THE STORY OF THE SANTO DOMINGO MINE *

Santo Domingo , January 15, 1933 . My very dear Iva:

I am glad you considered the "hodge-podge" of round robins interesting and I confess the "rehashing" was just a little interesting to me as well, for I enjoyed some of the thrills in retrospect, while the mere copying brought back memories, the pleasant ones heightened, the others mellowed by time. You say the storm was "awful" and it was, but, my dear, that travail of the very foundation of the earth (so it seemed to us) gave us a dear little girl, who has brought and is continuing to bring much joy into our home: her father was the unfortunate victim of the cruel landslide and we at once took the motherless, eight-year-old waif into our hearts as well as our home; she calls Clarence "daddy" and her "mammie" means more to me than all the degrees or titles I have ever had conferred upon me; she more than compen­sates for any fear, worry or loss we have suffered and we both regard her as South America's most precious gift to us.

You want me to tell you the story of the Santo Domingo Mine—your request is timely, for I have just received some notes on the mine by Mr. Paul Yungling, who was the first American engineer at this mine. (Clarence always wanted me to collect data on the Pulacayo mine, for if ever a mine has had a hectic history, Pulacayo is certainly the one to carry off the prize; but I procrastinated too long and lost a golden opportunity to give my friends an absorbingly inter­esting story.) This time I shall not put it off but am begin­ning the very next day after the receipt of your letter.

Early in June we were most agreeably surprised by a wholly unexpected and quite unheralded visit from two men directly from Los Angeles; I say unheralded, for we usually know from Huancarani, at least, when anyone is coming to Santo Domingo, but these two men, Mr. Yungling and Mr. Jones, had stopped at Sagrario several days and I presume had not mentioned at Huancarani that they were later com­ing to Santo Domingo . Mr. Yungling was a member of the group of Americans that came to Peru in 1894 to take over the Santo Domingo mine; he was assayer, surveyor, doctor and general-utility lad, for he was only nineteen. He has a flair for languages and was soon able to speak the Quechua with the Indians, the Spanish with the Cholos and gente decente, and being a "medicine man" as well (he had studied medicine for two years and has the successful amputation at a man's leg and several other surgical feats down here to his credit), the Indians soon had confidence in him and before long, an Indian showed him some gold—gold that duplicated the Santo Domingo gold—and told him in a general way where this gold had been discovered. So Mr. Yungling spent his vacations scouting around, looking for this mine, but his vacations were never long enough to give him the time necessary to find the outcropping from which this "float" came.

At the expiration of his contract, three years, Mr. Yung­ling returned to the States; his mother was not very well and she exacted a promise from him that he would not return to Peru during her lifetime. But now, after thirty-seven years, he is here again; his mother, still living and more; robust at eighty-four than she was at that time, has released him from that promise. She feared the "Chuncos" (savage Indians), who were but a few kilometers from Santo Do­mingo ; the extreme roughness of the country and the un­known dangers of the unexplored wilderness frightened her. In the meantime Mr. Yungling has been in nearly all parts of the globe but the dream of finding this " El Dorado " in Peru has ever been with him.

Mr. Jones, a younger man, but not one whit more vigorous, whose more than six feet of brawn and muscle and "the cut, of whose jib" shows that he usually gets what he goes after, has been fired with the same enthusiasm and now the two men are actually on the trail of this mine in the Inambari Gold Concession. It is scarcely necessary to say that the entire staff at Santo Domingo devoutly hopes for their suc­cess in even greater measure than they themselves are hoping to obtain.

Mr. Yungling held us spellbound with his graphic descrip­tions of the adventures and experiences of this first Ameri­can expedition into this trackless montaña (Green Hell) nor did we want to interrupt him, but later in the evening I asked him for some notes of the "high spots"—and these are the notes just received. While waiting for these notes, I interviewed, just talked, with as many "old-timers" as I could —and one of these "old-timers" was here when Mr. Yungling first arrived and still remembered him! I have gathered quite a little more information in this way of the "romantic history of the Santo Domingo mine" and shall now pass on to you what, to us, is an absorbingly interesting story and if you find it one-tenth as interesting, I shall feel that my efforts at transcribing these data are well repaid.

In 1890 one Mariano Quispe, an Indian from the village of Macusani , sixty miles from Santo Domingo , was with a party collecting bark of the cinchona tree, our source of quinine. Quispe made his way alone up Santo Domingo Creek, turned into a small creek joining the Santo Domingo Creek on the left and stopped to survey a small waterfall that blocked his way; deciding that he could not proceed, he turned to re­trace his steps to the main stream and was astonished to see a dim reflection of himself on a slab of metal, which seemed as if plastered to the surface of the rock wall of the box canyon in which he found himself; the canyon was but seven feet wide. This metal he at once saw to be solid gold and he broke it loose with the small hatchet he carried for peeling the bark from cinchona trees. This side trip occurred on Sunday, "Domingo."

When Quispe returned to his village he showed this slab of gold to Francisco Velasco, who, naturally, became very much excited and he immediately sent for Manuel Estrada, a wealthy (relatively speaking) man of the village, to whom the Indian explained again in detail where he had found the gold; the two men offered him four head of cattle, if he would conduct them to the place and he accepted the offer. A party was organized, and ten days later Quispe showed them the exact spot where he had chipped off the gold. There was no delay, for the Indian had remembered every ridge and every gully.

