while the descendants of Cortez, who received a royal grant of the valley of Oajaca, together with some Spanish merchants in Jalapa and Vera Cruz, derived the chief part of their fortunes from landed estates, cultivated carefully during the period when the Indians were under better agricultural subjection than at present.

Thus, the mines and the mining districts, by aggregating a large laboring population in a country in which there were, until recently, but few manufactures, and in which the main body of the people engaged either in trades or in tending cattle, became the centers of some of the most active agricultural districts. The most fertile portions of the table-land are the Baxio, which is immediately contiguous to Guanajuato, and comprises a portion of Valladolid, Guadalajara, Queretaro and Guanajuato, the valley of Toluca and the southern part of the State of Valladolid, which both supply the capital and the mining districts of Tlalpujahua, El Oro, Temascaltepec and Angangeo; the plains of Pachuca and Appam, which extend on either side to the foot of the mountains upon which the mines of Real del Monte Chico are situated; Itzmiquilpan, which owes it existence to Zimapan; Aguas Calientes, by which the great mining town of Zacatecas is supplied; a considerable circle in the vicinity of Sombrerete and Fresnillo; the valley of Jaral and the plains about San Luis Potosi, which town, again, derives its name from the mines of the Cerro de San Pedro, about four leagues from the gates, the supposed superiority of which to the celebrated mines of Potosi, in Peru, gave rise to the appellation of Potosi. A little further north we find the district of Matehuala, now a thriving town with more than seven thousand inhabitants, created by the discovery of Catorce; while about the same time, in the latter part of the last century, Durango rose into importance, from the impulse given to the surrounding country by the labors of Zambrano, at San Dimas and Guarisamey. Its population increased, in twelve years, from eight to twenty thousand, while whole streets and squares were added to its extent by the munificence of that fortunate miner. To the extreme north, Santa Eulalia gave rise to the town of Chihuahua; Batopilas and El Parral became each the center of a little circle of cultivation; Jesus Maria produced a similar effect; Mapimi, Cuencame and Inde, a little more to the southward, served to develop the natural fertility of the banks of the river Nazas; while in the low, hot regions of Sonora and Sinaloa, on the western coast, almost every place designated on the map as a town, was originally, and generally is still, a real, or district for mines."*

Such is the case with a multitude of other mines which have formed

* Ward, ut autea.

the nucleii of population in Mexico. They created a market. The men who were at work in the vein required the labor of men on the surface for their support and maintenance. Nor was it food, alone, that these laborers demanded; all kinds of artisans were wanted, and, consequently, towns as well as farms grew up on every side. When these mining dependencies are once formed, as Baron Humboldt justly says, they often survive the mines that gave them birth, and turn to agricultural labors, for the supply of other districts, that industry which was formerly devoted solely to their own region.

Such are some of the internal advantages to be derived from mining in Mexico, especially when the mines are well and scientifically wrought, and when the miners are kept in proper order, well paid, and, consequently, enabled to purchase the best supplies in the neighboring markets. The mines are, in fact, to Mexico, what the manufacturing districts are to England and the United States; and they must be considered the great support of the national agricultural interests until Mexico becomes a commercial power, and sends abroad other articles besides silver, cochineal and vanilla-the two last of which may be regarded as her monopolies. The operations of this tempting character of mines, or of the money they create as well as circulate, is exhibited very remarkably in the rapidity with which the shores of California have been covered with towns and filled with industrious population.

The tabular statement on the 43d page manifests the relative production, and improving or decreasing productiveness, of the several silver districts of Mexico during the comparatively pacific period of ten years antecedent to the war with the United States, which commenced in 1846. While that contest lasted, the agricultural and mineral interests and industry of the country of course suffered, and, consequently, it would be unfair to calculate the metallic yield of Mexico upon the basis of that epoch, or of the years immediately succeeding.

From the table it will be seen (omitting the fractions of dollars and of marks of silver) that the whole tax collected during these ten years, from 1835 to 1844, amounted to $1,988,896 imposed on 15,911,194 marks of silver, the value of which was $131,267,352; the mean yield of tax being $198,889, and of the silver 1,591,119 in marks, which, estimated at the rate of eight dollars and a quarter per mark, amounts to $13,126,734 annually.

Comparing the first and second periods of five years, we find a dif ference in the tax, in favor of the latter, of $113,130, or 905,042 marks of silver; showing that, in the latter period, $7,466,596 more were extracted from the Mexican mines than during the former.

If we adopt the decimal basis of calculation, the returns show, approximately, the following results:

These statements do not include the precious metals produced in Mexico, which were either clandestinely disposed of or used in the manufacture of articles of luxury.

