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Collection: Books and Periodicals

Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)

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138 CORNISH MINERS. can war, that on going over the field after their battles, they found their own comrades with the flesh eaten off their bones by the coyotes, while never a Mexican corpse had been touched ; and the only and most natural way to account for this phenomenon was in the fact that the Mexicans, by the constant and inordinate eating of the hot pepper-pod, the Chili colorado, had so impregnated their system with pepper as to render their flesh too savoury a morsel for the natural and unvitiated taste of the coyotes. These coyote diggings require to be very rich to pay, from the great amount of labour necessary before any pay-dirt can be obtained. They are generally worked by only two men. A shaft is sunk, over which is rigged a rude windlass, tended by one man, who draws up the dirt in a large bucket while his partner is digging down below. When the bed rock is reached on which the rich dirt is found, excavations are made all round, leaving only the necessary supporting pillars of earth, which are also ultimately removed, and replaced by logs of wood. Accidents frequently occur from the “ caving-in” of these diggings, the result generally of the carelessness of the men themselves. The Cornish miners, of whom numbers had come to California from the mines of Mexico and South America, generally devoted themselves to these deep diggings, as did also the lead-miners from Wisconsin. Such men were quite at home a hundred feet or so under ground, picking through hard rock