120 AMERICAN MINES. CHAP. xxi. 



streams which descend from the Cordilleras. The 

 climate is mild and the soil fruitful; and per- 

 haps less suffering was inflicted in the extraction 

 of that than of any gold or silver in the other 

 times and countries where it has been acquired. 

 A recent traveller who has visited Chili remarks, 

 " It is usually observed in those countries where 

 great mineral riches exist, that the soil is of a 

 barren and unproductive nature ; but Chili affords 

 a striking and solitary exception to this rule. 

 Streams abounding in gold wander through the 

 most luxuriant corn-fields, and the farmer and 

 the miner hold converse together on their banks V 

 In the northern part of South America, for- 

 merly known as the new kingdom of Granada, 

 but now forming what is denominated the Re- 

 public of Columbia, some little silver, but much 

 more gold, was produced. The first conquerors 

 found gold in Barquisemento, and in some other 

 places in the mountains to the north-east of the 

 nevada of Merida, and in those to the south of 

 Caraccas, but they appear to have been very early 

 exhausted. In the century now under consi- 

 deration, the chief quantity of gold was procured 

 from the valleys or ravines "in the mountainous 

 regions of Antioquia, in the valley of Cauca, 

 between the central and western Cordilleras, and 

 especially in the province ofPopayan, at its southern 



1 Caldcleugh's South America, vol. i. p. 351. 



