MINING DISTRICTS AND EXTENT IN MEXICO.

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The mines of Mexico may be classed in eight groups, nearly all of which are placed on the top or on the western slope of the great Cordillera.

The first of these groups has been the most productive, and embraces the districts contiguous to Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Charcas, Catorce, Zacatecas, Asientos de Ybarra, Fresnillo and Sombrerete.

The second comprises the mines situated west of the city of Durango as well as those in Sinaloa, for the labors of engineers have brought them so close to each other by their works that they may be united in the same geological division.

The third group is the northernmost in Mexico, and is that which embraces the mines of Chihuahua and Cosiguiriachi. It extends from the 27th° to the 29th of north latitude.

The fourth and fifth clusters are found north-east of Mexico, and are formed by the mines of Real del Monte or Pachuca, and Zimapan, or, El Doctor.

Bolaños, in Guadalajara, and Tasco in Oajaca, are the central points of the sixth, seventh and eighth. 1

The reader who will cast his eye over the map of Mexico, will at once perceive that the geographical space covered by this metalliferous region, is small when compared with the great extent of the whole country. The eight groups into which the mining districts are divided occupy a space of twelve thousand square leagues, or one tenth only of the whole extent of the Mexican republic as it existed previous to the treaty of 1848 and before the mineral wealth of California and probably of New Mexico was known to the world. But as that treaty confirmed and ceded to the United States more than one half of the ancient territory of Mexico, we may estimate the mining region as covering fully one fifth of the remainder.

Before the discovery and conquest of the West Indies and the American continent, Europe had looked to the east for her chief supplies of treasure. America was discovered by Columbus, not as was so long imagined, because he foresaw the existence of another continent, but because he sought a shorter route to the rich and golden Zipangou, and to the spice regions of eastern Asia. Columbus and Vespuccius both died believing that they had reached eastern Asia, and thus a geographical mistake led to the greatest discovery that has ever been made. In proof of these assertions we may state that Columbus designed delivering at Cuba, the missives of the Spanish king to the great Kahn of the Mongols,

'Humboldt, Essai Politique, Book iv., chap. ii. - Paris, 1811.

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FRRORS AS TO EARLY SUPPLY

and that he imagined himself in Mangi the capital of the southern region of Cathay or China! "The Island of Hispaniola,” (Hayti) he declares to Pope Alexander VI., in a letter found in the archives of the Duke of Varaguas,-"is Tarshish, Ophir, and Zipangou. In my second voyage, I have discovered fourteen hundred islands, and a shore of three hundred and thirty-three miles, belonging to the continent of Asia." This West Indian Zipangou produced golden fragments or spangles, weighing eight, ten and even twenty pounds.

1

Before the discovery of the silver mines of Tasco, on the western slope of the Mexican Cordillera, in the year 1522, America supplied only gold to the Old World, and consequently, Isabella of Castile was obliged, already in 1497, to modify greatly, the relative value of the two precious metals used for currency. This was doubtless the origin of the Medina edict which changes the old legal ratio of 1: 10.7. Yet Humboldt has shown that, from 1492 to 1500, the quantity of gold drawn from the parts of the New World then known, did not amount, annually, to more than about one thousand pounds avoirdupois; and the Pope Alexander VI., who, by his famous Bull, bestowed one half the earth upon the Spanish kings, only received in return, from Ferdinand the Catholic, some small fragments of gold from Hayti, to gild a portion of the dome of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore; a gift that was suitably acknowledged in a Latin inscription in which the offering is set forth as the first that had been received by the Catholic sovereigns from India.

Although the income of treasure must have increased somewhat, yet the working of the American mines did not yield three millions of dollars yearly until 1545. The ransom of Atahualpa amounted, according to Gomara, to about four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars of our standard, or fifty-two thousand marks of silver, whilst, the pillage of the Temples at Cuzco, if Herrera is to be credited, did not produce more than twenty-five thousand seven hundred marks, or a little more than a quarter of a million of our currency.

2

It has been generally imagined that the wealth of the New World immediately and largely enriched the Spanish kings or their people; and that the sovereigns, under whose auspices the discovery was

'See Humboldt's essay on the production of gold and silver in the Journal des Economistes for March, April and May, 1838.

See Humboldt's Essay on Precious Metals, ut antea - in note - in the American translation, given in vol. iii., of the Banker's Magazine, p. 509.

OF METALS FROM AMERICA.

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made, participated, at once, in the treasures that were found in the possession of the Indian rulers. Such, however, was not the case. The historian Ranke, in his essay on the Spanish finances, has shown, by new documents and official vouchers, the small quantity of the precious metals which the American mines, and the supposed treasures of the Incas yielded. It is probable that the conquerors did not make exact returns to the court of their acquisitions, or that the revenue officers, appointed at an early period of American history, were not remarkable for the fidelity with which they transmitted the sums that came into their possession as servants of the crown; and thus it happened that neither the king of Spain nor his kingdom, was speedily enriched by the New World. Baron Humboldt, in one of his late publications, gives an interesting extract from a letter written by a friend of Ferdinand the Catholic a few days after his death, which exhibits the finances of that king in a different light from that in which they have been hitherto viewed. In an epistle to the bishop of Tuy, Peter Martyr says, that this "Lord of many realms, this wearer of so many laurels, this diffuser of the Christian faith and vanquisher of its enemies,- died poor, in a rustic hut. Whilst he lived no one imagined that after his death it would be discovered that he possessed scarcely money enough either to defray the ceremony of his sepulture, or to furnish his few retainers with suitable mourning!" 2 The adventurers in America, were doubtless enriched, and duly reported their gains to friends at home; but Spain itself was not speedily improved by their acquisitions.

