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XI
Inguran Mines – Five Thousand Six Hundred Feet Below Ario
Inguran Mines,November 29th.
From Santa Clara to Ario we had descended one thousand two hundred feet in thirty miles. Now we were again going down. Each mile the country grew more tropical. A fine, rich, rolling land it was, a soil black and fertile; guavas, bananas, coffee, and other like trees began to be common along the road; long lines of monstrous century-plants (maguey), supplying an unfailing source of pulque, bordered the roadway on either hand, serving as impenetrable hedges. The camino (road) showed signs of having once been graded and on the slopes it had been paved from curb to curb. Now, as yesterday, all the road is gone, or nearly so. Chasm-like ruts, vast holes, diverse and many paths, give the traveler a varied choice.
Again we met hundreds of loaded horses, mules and burros and scores of men also, bearing crates and heavy burdens upon their backs. They were transporting cocoanuts, and sugar, and brown ocean salt, and palm leaves, and tropical products even from the distant Pacific shores, seven or eight days’ journey across the gigantic summits of the Cordilleras far to the southwest. Also, we met trains of pack mules loaded with bags of concentrated copper ore from the mines of this great mineral belt, wherein now I am.
I took many kodaks of these travelers as well as of passing incidents. The Jefe Politico stopped his whole “army,” or would have done so, if I had not waved him to come on, for the picture had been taken while he gave his order, “Instantemente,” greatly to his surprise.
By 11:00 A. M., we reached the Rancho Nuevo, and entered through the big white wall into an extensive courtyard. Here, were already several pack trains, some from the mines, one going on beyond the Balsas River into Guerrero. The journey is from dawn to midday. Then a halt is made, the packs are taken off, the animals cooled, – led slowly about by boys, – then later, the saddles and aparejos (Mexican substitute for pack-saddle) are taken off and, finally they are watered, and given “roughness” (the stripped dried leaves of maize) to munch, but are not fed with grain till night.
Nothing differentiates the Spanish-Indian civilization of the Mexican – mediæval and Roman as it is – from the twentieth century civilization of our own modern life, more than the attitude of the two peoples in regard to the suffering of dumb creatures. This I see everywhere and at all times. For example: The Spanish-Mexican knows no other bit to put upon his horse than a cruel combination of rough steel bars and pinching rings sufficient to break the jaw. No horse nor mule, nor burro, wearing this cruel device, will pretend to drink a drop of water, nor can he, until it is removed. When you would water your beast, you must dismount, take off the bridle and remove the harsh mass of iron from his mouth.
Pack-animals are rarely shod and are often driven until their hoofs are worn to the quick and their backs are raw and the flesh is chafed away even to the bone. When they can travel no further they are turned out to die or to get well as best they may, no one caring what may be their fate. Horsemen ride the ponderous leathern saddles of the country in the fierce heat of the Tierra Caliente as well as upon the highlands of the Tierra Fria. And no one would think, for a moment, of pausing in his journey for the mere reason that his horse’s back had become galled and sore, however grievous the wounds might be. The gigantic spurs with their big blunt points are perpetually rolled with pitiless insistence and an incessant jabbing heel motion along the animal’s bloody sides.
The same cruelty which we saw practiced in the bullring, where horses were ripped open, sewed up twice and thrice and ridden back into the arena to be ripped open just once more, amidst the plaudits of vociferating thousands, is equally apparent along this traveled highway where we constantly meet animals overloaded to their death, animals turned out to die, animals fallen beneath their loads and unable to rise.
At the Rancho Nuevo, the Spanish-Indian ladies of the kitchen promised us boiled chicken with our rice for the midday meal. One of the ladies, a stocky, swarthy Indian, with her agile son, started in hot chase after a long-legged active hen. The bird seemed to know its fate. Several short-haired dogs joining in the pursuit, the hen was captured. The mother brought it to me holding it up showing it to be fat and well-fed, and then, as she stood beside me, watching a caravan of pack animals on the moment just entering the courtyard, she calmly broke the thigh bone of each leg and the chief bone of each wing, so that escape became impossible, and proceeded right then and there to pick the chicken alive. She was evidently unconscious of any thought of cruelty. The legs and wings were broken in order that the bird might not run or fly away. It was picked alive as a matter of course. The sentiment of pity and tenderness for dumb things had never yet dawned upon her mind. The fowl destined for the pot, was as little considered as the wounded prisoner with his wrists tied tight to the neck and back, whom Don Louis’ soldiers that day were “transferring” to another jail.
