Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/517

 MEXICO. SO to afford some faint indications of the riches which they are now known to contain. There is, therefore, so little reason to question the producing powers of the country, that, were it necessary to adopt one of two extreme suppositions, there would rather be cause to fear a depreciation in the value of our present circulating medium, from the probability of too great an increase in the average annual produce, than to apprehend any great falling off in its amount. But the progress of discoveries, as we have seen, is liable to be influenced by a thousand circum- stances, unconnected with the mines themselves : any great change, in either sense, must be the work of time; and occu- pied as the Companies now are by extensive undertakings in the more Central districts, it seems probable, not only that the former standard of twenty-four millions per annum will not be reached before the year 1835, but that, while the mines of the South continue to be sufficiently productive to repay the Adventurers, capital will not be employed to any great extent in the less accessible districts of the North, to which, as I have already stated, I am induced to attach the greatest importance. On the other hand, it may be urged that the trade now opened with Asia, through the ports of Mazatlan and Guaymas, will hold out great encouragement to speculations in that quarter, by the facilities which it affords for turning to immediate account riches, which were formerly of (compara- tively) but little advantage. The luxuries of life may now be obtained with as much ease by the inhabitants of the Pro- vinces on the Pacific, as by those of the Capital itself; and there can be little doubt that, in proportion as wealth becomes more desirable, it will be more eagerly sought. It is, there- fore, difficult, after allowing a reasonable time for these causes to operate, to suppose that they will not produce their natural effects ; in which case I am certainly inclined to think