118 AMERICAN MINES. 



CHAP. XXI. 



(since called La Paz) ; and their operations were 

 quickened by the stimulus arising from the desire 

 to procure the mate or tea of Paraguay, which 

 silver could most easily purchase, and which was 

 deemed an indispensable refreshment for those 

 who laboured in the mines. 



Northern In the same century the silver mines of Yauri- 

 cocha or Pasco, in the more northern part of Peru, 

 were first opened, and yielded a large portion of 

 that metal. It is thus that though Potosi, which 

 had at first yielded the greatest quantity of silver, 

 had declined, yet the other parts of Peru advanced 

 in their issue of the precious metals so considera- 

 bly as more than to compensate for that deficiency. 

 This increase, especially of silver, was greatly faci- 

 litated by the extension of the mines of mercury 

 at Huancavelica. Those mines, as has been be- 

 fore noticed, were discovered as early as the me- 

 thod of extracting silver by the process of amalga- 

 mation in 1576 ; but the quantity at first produced 

 was small when compared with that which they 

 reached between the years 1598 and 1684, after 

 which they appear again to have declined. The 

 quicksilver was under monopoly regulations, the 

 government making the delivery of it subservient 

 to its purposes in securing the tax on the silver ; 

 so that the quantity which each miner received 

 was a kind of check on the quantity of silver on 

 which he ought to pay the tax or the king's share. 

 The chief of those mines became choked up about 