Our Jefe Politico had been joined by two Spanish (Mexican) gentlemen, managers (superintendentes) of haciendas and we all dined together. We had the hen cooked with rice and then frijoles, and I gave them of my precious old Bourbon, which – “La agua de los Estados Unidos” – they pronounced “mas excellentemente” than their own mescal.
Here we rested until about 3:00 P. M., when we got away for the final descent into La Tierra Caliente. We came down very gradually for about an hour and then found ourselves at Agua Sarpo, a collection of a few huts on the brink of the plateau, whence we looked out over an aggregation of mountain peaks and ridges, valleys and deep plains, much as though you stood at the “Hawk’s Nest” in West Virgina, and looked out for a hundred miles over a country five thousand feet below, all that distant region bathed in lurid heat, verdant and luxuriant with tropical vegetation.
The summits below me were volcanic and the flat cone of Mexico’s last created volcano, Jorullo, thrown up to a height of nearly two thousand feet in a single night, September 29, 1759, and so graphically described by Humboldt, stood at our very feet – the extraordinarily clear atmosphere making the volcano and neighboring peaks and ranges look as though crowded hard against each other, although they were many of them miles apart.
My first herald of the approaching tropics was a paraquita gorgeous in emerald and scarlet and gold, sitting on a stump watching me intently, and then I noticed a flock of parrots tumbling in the air.
The road, a mere trail, was as steep as some of those which lead down from our Kanawha mines. We let the Jefe and his soldiers follow us, we taking the lead. Down we went and down, and down, hour after hour. We passed palm trees, multitudes of bananas, and coffee trees. There were many Indian huts by the wayside, – for we were on a famous, much traveled thoroughfare, – and at most of them a bottle or gourd of pulque and fruit were set out to tempt the traveler to buy.
When almost down we came to the hacienda Tejemanil, a great sugar estate, with an ancient mill run by water conveyed many miles from the plateau. Here we rested half an hour, the Jefe transacted some business, and we ate delicious oranges, small, in color a light yellow, and bursting with slightly acid juice.
We were now on a level of palm orchards, whence the dried palm leaves are shipped to the highlands in great bales. Then we came to another hacienda, a farm of a hundred thousand acres, La Playa, where the Jefe and his company with their doomed prisoner took the diverging road to La Huacana. Finally, we came to a broad valley, the valley of El Rio de la Playa, black with volcanic sand, called the mal pais (bad land), this being the immediate region once devastated by the terrible eruption of volcano Jorullo. Here were extensive banana groves, strange tropical trees quite new to me, orchids and palms and a stretch of several miles of indigo and watermelon cultivation. We then crossed another divide and came down again just as the big hot sun dove behind the mountains and precipitated the night. It was pitch dark when we entered the hacienda La Cuyaco and dismounted, four thousand eight hundred feet below Ario, six thousand feet below Santa Clara and yet some one thousand two hundred feet above the sea.
This night we slept on rawhide springs, a piece of matting for a mattress. We were in the tropics. I was forbid to touch water, even to wash. Our supper was chocolate, (delicious), tortillas and eggs. Parrots and two large gray doves and a gold finch hung in cages in the patio where we ate. All were new to me. A baby swung in a cradle suspended from the ceiling and the father, Izus, the keeper of the courtyard, held another. He had thirteen children.
We took off our thick clothes – (it had been difficult to endure them all the afternoon) – I put on a gauze underwear and linen, and slept without the burden of a blanket. In the morning we set out early, but the sun was fiercely hot by nine o’clock. For some fifteen miles we now traversed a wide valley. We were away from the neighborhood of Jorullo and its scattered volcanic sands, and had entered the mineral belt. A ledge bearing copper and silver ran through the courtyard of the hacienda. I tripped against it when going to supper.
And thereby hangs a tale: Not long ago, it seems, an itinerant American – one of those casual countrymen of mine who now and then retreat to Mexico, when the law at home gives too hot chase – dropped in at the hacienda toward the close of a hot day and asked for lodging. He was hospitably received, as is the custom, and when the great bell clanged for supper, he left his sleeping room and made his way across the courtyard.
