Once an hour I descended to a hole far beneath by a rope ladder, life depending on a spike driven in the rock above and a secure handhold, for the handful of "pay dirt" two peons were grubbing down out of a lower _veta_, a long narrow alleyway of soft earth and small stones that stretched away into the interior of the mountain between solid walls of rock. No inexperienced man would have supposed this mud worth more than any other. But silver does not come out of the earth in minted dollars.
In the mine the peons wore their hats, a considerable protection against falling rocks, but were otherwise naked but for their sandals and a narrow strip of once white cloth between their legs, held by a string around the waist. Some were well-built, though all were small, and in the concentrated patch of light the play of their muscles through the light-brown skins was fascinating. Working thus naked seemed so much more dangerous; the human form appeared so much more feeble and soft, delving unclothed in the fathomless, rocky earth. Many a man was marked here and there with long deep scars. It was noticeable how character, habits, dissipation, which show so plainly in the face, left but little sign on the rest of the body, which remained for the most part smooth and unwrinkled.
The peons were more than careless. All day long dynamite was tossed carelessly back and forth about me. A man broke up three or four sticks of it at a time, wrapped them in paper, and beat the mass into the form of a ball on a rock at my feet. Miners grow so accustomed to this that they note it, if at all, with complete indifference, often working and serenely smoking seated on several hundred pounds of explosives. One peon of forty in this gang had lost his entire left arm in a recent explosion, yet he handled the dangerous stuff as carelessly as ever. Several others were mutilated in lesser degrees. They depend on charms and prayers to their favorite saint rather than on their own precautions. Every few minutes the day through came the cry: "'Stá pegado!" that sent us skurrying a few feet away until a dull, deafening explosion brought down a new section of the vein. Not long before, there had been a cave-in just beyond where we were working, and the several men imprisoned there had not been rescued, so that now and then a skull and portions of skeleton came down with the rock. The peons had first balked at this, but the superintendent had told them the bones were merely strange shapes of ore, ordered them to break up the skulls and throw them in with the rest, and threatened to discharge and blackball any man who talked of the matter.