Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/410

370 MEX ICO. great Bonanza of the Fagoaga family, (when eleven millions of dollars were raised in eight months, from the Mine of El Pavellon alone,) up to 1810. The registered produce of the Mining Districts of San Luis PotosT, (the most important of which was Catdrce) during a term of five years, before and after the Revolution, (for which alone I have been able to procure Returns,) is stated in the annexed Table, (No. X.) by which it appears that there was a decrease in the latter period of 8261 Bars of Silver, (each of 134 marcs, or 1139 dollars,) which gives a total difference of 9,409,279 dollars on the five years after 1810. The produce of the Mines of Catorce in ten years, (from 1816 to 1825 inclusive,) according to an extract from the Registers, which has been recently transmitted to me, was 5,994,006 dollars ; which, if one half of this sum, (or 2,997)003 dollars) be added for the five years not included in the returns in my possession, will give 8,991,009 dollars, as the total, or 599,400 dollars as the average annual produce of that District, on the whole fifteen years. Before the Revo- lution, Catorce was second only to Guanajuato in the amount of the silver raised, the value of which was estimated by Humboldt, (in 1803) at three millions and a half of dollars annually. The produce of the Biscaina Vein, at Real del Monte, in seven good years before the Revolution, (from 1794 to 1801,) was six millions of dollars, or 857,042 dollars per annum. From 1809 to 1 823, it only yielded 200,000 dollars in all, or 14,285 dollars per annum. If it were possible to obtain returns from the other Mining Districts, the disproportion between the produce before, and after, the year 1810, would be found to be equally striking. In all, the principal Mines were abandoned, the machinery was allowed to go to ruins, and the silver raised was merely the gleanings of more prosperous times; the workings.