The vein was cut by the creek, the outcroppings of rich gold were exposed on both sides of the narrow gorge; this spot was named "El Suche," from a fragrant yellow flower that grew here in abundance and it is so called by the old-timers yet today. The thrilling part to us is that it is directly below this "El Suche," undoubtedly a continuation of the same ore shoot, where Clarence took out the bulk of the ore with which we paid for Santo Domingo ! The Velasco-Estrada party set monuments, posted notices of denounce­ment and returned home via the high ridge down the Macho Creek to Oroya (you remember our last Christmas Greetings shows a picture of the swinging bridge at Oroya); here the Indian, Mariano Quispe, the discoverer of this slab of gold, fell over a cliff and was drowned. His body was never recov­ered nor were the four head of cattle ever delivered to his heirs. To find the heirs of Mariano Quispe now would be like trying to find the heirs of a John Smith in the States-there would be thousands of claimants.

Mr. Yungling saw this slab of gold, called "Espejo de Oro" (Mirror of Gold), at Velasco's home in Macusani; it weighed forty-seven Spanish ounces, was worth approximately $900; he said it was a beautiful, massive nugget, an alluring speci­men of nature's handiwork—no wonder he wants to find more like it!

The following dry season Velasco and Estrada installed a small four stamp mill on the creek, on an artificial flat, which can still be seen just around the bend from our present camp; this mill was driven by a small overshot water wheel; they saved an average of fourteen ounces ($280) per day, grinding only selected ore, the very richest, and losing at least 40 percent of the values in the tailings.

Four years later United States citizens come into the pic­ture: in 1894 Mr. W. L. Hardison, President of the Union Oil Co. of Santa Paula, California, came to Peru to investigate the oil fields; while in Lima, he was shown some very rich samples of gold ore by a Dr. Alejandro, the samples being owned by a Sr. Pando, who claimed the specimens came from his mine on Maco Tacuma, just across the ridge from the very rich Santo Domingo mine. Mr. Hardison agreed to go with Pando to inspect the mine with the idea of purchasing it. Mr. Hardison was accompanied to Peru by Mr. Chester Brown, now a retired capitalist of Los Ange­les; these two men, with Pando, traveled five hundred miles by sea from Lima to Mollendo, then by rail from Mollendo to Tirapata as men travel today, but there was no road then from Tirapata to Huancarani nor any canyon trail from Huancarani to the mine as now. These men made the hazardous, difficult trip into the montaña (Green Hell) via Macusani and Coaza, following Indian trails on the almost knife-edge tops of the ridges between the canyons, and some­times the trails led into the canyons, wading or swimming the rivers, sleeping in Indian huts or in the open. It is sixty miles from Tirapata to Macusani, thirty from Macusani to Coaza and another thirty from Coaza to Santo Domingo; all this way on mule or on foot, very likely two-thirds of the way on foot; today, with a good trail from Coaza to the mine, it takes an Indian with llamas six days to bring us potatoes. The three men spent a day and a night at the Velasco-Estrada camp, crossing the divide the next day to Pando's mine; they found the tunnel in the mountain but no mine, no ore in sight.

Mr. Hardison made up his mind that the samples shown him were from Santo Domingo , so he negotiated with Velasco and Estrada to purchase the Santo Domingo mine for $210,000, paying $10,000 cash and an option for ninety days to pay the balance. Returning to the United States , he formed a company consisting of Senator Emery of Bradford , Penn­sylvania ; Joseph Seep, Charles Collins and others; this com­pany supplied the funds for the purchase of the mine and what was considered necessary for expenditures to develop it.

A few days after giving the option, the owners struck an extremely rich zone in two of their four tunnels; in their eagerness to work it out before the option expired, they gutted the ore body, putting in a stick of timber only when absolutely necessary for their work, with disastrous conse­quences to the American company later. (Now the timber gang ranks in importance with that of mill or mine; about one hundred Indians are constantly employed in cutting down the huge logs and transporting them down to the mine on their backs, for only men have the skill to bring the logs along the precipitous canyon sides. Some parts of the mine smell like an old-fashioned drug store, for the mine is tim­bered with camphor wood, laurel, mahogany and rosewood, valuable woods that sell by the pound in the United States, yet being indigenous here, they grow all up and down the canyon slopes, as common in our canyons as the willows along streams in the northern hemisphere. But, of course, I have not smelled these woods in the mine, for, as I have written you previously, women are not allowed in any mine in South America as the Indians believe there will surely be a fatal accident if a woman enters the mine, and in some localities the same superstition holds for a priest.) On the eighty-seventh day of the option, arrived Mr. Hardison with his son, his nephew, Chester E. Brown, Theodore Gray and Paul Yungling. Mrs. Hardison, her two small children and the accountant's wife arrived a few days later. At that time there was no trail along the Santo Domingo Creek. Feature if you can, two women and two children following the creek bed, climbing over huge boulders, crossing the stream one hundred and thirty-two times, first one side, then to the other side, fighting their way through thick bushes, improvis­ing ladders out of trees when necessary to climb precipices— a difficult enough feat for a hardy man—these women were certainly heroic, even though Indians helped them over the worst places and occasionally carried the children.

