bar that a fellow-workman turned in his bare hands, while others gathered about the panting steam-drills that shook the solid rock with fierce, short blows, and hid the men about them in a throbbing curtain of steam. Self-important little dummy-engines, dragging long trains of ore-cars, rolled and rocked on the uneven surface of the ground, and swung around corners with warning screeches of their whistles. They could see, on peaks outlined against the sky, the signal-men waving their red flags, and then plunging down the mountain-side out of danger, as the earth rumbled and shook and vomited out a shower of stones and rubbish into the calm hot air. It was a spectacle of desperate activity and puzzling to the uninitiated, for it seemed to be scattered over an unlimited extent, with no head nor direction, and with each man, or each group of men, working alone, like rag-pickers on a heap of ashes.
After the first half-hour of curious interest Miss Langham admitted to herself that she was disappointed. She confessed she had hoped that Clay would explain the meaning of the mines to her, and act as her escort over the mountains which he was blowing into pieces.