The rise in the prices of grain and other products of agriculture or human industry, about the middle of the sixteenth century, and especially from 1570 to 1595, indicates the true beginning of the plentiful flow of the precious metals to the Old World, in consequence of which their value diminished and the results of European industry increased in price. This is accounted for by the commencement of the beneficial working of the American mines about that period. The real opening of the mines of Potosi, by the Spanish conquerors, dates from the year 1545; and it was between this epoch and 1595, that the splendid masses of silver from Tasco, Zacatecas, and Pachuca, in New Spain; and from Potosi, Porco and Oruro, in the chain of Peruvian Andes, began to be distributed more uniformly over Europe, and to affect the price of its produc

See Ranke: Fursten and Volker, vol. i., pp. 347, 355.

2 Pet. Mart. Epist. lib. xxix., No. 556, 23d January, 1516.

K

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tions.

TRUE PERIOD OF ABUNDANCE.

From the period of the administration of Cortéz to the year 1552, when the celebrated mines of Zacatecas were just opened, the export from Mexico, rarely reached in value, annually, 100,000 pesos de oro, or nearly $1,165,000. But from that date it rose rapidly, and in the years 1569, 1578 and 1587, it was already, respectively

During the last peaceful epoch of the Spanish domination, Baron Humboldt calculates the annual yield of the mines of Mexico at not more than $23,000,000, or nearly 1,184,000 pounds, avoirdupois, of silver, and 3,500 pounds, avoirdupois, of gold. From 1690 to 1803-$1,330,772,093 were coined in the only mint of Mexico; while, from the discovery of New Spain until its independence, about $2,028,000,000, or two-fifths of all the precious metals which the whole of the New World has supplied during the same period, were furnished by Mexico alone. 2

It appears from these data that the exhaustion of the mines of Mexico is contradicted by the geognostic facts of the country, and as we shall hereafter show, by the recent issues of Mexican mints. The mint of Zacatecas, alone, during the revolutionary epoch, from 1811 to 1833, struck more than $66,332,766, and, in the eleven last years of this period, from four to five millions of dollars were coined by it every year uninterruptedly.

The general metallic production of the country, which was of course impeded by the revolutionary state of New Spain between 1809 and 1826,- has arisen refreshed from its slumber, so that, according to the best accounts it has ascended to perhaps twenty millions annually in total production, in consequence of the prolific yield of the workings at Fresnillo, Chihuahua, and So nora, independent of the abundant production at Zacatecas.

1 See M. Ternaux-Compans' Original Memoirs of the discovery of America-(Conquest of Mexico, p. 451)-Compans publishes in this, for the first time, an official list sent between 1522 and 1587 by the viceroys of New Spain to the mother country. The PESOS of gold, must be multiplied by a mean of eleven dollars and sixty-five cents in order to give their value in dollars. See Banker's Magazine, ut antea, p. 594, in note. See Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico, vol. i., 320. Raminez, in his notes on the Spanish translation of Prescott's History of the Conquest rates the peso de oro at two dollars and ninety-three cents. This result is reached by a long financial calculation and course of reasoning. See La Conquista de Mejico, vol. ii., at p. 89 of the notes at the end of the volume.

2 This is Humboldt's estimate in the essay cited in this section. We think it rather too large, yet give it upon such high authority. See our general table of Mexican coinage.

MINES NOT EXHAUSTED

CONDITION.

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The Mexican mines were eagerly and even madly seized by the English, and even by the people of the United States, as objects of splendid speculation, as soon as the country became settled; but, in consequence of bad management, or the wild spirit of gambling which assumed the place of prudent commercial enterprise, the holders of stock were either disappointed or sometimes ruined. Subsequently, however, the proprietors have learned that prudence and the experience of old Mexican miners was better than the theoretical principles upon which they designed producing larger revenues than had ever been obtained by the original Spanish workmen. Their imported modern machinery and engines for voiding waterfrom the shafts and galleries is the chief beneficial improvement introduced since the revolution; but the enormous cost of transporting the heavy materials, in a country where there are no navigable rivers extending into the heart of the land, and where the usual mode of carriage is on the backs of mules, by wretched roads over mountains and through ravines, has often absorbed large portions of the original capital before the proprietors even began to employ laborers to set up their foreign engines. Many of the first British and American adventurers or speculators have, thus, been ruined by unskilful enterprises in Mexican mines. Their successors, however, are beginning to reap the beneficial results of this expenditure, and, throughout the republic steam engines, together with the best kinds of hydraulic apparatus, have superseded the Spanish malacates.

"Whenever these superb countries which are so greatly favored by nature," says Humboldt, in his essay on gold and silver, in the Journal des Economistes, "shall enjoy perfect peace after their deep and prolonged internal agitations, new metallic deposites will necessarily be opened and developed. In what region of the globe, except America, can be cited such abundant examples of wealth, in silver? Let it not be forgotten that near Sombrerete, where mines were opened as far back as 1555, the family of Fagoaga, Marquesses de Apartado, — derived, in the short space of five months, from a front of one hundred and two feet in the outcropping of a silver mine, a net profit of $4,000,000; while, in the mining district of Catorce, in the space of two years and a half, between 1781 and the end of 1783, an ecclesiastic, named Juan Flores, gained $3,500,000, on ground full of chloride of silver and of colorados!"

One of the most flourishing establishments in 1842, was the Zacatecano-Mejicano Mining Company of Fresnillo. Its 120