hands of the proprietors. In some instances, where dollars were scarce, checks upon the shops were given for the amount due to each labourer, and thus a sort of paper circulation created, which was seldom objected to where the credit of the adventurers was tolerably well established.
At Catorce, the Governor of San Luis has two shops, from which he derives a very considerable addition to his income; but his principal profits consist in the trade in "bars" of silver, which, as it is now organized, affords to any capitalist a very profitable investment, unaccompanied by any risk.
The silver is bought up from the poorer miner's and rescatadores, who are anxious to convert it into ready money as speedily as possible, at seven dollars and six reals the marc. At San Luis the mint price is eight dollars and two reals. The "Bar" contains 136 marcs, which, at four reals profit upon each, leave 540 reals, or sixty-seven dollars and a half, to the purchaser, out of which must be deducted two dollars for the carriage of the "bar" to San Luis, and two dollars more for commission and agency there and at Catorce. The net profit is therefore sixty-three dollars and a half on each bar, and in an establishment where thirty and forty bars are negotiated monthly, the amount at the end of the year is very considerable.
I have given these details upon a subject, which to many of my readers may appear unimportant, in order to exemplify the possibility of silver being
