HISTORY OF MINING UNDER THE SPANTARDS. 153 | 
by the Apaches, all work has ceased. The largest enterprise 
was that which led to the opening of the Colorado Mine, and 
caused the erection of the twenty-stamp mill and other 
machinery now standing at Enviguetta, which I have already 
mentioned. Mismanagement and extravagance brought this 
company to ruin. 
The above districts are all in United States’ territory. 
They represent the first abortive attempt at silver mining 
in the south, and tend to show that the natural disadvantages 
peculiar to these regions are at present almost too great to be 
overcome. Labour and provisions are high, the expense of 
transporting and putting up machinery is enormous, water 
is scarce; but for all that the silver is there, and will 
eventually be got at. 
In forming a true conclusion as to the value of the mineral 
resources of Sonora, the history of its mining operations is a 
very necessary part of the evidence. Sonora and Sinaloa, 
under Spanish rule, were one State, and had their base of 
supplies, not at Guaymas, Agiavanpo, or any harbour on the 
Pacific coast, but at Vera Cruz. From this far-distant port, 
all the supplies sent from Old Spain to the settlers—every- 
thing, in fact, that they required—had to be packed on mules, 
- a distance of 2,000 miles, first to the city of Mexico, thence 
along the great military road to Chihuahua, across the Sierra 
Madre vid Concepcion, to Arispe, the then capital of Sonora, 
where the troops were paid, and from which point supplies 
were distributed to the military posts and missions scattered 
all over the country. But notwithstanding the remoteness of 
the province from its base of supply, the Spaniards during 
nearly a hundred years of peace, and under the protection of 
a strong military government, carried on their mining and 
agricultural operations most vigorously, discovered most of 
