exploration of mineral districts. In later years this branch, which might be called a mining bank, met with reverses,[1] and the college, which depended upon it, could be maintained only with great sacrifices, the expenses amounting annually to about thirty thousand pesos. The Real Seminario de Mineria, as it was proudly called, indeed never fulfilled its object, although for some time it was under the management of able directors and teachers,[2] for it had been founded on a plan too vast and elaborate to be practicable.[3]
The greatest achievement of the tribunal was the compilation of the celebrated Ordenanzas de Minería, which, translated into several languages and widely commented upon, have formed the first complete code of colonial mining laws. For two hundred and fifty years, since Cortés planted the banner of Castile on the ruins of Tenochtitlan till about 1770, the legislation of the mining industry had been ruled by a mixture of decrees and ordinances[4] which had gradually become inapplicable. Therefore when the mining tribunal was created, orders came that it should frame a new code, a work completed in 1779. In August of that
- ↑ The crown obliged the tribunal on one occasion to make a donation of about $500,000, and soon afterward a loan of about $4,000,000, the repayment of which met with great difficulties. Alaman speaks also of bad management of the funds and the consequent failure, with liabilities amounting to $4,000,000. Hist. Méj., i. 63. Ward, Mex., ii. 50, says the forced loan to the king was $3,000,000. Revilla Gigedo mentions two loans of $1,000,000 each. Instruct., 119-20. The revenue of the tribunal in about 1792 was estimated at $160,000.
- ↑ Alaman mentions among them Fausto de Elhuyar and Andrés de Rio, both men whose names have acquired a well founded reputation as able mineralogists. Hist. Mej., i. 63. The creation of the college had been ratified by royal cédula of May 22, 1783. Beleña, Recop., ii. 284, 292.
- ↑ Its imperfection is well illustrated by the statement of two prominent travellers, that the collection of ores though comprising numerous and valuable specimens from Europe, was extremely deficient in Mexican minerals. Instruction was given gratuitously to twenty-five pupils, either of Spanish blood or noble Indians; descendants of miners being preferred. There were also a number of paying pupils. Humboldt, Essai Pol., ii. 506: Burkart, Reisen, i. 265-6.
- ↑ The original base was the laws in force in Española enlarged by a number of decrees, usually bearing on some special subject, and occasionally reformed by local regulations. Of the latter the first issued were those of Mexico City, of July 31, 1527. Libro de Cabildo, MS., 197-9.
share of the yield. This was called to habilitar a mine. Lassága, Repres., 18 et seq., gives the basis on which the avios were made.
