Four natives with machetes hewed away the giant ferns and entwining underbrush and we slowly worked in toward our goal. I have seen worse in the South Pacific and the Philippines, but I minded this stretch of jungle particularly because of a horse. For some reason I have still to remember, I had brought a horse on the journey. It was impossible to ride him as he stumbled and lunged through the thick thorn-trees and tripped over long, sturdy vines. Leading him was an adventure in itself as he thought nothing of trodding solidly on my boot heels. At times it was necessary to lift him over fallen logs, one set of feet at a time. Now that may sound a bit weird, but consider the fact that Puerto Rican horses are a vest-pocket edition, weighing only about twice as much as a man.
After long hours of sweaty struggle we reached our objective and inspected the three pitiful dents in a mountain of stone and poisonous thorns. The veins were but a few inches wide and their gangue extremely poor, barely mineralized.
An American engineer named Morton had made these holes, and it is rumored about San Juan that he committed suicide when it was discovered that he was a spy for the German government in the World War. However, it is Mac’s steadfast opinion that the man killed himself from sheer shame of his limited mining knowledge.
This brings to mind the stories which I used to tease Mac. It would seem that to date no mining engineer who invaded Puerto Rico lived to tell the tale, and a fascinating game ensued which had for its object the promise that Mac would never live to return to his Rockies and his girl.
Sayer might be called the first casualty. He spent his fortune and drank himself to death. Then there was Morton in 1914. Trautman, an engineer who had made his fortune from a manganese mine during the World War, found a mountain crowded with gold veins, pushed eight drifts into the stubborn lava. He died in the southern part of the island shortly after he had pauperized himself. A young American was supposed to have discovered a rich vein in the region of Barrio del Carmen a few years ago and one of his tunnels still juts into a hillside. But the story is told that he celebrated shortly after his discovery, insulted a townsman of Carmen, and was buried in the basin. Not far from Carmen another American engineer carelessly stopped three bullets from the gun of a drunken jibaro. The diggings of Peter Nelson are everywhere in evidence over the island, and so was Peter Nelson until he died of fever and an overdose of French brandy. The one mine of note which he discovered is so entangled with stockholders that no one will ever be able to realize a profit from the site.
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