At once after the arrival of the six men, Velasco and Estrada informed Mr. Hardison that they had changed their minds and did not care to sell; they would return the, $10,000 deposit, but they would not give up the mine! Each and every one of the six Americans was armed with a Win­chester carbine and a Colt .44 revolver; the six, with Velasco and Estrada, were seated on the porch of the building used as office, store and home of the Peruvian owners; some chick­ens were feeding on the ground about fifty feet away. Mr. Hardison, who ordinarily was an execrable shot with a revolver, drew his .44, shot the head off of a rooster, and calmly replaced his gun, as if that were not an unusual occur­rence, while the other five did all they could to give the impression that they could easily do likewise. Looks of astonishment appeared on the faces of Messrs. Velasco and Estrada, they withdrew and in a few moments returned with the announcement that upon reconsideration they had de­cided to fulfill their agreement. And so, although Santo Do­mingo came by its name because the "Espejo de Oro" was discovered on Sunday (Domingo), its name might as appro­priately have been changed to the less euphonious one of "gallo" (rooster).

The original owners, however, were so resentful of being dispossessed that they told the miners and Indian laborers that the "Gringos" were robbers, little better than murderers and that anyone who remained in camp did so at his own risk; with the result that there was a general exodus, leaving but the handful of Americans in camp. Before they were able to secure other laborers, the rains were upon them. And such rains! (We have a record of nine feet, one hun­dred and eight inches, in two months, March and April, twelve times a rainfall record in the United States, and we have another record of five inches in two hours! Muto San tells of a recorded rainfall of ten inches in one hour at Bella Pampa, but that, of course, like any unpleasant weather in California , is unusual.) This small group put in a miserable existence for nearly eight months, their supplies gradually giving out until they subsisted on rice alone, and were even without salt for two whole months. Mr. Yungling made several hunting trips up the Quitun canyon and was able to send back a few monkeys, a few parrots and other birds by Indians he met, whom he cajoled or forced by threats to do his bidding. When at last the wretched, half-starved but indomitable small group did receive supplies and had per­suaded a few miners to work, they found all the tunnels caved in, due to improper or almost entire lack of timbering, hence they were absolutely useless for mining. Two new tunnels were started, the Inca and the "Dos de Mayo" (May 2nd), but in the whole three years Mr. Yungling was with the company, not a ton of ore was taken out!

Estrada told Mr. Yungling that he and his partner had taken out more than $300,000 worth of gold in the eighty-seven days of the option; Mr. Yungling himself met the train of llamas carrying out their last shipment of gold—six llamas, each with fifty pounds of gold, in all approxi­mately $90,000 worth—and not a llamero (llama herder) nor a guard in sight! Mr. Yungling waited around a half hour or so, every moment expecting to see the man in charge of all this gold, but not until he arrived at Quitun, an Indian village of a few huts (now a coffee plantation), late the following day, did he find the official guard, and this guard was dead drunk and remained so for several days. Thus the six llamas were wandering along the trail all this time, with those heavy burdens, with all that gold on their backs. I believe no flight of imagination could make us see $90,000 worth of gold being carted around anywhere in the good old U. S. A. without someone to look after it; in our cities there would be the armored car plus mounted police, while the smallest village would have a constable or so to guard the gold. But aside from the danger to the gold, it was cruel to treat the llamas so: a good llamero unloads his llamas every evening and shifts loads in such a manner that each llama carries a load only every alternate day and he drives than but six to twelve miles a day, the llamas feeding as they go. And do you know that only the Indians can manage lianas? A Cholo or a white man can do nothing with them —they simply "do not understand the language" of any but a pure Indian. Some time later the Inca Mining Company, while never so careless as in the above instance,” did have a "hold-up," which I will tell you about subsequently, and we take the utmost precaution with our shipments—the gold is carefully guarded from the time it is cast into bars until it is aboard the ship en route to the United States mint.

Thus endeth the tale of the time Mr. Yungling was here; the information until our arrival has been supplied by "old-timers" who are still employed here. Felipe, a one-armed man, whose arm was amputated by our doctor three years ago, was fishing at Maldanado with dynamite and did not let go of the fuse soon enough. When he arrived at the mine, the bone of the forearm was protruding and the flesh at its extremity putrefied; our doctor amputated his arm a few hours after he arrived, and he now looks after a little chacra (farm) where he raises fruit and vegetables for us; the farm is called Miraflores, meaning "Look, flowers," and is close to Oroya. I feel sure every city and large town in South America has a suburb called Miraflores, so Santo Do­mingo had to have such a suburb, too. Felipe remembers much of those stirring times and a good many of his "they says" and of the other oldsters, through much repetition, now pass as authentic.

Mr. Hardison as manager was relieved by Chester Brown, under whose capable management, the mine produced about $12,000,000; fully five and a half of these millions, and very likely much more, were spent here in Peru for machinery and buildings at the mine and at Tirapata, in mills, in build­ing roads and trails; the trail from Huancarani to the mine is said to have cost a million alone. Later huge sums were spent in rubber lands and in building a trail to these rubber lands; Mr. Wilson, one of our employees, had charge of the building of this latter trail and he relates many interesting and hair-raising tales of his encounters with the "Chuncos," the savage Indians; he and his workmen were always armed and had to be constantly on the alert for attacks from am­bush.

And until 1905 the very location of Santo Domingo was in dispute; its discoverer was a Peruvian and all connected with the mine later had come in by way of Peru but Bolivian money was the only currency used, the workmen receiving their pay in Bolivian silver pesetas, and, until Santo Do­mingo was discovered, the boundary between Peru and Boli­via was indefinite, the Inambari River being considered by some as the boundary. Then in 1905 an English Commission was appointed to fix the boundary between Peru , Bolivia and Brazil ; Col. P. H. Fawcett, whose disappearance many years later in the Brazilian jungles is still perplexing his friends, for whom efforts are still being made to locate him, was made Head of this Commission. The boundary between Peru and Bolivia is now the Tambopata River .

