Further Incidents in the Life of a Mining Engineer

g to the Company. One was a pure white animal, with hardly a blemish on it, and the other a dark bay, both were easy riders, and both I afterwards taught to trot. The white mule cost £130, the bay £n0. In Mexico a good riding mule fetches a high price, though a cargo mule was worth only from £10 to £15, proving how few there are with an easy gait. One of my first difficulties was with the authorities who lived nine miles from us, and whose police were all armed with rifles and bayonets. As soon as my predecessor (who had succeeded very well in keeping on good terms with the authorities) had gone they attempted a " try on " with me, for one evening our own head policeman reported that a Lieutenant and fifteen police had entered my camp, and had seized many of my best men and foremen, having locked them up in our jail for the night until the following morning, when they were to be taken away as prisoners. This was meant, I knew, to extort money by way of fines out of them on some plea or other brought against them. I waited until the early morning before sending the Lieutenant a polite message expressing surprise that he had not called on me, and asking him to do so. Very soon he turned up, and drew up a guard outside my office of fifteen police, all with bayonets fixed. I was not sure what the law was in Mexico, but in South America I knew that on a Government official entering a private property he had to report his presence to the owner or his representative, an...