subsisting as we had subsisted at the time of our escape.

At

one of the private mines we obtained work during the summer; laborers were scarce, and the proprietors were quite willing to engage us without asking any questions that might annoy us.

"At the end of the summer we were paid off. A few days before our payment we managed to drop some worthless papers into a fire where several men, among them one of the superintendents, could see us. We pretended to be in great distress, that the papers were our passports, and that we had nothing else for our protection. The chief of the mine consequently made certificates to the loss of our papers by accident, and the certificates were sufficient for our protection. ing the winter and early spring, we managed to travel to the Ural Mountains, where we again hired out for the summer. In this way we obtained money enough to take us to Poland, where we arrived three years after the date of our escape.

Dur

"What became of the rest of our party I have never positively known. Two of them have reached Poland, as I am informed; and I have heard vague rumors that some of the others were captured, and returned to the servitude from which they had escaped. But no direct tidings from any of them have ever reached me."

LEAD MINES OF IOWA.

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BLUFFS AT DUBUQUE, IOWA. -THE LEAD MINES. -HOW LEAD IS FOUND THERE. -INDIAN DISCOVERIES. HOW THE SECRET BECAME KNOWN. STORY OF THE SIX INDIANS. FOLLOWING THEIR TRACKS. AN INDIAN TRAITOR. — AN EXPLORER'S ADVENTURE. — THE INDIAN GUIDE AND THE GREAT SPIRIT. — MURDER OF TWO EXPLORERS. -USES OF ABANDONED SHAFTS AND CAVES.AN EDITOR'S DISCOVERY. AN UNDERGROUND BANQUET. -UPS AND DOWNS OF A LEAD MINER. DEATH OR A FORTUNE. — A DANGEROUS BLOW. -A MINUTE OF GREAT PERIL.

ON the Upper Mississippi, in the vicinity of Dubuque, Iowa, there are many lead mines, and in the vicinity of these mines the bluffs contain numerous caverns, rarely of great extent. Sometimes these caverns are in the form of a succession of chambers extending and opening into one another; and in these chambers rich deposits of ore are found. Several years. ago the author visited Dubuque and the region around it, and was kindly escorted by one of the citizens, Mr. Henry W. Pettit, in an examination of the natural and artificial curiosi ties of the place. We had a wearying tramp, and returned to the hotel covered with dust, accumulated in our inspection of shafts, tunnels, caves, and other underground works of nature or art. I was under the impression that if we had been reduced in a furnace, a fair amount of lead could have been obtained by the reducer; and lest some enterprising resident should make an effort in that direction, we washed off the accumulation as speedily as possible.

The lead mines of Dubuque were discovered and opened soon after the settlement of the place by Julien Dubuque, after whom the city was named. The Indians were aware of the existence of the rich mineral, and the first information about it was obtained from one of the red-skinned gentlemen

who had partaken rather freely of the white man's fire-water. They used to bring lead to sell to the whites; they revealed some of the localities whence they obtained it, and then their white neighbors went to work to dig for themselves. But there was one deposit, supposed to be the richest of all, that the Indians would never reveal, if the story was told to me correctly. There were half a dozen Indians who used to appear and disappear mysteriously; whenever they wanted money or goods, they would go away a few days, and return with all the lead they could carry. All efforts to induce them to tell where they obtained it were of no avail. The experi ment was tried repeatedly of getting them drunk, but the more they got drunk, the more uncommunicative they be came. They were promised that if they would show the rich deposit, they should never again be required to draw a sober breath as long as they lived; but even this glittering bait did not allure. Wealth, fame, and perpetual intoxication could have been theirs, but they preferred to bask in the sunshine of the smiles of the Great Spirit, who would be unpardoningly angry if they told their secret to the white man.