From about May, 1912, the mine did not produce so well and there occurred a bewildering change of personnel, from manager down to peons, but even during Mr. Brown's regime and on down to 1914, when the Company was reor­ganized, Santo Domingo had more than its share of bad men, high-graders (those who steal high-grade ore) and lawless desperadoes; Mr. Spencer, inspector at the change-house, told me the mountain sides were dotted with the tents of the comerciantes (merchants or peddlers), who brought in alco­hol with other things, and fighting affrays were frequent. So bad did the conditions become, that the management decided to put in a cantina (barroom) to try to regulate the drinking. Many are the amusing stories of the "bootlegging" that fol­lowed: bottles of alcohol cleverly tucked away in bundles of coca leaves and even in cans of rice or sugar. But there was an improvement for the apprehended bootlegger was not allowed to return. We have a dry camp with drinking trou­bles almost nil. Mr. Spencer told me most of the following stories:

4. The "Hold-up": An American (of course), named Howard, and an Englishman, name forgotten, both former employees of the mine, decided to hold up the shipment of gold. They were, naturally, familiar with the modus operandi; they stopped several parties going out but somehow missed the one with the gold; they finally decided they would take the payroll coming in, since the conveyor of the gold had "outsmarted" them; so they held up the postman at Aricoma, the summit, but again they were out of luck, for he had only the mail. So they came on down to Agualani and compelled the foreman in charge of the road work there to accompany them, with his sack of silver pesetas, almost as far as Oconeque, then merely a camp; but the bandits had been hanging around so long, had stopped so many people, that the whole countryside was aroused, soldiers had been sent for and now the pursuers were hot on the bandits' trail. Many shots were exchanged and the robbers, becom­ing frightened, took the sack from the road boss and "beat it" into the brush at Oconeque, where they buried the money. That money has not been found to this day. How­ard, after killing four or five men, made his way to Bolivia, where he is still living; Mr. Othick, our millman, knows him and says this attempted hold-up was his last misdeed; he did send a man to Oconeque for the sack of pesetas but his envoy failed to find the cache. Since Oconeque provides most of our fruit and all our vegetables, it had been pretty well dug over, yet there is always the chance that our trail rider, who is the Jefe (Chief) at Oconeque, may find that cache of silver. The Englishman's whereabouts are unknown.

5. A man killed in the mine was brought out by his fellow workers, who first stuffed his pockets with gold—for, of

course, a dead man would not be searched—and later the corpse bearers divided the spoils!

10. Another scheme of high-graders was to wrap the gold in an old rag or tie it to bits of wood, then drop the bundle in the stream of water pumped out of the mine into the drainage canal; to stop this the canal was emptied daily at irregular intervals and the inspector was paid a commission on the gold recovered from the canal; one month, Mr. Spencer said, his commissions amounted to S./400, at that time $160.

11. An Italian barretero (miner), who always wore a jaunty yachting cap to work and who was accustomed to coming out earlier than his fellow workers, was stopped by the inspector, who merely wanted to ask him the time; the miner looked so scared that the inspector reached over and jerked off his cap—and out fell more than a pound of gold! 12. For some time the lower-grade ore from the mine was concentrated by grinding it and flowing the ground-up ore over vibrating tables in a stream of water so that the heavy high-grade particles settled at one end of the tables; these high-grade concentrates were dried, sacked and sent out by pack train to the railroad and thence sent to the smelters where the gold was separated. Once a mule with two sacks of concentrates fell over a cliff on the trail between Oconeque and Limbani; Mr. Spencer, the "light-weight" of the party, was let down over the cliff by a rope into the canyon, but he saw no sign of the mule and but one sack of the concentrates; the mule and the other sack had been carried down the swift stream, perhaps even into the Inambari.

(Later the management gave up sending out concentrates; the crushed ore was amalgamated with mercury in mills and the residues containing the chemically combined gold stored in tanks. These residues are to be treated by the "cyanide process" and roasted in a furnace, now in the building; we have thirteen huge tanks, containing approximately 5,000 tons of concentrates with an estimated value of from $80 to $100 per ton and, of course, the mills are adding to these tanks every day.)

Thus endeth these tales; which do you think the best? To me, No. 5 is the most shocking. High-grading is always a serious problem in any gold mine and constant, unremit­ting vigilance is necessary. Just the other day Clarence found a beautiful gold specimen near the track—it contained at least three ounces of gold ($60). He thinks it must have been thrown off by a carman during the night and a confed­erate was to have picked it up; but Clarence, always an early riser, made his usual rounds somewhat earlier this morning; and it was in this way that he found reason to suspect Mamani, a carpenter, one of the "original thirteen” who were here when we arrived. Clarence met him on the track several times, too early to be reporting for work; his house wan searched and, sure enough, more than $300 worth of ore was found under the kitchen floor. This collusion between carmen and outside workers is, of course, the most difficult to ferret out: the track from "la boca de la mina" (the month of the mine) to where the ore is dumped for the crusher, is a quarter of a mile long, curves somewhat, and although a string of electric lights illuminates the entire distance, yet, at night, a carman can "take a chance" that he will not be caught. The underbrush and all vegetation are cut close to the ground on both sides of the track; a window in the change-house gives an unobstructed view for fully two-thirds of the distance, while a window in the surveyor's office at the other end of the track gives a view of the other third, so there is not much possibility that a carman would risk throw­ing off pieces of high-grade ore during the day shift.

