There were hundreds of great steel bars, three or
four inches in diameter and a dozen feet long, pounding up and
down at the same time on the ore and reducing it to powder. It
was mixed with water, and ran away as thin red mud, the gold
being caught by quicksilver. The openings of the shafts and
tunnels were in or near the mills, and there were the smallest
cars and locomotives which we had ever seen going about
everywhere on narrow tracks, carrying the ore. Ollie walked up to
one of the locomotives and looked down at it, and said:
"Why, it seems just like a Shetland-pony colt. I believe I
could almost lift it."
The engineer sat on a little seat on the back end, and seemed
bigger than his engine. As we looked at them we constantly
expected to see them tip up in front from the weight of the
engineer. There was also a larger railroad, though still a narrow
gauge, winding away for twenty miles along the tops of the hills,
which was used principally for bringing wood for the engines and
timbers for propping up the mines.
[Illustration: Flying Cord-Wood]
We were walking along a connecting shed, and happened to look
out a window, when we saw a four-foot stick of cord-wood shoot up
fifty feet from some place behind us, and after sailing over a
wide curve, like a "fly-ball," alight on a great pile of similar
sticks on the lower ground, which was much higher than an
ordinary house, and must have contained thousands of cords.
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