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Four kilometres from Mariana, amongst steep hills bearing clear traces of centuries of mining, the ancient gold mine of Mina da Passagem (or Mina de Ouro) is one of the area's more unusual sights. Without your own transport, take an Ouro Preto-bound bus from Mariana and get off at the bus stop opposite the mine. One of the oldest deep-shaft gold mines in Minas, gold was first extracted here in 1719, although most of the seventeen kilometres of galleries date from the nineteenth century. These days the mine's eight faces are all closed and the mine survives instead as a tourist attraction, with retired miners serving as guides. Delightfully ramshackle tours operate every day from 9am until 6pm (tel 031/3557-5000); the $8 charge is fairly steep, but it's an interesting trip. Among the series of repair yards is probably the oldest functioning machine in Brazil - a vintage 1825 British steam engine, now adapted to run on compressed air. It powers a drum cable that drives railcars into and out of the mine - safer than it looks, though you do need to be careful of bumping your head once you trundle into the galleries. The guides are friendly, knowledgeable and some speak a little English and French; there are bits of nineteenth-century mining equipment knocking around, and the dripping gallery opens out into a small, crystalline floodlit lake, 120m underground. Back up on the surface, the visit is rounded off with a demonstration of gold panning, with real gold - not as easy as it looks. The history of the mine is a roll call of economic imperialism. Sold by the Portuguese to the British in 1830, whose owners happily worked it with slaves at the same time as the Royal Navy was intercepting slavers in the Atlantic, it was then offloaded onto the French in 1883. Nationalized by Vargas in 1937, the mine was sold to a South African company in 1970 and finally ceased operations in 1985
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