About 1912 the price of rubber dropped to less than the cost of transportation from Astillero to Tirapata, let alone the added cost of production. While the Inca Rubber Com­pany was a separate unit, yet that company and the Inca Mining Co. had the same stockholders; at one time more than 500 mules were carrying rubber over the Santo Do­mingo trail. At this time the mine's production could not keep pace with the high-graders and there is a colorful inter­lude of about two years when the men in authority were often worse high-graders than the miners! Be it known that the men most interested in Santo Domingo financially were not mining people at all, they were oil men, who almost never gave Santo Domingo personal supervision.

In 1914 with a reorganization, the name of the Company was changed from the Inca Mining Company to the Inca Mining and Development Company, which appellation it retains to this day. Senator Emery became chief stockholder and he took an active and personal interest in Santo Domingo up to the time of his death in 1925; he was an oil man also and the only oil man who, in defiance of Rockefeller, was able to keep his refineries operating and to maintain an oil line from his Pennsylvania oil fields to the Atlantic coast; you will remember that Senator Emery was one of the origi­nal promoters who sent the first American party down here, of which Mr. Yungling was a member.

A multimillionaire and at an age when most men retire, Senator Emery spent a great deal of his time at the mine; he had great faith in the gold possibilities of this region, he believed it to be another Rand, and whether Santo Domingo paid or not, he continued to devote his time, his energy and his money to this, his "pet" project. He spent $200,000 for a 540 H. P. hydro-electric plant at Bella Pampa, which was never completed in his lifetime. (We have just finished its installation at an additional cost of $10,000. It has been functioning since the first of June and now we can really enjoy what little sunshine we have—before this plant was operating, we were always fearing a shortage of water if the sun shone more than a day or two in succession. The Turquipata power plant has given sufficient power for all purposes except in extremely dry weather, but with the Quitun River now supplying the power at Bella Pampa, we are not dependent on the rains. And we now have excess power for other mines.) Mr. Emery spent another $200,000 for an all-slime cyanide plant, which gave but 10 percent extrac­tion: in his many trips back and forth to the States, he met engineers from South Africa , who expatiated on the low cost of extracting gold by the cyanide process, so he was eager to try out the process here. "Pop" Ridgeway, his metallurgi­cal engineer, advised him that the Santo Domingo ore was not amenable to the cyanide process but he insisted upon installing such a plant nevertheless, and when told that he would be wasting his money, he replied, "It is my mine and my money and I'll do as I’d please." Of course, Mr. Ridgeway resigned. We are now using this plant by in­ stalling a roasting furnace. There were many other heavy expenditures but the Bella Pampa power plant and the cyanide plant are the two outstanding ones.

However, aside from being the chief stockholder, Mr. Emery really enjoyed living in Santo Domingo ; he liked the climate, spoke of it as perpetual spring, and he preferred to live in the house in which we are now living, to his luxurious home in Bradford , Penn. , or to his palatial summer home in the Jamaica Islands . At eighty years of age, he would trot his mule over the dizzy heights of Bandarani and other scary places on the trail, where young men of twenty or thirty would dismount and lead the mule. Many are the stories recounted of his eccentricities: he would pick up old, rusty nails and tin cans, insisting they be used again, yet he was most generous in his benefactions; he spent money freely on any big idea but he could not bear to see the slightest thing wasted. He wore overalls, fraternized with the laborers and even worked right along with them as stone mason or car­man, collecting his two soles (at that time about eighty cents) at the cashier's window, and then he would spend his wages for cigarettes or candy to distribute among the workmen.

Mr. Emery made no attempt to learn Spanish and many amusing anecdotes are related of this linguistic lack: the cockroaches were so numerous at the Casa Santo Domingo that he had the kitchen walls lined with tin sheets from the empty five-gallon cans and there are plenty of cans, for all flour, rice, sugar, etc., must be brought in in well-soldered five-gallon tin cans on account of the heavy rains; the tin walls were then painted and when finished, he went in to inspect the work. Tornella, a big, fat Italian cook, in charge of the kitchen, could speak no English. Mr. Emery said, "Now, see, Tornella, you will not see any more cockroaches." Tornella, with the customary Latin politeness, doffed his cap and said, "Si, si, Señor." (Yes, yes, sir—but the "si" is pro­nounced "see.") So Emery answered, "But, damn it, man, I tell you you won't see any more." Then there is the story of a telegram sent to his home from the office which read: "No hay de esta en Tirapata" (There is none in Tirapata), referring evidently to some supplies ordered. Mr. Emery sent back word to the office that he knew positively that there was plenty of hay in Tirapata, for he had but recently purchased enough to last a month! "No hay" (pronounced i, long), meaning there isn't any or there are not, is used almost as much as mañana down here; "no hay" is a provoking refrain of the servants, for it is so much easier to just say, "no hay" than to look for something. Once in Lima he wanted to order ham and eggs for breakfast and told the waiter to bring him "jabón and huecos"— soap and holes.

In teaching the Indians to use wheelbarrows (I saw an Indian just yesterday carrying a wheelbarrow on his shoul­ders instead of pushing it), Mr. Emery would hit them on the elbows with a big stick; yet all the laborers liked the "old man" or "tata" (father) as they affectionately called him; one of the old-timers told me last week that Mr. Emery once asked him for a cigarette, the only time in his life that a millionaire had asked him for a cigarette, and he is still so proud of the honor! Mr. Emery "fired" a Gringo, then made him take a gold brick to the United States mint for him!

