The first, (Santa Eulalia,) from its vicinity to the town of Chihuahua, was worked as early as 1705.
Its registered produce, from that time to 1737, was 55,959,750 dollars, or an average of 1,748,742 dollars per annum. From 1737 to 1791, it yielded something more than Forty-four millions, making a total of One hundred millions of dollars during a period of Eighty-six years.
The district was gradually abandoned during the last years of the last century, on account of the incursions of the savage Indian tribes; but in 1791, it possessed a population of 6,000 inhabitants, with seventy-three Haciendas for reducing metals, and one hundred and eighty smelting furnaces. All these are now in ruins, and the produce, during the last thirty years, has been little or nothing; the whole receipts of the Provincial Treasury of Chihuahua having only amounted to 10,769,096 dollars from 1791 to 1825; but the possibility of restoring the mines to what they were, is, in the opinion of the natives, undoubted.[1]
From Bătŏpīlăs, and Guārĭsămĕy, I have been unable to obtain returns as exact as those from Santa Eulalia; a great part of the wealth derived from the first, by the Marquis of Bustamante, having been
- ↑ In this they are probably misled by their attachment to a place, which, during so long a period, was the source of the prosperity of the State; for with so many virgin districts in every direction around them, it can never be advisable for Foreign Capitalists to attempt the regeneration of Santa Eulalia.
