Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/171

Rh worked up, with certain proportions of common salt, sulphate of iron, and quicksilver, into a vast mud-pie, by means of troops of broken-down horses or donkeys, which for two or three weeks in succession tramp round and round in the mass—animals and Indian drivers alike sinking leg-deep in the paste at every movement. When the amalgamation is completed, it is brought in vessels or baskets rather than with wheelbarrows, to washing-tanks, where half-naked men and boys further "puddle" it until the metal falls to the bottom, and the refuse runs away. The process is hard, and even cruel, for both man and beast, and is not expeditious; but it is economical (considered in reference to the cost of other methods involving power), and is effective.

The number of mining properties at present worked in Mexico by American companies is understood to be about forty.

The popular idea that there are a considerable number of old Spanish mines in Mexico which were worked to great profit before the revolution, and then abandoned when their original proprietors were driven from the country, and are now ready to return great profits to whoever will rediscover and reopen them, has probably very little foundation in fact. Sixty-five years have now elapsed since Mexico achieved her independence,