Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/113

Rh animal. Nature has, however, compensated this ungrateful sterility, by the abundance of those precious metals, which, having been prodigiously augmented by the discovery of the new world, and received as the token of every description of productions, have entirely changed the ancient system of the commerce of the globe.

In a greater or less degree, the arid mountains of Peru may be considered as an inexhaustible elaboratory of gold and silver. With the exception of the mine of Huantajaya, situated near the port of Iquique, at a distance of two leagues from the sea, the richest mines are comprehended in the most rigid and insalubrious parts of La Sierra, where the absence of plants and shrubs, or, in other words, the infertility itself of the cold soil they occupy, is in general a sure indication which leads to their discovery.

As the Indians were ignorant, not only of the invention of money, but likewise of the astonishing powers of hydraulics applied to machinery, and of the secrets of mineralogy, more especially as they refer to chemistry and subterraneous geometry, the metals they extracted were not of a very considerable amount. The last emperor of Peru could not muster for his ransom, the value of a million and a half of piastres in gold and silver; and the plunder of Cusco was not estimated at a greater sum than ten millions. This was a small quantity for so many years of research and accumulation, but immense for the simple and unique process of collecting, among the sands of the rivers, the minute particles of gold that had been swept along