1872.] Copper Mines of Chili. 179 
every probability of a steady decline. But that decline will 
not be sudden nor speedy. All the large mines have ore 
enough in sight, or reserves, to keep up the supply to 
nearly its present proportions for years tocome. ‘The great 
vacillations in the quantities shipped from month to month 
do not indicate a like vacillation in the production, which 
the railroad returns of ore or regulus carried to the coast 
from the different mines show to be comparatively constant. 
Mine owners and smelters are able in Chili as well as in 
England to hold large stocks in anticipation of a favourable 
turn in the market. Larger shipments than usual may be 
looked forward to as a result of the present favourable 
price,—since some large stocks are held, especially in the 
north. But advanced prices are not likely to increase the 
-_production to any great extent ; for even if they rose suffi- 
ciently to justify ore being broken which has heretofore 
been left standing on account of its poverty, miners to do 
the work could not be found. 
It is pretended that the new railroads penetrating the 
Cordillera, in Peru, will bring to market vast quantities of 
ore heretofore shut out by heavy freights; but it remains to 
be ascertained whether Cordillera copper mining in Peru 
will reverse the universal ill success which has attended it 
in Chili. 
Copper Smelting in Chili. 
As is well known, the conditionin which the copper comes 
to England is not that of ore. Twenty-five years ago very 
little copper was smelted in Chili; whereas, in 1870, only 
3°16 per cent was exported as ore, while 55°35 per cent was 
exported as bars and ingots, and 41°48 per cent as regulus. 
The previous review of the mines has shown how little ore 
of high produce is or can be obtained. It is therefore impe- 
rative that it be smelted as near the mine as possible. But 
the high price of fuel—the average cost of Chili coal deli- 
vered at any of the northern ports being 8 dollars a ton— 
renders smelting so expensive that only by the exercise of 
the greatest skill can it be profitably conducted. 
Mr. Lambert, as already stated, erected the first rever- 
beratory furnace in Chili about the year 1837, and by him 
were built the first extensive smelting works in the port of 
Coquimbo. But smelting received its greatest impulse 
from the operations of the Mexican and South American 
Smelting Company, whose large establishment at Herradura, 
near Coquimbo, was run from 1848 to 1857 with persistent 
loss. It, however, benefitted Chili by introducing Napier’s 
