652 



mits, furnishes a vast field to the enterprizing 

 spirit of the miner. Gold, platina, silver, mer- 

 cury, copper, gem-salt, sulphur, and alum, may 

 become objects of important workings. The 

 production of gold alone amounted before the 

 epocha of the civil dissensions *, mean year, to 

 4700 kilogrammes (20,500 marks of Castille). 

 This is nearly half the quantity furnished by 

 all Spanish America, a quantity which has an 

 influence so much more powerful on the vari- 

 able proportions between the value of gold and 

 silver, that the extraction of the former metal 

 has diminished at Brazil, during forty years 

 past, with surprising rapidity. The quint (a 

 tax which the government raises on gold-wash- 

 ings), and which in the Capitania of Minas 

 Geraes, was, in 1756, 1761, and 1767, from 

 118, 102, and 85 arobas of gold (at 141 kilo- 

 grammes), is fallen, according to manuscript 

 notes kindly furnished me by the Baron d'Esch- 

 wege, director-general of the mines of Brazil, in 

 1800, 1813, and 1818, to 30, 20, and 9 arobas ; 

 an arob of gold having at Rio Janeiro, the 

 value of 15,000 cruzades. According to these 

 estimations, the ancient produce of the gold 

 of Brazil, making deductions for fraudulent ex- 

 portation, was in the middle of the 18th cen- 

 tury, in the years of the greatest wealth of the 



* See my Political Essay, Vol. iii, p. 394. 



