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Rh the calendar year 1890 was $11,020,691, as against about 9,790,000 pesos in 1848 (the peso being 80 cents).

If united capital and improved methods of work, thus so sparingly employed in Bolivia since 1848, have wrought the increased production named without any appreciable addition to the number of mines worked, it is apparent that, with these same conditions applied to the ten thousand abandoned mines of the old Spaniards and to the greater unexplored riches of the vast silver belt of the Republic already described, supplemented by the necessary transportation facilities which railroads alone can supply to this country, the annual silver production of Bolivia would be second to that of no country in the world.

The causes leading to this remarkable decline in the number of mines worked in Bolivia since the period of greatest mining activity under the Spaniards must be looked for outside of the character of the mines themselves. The system of rifling the mines for immediate gain, instead of systematically developing them for greater and more enduring results, as practised by the Spaniards; the treatment of the Indians and their consequent revolt and butchery of their oppressors and wanton destruction of the mines; the war between Spain and England; the famine of 1804; the protracted war of independence, ending in 1825 with the expulsion of the Spaniards and complete prostration of the mining industry; and the impoverished condition of the country that followed, would seem to furnish a sufficient combination of causes to account for the wholesale abandonment of the mines described; but the following figures seem to clearly demonstrate that the character of the mines of Bolivia does not enter into the account.

The records kept at Potosi, the location then, as now, of the public mint, of the fifths that accrued to the royal treasury from