Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/500

 460 MEXICO. The Decree states the weight of the Balls, Sheets, and other pieces of silver discovered, {bolas, planchas, y otras piezas de plata,) to have amounted to 165 arrobas, 81bs., in all, (40331bs.) : and mentions particularly one mass of pure silver weighing 108 arrobas, (27001b£.,) ; and another of eleven arrobas, upon which duties had been actually paid by a Don Domingo Asmendi, and which, as a great natural curiosity, {como cosa especial,) the King states ought to have been sent to Madrid. The Decree ends by declaring the district of Arizona to be Royal property, as a " Criadero de Plata ;"" (a place where, by some natural process, silver was created;) .an idea, to which the flexibility of the metal, when first extracted, seemed, in those times, to give some colour of probability ; and by directing it to be worked upon the Royal account. This put a stop to the enterprises of individuals; — the district was deserted; an attempt to send a colony there failed ; and, in a few years, the very name of Arizona was forgotten. I am far from supposing that the whole of the facts re- corded in this Decree can be taken as correct, although the authenticity of the Decree itself is unquestionable. But what one cannot adopt without confirmation, ought not to be re- jected without inquiry; and I see enough, at least, in these records of Arizona, to warrant the supposition, (confirmed as it is by the facts and appearances mentioned in the pre- ceding pages,) that the hitherto unexplored regions in the North of Mexico, contain mineral treasures which, as dis- coveries proceed, are likely to make the future produce of the country infinitely exceed the amount that has been, hitherto, drawn from the (comparatively) poorer districts of the South. .) '. In how far these discoveries must be influenced by the pro- gress of population, and in what degree the discoveries them-