Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/478

438 case in Oaxaca, the mines there had yielded, up to the end of December 1826, twenty-six bars of silver, worth (including a small ley de oro) about 30,000 dollars.

The disorganization of the Catorce Company, occasioned by the failure of the House of Goldschmidt, prevented their Directors from favouring me with any report. I was, how- ever, enabled to ascertain, during my journey North, that their outlay at Catorce did not exceed from thirty to forty thousand pounds. Fifty thousand pounds more are required, and two years' time, to complete the principal work which they have undertaken there ; but, if they can raise funds to carry it on, there is no mining enterprise in the country of which the Mexicans have so high an opinion ; and I should myself be inclined to estimate their probable profits, for some years, at from sixty to seventy per cent, upon their advances. The former produce of Catorce, during its best years, was 2,854,000 dollars, (the average on five years, from 1800 to 1804.) The mines from which by far the largest proportion of this sum proceeded, are now unworked, and must remain so, until the great Adit, the contract for which the Catorce Company has taken up, be concluded.

There is, however, every probability that, if carried on, the annual produce would equal that of the most flourishing periods before the Revolution ; the riches of the vein having continued undiminished, at the time when the increase of the water obliged the proprietors to abandon the works.

Mr. Alaman, the principal director of the United Mexican Company, in a Report full of curious information, which he had the goodness to draw up for me, declined hazarding any positive calculation as to the probable amount of the produce