fe; that part of the mountain side, which
is very open and green, was tenanted by no living creature but ourselves
and the insects; and nothing stirred but the cloud manufactory upon the
mountain summit. It was odd to compare this with the former days, when
the engine was in full blast, the mill palpitating to its strokes, and
the carts came rattling down from Silverado, charged with ore.

By two we had been landed at the mine, the buggy was gone again, and we
were left to our own reflections and the basket of cold provender, until
Hanson should arrive. Hot as it was by the sun, there was something
chill in such a home-coming, in that world of wreck and rust, splinter
and rolling gravel, where for so many years no fire had smoked.

Silverado platform filled the whole width of the canyon. Above, as I have
said, this was a wild, red, stony gully in the mountains; but below it
was a wooded dingle. And through this, I was told, there had gone a path
between the mine and the Toll House--our natural north-west passage to
civilisation. I found and followed it, clearing my way as I went through
fallen branches and dead trees. It went straight down that steep canyon,
till it brought you out abruptly over the roofs of the hotel. There was
nowhere any break in the descent. It almost seemed as if, were you to
drop a stone down the old iron chute at our platform, it would never
rest until it hopped upon the Toll House shingles. Signs were not
wanting of the ancient greatness of Silverado. The footpath was well
marked, and had been well trodden in the old days by thirsty miners. And
far down, buried in foliage, deep out of sight of Silverado, I came on a
last outpost of the mine--a mound of gravel, some wreck of wooden
aqueduct, and the mouth of a tunnel, like a treasure grotto in a fairy
story. A stream of water, fed by the invisible leakage from our shaft,
and dyed red with cinnabar or iron, ran trippingly forth out of the
bowels of the cave; and, looking far under the arch, I could see
something like an iron lantern fastened on the rocky wall. It was a
promising spot for the imagination. No boy could have left it
unexplored.

The stream thenceforward stole along the bottom of the dingle, and made,
for that dry land, a pleasant warbling in the leaves. Once, I suppose,
it ran splashing down the whole length of the canyon, but now its head
waters had been tapped by the shaft at Silverado, and for a great part
of its course it wande