196 SIX MONTHS IN MEXICO. 



the stamping room, where they are coined by 

 fly presses, worked by eight men each : these 

 machines, twenty in number, are said to be 

 capable of coining upwards of 100,000 dollars 

 in ten hours. 



The operations seemed to me to be in 

 general performed in an awkward mariner ; 

 the machinery occupies a great space, and 

 occasions much noise. At present about two 

 hundred workmen are employed, but when 

 the mines were in full operation four hundred 

 were engaged, and eighty thousand dollars 

 per diem were coined here, independently of 

 what was done in the other mints. 



They were still striking bad impressions of 

 the expelled Emperor, and I was sorry to 

 observe such, ill executed work on a coin 

 which was to serve as the medium of ex- 

 change throughout the greater part of the 

 civilized world. They are now sinking new 

 dyes for the Republican Government, but 



