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DEPARTMENT OF POTOSI. 



Oruro and the Argentine confederation, and contains a population of 

 83,296 Creoles of European descent, and 164,609 Aymara Indians. 



The city, situated at the base of the far-famed Cerro de Potosi — the 

 rich sister of Cerro de Pasco, in Peru — has a population of 16,711. 



In the Cerro de Potosi and neighborhood there are twenty-six silver 

 mines worked, and eighteen hundred standing idle. Besides which, 

 the government accounts show us that, in the provinces of Porco, Cha- 

 yanta, Chichas, and Lepiz, there exist three thousand and eighty^ine 

 silver mines which have been abandoned, and only sixty-five mines 

 worked now. 



In former days the department of Potosi excited the envy of the 

 world. The silver ore was found rising from the top of the peak ; the 

 vein being followed below the water-line, when it was given up and a 

 new one sought. The work was carried on in this manner until few 

 new veins remained. The people are now burrowing in at the base of 

 the peak, striving to strike the vein below, where it was left in its rich- 

 ness. This is an expensive business, and some have given up the plan, 

 after an unsuccessful entrance into the very core of the mountain, with 

 heavy losses. 



There is a mint at Potosi, where the miner finds a ready market for 

 silver and gold. It received and coined in the year 1849 one million 

 six hundred and twenty-one thousand five hundred and thirty six dol- 

 lars in silver, and eleven thousand nine hundred and eighty-four dollars 

 m gold. 



The government purchases quicksilver to trade with the miner. It 

 is a singular fact that, while the rich quicksilver mines of Huancavelica 

 are so close at hand, Bolivia annually imports two hundred thousand 

 pounds of this important fluid mineral, in iron jars, from England, around 

 Cape Horn, and over the Cordilleras, one hundred and fifty-eight leagues 

 from Cobija. 



Owing to the imperfect apparatus used for separating quicksilver 

 from the silver ores, the waste of the imported metal is very great. Five 

 thousand pounds of ore, yielding one hundred and fifty pounds of pure 

 silver, required four hundred and fifty pounds of quicksilver for the 

 amalgamation ; of which, I was told, not less than one hundred pounds 

 were lost. A simple cast-iron silver burner, or distilling apparatus, 

 would probably save half this waste, and certainly much labor — both 

 the labor and mercury being the most expensive items in the miner's 

 list of expenditures. 



It is supposed that much silver is smuggled out of Bolivia every year. 

 The miner hands one bar to the mint, while another he pays to the 