Shortly after Mr. Emery's death, the mine was closed down as his heirs were not interested in mining. Mr. Emery's faith in the Inambari district, an unabated faith until the day of his death, was based on his own observation and its early history as well: more than $200,000,000 worth of gold taken out from the time of the Spanish Conquest in 1535 to the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1775, and this more than $200,000,000 of gold put the world on the "gold standard"; from 150 to 200 mines in operation, the largest of which, the San Juan del Oro, shows a pit from which 50,000,000 cubic yards of gravel have been worked, with untold millions of cubic yards still remaining, for this old river channel is known to extend to the mouth of the Inambari River, many, many miles below; and there is no doubt that a great part of Atahualpa's ransom came from this region. Mr. Emery might have seen this faith justified, had he been permitted to live a few years more, for "rich strikes" are being reported, a thousand Indians are working the streams of the Inambari today and many mines are in the process of being opened up.

Aren't you tired? Better leave the rest for another day and again make yourself comfortable, for it will be a long recital of how we happened to come to Santo Domingo and then some of the "high spots" in our life down here.

You remember that our home at Chojñacota (tin mine) in Bolivia was very, very high: our home was 15,623 above the level of the sea and the mine was a thousand feet higher; the entire Quimse Cruz (Three Crosses) section, of which Chojñacota was a part, has the rest of the world, in my opinion, "backed off the map" for scenic beauty; I still rave over Chojñacota's towering peaks, capped deeply with everlasting snow—the ever-changing but always interesting and fascinating glacier in our back yard, and the three large, sometimes small, wonderful, now sapphire, now emerald, lakes in our front yard. But when you bear in mind that we were ac­tually living at an elevation much higher than Mt. Rainier or Mt. Shasta , more than a thousand feet higher even than Mt. Whitney , the highest peak in the United States , you will agree with me that we were really "living high." Unfor­tunately the excess of grandeur and scenic beauty could not make up for the lack of oxygen; I think I still hold the record for living the longest period of time, three years, of any white woman, at such an altitude, yet I seemed to thrive on it; but it was too much for Clarence and at one of our enforced vacations at the seacoast, where he always recuper­ated so rapidly, we decided to seek a lower level for our next abode at the first opportunity—and that opportunity presented itself while on this vacation.

All mining people had heard of Santo Domingo from its very inception on account of the richness of the "strike," and later on account of the "high-grading," which has been notorious, and which still persists in spite of every precau­tion; just yesterday Clarence had to "send down the hill" two miners for quarreling, and always when sending a work­man "down the hill" he is searched and one of these belliger­ents had high-graded nearly a half ounce of gold. When Clarence came to Bolivia , nine years ago, he met an engineer, a Mr. Rand, on the boat, who was "ticketed" for Santo Do­mingo , and he entertained the group of mining people on the ship with stories of the wonderful richness of the Santo Domingo ore and of the clever high-graders. One of the shift bosses working for Clarence in the Huanchaca mine, that once fabulously rich silver mine at Pulacayo, told Clar­ence that in his last month of employment at the Santo Do­mingo mine he took out enough gold to get £800 Peruvian ($3,200) cash for it—and this same shift boss had the nerve to ask Clarence for a job here shortly after our arrival! At Chojñacota there were several workmen who boasted of how much they had high-graded at Santo Domingo and they, too, later applied for jobs here!

Returning from the coast to Chojñacota, we took a side trip to Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Incas, and while on this train, an army officer and Clarence "passed the time of the day" and were soon discussing the mining possibilities of Peru; in the meantime I was quite interested in the offi­cer's wife and their eight children, the eldest fourteen and the youngest a babe in arms; such a young-looking, happy mother and such well-brought-up children, the older ones looking after the younger ones; it was a joy just to watch them. The officer knew Santo Domingo and as we neared Tirapata he said to Clarence, "Let's get off here, perhaps there will be someone from Santo Domingo at the station." And, sure enough, there was an ex-shift boss to whom the officer said, "How's Santo Domingo ?" and the shift boss replied, "The mine is all right, is good, but the manager was crazy." There was time for no more as the train stops at Tirapata only long enough for passengers to get on and off but the shift boss's remark made an indelible impression on Clarence, and shortly after our arrival at Chojñacota he wrote the Emery heirs for permission to examine their mine.

The permission was granted and at our next regular vacation in January—we were expected to take a vacation every six months to get out of the high altitude—Clarence came to Santo Domingo, while I visited with our good friends, the Bells, in La Paz. Clarence at once recognized this section of the country as of gold formation, very closely resembling the "mother lode" section of California , and even if Santo Domingo had been a "washout," he would have, very likely, come over here to prospect. He was pleased, however, with the possibilities he saw in Santo Domingo and he made as thorough an examination as his time allowed and saw three places where possible ore shoots might have been overlooked; he took seventy samples; in fact he was so well pleased that he immediately wrote the heirs, before he assayed the samples, that Santo Domingo had a possible value and if given an option for two years, he would take the mine at the price offered.

Clarence then sent his report on the Santo Domingo mine to the company by whom he was employed at Chojñacota, telling the company that the mine had no cash value but that it had wonderful possibilities; that if it were located in the United States and with this option, he would stake his repu­tation as an engineer that he could pay for the mine with but thirty days' credit. But, due to the mine being in a foreign country and it having been shut down for some time, he would need $15,000 cash and a credit of $10,000 more to draw on, if necessary. He included in his report that the Santo Domingo mine was the biggest monument to ineffi­ciency that he had ever seen. But the company was not interested.

