Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/437

 MEXICO. 397 Such were the principal characteristics of the Mining system of New Spain before 1810, at which time the country was supposed to contain 500 Reales, or ReaUtos, (spots in which mines were worked,) with from three to five thousand mines, (large and small,) included in the thirty-seven Mining Districts, or Deputations, into which the Viceroyalty was divided. The names of these Districts, with those of the principal mines in each, may be found in Humboldt, (Book IV. Chap- ter II.) as given by a manuscript, drawn up by Don Fausto Ellhuyar, (first Director of the Supreme Tribunal,) for the Viceroy, Count Revillagigedo. I do not insert them here, both because I am unwilling to trespass unnecessarily upon the time of my readers, and because it will be more suitable to the purposes of my present inquiry to give, subsequently, a table of those Mines, for which contracts have been entered into by British Companies, and to specify the States in which they are situated ; that being now the only territorial division recognized in Mexico. It is, therefore, only necessary to repeat, what I have attempted to demonstrate in the first Section, namely, that the average annual produce of these thirty-seven Districts, during the fifteen years which pre- ceded the Civil War, was twenty-four millions of dollars, or six millions of pounds sterling. The extraction of this enormous mass of Silver, was not, (as has been supposed in Europe,) the result of a simple process, in which the Mine owners and the Government were the only parties concerned, but rather the effect of a most complicated system, by which the Silver raised was made to pass through the hands of four or five immediate agents, before it was brought into circulation, or even paid the Du- ties to the Crown. Few of the old Miners were originally capitalists. Many were unable, at first, to obtain advances from those who were so, except to a very limited amount ; and were thus compelled to carry on the works of their mines,