Walking carelessly, he stubbed his toe against the unruly ledge and limping into the dining room, his host apologized for the presence of so ill located a ledge of obtruding rock. The guest declared his hurt a trifling matter, and the incident was forgotten. The next morning, he was seen knocking the ledge with a hammer and he put samples of the rock in his pocket before he went away.
Many months passed by and all memory of the casual American had vanished from men’s minds. Recently, however, an officer connected with the Department de Mineria of the Mexican Government, dined at the hacienda and politely informed the superintendente, that an American had “denounced” (i. e. filed claim to) the ledge of mineral running through the courtyard, and had received title thereto along with the right to occupy as much of the adjacent surface as might be necessary to work the mine.
Thus are the proprietors of the hacienda most uneasy at the approach of any gringo (contemptuous term for American) lest the newcomer turn out to be their casual guest or his representative.
After leaving Cuyaco, we met constant indications of minerals along the road. I also noted flocks of parrots, multitudes of jays, flycatchers, brown and black vultures and many Caracara eagles, all of these birds being new to me; and I saw also several fine butterflies, Papilios and Colias, small white and orange and yellow ones. But nowhere did I see any wild flowers – the season was now too hot for these.
Toward ten o’clock, we stopped at an hacienda, that of San Pedro de Castrejon, where the Castrejon brothers live, owners of copper properties near those we go to see. They are the grand señores of the Valley; they also gave us letters of introduction. Black birds, big boat-tailed grakles, grey and white jays, and scores of wild doves were here walking tamely among our horses. Swarms of parrots were clamoring in the trees. For a few centavos, we here bought delicious bananas, small finger size, and others three times as big, and oranges and cocoanuts.
By eleven o’clock we began to see the steam from the power house of the Inguran mines and were soon there. They are ancient copper mines, now being opened by the French Rothschilds, over four million francs having been thus far spent. Extensive copper deposits are here exposed. The managers are all Americans; one is from Virginia, one from California. There is not a Frenchman employed.
We are installed in the private bungalow of the general manager, of Mexico City, from whom we brought a letter of introduction. We are half way up the foothills; we have a superb view, the beds are comfortable and the fare is good.
This morning we have gone through the mines. Fuel and transportation are here the two problems. This whole region of several hundred miles square is rich in copper and silver, is full of ancient mines, once worked by Indian slaves but now abandoned, since Spanish expulsion and the dawn of liberty.
XII
Antique Methods of Mining
Mina la Noria, Michoacan, Mexico,December 4th.
We left the mines of Inguran early Saturday morning. We were up at four-thirty, and by five-thirty had packed and breakfasted, desayuno, and almuerzo combined. The traveling Mexican eats early and, while he may take a midday snack, it rarely rises to the dignity of the comida, and when the day’s journey is over, like the two morning meals, the comida and cena, are united into one. Our breakfast consisted of fried chicken and rice – rice so delicately fried that each grain was encased in a crisp and dainty shell, and each mouthful cracked with relish between your teeth. Eggs are always to be had. In Spain and Cuba an egg is called huevo, in Mexico the refinement of language substitutes the word blanquillo (little whitey). It is a courtesy to ask your hostess for blanquillos. It would be ill-bred to ask her for huevos. It is also a courtesy, to say, when you address her, señorita. If she protests she is a señora, mother of a family and long past the age of a señorita, you exclaim “it is impossible,” for since she looks so young, she must be a señorita. The blunt American manner which calls an egg a huevo, and a dame a señora, is regarded as unpardonably rude.
By 5:45 we were climbing down the three hundred feet of mountain side, through the mining village, over an ancient paved roadway about four feet wide, the paving stones set in so firmly between the curbs that the floods and wear of the centuries and seasons have left it as intact and solid as when first laid. The Spaniards built many such roadways to their mines, when they worked the Indians as slaves, centuries ago. The mining village was picturesque. The miner, when he goes to work, builds his own house and pays no rent. The walls are upright poles and the roof is a palm leaf thatch. When he quits his job he abandons his house, although he sometimes carries away the roof. Near each dwelling is built a sort of Dutch oven of clay, making an oven and stove combined. In it the bread is baked; upon it most of the cooking is carried on. Housekeeping is a simple process in this tropical land.
