The horizontal displacement was not
more than six feet, and it was through this that the tunnel ran.
The walls of the passage were smooth, and the floor was like
polished glass, a fact which the boy was at first at a loss
to account for. On the north side the wall was dark and there
were no traces of gold, while that on the south showed spots
of precious metal.
Nestor proceeded down the incline until there was little more
rope left, as the boys called out from above, and then came to
an opening. He was now nearly 400 feet from the gold chamber.
When he looked out of the round opening to which he had come
he saw that beyond ran a deep gully, or canyon. At the point
where the opening cut the wall of the canyon, however, there
was a gradual descent for perhaps 400 feet to the bottom of
the break in the mountain.
Elsewhere the walls of the canyon seemed to stand perpendicular,
and Nestor was for a moment puzzled to account for the filling
of the break at that particular spot, as if a rude stairway had
been laid to the ground below. Then the truth flashed upon him.
The tunnel had been built as a chute for the disposition of the
rock crushed in the mine.
There was no knowing how many years the natives had worked in
that underground mine, crushing out the gold with rude appliances
and disposing of the refuse by means of the tunnel cut through
the fault in the rock. The canyon into which the crushed rock
had been cast was a wild and almost inaccessible break almost
at the top of the mountain range, and might have been used for
years--perhaps for centuries--without the truth of its gradual
filling up becoming known to hostile peoples.
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