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580 no difficulty in reducing them by fire, however rude or defective the process. But never was the utter worthlessness of the metal, as such, so clearly demonstrated, as it has been in the case of the Araucos, whose only pleasure consists in contemplating their hoards, and in occasionally throwing away a portion of their richest ores to be scrambled for by their former companions, the workmen.

Throughout the Sierra Madre, instances of this sort have occurred, for these wild and distant districts are visited only when the fame of their riches attracts adventurers from the towns. For some time, they have neither supplies of any kind, nor intercourse with the more civilized part of the country; and when a few straggling pedlars first penetrate into these fastnesses, the avidity with which their wares are bought up, at the most unheard-of prices, is quite astonishing. The brother of the Governor of Durango, a lawyer by profession, informed me that, at the commencement of his career, he had been employed to visit the district of Refugio, which, like Morelos, was then recently discovered, in order to terminate some disputes between the proprietors of the different mines. He found the original discoverer, Păchēcŏ, surrounded by a swarm of harpies, to whom, not being able to convert his bars into dollars with sufficient rapidity, he had given checks (boletas) upon his mine for a certain number of cargas of ore, for which they had consented to exchange their goods; and he assured