Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/475

Rh feet, so that troops of mules can descend into the lowest portions, in its best days it yielded annually seven hundred thousand hundred-weight of ore, and upwards of three thousand persons were employed in it. Second in importance among the old mines of Guanajuato is the mine of Los Rayas, from which the king's fifth alone, during Spanish possession, was $17,365,000. From the mine of El Carmen, in the State of Sonora, was taken a lump of pure silver weighing 425 pounds, and another is on record which weighed 2,700 pounds. The mines of San Luis Potosi have enriched thousands. The story has been often told of poor Padre Flores, of that State, who bought a small claim, and, after following the vein a little ways, came to a cavern containing the ore in a state of decomposition (like that found in the Santa Gertrudis), and from this silver cave obtained over $3,000,000.

From the four silver-producing States that hold the lead—Pachuca, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Sonora—have been obtained the greater part of that $4,000,000,000, which, it is estimated on good authority, Mexico has yielded, up to the year 1884. The mines of Pachuca have an advantageous situation in point of contiguity to the Mexican valley, and with direct communication with Vera Cruz; and if any mines in Mexico ever fulfil the promises of their owners, these should come to the front. Experience, however, has demonstrated that more foreign capital has been poured into Mexican mines than has ever been taken out of them. England's experiment of sixty years ago cost her millions, and Americans should heed the warning.

Though it may appear from the preceding, that the primitive processes are wasteful in the extreme, and that the very rivers are carrying away as wastage thousands of pounds of silver annually, yet it is doubtful if Americans can substitute for the Mexican process any other which will more economically extract the metal from ores of so low a grade as only are found here.

One never knows when he is safe in Mexico, either in person or in pocket. Now, though I had spent a week among the hills, and had seen nothing of an alarming nature, yet the man who rode down with me from the mining region astonished me