1872.! Copper Mines of Chili. 177 
doubtless be a notable falling off. Wages are daily rising. 
The Chili eon can get 1 dollar a day on the Peruvian rail- 
roads, and will therefore no longer work at home for 
25 cents. Numbers of small mines, yielding each a few 
tons of picked ore annually, and which paid their workers— 
who were often at the same time owners—small wages, 
are being abandoned. Though the yield from each may 
be insignificant, their total production is by no means 
trifling. A great deal of the copper smelted at Guaya- 
can and the Copiapo establishments is bought in small 
parcels of a few cwts. each: the Catemo district espe- 
cially will suffer from this cause. On the other hand, 
improved methods of treatment and means of transport 
are leading to certain ores being treated which would 
formerly have been deemed valueless. An experiment 
is now being made on some very extensive beds of 4 to 
5 per cent purple sulphuret near Tiltil, on the eastern 
slope of the coast range. They occur at an elevation of 
5700 feet above the sea, and so perpendicularly above the 
nearest spot suitable for a concentrating establishment, that 
an aérial wire-road, which carries the ores from the mines, 
descends 2250 feet to the mill, with an average grade of 33°. 
There is during most of the year water enough for buddling, 
which is effected by eleven concave buddles, for which the 
ore is crushed by a Blake, four sets of steel-jacketed rolls, 
and a battery of twelve stamps. The Hunt and Douglas 
method is used for reducing the ore to metal in the wet 
way. It is a bold attempt, surrounded with many diff- 
culties; but being under the management of Mr. Waring, 
one of the best mechanical and mining engineers in Chili, 
it bids fair to be remunerative. If the experiment succeed, 
other deposits of a like nature wiil be worked, and may 
supply the deficiency certain to arise from the causes just 
referred to. 
Tomaya will doubtless produce less in the course of a few 
years; for the desmontes, which have for some years been 
yielding a considerable portion of its quotum, will hardly 
bear re-picking: the old workings, abandoned to tributers, are 
of course not inexhaustible, and the mines have invariably 
and steadily grown poorer in the deeper levels. Increased 
cost of production going on simultaneously with diminution 
in the percentage of the ore, must result sooner or later ina 
serious falling off. The facility of extracting poor ores, 
which the Lecaros adit may afford, may ward off the evil 
day for some years; but within the next decennial period 
VOL.i1. (N.S.) 2a 
