Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/109

Rh The Mexican mines were eagerly and even madly seized by the English, and even by the people of the United States, as objects of splendid speculation, as soon as the country became settled; but, in consequence of bad management, or the wild spirit of gambling which assumed the place of prudent commercial enterprise, the holders of stock were either disappointed or sometimes ruined. Subsequently, however, the proprietors have learned that prudence and the experience of old Mexican miners was better than the theoretical principles upon which they designed producing larger revenues than had ever been obtained by the original Spanish workmen. Their imported modern machinery and engines for voiding water from the shafts and galleries is the chief beneficial improvement introduced since the revolution; but the enormous cost of transporting the heavy materials, in a country where there are no navigable rivers extending into the heart of the land, and where the usual mode of carriage is on the backs of mules, by wretched roads over mountains and through ravines, has often absorbed large portions of the original capital before the proprietors even began to employ laborers to set up their foreign engines. Many of the first British and American adventurers or speculators have, thus, been ruined by unskilful enterprises in Mexican mines. Their successors, however, are beginning to reap the beneficial results of this expenditure, and, throughout the republic steam engines, together with the best kinds of hydraulic apparatus, have superseded the Spanish malacates.

"Whenever these superb countries which are so greatly favored by nature," says Humboldt, in his essay on gold and silver, in the Journal des Economistes, "shall enjoy perfect peace after their deep and prolonged internal agitations, new metallic deposites will necessarily be opened and developed. In what region of the globe, except America, can be cited such abundant examples of wealth, in silver?  Let it not be forgotten that near Sombrerete, where mines were opened as far back as 1555, the family of Fagoaga,—Marquesses de Apartado,—derived, in the short space of five months, from a front of one hundred and two feet in the outcropping of a silver mine, a net profit of $4,000,000; while, in the mining district of Catorce, in the space of two years and a half, between 1781 and the end of 1783, an ecclesiastic, named Juan Flores, gained $3,500,000, on ground full of chloride of silver and of colorados!"

One of the most flourishing establishments in 1842, was the Zacatecano-Mejicano Mining Company of Fresnillo. Its 120