The mines of Inguran are situated at an altitude of about two thousand feet above the sea, and the dry air, not too light nor too heavy, seems to agree perfectly with the Americans there at work, and restored me to a vigor which the thin air of the highlands had partly relaxed. We were entertained, of an evening, at the delightful bungalow of the superintendent of the inside work, a Mr. O’Mahondra, a member of the distinguished family of that name of Richmond, Virginia. Originally he began the practice of law in Chicago, when, his wife being threatened with consumption, he fled with her to El Paso. There she gained nothing and he carried her further south and, abandoning the law, took this post at Inguran. She was tall, fine looking and the picture of robust health. A clever American woman, she had acquired the art of assaying and, as official assayer of the mines, received a handsome salary. “The only drawback to living in Inguran,” she said, “is that I am so delightfully healthy.”
Our way lay down and then across the San Pedro valley toward the southwest. The valley is a mile or two wide. The trail we followed ran through dense tropical foliage. The air in the early morning was cool almost to coldness. The birds were everywhere astir and all their notes were new to me. There were many doves, the little brown ground dove that merely stepped out of our way; a bigger dove, slate gray in color, which flew among the higher branches of the thickets. The large gray jay was numerous and there were many magpies and rusty and yellow-headed grakles. Along the watercourses we again came constantly upon bands of the big brown and small black vultures, as well as Caracara eagles which were fishing in the stream. Parakeets, resplendent in green and scarlet and gold, were abundant, and flocks of gray and green parrots tumbled clumsily in the air. I saw also my first big green Military macaws, – birds as large as chickens or small turkeys, the body a brilliant green, the head capped with red and yellow. I have never seen these splendid birds in captivity, nor among those brilliant macaws from the Amazon and from Australia which are so often exhibited in collections. These macaws were very tame, and a flock of them settled upon a mimosa tree under which we drew rein. I might have shot them with my pistol, and should have brought some of them home with me, if I had had any way to preserve the skins. In the thickets I also noticed flycatchers and several sparrows I did not know, but I saw no ravens as I did the other day upon the highlands.
After five or ten miles down the valley, winding through the forest, crossing open clearings, passing here and there a native hut, frequently fording the river, we left the main trail and turned up a shaded ravine, following it to its head, where we passed through a low gap with high mountains on either hand, and then descended toward the river again, thus cutting off a great bend and saving fifteen or twenty miles. As we came down toward the main valley, the timber grew smaller, the persistent mesquit more and more possessed the land, and the sun fell full upon us. The heat was intense. No living thing now seemed anywhere to exist; only the multitudes of little brown lizards, countless thousands of them scurrying on the sand; and iguanas, black as night, sleeping in the crotch of a tree, or on the heated top of a stone near the wayside. Nor did any sound now stir the midday silence except the hum of millions of cicadas, which the fierce sun rays seem only to nurse into active life.
Six hours in the forepart of the day brought us to the Hacienda de Oropeo, on the borders of the Rio de San Pedro. Here we halted for the noontime rest, lying-by beneath an Indian shelter, a wide-thatched roof of palm leaves, under which we could tie our horses, and where we might ourselves repose. Here an old Indian woman cooked for us tortillas and frijoles. We watched her make the tortillas, little cakes of corn meal as thin as sheets of paper. The dry kernels of the corn are first soaked in lime water until the enveloping shell readily comes off. It is then much like samp. The swelled and softened grain is then rubbed to a pulp between two stones, the moistened pulp is patted between the hands to the thinnest sort of a wafer, and these thin wafers are laid upon the top of the clay oven to be slowly dried. The tortilla is said to be the most nutritious of all foods prepared from maize. It is the staff of life of the Mexican peon, and the making of tortillas is the chief vocation in life of his wife and daughters. As soon as the little girls are big enough they begin to pat tortillas, and they continue to pat tortillas throughout their lives. If you travel through an Indian village your ear will be struck by the pat, pat, pat, of hundreds of pairs of hands. The Indian women are patting tortillas. They are always patting tortillas, when not specially occupied in other toils.
Toward 4:00 P. M. Izus, our mozo, repacked the loads, again we mounted, and in an hour were across the river, where we ascended a small creek a couple of miles to these ancient mines. It was while resting at noontime, that we noticed a group of thirty or forty men bearing on their shoulders the palm-thatched roof of a moving mansion. Later, we rode past the new domicile, the roof was already set upon the corner posts, and the family were already moved into their habitation.
