They well
knew the usual end of labor in the mines. A mass was said for him at the
church, and he had to take an oath of fidelity to the king. Then he was
sprinkled with holy water and sent away to his deadly service. Deadly we
may well call it, for it is said that scarcely a fifth part of these
miners lived through their term of labor.
Lowered from the light of the sun into the deep underground shafts and
galleries, and passing from the pure air of heaven to a pestilential
atmosphere, excessive labor and bad food soon robbed them of strength and
often of life. If they survived this, a species of asthma usually carried
them off during the year. We may judge of the results from the calculation
that the _mitad_ in Peru alone had eight million victims.
The law limited the _mitad_ to those living within thirty miles of a mine,
but laborers were often brought by force from hundreds of miles away. As
for the small wages paid them, the masters took part of it from them in
payment for their food, and usually got the remainder by giving credit for
clothes or liquor or in other ways.
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