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

TOILS AND PLEASURES
sort of platform on the edge of the dump. There,
in old days, the trucks were tipped, and their load
sent thundering down the chute. There, besides,
was the only spot where we could approach the
margin of the dump. Anywhere else, you took your
life in your right hand when you came within a yard
and a half to peer over. For at any moment the
dump might begin to slide and carry you down and
bury you below its ruins. Indeed, the neighbour-
hood of an old mine is a place beset with dangers.
For as still as Silverado was, at any moment the
report of rotten wood might tell us that the platform
had fallen into the shaft ; the dump might begin to
pour into the road below; or a wedge slip in the
great upright seam, and hundreds of tons of moun-
tain bury the scene of our encampment.
I have already compared the dump to a rampart,
built certainly by some rude people, and for pre-
historic wars. It was likewise a frontier. All below
was green and woodland, the tall pines soaring one
above another, each with a firm outhne and full
spread of bough. All above was arid, rocky, and
bald. The great spout of broken mineral, that had
dammed the caiion up, was a creature of man's
handiwork, its material dug out with a pick and
powder, and spread by the service of the trucks.
But nature herself, in that upper district, seemed to
have had an eye to nothing besides mining; and
even the natural hillside was all sliding gravel and
precarious boulder. Close at the margin of the well,
leaves would decay to skeletons and mummies,
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