74 



case tîiey begin with reducing the ore to powder 

 by grinding it in a mill. This powder is then passed 

 through a wire sieve and spread upon the hides of 

 cattle, where it is mixed with sea salt, quicksilver 

 and rotten dung. After wetting this mixture from 

 time to time, and beating and treading it well for the 

 space of eight days, in order to incorporate the sil- 

 ver and the mercury, it is put into a stone trough 



lavaderos of Andacoll, which produce gold of 23 carats fine, and 

 are worked constantly with great profit when there is no scarcity 

 of water. This has given rise to a saying of the inhabitants that 

 the ground is creative, that is, that gold is continually formed 

 in it ; founded in the circumstance of their finding that metal 

 in as great qua.ntities as at first, although it is sixty or eighty 

 years since these lavaderos have been worked. Besides the 

 lavaderos, which are in all the vailles, so numerous are the mines 

 of gold and some of silver that are met with in the mountains, 

 that they would furnish employment for more than forty thou- 

 sand men. — Frazier^s Voyage. 



Chili abounds in mines of all kinds, more especially in those of 

 gold and copper, which are very common. Coquimbo, Copiapo 

 and Guaseo have gold mines, the ore of which is called by way 

 of distinction, oro cafiote, as being the most valuable of any that 

 has hitherto been disco vered...../fmencarz- Gazetteer; article Chili. 



These valiies contain besides mines of silver, those of lead, cop- 

 per and quicksilver, and a very great number of gold. Of this 

 last there is so much found in the sands of the rivulets, that a cer-^ 

 tain author has said that Chili is a composition of this precious 

 metal. The quantity obtained by Pedro de Valdivia, who entered 

 Chili after Almagro, w-as immense. That general opened mines 

 of gold which were so rich that each Indian furnished from thirty 

 to forty ducats daily, as, when only twelve or fifteen vf ere employed, 

 he obtained three or four hundred ducats a day. This concurs 

 with what Garcilasso says in his history of Peru, that a part of 

 Chili fell to the lot of Valdivia, who received from his vassals an 

 annual tribute of more than one hundred thousand pieces of gold.— 

 Sanson's (of Abbeville) Geograjihy ; article Chili. ^ 



