"230 Mexican Mines. 



motions in Mexico, they experienced a fatal blow by the in- 

 terruption to industry produced by internal war*." To what 

 a vast extent the application of the steam-engine has raised 

 the produce of mines in Coi'nwall, which had been nearly or 

 wholly abandoned for the want of means to keep out the water, 

 no one in this country can be at a loss to learn. Of the Mexi- 

 can system of malacates alluded to by the writer, we have the 

 following account by Humboldt : 



" We have already spoken of the truly barbarous custom of 

 drawing off the water fi'om the deepest mines, not by means 

 of pump apparatus, but by fneans of bags attached to ropes 

 which roll on the cage of a whim. The same bags are used 

 in drawing up the water and the ores : they rub against the 

 walls of the shafts, and it is very expensive to keep them in 

 repair. At the Real del Monte, for example, these bags only 

 last seven or eight days ; and they commonly cost five, and 

 sometimes seven and eight shillings a piece. A bag full of 

 water, suspended to the cage of a whim with eight horses 

 {nialacate doble), weighs 1250 pounds : it is made of two hides 

 sewed together. The bags used for the whims called simple^ 

 those with four horses [malacates seiicillos), are only half the 

 size, and are made of one hide. In general the construction 

 of the whims is extremely imperfect ; the bad custom also 

 prevails of forcing the horses, by which they are made to go 

 at far too great a speed. I found this speed at the shafts of 

 San Ramon at Real del Monte no less than ten feet and a 

 half per second ; at Guanaxuato, in the mine of Valenciana 

 from thirteen to fourteen feet; and every where else 1 found 

 it more than eight feet. Don Salvado Sein, Professor of 

 Natural Philosophy at Mexico, has proved in a very excellent 

 j)aper on the rotatory motion of machines, that, notwithstand- 

 ing the extreme lightness of the Mexican horses, they produce 

 only the maximum of effect on the whims, when exerting a 

 force of 175 pounds they walk at a pace of from five to six 

 feet in the second. 



"It is to be hoped that pumps, moved either by horse-engines 

 of a better construction, or by water wheels, or by pressure 

 engines, will at last be introduced in the mines of New Spain. 

 If wood and coal, which has only yet been discovered in New 

 Mexico, should be found sufficiently abundant for employing 

 the steam-engine, the use of it would be of great advantage 

 in the inundated mines of Bolafios, as well as in those of 

 Rayas and Mellado. 



" It is in the draining the mines of water that we particularly 

 feel the indispensable necessity of having plans drawn up by 



* Selections from Humboldt leliiting to Mexico, by John Taylor, Esq. 

 Introd. p. vii. 



subter- 