We are bivouacked in a building where once lived the lord of the mines, – mines now filled with water and abandoned, although none of the workings go down more than one hundred feet. The building is chiefly constructed, both the floor and walls, of sun-baked clay. High above the walls rests the palm-thatched roof. There are no frames in the window openings, no frames in the doorways. Walls and roof being only a protection from the sun heat, the air may blow through where it listeth. Our cots are taken from the back of “Old Blacky,” unrolled and set in the breezy chamber; upon them we sit and sleep.
Our only terrors are the ants, but we set the legs of the cots in little earthenware pans of water and are safe. An Indian family, living in the distant end of the rambling, abandoned buildings across the courtyard, provides us with boiled rice and stewed chicken. Izus has brought us an abundance of bananas and oranges, fresh, fragrant, and luscious. We buy several oranges for a centavo, and a centavo is worth less than half an American cent. The Indian keeps poultry and also gamecocks. These latter are tied by the leg near his door. They are his pride, and he fights them on Sunday after church. When the priest has closed the services the neighbors, who have all brought their chickens, form in a circle, and there the week’s wages are staked and lost upon the issue of the fights. I send you a snap shot of a battle.
When dining, we sit on improvised stools around a homemade table and just back of us crouch a group of attentive admirers – the famished family dogs, rough-haired, cadaverous, wolf-eyed, silent dogs they are. They watch with furtive intentness each morsel we put into our mouths, they instantly pounce upon each crumb and bone which falls within their reach. They never bark – only a shrill melancholy howl I sometimes hear breaking the stillness of the night; they never wag their tails, for these are always tucked between their legs. When we have finished, we toss to these wistful watchers the refuse of our meal. There is a silent scuffle, a hasty crunching and then each dog sits up as hungry and observant as before. Thus our friends breakfast and dine and sup with us, and so filled with suspicion and fear of man are they, that they never by any chance allow us to approach. “Veni aqui perro” (come here, dog) an Indian boy calls out, and immediately perro slinks out of sight. Descended originally from the wild coyote, which they much resemble, these dogs seem to have acquired little taming by contact with man.
Next up the creek above us lie the Azteca mines, long since abandoned, and then come the China (pronounced cheena) mines, the only group now being worked, the present superintendente being a member of the Castrejon family to whom they belong. The vein is a porphyry-and-quartz carrying copper, and is about three hundred feet wide and almost vertical. It is nearly with the watercourse, about one degree to the west, and how deep it may go no one knows. This whole region is full of holes, generally, say, four feet to six feet square, from which for centuries the copper ore has been taken. The rich pieces were carried away and the balance was thrown upon the ground. The entire country is filled with innumerable piles of this abandoned copper ore carrying two and three per cent of copper, and waiting for that distant day when railroads, modern machinery and efficient labor shall make this natural wealth profitable to modern enterprise. As it is, the present primitive Indian methods of mining and transportation on mules, unventilated pits, and awful trails climbing stupendous heights, destroy the possibility of profit even in working the richest ores.
Sunday we spent in riding over the hills which rise from three to five hundred feet above the stream. Up their easy, rounded slopes a horse can clamber almost anywhere. It is a country where cattle roam and where the Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) are the only human beings. In the afternoon, we went down to the San Pedro River, now a small stream, and bathed in the tepid water, where I surprised an old familiar friend, also watching the limpid water, a Belted Kingfisher.