A watch was set upon their movements; but an Indian is proverbially a troublesome customer to the detective who tries to follow him, and the spies on the track of these aborigines invariably came to grief. Finally, one of the pale-faces pressed his arguments so far as to induce an Indian to agree to turn traitor to his brethren, and reveal the locality of the lead mine. Comfortably soaked with whiskey, the twain started, with provisions for several days' journey. The Indian led the way to a secluded spot among the hills, miles away from any human habitation. All around in this little valley there were the remains of fires where the Indians had melted out the lead from the ore; it was so rich that a common wood fire in the open air was quite sufficient for its reduction.

But suddenly the Indian stopped, and looked anxiously into the sky. After gazing there a full minute, he turned to his companion, and refused to show him further.

"Go on, go on!" said the impatient explorer.

A FRIGHTENED ABORIGINAL.

615

"No; not go on," replied the Indian. "Great Spirit angry; I see him looking now."

The explorer looked, but could see no spirit beyond that which he carried in his bottle. He offered some of it to the Indian, in the hope of overcoming his terror.

But it was "no go" with the red man. He took the prof fered drink, and then looked again into the sky. Evidently he saw, or fancied he saw, the Great Spirit frowning upon him, for he turned on his heel, and ran faster than he had ever been known to run before.

The explorer was left alone, and concluded to investigate on his own account. There were the remains of the fires where the lead had been melted, and the number of them showed that a goodly amount of smelting had been done there. The mine must be near, and of course it ought to be easily found. He looked for a path which might lead to it, and here he found that the Indians' cunning had baffled him. In no direction was there any track, and it was evident that the Indians had made it a rule never to follow the same course twice when entering or leaving the valley. They had brought the ore from somewhere, but there was no way of knowing whether that place was feet, yards, or miles away.

He spent a couple of days in a careful examination of the vicinity, but found nothing, and returned home very little wiser than he went out. He had a suspicion that he was watched from the time the Indian left him until he gave up the search, but could not say positively that such was the case. A few days after his return, the Indian made his ap pearance with a fresh lot of lead, for which he refused all compensation, though he did not decline to get drunk at the expense of his acquaintance. He would not talk freely, but solemnly declined to go on another expedition, and, furthermore, cautioned the white man not to undertake it.

The latter would not be advised; and, two or three weeks later, he set out with a friend, with the intention of spending a week or two in exploring the region around the Indian smelting-place.

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MURDER OF THE EXPLORERS.

They were absent one, two, three weeks, and finally their friends became alarmed for their safety, and started out to look for them. Their search was unrewarded, as no trace of the missing men could be found anywhere. No Indians were seen. The half-dozen came and went as usual, but to all questions they returned the most unsatisfactory and non-committal answers.

One day a hunter found the remains of the two men. Wild beasts had devoured the bodies, but their weapons and scraps of clothing remained, and sufficed for their identification. In each skull there was a deep indentation, caused, undoubtedly, by a tomahawk in the hands of an Indian. But further that this the circumstances of their deaths were never known. After the discovery of the bodies, the Indians did not visit the settlement as often as before, and it was universally sup posed that they committed the murder, or, at all events, knew to whom it should have been attributed.

Years afterwards a rich vein of lead ore was found two or three miles from the valley to which the Indian led the first explorer. There was a small cave, so carefully concealed by brushwood that it was only revealed by accident. There were indications that it had been visited by Indians, and that quantities of the ore had been carried away. All around the sides and roof of the cavern there were blocks of rich ore, and the discoverers made a comfortable fortune out of the deposit. It was supposed to be the cave whence the Indians obtained their supply, but whether so or not was never positively known.

In the bluff at Dubuque, lead mining was carried on in two ways first, by entering the caverns and veins from the foot of the bluff; and, secondly, by sinking shafts from the surface. The shafts were not very deep, so that no elaborate machinery was required for hoisting purposes, a common windlass or a whim, worked by horse power, being all that was required. Where the mining was pushed from the foot of the bluff, levels were driven in until a cavern or seam was reached, and very often the seams in the bluff were taken as the starting-point.