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Many are these fertile expanses, which, entered upon through some deep and rugged defile, lie like amphitheatres inclosed by jagged and massive walls of brescia and porphyry, that rise in a thousand grotesque shapes above their bases of green,—at a near view showing all the varying shades of gray, yellow, and brown, and in the distance deep purples and blues, which blend into the clear azure of the sky. One of the most beautiful of such spots is that in which lay the hacienda or estates of the family of Garcia, and one of the most marvellously rich; for there even the very rocks yield a tribute, the mine of the Three Brothers—the “Tres Hermanos”—being one of those which at the Conquest had been given as a reward to the daring adventurer Don Geronimo Garcia. It was surrounded by rich lands, which unheeded by the earliest proprietors, later yielded the most important returns to their descendants. But at the time our story opens, the mines and mills of Tres Hermanos, though they added a picturesque element to the landscape, had become a source of perplexity and loss,—still remaining, however, in the opinion of their owners, a proud adjunct to the vast stretches of field and orchard which encircled them.