Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/461

MEXICO. 421 Secondly, The great progress that has been already made by all the Companies: the forward state of their preparatory works ; and the rapidity with which, after making roads, re- building Haciendas, and laying in stores of all kinds, they are now approaching the lower workings of their different Mines, where the demand for farther advances, on the part of the Shareholders, will cease. Thirdly, The certainty, that errors once committed, will not be repeated ; that every precaution is now taken in order to confine the operations of the Companies to those Mines from which speedy returns may be expected ; that the great- est activity is displayed in every one of the negotiations ; and that this activity is rendered doubly efficient by the lessons of the last three years. My own experience enables me to add that, in Mexico, there has been no instance of any of those disgraceful specu- lations which have contributed so much to discredit, in Eng- land, Mining Adventures in general. The engagements of the different Companies are all bona fide engagements, and no exertions have been spared in carrying them into effect. The efforts which have been made in the service of some of the Associations, and the obstacles that have been sur- mounted, are quite incredible, and do the highest honour to the gentlemen charged with the direction of their affairs : and, though some of the minor undertakings, in which capital was, (perhaps injudiciously,) invested, at a time when a de- sire to employ capital in this Avay was universal, have since been given up, still, the great enterprises which were pointed out, in the first instance, as the object of the formation of the different Companies, have been steadily pursued, and are now in a very advanced state. Those who are unacquainted with the scale upon which Mining enterprises in Mexico are conducted, and who judge of the outlay required there, by a comparison with that which attends the working of one of the smaller mineral de-