Monday, we spent from seven o’clock to ten, going through the China mines, which are worked by the Mexicans in the old primitive way. We went into the side of the hill by a short tunnel, which led to a black hole up out of which stuck a slippery pole. On one side of this pole notches are cut, and into these notches, if you want to descend, you must sidewise set your feet. Our guide clasped the pole with one arm, holding aloft his flickering light with the other, and slowly sank from sight into the blackness below. We all went down, not knowing what might be beneath us. At first, my feet would not hold in the notches, but it was a matter of setting in my feet or falling into unlimited darkness, so I clung tight and came slowly down. The distance was only about twenty feet. Here there was an off-set of eight or ten feet, and then another pole and more notches, blackness above as well as below, and the notches had grown slick through years of contact with shoeless Indian feet. Thus we went down and down, descending some two hundred feet to where the air lay hot and heavy and our breathing became stertorous and slow. We then followed a long narrow tunnel, and came to where naked Indians with steel wedges were sledging out the ore. The Indians descend in the morning, they work as long as the foul air permits, then they gather up all the rock they have dislodged, put it into a bull hide sack, load this on their backs and climb up the notched poles again to daylight. On issuing from the mines they stagger to an ore pile, under a thatched roof set on high poles, and dump their loads. Around this pile of ore squat twenty or thirty Indians, each holding a stone in his hand. Each has before him a large flat piece of rock. He reaches for the ore pile, takes from it a lump which looks fairly good and cracks it to powder between the two stones. The mean ore is thrown on a dump pile, the rich ore is all cracked up. This is the original of the modern stamp mill, and it is the only stamp mill the Indian-Mexican will probably ever know. The ore, after it is pulverized in this way by hand, is put into a wooden trough into which water is poured which has been carried up in bull hide sacks from the stream below, and the ore is thus washed and concentrated. It is afterwards put into sacks, about two hundred pounds to the sack, and taken fifty or sixty miles, over the frightful precipitous trails, to the railroad at Patzcuaro, whence it is shipped to the smelter.
It is a wonder that even the Mexicans can thus work these mines, year after year, and make the smallest profit. The most efficient American manager would find this to be impossible. The Mexican superintendente lives on nothing and his Mexican employes live on less. Eighteen to twenty cents a day Mexican (less than ten cents a day in American) is the miner’s pay. On this amount he must support himself and often a large family. The Mexicans follow the old Spanish theory, that human labor is cheaper than machinery, if you can crush down the human labor to a sufficiently low wage. Hence, the Mexican employing classes discourage both the use of machinery and the education of the peon. Ignorance and the abject poverty of the working class is the Spanish-American ideal. The day laborer in Mexico is little better than a slave. The wealthy mine owner, who lives in luxury in the distant Capital, or in Paris, or Madrid, may exhibit the evidences of culture and refinement, but Mexico can never greatly advance until the masses of the common people shall be enlightened and by modern statesmanship be lifted from this condition of industrial servitude.
Some of the types among these Indians are curious. One man has a head that runs up straight behind his ears, nor has he much brain in front. Another looks like a Japanese. These Indians – they are called Indians, but are many of them half-breeds, for there is much Spanish blood mixed in among them – are pitifully poor and are hopeless in their poverty. They have been hammered and battered for so many centuries by the merciless Spanish overlord, that they have had all spirit long ago knocked out of them. They seem to be unable now to rise. Nor are they a hardy race. When sickness prevails they are too poor to employ a doctor, but rely upon charms and religious rites. I have just acted the part of a physician. I have brought with me a small box of selected medicines sufficient for the common ailments of this land of semitropics. I am now prescribing quinine for Doña Caldina, calomel for Señor Perez. I hear that a crippled man is coming to-morrow to see me and ask whether the white señor can cure him and make him walk. There is a certain childlike quality about these peones. How humbly they accept the superiority of the white man, whom they do not love!
I see many instances of what might be called degenerates, misshapen heads, ill-shaped and deformed bodies, signs of a race too much inbred. They wear white cotton clothes, peaked straw hats and rawhide sandals. The men generally carry blankets (zerapes) folded across the shoulder which they wrap up in, as do their brothers on the highlands, when the air grows cold.
The coldness of the nights and the burning heat of the day are strange. I slept last night in flannel underwear, a woolen jersey over that and flannel pajamas still outside; then two thick wool blankets and a rubber poncho over all. Early, toward one or two o’clock I woke up chilled to the bone. I put on my corduroy coat. I was just warm, for an icy wind was blowing down from the lofty altitudes of the Tierra Fria. This morning when the sun rose about six o’clock, the air was still cold. In an hour it was pleasantly warm, birds were singing and flying from tree to tree. By nine o’clock the sun blazed like a ball of fire. I am now, at half past nine, going about in slippers, in linen trousers and my thin pajama coat, and even then I hide from the sun. By ten o’clock a silence lies upon the land profound and overwhelming, not a living thing is astir, except only the lizards and the cicadas. The daylight ends precipitately. The day lasts only as long as the sun is up. By half past five the sun hangs above the mountains on the west. Suddenly it is gone. In fifteen minutes it is dark, the stars are out, and such white stars they are! The cold air of the highlands then settles down upon us for the night.
