With this very severe labour, they live entirely on boiled beans and bread.

They would prefer having bread alone; but their masters, finding that they cannot work so hard upon this, treat them like horses, and make them eat the beans.
Their pay is here rather more than at the mines of Jajuel, being from 24 to 28 shillings per month.

They leave the mine only once in three weeks; when they stay with their families for two days.

One of the rules of this mine sounds very harsh, but answers pretty well for the master.

The only method of stealing gold is to secrete pieces of the ore, and take them out as occasion may offer.
Whenever the major-domo finds a lump thus hidden, its full value is stopped out of the wages of all the men; who thus, without they all combine, are obliged to keep watch over each other.
When the ore is brought to the mill, it is ground into an impalpable powder; the process of washing removes all the lighter particles, and amalgamation finally secures the gold-dust.