Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

And he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger
knowingly. Even when the number of the miners alone rose to over
six hundred he seemed to know each of them individually, all the
innumerable Joses, Manuels, Ignacios, from the villages
primero--segundo--or tercero (there were three mining villages)
under his government. He could distinguish them not only by their
flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs. Gould looked all alike, as if
run into the same ancestral mould of suffering and patience, but
apparently also by the infinitely graduated shades of
reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the
two shifts, stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps,
mingled together with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered
picks, swinging lamps, in a great shuffle of sandalled feet on
the open plateau before the entrance of the main tunnel. It was a
time of pause. The Indian boys leaned idly against the long line
of little cradle wagons standing empty; the screeners and
ore-breakers squatted on their heels smoking long cigars; the
great wooden shoots slanting over the edge of the tunnel plateau
were silent; and only the ceaseless, violent rush of water in the
open flumes could be heard, murmuring fiercely, with the splash
and rumble of revolving turbine-wheels, and the thudding march of
the stamps pounding to powder the treasure rock on the plateau
below. The heads of gangs, distinguished by brass medals hanging
on their bare breasts, marshalled their squads; and at last the
mountain would swallow one-half of the silent crowd, while the
other half would move off in long files down the zigzag paths
leading to the bottom of the gorge. It was deep; and, far below,
a thread of vegetation winding between the blazing rock faces
resembled a slender green cord, in which three lumpy knots of
banana patches, palm-leaf roots, and shady trees marked the
Village One, Village Two, Village Three, housing the miners of
the Gould Concession.

Whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in
the Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work and safety had
spread over the pastoral Campo, forcing its way also, even as the
waters of a high flood, into the nooks and crannies of the
distant blue walls of the Sierras. Father first, in a pointed
straw hat, then the mother with the bigger children, generally
also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens, except the leader
himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of the family,
stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow, with braids of
raven hair, a thick, haughty profile, and no load to carry but
the small guitar of the country and a pair of soft leather
sandals tied together on her back. At the sight of such parties
strung out on the cross trails between the pastures, or camped by
the side of the royal road, travellers on horseback would remark
to each other--