278 DISHONESTY OF THE MEXICAN MINERS. 



ing. As might have been expected, it was in its infenqjr. 

 It had not advanced since the sixteenth century, when it 

 was first transplanted from Europe. The miners were 

 not enterprising enough to adopt any of the modern im- 

 provements ; they adhered tenaciously to the old way, 

 which w r as notoriously crude and imperfect They w r ere 

 better paid, however, Humboldt thought, than the miners 

 of other countries ; they earned from $5 to §6 a-week, 

 while the w r ages of other labourers in Mexico did not 

 exceed $1,50, or $1,75 for the same time. The miners 

 were not remarkable for their honesty, for they made 

 use of a thousand tricks to steal the rich minerals in 

 which they worked. As they were nearly naked, and 

 were searched on leaving the mines (not in the most 

 delicate manner either), they tried to conceal small mor- 

 sels of native silver, or red sulphuretted and muriated 

 silver in their hair, under their arm-pits, in their mouths, 

 and other out-of-the-way corners of their persons. Good 

 or bad, all were searched alike, and a register was kept 

 of the minerals found about them. In the mine of 

 Valenciana, between 1774 and 1787, the sum stolen, but 

 recovered, amounted to $180,000. 



The w r orking of the mines was long regarded as one 

 of the principal causes of the depopulation of Mexico. 

 Humboldt, however, did not consider the mortality 

 among the miners much greater than among the other 

 classes. This seemed to him remarkable from the tem- 

 perature to w T hich they were exposed. In one mine he 

 found the thermometer at 93° at the bottom, a perpen- 

 dicular depth of one thousand six hundred and eighty- 

 one feet, while at the mouth of the pit, in the open 

 air, the same thermometer sank in winter to 39° 



