the shaft was undergoing considerable repairs, and when they were completed, the quantity of ore was expected to increase; but I should not think it likely to do so in a ratio sufficient to cover the expence of keeping up an establishment, with haciendas, horses, and a responsible officer, for the sake of working this mine alone. The two others have been subsequently abandoned.
The Company likewise possessed two Mines at the Real del Cristo, about twelve leagues South of Tĕmăscāltĕpēc, (San Diego and San Antonio,) and was about to contract for another. La Golondrina. All these are known to produce rich ore; but the veins are small, and the system of multiplying and subdividing establishments in a country where personal inspection is so necessary, can hardly be made to answer. The Cristo is too far from Temascaltepec for the ores raised there to be reduced in the Haciendas of Guadalupe or San José; and a new Hacienda must consequently be built, at an expence which few isolated mines, if small, can support.
About 150,000 dollars have been sunk in these enterprises, from which it is generally thought that very little is to be expected.
Mr. Bullock's Company, which has since been dissolved, was denominated "The Mexican Mine Company," and was formed by Mr. Baring and Sir John Lubbock, in order to work the Mina del Vado, denounced in 1823 by Mr. Bullock, as a Mexican citizen, with all the formalities described in the
