Chap. X. 
AND ITS SILVER MINES. 
359 
tains around Sta. Eulalia contain silver. More than two 
hundred mines have been worked here, and more than 
fifty of these have shafts above six hundred feet in depth. 
Several of them are so extensive that it takes a whole day 
to pass through one of them. 
When these mines were at the height of their prosperity 
a tax of two grains of silver upon each mark was levied 
to build the cathedral of Chihuahua and the church of 
Santa Eulalia. The first cost 600,000 dollars, the last 
150,000, and a surplus of 150,000 remained to the build- 
ing fund when both were completed. The amount of this 
tax shows the produce of the mines to have been 14,500,000 
marks of silver. 1 I have already stated that from 1703 
to 1833, namely 130 years, according to a census taken 
at the end of this period, a mass of silver amounting to 
43 millions of marks was raised from the mines of Santa 
Eulalia. 
Since 1833, when these mines ceased to be regularly 
worked, up to this period, the inhabitants of the small 
town have always managed to find enough in them for 
their maintenance. People who, without knowledge or 
scientific resources, find their livelihood in the abandoned 
mines, are called in Mexico, Gambusinos. The whole 
population of Santa Eulalia is of this class. To give up 
working a mine is, according to Mexican law, to give up 
all right to it ; and, still more, any one who will declare 
that he can work a mine more profitably than the person 
then holding it, may compel him to give it up, upon pay- 
ment of a rent in proportion to the amount of ore hitherto 
1 According to Wislizerms, the cathe- 
dral of Chihuahua was seventy-three 
years huilding, and cost 800,000 dollars. 
The above statement is taken from a 
more extensive paper respecting the 
gold and silver mines of the State of 
Chihuahua, intended for the Mexican 
Congress, which was communicated to 
me in the MS., and which, translated 
into English, I published in the ' New 
York Tribune,' August, 27, 1853. 
