Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/500

460 MEXICO. The Decree states the weight of the Balls, Sheets, and other pieces of silver discovered, {bolas, planchas, y otras piezas de plata,) to have amounted to 165 arrobas, 81bs., in all, (40331bs.) : and mentions particularly one mass of pure silver weighing 108 arrobas, (27001b£.,) ; and another of eleven arrobas, upon which duties had been actually paid by a Don Domingo Asmendi, and which, as a great natural curiosity, {como cosa especial,) the King states ought to have been sent to Madrid. The Decree ends by declaring the district of Arizona to be Royal property, as a " Criadero de Plata ;"" (a place where, by some natural process, silver was created;) .an idea, to which the flexibility of the metal, when first extracted, seemed, in those times, to give some colour of probability ; and by directing it to be worked upon the Royal account. This put a stop to the enterprises of individuals; — the district was deserted; an attempt to send a colony there failed ; and, in a few years, the very name of Arizona was forgotten. I am far from supposing that the whole of the facts re- corded in this Decree can be taken as correct, although the authenticity of the Decree itself is unquestionable. But what one cannot adopt without confirmation, ought not to be re- jected without inquiry; and I see enough, at least, in these records of Arizona, to warrant the supposition, (confirmed as it is by the facts and appearances mentioned in the pre- ceding pages,) that the hitherto unexplored regions in the North of Mexico, contain mineral treasures which, as dis- coveries proceed, are likely to make the future produce of the country infinitely exceed the amount that has been, hitherto, drawn from the (comparatively) poorer districts of the South. .) ' . In how far these discoveries must be influenced by the pro- gress of population, and in what degree the discoveries them-