The Evening News. November 25, 1916

44. The New Almaden, Part VI

Even the great golden poplar candles on the banks of the Guadalupe could not light up the way of mystery and tragedy that led to Almaden. Fog had settled down on the black face of Loma Prieta, where tempers brew and threaten. This day even the abandoned Protestant church that, have a Holy fortress, guards the summit of the mountain was hidden in fog. The mountain was a gray ghost. We passed the school house, the white spacious manager's residence, the neat little vine draped cottages on the left among the sycamore and eucalyptus trees. We saw the old hacienda stone with its barred window, the little brook purling along the rough old, dull red brick sidewalk in front of the cottages. We passed the reduction furnaces with their high chimneys, and the manager's office. It was the last touch of reality.

We shot straight up toward the dead city. We ourselves became ghosts. We could see neither before nor behind. Only the red brown road was visible. In an automobile we chugged through the clouds. Thus for half an hour we went, but finally we sailed by some tiny, shadowy houses. We were at English Almaden.

The company's deserted brick store, the company's office, the manager's residence, the tiny fire-house, a rickety school house among cypress trees above the level of the Plaza and the dim, deserted church among the oaks on another knoll, make up the silent, motionless town. Our own voices sounded strange as we wandered about the ghost city.

The schoolhouse doors were flung wide open, as if the children had gone to play. In one room was a large square, silent piano. On the floor was a book the children had used. It was called "Robinson's Progressive Intellectual Arithmetic on the Inductive Plan." One couldn't blame children for deserting such a book, even though it was studied in 1875 in a delightful garden.

We came down from the school house because in the plaza we saw a ghost holding a candle. No, it was a man. My interpreter addressed him in Spanish. His name was Clemente Chaboya. He is the last man in the old Mexican town hidden in the fog on the hill above. Clemente Chaboya is courteous, he led us to his old ghost city.

As we wound gradually up the hill in the fog people appeared. Some worker men were putting a new roof on a red building. In the old time it was occupied by the justice of the peace. The jail was father up the mountainside, a cave. Not that they had much use for a jail in Almaden, Clemente Chaboya smiled. Only occasionally did they put a man in jail.

"How long have you been here?" I asked the ghostly guide.

"Always, "he replied. " I began work here. This is all I know or remember. I am sixty-six."

"You worked in the mine today?"

"Always."

"What luck?" He shrugged his shoulder.

"How much can you make in a year?"

"My four boys and I earn about fifteen hundred dollars a year. We work by contract."

How much did you make in the old days?

"A great deal. I don't know. In the old days I never counted money."

"Is there a great deal of quicksilver in the mine?"

"Yes, if you can find it."

We climbed the steep hill with its red-brown earth and gray-blue rock. Some ghosts of houses cling to the perpendicular hillside below. This was where the Cornishmen lived. Runaway Scotch broom having escaped for the old gardens, makes an unruly hedge along the roadside. Occasionally there is a sprig of yellow bloom. Up this steep way often in the old days horses hauled the heavy circus wagons in order to divert the dwellers in Mexican town.

On a half level space about a mile above the school house stand two or three houses. One is deserted. Another is occupied by the last inhabitant of Mexican town. These houses huddle near a hill jagged with boulders. On this rocky peak is a flag pole where a flag on the sixteenth of September always flew to celebrate the Independence of Mexico.

The few remaining houses on the hill are half-covered with rose bushes and oleander trees. We seemed to be on an island in the clouds. To the left is a higher island where is the old cemetery. We continue the rough, rocky way, climbing for a mile father into the clouds until we come to a brown furry open field where in the old days the toreadors met the wild bulls and maddened them by flaunting flaming mantles in their faces. It was Bull Run!

Once again at the foot of the hill I asked Clemente Chaboya, "Do you always intend to live here?"

"Always."

We left him standing on the hill, an oddly bent little ghost. Old Almaden became a ghost.

Transcribed by Kitty LaFavor, for the Santa Clara Co. CAGenWeb Project. 2008