Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

EPISODES m THE STORY OF A MINE
No one could live at Silverado and not be curious
about the story of the mine. We were surrounded
by so many evidences of expense and toil, we lived
so entirely in the wreck of that great enterprise, hke
mites in the ruins of a cheese, that the idea of the
old din and bustle haunted our repose. Our own
house, the forge, the dump, the chutes, the rails,
the windlass, the mass of broken plant; the two
tunnels, one far below in the 'green dell, the other
on the platform where we kept our wine ; the deep
shaft, with the sun-glints and the water-di'ops ;
above all, the ledge, that great gaping slice out of
the mountain shoulder, propped apart by wooden
wedges, on whose immediate margin, high above
our heads, the one tall pine precariously nodded —
these stood for its greatness ; while the dog-hutch,
bootjacks, old boots, old tavern bills, and the very
beds that we inherited from bygone miners, put in
human touches and realised for us the story of the
past.
I have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick
madronas near the forge, with just a look over the
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