Clarence received a telegram from the Emery heirs that his offer was accepted and as the Chojñacota Company had turned the proposition down, we decided to take it over "on our own." Mr. J. A. Othick, an experienced millman, for­merly with this same Chojñacota Company, and also "fed up" with high altitudes, agreed to come with us, and the day before we left, Charley Patra, whom Clarence had known years before in the Idaho mines, and who had had charge of the electric plant at Chojñacota, returned from an extended vacation, and he asked if he might go with us, too. So, on Friday, the 13th of July, 1928, the four of us said "Adios" to this lofty aerie in the rugged Andes, which had been Clar­ence's and my home for three years, but Othick and Patra had lived there much, much longer.

We were several days in La Paz, finishing up business af­fairs, getting our passports vised, etc. (So it is almost four years now since I sent you a detailed account of our trip, with special emphasis on the wonderful, beautiful and "scary" famous Santo Domingo trail.) I still remember how we left Bolivia with mingled feelings of regret and joy; regret to leave our friends, joy in the anticipation of new adventures ahead and joy to leave the excessively high alti­tude; we left Bolivia with high hopes in our hearts and with but an even thousand Peruvian pounds ($4,000) in our pockets! We arrived at Santo Domingo Friday, July 20th; Muto San, a Japanese electrician, who had had charge of the mine most of the time since it was closed down, and who had placed every facility possible at Clarence's disposal for exam­ining the mine the previous January, met us at the turnstile with his far-famed broad smile and conducted us to our home; here in a conspicuous place, he had perched a stuffed, beautiful blue bird and had put a slip of paper in its bill with the typed inscription: "Mr. and Mrs. Woods, WELL-CAME." It was a pretty conceit, and the blue bird for happiness with its yellow breast signifying gold, was taken as a happy augury for the future.

Muto San had thirteen men working for him, keeping water out of the mine, as carpenters, or on what repair work was absolutely necessary to keep the mine from becoming a complete wreck. Of these "original thirteen," eight are still here; two were "canned" for high-grading and the other three will return soon from vacations. We four and Muto are still here but "Don Carlos" (Charley Patra) is just now placer-mining on Santo Domingo Creek "on his own" and is making good. The executive staff has increased to ten. I was the only white woman in camp for just a little more than a year. Was I lonely? Not at all—I had thus been alone in Chojñacota and for about the same time but with this difference: here we were "on our own" and each daily incident became much more significant. Still, you remem­ber these lines: "Loneness lacks but one charm to make it half-divine—a friend, with whom to whisper, 'Solitude is sweet.' " And, you, Iva, I would have chosen as that friend. On July 25th a year later, and the 25th is Clarence's birthday, again Miss Krause arrived to make it two white women in camp; but this time Clarence and I met her in Juliaca and the three of us came to Santo Domingo just in time to cele­brate, for Muto surprised us with an elaborate birthday cake of his own making.

With these thirteen men as a nucleus, we started to work: Clarence took charge of the mine, Othick of the mill, Muto of the store and bookkeeping, and Patra of the electric plant at Tunquipata, while I, I cheered them on. Our Gringo men did all kinds of work wherever and whenever neces­sary, pushing cars, laying track, mending pipe line, mucking —anything that had to be done—until sufficient men had come to relieve them of the most onerous labor.

Clarence found conditions much better than he had hoped for and on August 1st, just ten days after our arrival, the mill was grinding ore, which was being brought out regu­larly, although day shift only, from the mine. On Friday, August 31st, we had our first clean-up, 132.7 ounces ($2,641.40), and never, never will another clean-up look so big to us. Remember we came here with only $4,000 cash and the second week here Clarence had to pay $1,800 to the Government for water rights at Bella Pampa! But our first clean-up yielded more than enough to meet our payroll and we were all jubilant. Our second clean-up, September 30th, was 256.08 ounces and the third, 607 ounces and the production continued to increase until, after twenty-two months, we had enough to pay for the mine and $60,000 surplus in the bank. Were we happy? Triumphantly so.

