REAL DEL MONTE MINES. 



THE mines of Real del Monte, so celebrated for their former pro- 

 digious wealth, are situated in a very mountainous district, and at a 

 considerable elevation above the table land of Mexico. The town of 

 Real del Monte, about three miles from Omethan, at which place the 

 Socabon del Arcadero has its commencement, lies to the west of the 

 vale, and a little to the north of the celebrated Veta Bescania. Be- 

 tween the town and the river, and indeed in almost every direction, 

 the surface is exceedingly irregular, rising into small hills, and it is a 

 rare circumstance to find a patch of level ground in all the neigh- 

 bourhood. The whole of this district is porphyry of various shades 

 and colours; in many places it is decomposed, and it is in those 

 places that the most productive mines have been found. A company 

 was formed in England in the year 1825, of speculating mania, to 

 work these mines and the extraordinary fluctuations in the shares of 

 this company is perhaps one of the most marked features in the history 

 of that singular period dazzled by the gilded halo that surrounds 

 South America, and the romantic history of her early discovery, a 

 large class of our countrymen idly dreamt, through the medium of 

 British capital and science, of realizing, almost by magic, that Ame- 

 rican dream, the fabulous El Dorado. When, therefore, their mag- 

 nificent contemplations ended in disappointment, a baseless panic suc- 

 ceeded to their former confidence, and produced in the mercantile 

 world a boulversment, the like of which had not been felt since the 

 celebrated South Sea scheme. 



But amid this general delusion, there were men of science, who 

 having nearly calculated all the difficulties to be overcome, shared 

 not in the general feeling of reaction that prevailed as to the mines 

 of Spanish America. On the contrary, they confidently predicted, 

 based upon geometric inductions, that, after a certain time, the most 

 magnificent results would be obtained. By the last accounts it now 

 appears that a vein of such extraordinary richness and extent has 

 been discovered, that will lead to an influx of wealth, unparalleled in 

 the commercial history of this country. 



As the district of Real del Monte, in Mexico, is one which has ex- 

 cited much interest of late years in the public mind, some parti- 

 culars relative to the people who inhabit the country in which these 

 celebrated mines are situated may not be uninteresting. During the 

 period of my residence there, the native population of the town and 

 its immediate vicinity amounted to between two and three thousand ; 

 and our countrymen settled among them, as myself, in the employ of 

 the English Mining Company, varied from one hundred to nearly 

 double that number. The prevailing characteristic of the Mexicans 

 in general appeared to me, their extreme fickleness and volatility 

 genus hominum mobile, infidum. A man, for instance, who to-day, on 

 the slightest provocation, has attempted to take your life, will on the 

 morrow throw his arms around you with the utmost cordiality, or 

 perhaps come to beg, with modest'assurance, the loan of a few dollars. 



