MINES NOT EXHAUSTED CONDITION. 



83 



The Mexican mines were eagerly and even madly seized by the 

 English, and even by the people of the United States, as objects 

 of splendid speculation, as soon as the country became settled ; 

 but, in consequence of bad management, or the wild spirit of gam- 

 bling which assumed the place of prudent commercial enterprise, 

 the holders of stock were either disappointed or sometimes ruined. 

 Subsequently, however, the proprietors have learned that prudence 

 and the experience of old Mexican miners was better than the theo- 

 retical principles upon which they designed producing larger reve- 

 nues than had ever been obtained by the original Spanish workmen. 

 Their imported modern machinery and engines for voiding water 

 from the shafts and galleries is the chief beneficial improvement 

 introduced since the revolution ; but the enormous cost of trans- 

 porting the heavy materials, in a country where there are no navi- 

 gable rivers extending into the heart of the land, and where the 

 usual mode of carriage is on the backs of mules, by wretched 

 roads o^ver mountains and through ravines, has often absorbed large 

 portions of the original capital before the proprietors even began 

 to employ laborers to set up their foreign engines. Many of the 

 first British and American adventurers or speculators have, thus, 

 been ruined by unskilful enterprises in Mexican mines. Their 

 successors, however, are beginning to reap the beneficial results of 

 this expenditure, and, throughout the republic steam engines, to- 

 gether with the best kinds of hydraulic apparatus, have superseded 

 the Spanish malacates. 



" Whenever these superb countries which are so greatly favored 

 by nature," says Humboldt, in his essay on gold and silver, in the 

 Journal des Economistes, " shall enjoy perfect peace after their deep 

 and prolonged internal agitations, new metallic deposites will ne- 

 cessarily be opened and developed. In what region of the globe, 

 except America, can be cited such abundant examples of wealth, 

 in silver ? Let it not be forgotten that near Sombrerete, where 

 mines were opened as far back as 1555, the family of Fagoaga, — 

 Marquesses de Apartado, — derived, in the short space of five 

 months, from a front of one hundred and two feet in the outcrop- 

 ping of a silver mine, a net profit of $4,000,000 ; while, in the 

 mining district of Catorce, in the space of two years and a half, 

 between 1781 and the end of 1783, an ecclesiastic, named Juan 

 Flores, gained $3,500,000, on ground full of chloride of silver and 

 of colorados!" 



One of the most flourishing establishments in 1842, was the 

 Zacatecano-Mejicano Mining Company of Fresnillo. Its 120 