There were, of course, some setbacks, it was not all smooth sailing. On March 20, 1929 , eight months after our arrival, we had a terrific electric rain storm lasting but one half hour, yet what a calamitous half hour. The lightning burned out our hydro-electric plant at Tunquipata; the floods washed out half of the flooring of the warehouse, causing the loss of 9,000 caps, all the dynamite and all the fuse and other mate­rials, amounting to a direct loss of $10,000, but an even greater indirect loss in the time consumed for replacing the dynamite; 300 feet of the flume to the mill were washed out; six huge landslides and many small ones obstructed the trail—all this took place between five-forty-five and six-fifteen p.m. It was raining slightly when Clarence and I started to Casa Santo Domingo for supper but before we arrived, merely three blocks, the rain was actually pouring through my umbrella—we thought it another deluge; before we had half finished supper, reports began to come in of the damages inflicted. We had lighted candles in the dining room when the light was so suddenly extinguished but it was pitch-dark outside and the rain was gushing down in torrents; from the porch it came down in sheets, while from the embankment opposite, the stupendous, roaring waters looked and sounded like a real Niagara; the storm lasted a brief half hour but it was an awe-inspiring thirty minutes. The men, carrying carbide lights, bringing the news of the various disasters, made me think of giant fireflies coming out of the Stygian blackness to the only illuminated spot in the whole camp. Also carrying a carbide lamp, Clarence brought me home; we had to wade knee-deep in the mud and to climb over high piles of slippery, muddy rocks, for there were three derrumbes (landslides) between Casa Santo Domingo and our home. Clarence put on hip rubber boots and went out to inspect the extent of the calamity but, of course, nothing could be done until daylight. And at daylight, every avail­able man was at work: at one-thirty p.m. the electric "juice" was again on; at one-forty-five the flume was repaired, and at two o'clock the mill was running; at five, the trail was ready for regular transportation. To me, the trail-repairing job was the almost miraculous thing—when I saw the stupendous slice cut out of the road, I was sure it would remain impas­sable for at least a week and yet, in less than twelve hours, mules could and did pass over it. Our workmen do need much supervision, but in time of stress one could not ask for more loyal workers. The following day, the new flooring for the warehouse was laid three feet higher than the one that had been wrested from its foundation and in splinters was carried away with its costly cargo, also in shreds, pellmell down the raging, rampant Santo Domingo Creek; not even a foot of insulated wire was salvaged. The new flooring up to date has withstood all floods.

On September 9, 1929 , we had our first fatal accident: a miner was killed instantaneously by a falling rock in the slope in which Lee and three other workmen had just en­tered; the two preceding workmen miraculously escaped, while Lee, bringing up the rear, sustained severe bruises from falling fragments of rock. We were all saddened by the tragic but unavoidable misfortune and yet we were grate­ful that Lee escaped death and the two workmen escaped injury.

We have had our share of high-graders; their names are on the "black list" and, of course, no high-grader is allowed to return, but you would be surprised to know how many beg to come back; after being absent six months or so, they plead that they have been punished enough!

On January 31st, 1929, in smelting the gold after the regular monthly clean-up, our son, Lee, was helping for the first time; Mr. Othick and Clarence, "old hands" at the process, forgot to give Lee detailed instructions and in lifting the red-hot crucible from the furnace, instead of setting the crucible back on the circular pouring device, as they should have instructed him to do, he started toward the mold with his half of the tongs, while Clarence tried to put the crucible back on the device, with the result that the entire mass of liquid gold, more than $11,000 worth, was spilled on the ground! Dr. and Mrs. Graybill were visiting us at the time and they and I were witnesses of the catastrophe; we were all too stunned by the mishap to move—and most fortunately no one was burned by the spattering—nor was the tense silence broken until Clarence, who, ordinarily, is not given to swear­ing, said, "Damn everything an inch high!" And this made Dr. Graybill laugh so heartily that the tension was broken; then each and every one of us got down on our hands and knees and helped to dig for that buried gold, and this "seem-so" disaster was not a setback at all, for we actually recovered more gold than was spilled! The smeltery is the same one that has always been used and, no doubt, gold has been spilled on various occasions, and we recovered some of this in addition to our own.

Two more stories, which I forgot to include among the previous fifteen, and then I'll add "Finis" to the Story of Santo Domingo. These are to illustrate the stupidity of the Indian and why such constant supervision is necessary. Mr. Yungling told this: An Indian was sent up the steep moun­tain side to cut down certain specified trees, and as the de­clivity was almost vertical he was told to tie himself to a tree while chopping—this is still being done here—but this In­dian, instead of tying himself to an adjacent tree, tied himself to a tree and chopped down the same tree below where he had tied himself! He and the tree came hurtling down the precipitous mountain side into Santo Domingo Creek, scarcely enough of the Indian left for burial. Clarence and I climbed to the top of this ridge recently—it is the road to Chabuca, a neighboring placer mine—and Clarence showed me the exact spot of this tragic occurrence.

Mr. Maycumber, our metallurgist, tells this less tragic one: he was directing the work of several Indians, one of whom was working inside of a large box; the box had to be moved, so he told the Indian inside where to move it. He left with the other Indians but returned in a few minutes, to find the Indian, still inside the box, making strenuous efforts to move it! Mr. Maycumber yanked him out and "booted" him to the end that needed to be shoved; this Indian, perhaps, will never try again to move a box with himself inside, but Quien sabef.

Now, in conclusion, I presume you, like so many other of our friends, wonder why we remain in the tropics, down here amid the mules and the Indians, that are as much a part of the "landscape" as the mountains and the rivers themselves; why we still remain in such isolation, 140 miles from a rail­ road; why we bother about the Inambari Concession, when, with Santo Domingo, we have apparently "chained the wolf." Ah! we, too, have great faith in this region and Quien sabef —perhaps it will be Peruvian gold that will restore the gold standard to the world. Besides, it is just stacks of fun to day dream and have visions of helping to relieve the distress of the world, be it ever so small a contribution; to dream dreams of sending the promising young men and young women of this country (and there are many such as I know from my teaching experience in La Paz and in Cochabamba and from observation of the children in our camp here)—sending these young people to our Alma Maters, that they may become the future engineers—mining, hydraulic, agricultural, sanitation, and household engineers—of this vast territory, full of re­ sources and, as yet, practically untouched. Visions? Yes. But, "Where there is no vision, the people perish," hence, we are living abundantly.

* From High in the Andes -- Peruvian Letters of a Mining Engineer's Wife by Josephine Hoeppner Woods
G. P. Putnam's Sons New York
1935

Last updated October 8, 2012

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