TABLE OF THE GOLD AND SILVER, coined in the eight mints of the Mexican republic from 1st January, 1844, to 1st January, 1845, according to official reports:

Mints.

Total.

Chihuahua,

Durango,.

Gold.
.$ 61,632 00
27,508 00

$ 351,632 00 240,870 30

Gaudalupe y Calvo,....................................

95,004 00

Guanajuato,..

.....

... 441,808 00

Mexico,.....

1,724.328 48

San Luis Potosi,..

Zacatecas,..

936,525 50 4,429,353 40

936,525 50

4,429,353 40

COINAGE OF MEXICO from 1535 to 1850, omitting fractions of a dollar:

1535 to 1600, in city of Mexico,.

1811 to 1844, Chihuahua,..

1811 to 1844, Durango,

1812 to 1844, Guadalajara,............... 1844, Guadalupe y Calvo,..

1812 to 1844, Guanajuato,

1827 to 1844, San Luis Potosi,...

1810, 1811 and 1812, Sombrerete,........ 1828, 1829 and 1830, Tlalpam,....

1810 to 1844, Zacatecas,

All the Mexican mints from the end of)

1844 to the end of 1849, at the rate of $14,000,000 per an., which was the approximate total coinage in 1844.† j

Totals,

.$ 620,000,000 $31,000,000 $

1,606,225,922

.......

..$2,465,275,954 $126,986,021 $5,566,876 $2,667,828,851

RESUME'.

Silver Coinage from 1535 to 1844, inclusive,..

$2,465,275.954

Gold.

Copper.

Total.

$651,000,000

88,597,827 5,323,765

1,700,147,514

6,629,875

868,248

50,428

7,048,551

21,$15,913

1,986,069

23,801,982

70,000,000

Gold
Copper

1845 to 1849, both inclusive,...........................

126,986,021

5,566,876 70,000,000

.$2,667,828,851

Total Coinage of Mexico to the present time, or in 314 years,.....

Or, avoiding fractions, nearly $8,500,000 yearly.

See Report of the Mexican Minister of Foreign and Domestic Relations, for

the year 1846, p. 139 of Documentos Justificativos.

The actual coinage of all the mints in the Republic, in 1844, amounted, in fact, to the sum of $13,732,861; but we assume $14,000,000 as a fair annual average for a period of several years.

32,405 63

23,293 59

8,093 61

ART. VL-RUINS OF CENTRAL AMERICA AND YUCATAN.

BY ALBERT WELLES ELY, M. D.

How often has it been said, that America, although she has the largest lakes, the largest rivers, the most stupendous cataracts, and the most extensive and lofty chains of mountains in the world, she can yet boast of no antiquities. This is an unmerited reproach, cast upon us by ignorant travelers, and one which, through ignorance of our own country, we have been in the habit of admitting to pass as correct. But the discoveries, of late years, have entirely changed the aspect of things, in regard to American antiquities, at least; so much so, that we can now fairly laugh the Old World to scorn. We can even deny its right to the title of Old World; or, to say the least, we can prove that this is, at least, as old a world as that.

What! no antiquities in America, no old temples, no acres of ground, as in Egypt and Asia, literally covered with ruined palaces, broken columns and fragments of statuary? So say the learned and sprightly male and female book-makers, that have attempted to enlighten this western hemisphere, during the last twenty-five years-chiefly by copying one another. Alas, they little knew what they were writing about. They had gone by moonlight, upon the old castles and abbeys of the Old World, as they may still continue to call it; they had wandered along the Nile, amid the ruins of Karnac, Luxor, and hundred-gated Thebes; they had seated themselves beneath the shadows of the ruined temples of Heliopolis, and gazed with deep sadness upon the sculptured grandeur of Palmyra, in the desert; they had grieved over the fallen greatness of Zenobia's empire, and feasted their eyes on those very scenes, within the Eternal City, that witnessed her a captive in the triumphal marches of a Roman conqueror: they had seen all this, and a great deal more, in their wanderings in the Old World, and they vainly imagined that they had seen all. And so, they honestly sighed over America, and wrote her down, Destitute of ruins, of antiquitiesa garden of desolation!

Even the eminent scholar and historian, Robertson, in speaking of the desolations of the Spanish priests and soldiers, at the time of the conquest of Mexico, writes as follows: "At this day, there does not remain the smallest vestige of an Indian building, public or private, in

*In the sixth volume of the Commercial Review, we published an elaborate paper, upon Central America, and discussed its antiquities, as brought to light by the labors of Stephens, etc. The reader will consult the paper with advantage in this connection.-ED.