38 



MEXICA N RE SO UR CES. 



These estimates are, of course, more or less imperfect. No one can doubt the 

 integrity of the great author of Cosmos, who diligently searched the mining records 

 of Mexico, to which he had free access. "But," says an English authorit}-, "during 

 the civil war (which occurred ten years later, and lasted nearly twelve years), the 

 archives, not only of the college of mines (to which Humboldt had access, and 

 by which the produce of each separate district might have been ascertained), but 

 of almost all the mining deputations, were destroyed Even the registers of the 

 sums paid to the Cajas Provinciales, — provincial treasuries, — as the ' king's fifth,' 

 have disappeared." 



Our authorities, then, from which the foregoing deductions are made are : first, 

 Humboldt (1803), Ward (1S27), Brantz Mayor (about 1842), Cubas (1S76), Busto, — 

 Estadistica de la Reptiblica Mexicana (18S0), various Mexican writers scattered 

 throughout the sixty years known as the Revolutionary period, and the anuarios 

 (annuals) up to 1884. Ward, the British Minister to Mexico in 1827, thought that 

 Humboldt under-estimated the product of the Mexican mines. He further alludes 

 to the fact that from the mines, throughout the long period when Mexico was 

 in the throes of civil strife, the lower classes drew their entire subsistence, by 

 extracting ore from the upper levels of mines abandoned by their wealthy 

 owners, and thus completing the ruin water had commenced by removing pillars left 

 for support, etc. It is not the author's desire to make out a case either for or 

 against the Republic of Me.xIco, but it is his wish to clearly present an accurate 

 statement of its resources. It is his opinion that, considering the vast amount that 

 conjecturally has paid no duties ; has been smuggled out of the country, and 

 extracted by the thousands of biiscones, or illegitimate miners, of which no record 

 has been kept, the mines of Mexico have yielded a total product of not less than 

 $4,000,000,000. 



In 1876, an American statistician,' basing his estimates upon those of Humboldt, 

 and the various official reports of Great Britain and the United States, sums up 

 tlie total products of gold and silver of the territory formerly known as New 

 Spain, the most valuable portion of which the United States acquired from 

 Mexico, in 1848, as follows: — 



Mexico, 1521 — 1804 

 " 1804 — 1848 



1848—1876 . 

 California, 1848 — 1876 

 Nevada, 1848 — 1876 . 

 Arizona, 184S — 1S76 . 

 New Mexico, 184S — 1876 

 Utah, 1848 — 1876 



Total of New Spain 1521 — 1S76 



$2,027,952,000 



768,188,420 



702,000,000 



1,064,628,502 



293.233.910 



7,962,000 



6,075,000 



17,472,773 



. $4,887,512,605 



He further compares the gold and silver product of the world, for about the 

 same period, with that of New Spain, by which it appears that the latter restricted 

 territory produced thirty-seven per cent of the whole, during three centuries : — New 

 Spain, $4,888,512,605; the World, $13,111,825,889. 



* Alex. D. Anderson, in The Silver Country; or. The Great Southwest. New York: 1877. 



