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266 and receive in payment the eighth part of the proceeds. The Director gave us some specimens of silver from the great heaps where they lie, sparkling like genii's treasure.

Ahhough I have not descended into these mines, I might give you a description of them by what I have heard, and fill my paper with arithmetical figures, by which you might judge of the former and the present produce. I might tell you how Don Lucas Alaman went to England, and raised, as if by magic, the enthusiasm of the English; how one fortune after another has been swallowed up in the dark, deep gulf of speculation; how expectations have been disappointed; and how the great cause of this is the scarcity of quicksilver, which has been paid at the rate of one hundred and fifty dollars per quintal in real cash, when the same quantity was given at credit by the Spanish government for fifty dollars; how heaps of silver lie abandoned, because the expense of acquiring quicksilver renders it wholly unprofitable to extract it; and I might repeat the opinion of those persons by whom I have heard the subject discussed; who express their astonishment that such being the case, an arrangement is not made with the country which is the almost exclusive possessor of the quicksilver mines, by which it might be procured at a lower rate, and this great source of wealth not thrown away. But for all these matters I refer you to Humboldt and Ward, by whom they are scientifically treated, and will not trouble you with superficial remarks on so important a subject. In fact I must confess that my attention was frequently