of Guanaxuato, especially when we feel ourselves oppressed with fatigue in ascending from the bottom of the mine of Valenciana without carrying the smallest weight. The tenateros cost the proprietors of Valenciana more than 15,000 livres Tournois weekly*; and they reckon that three men destined to carry the minerals to the places of assemblage are for one employed workman (barenador) who blows up the gangue by means of powder. These enormous expences of transportation would be perhaps diminished more than two thirds, if the works communicated with one another, by interior pits (rollschächt) or by galleries adapted for conveyance by wheel-barrows and dogs. Well contrived operations would facilitate the extraction of minerals and the circulation of air, and would render this great number of tenateros unnecessary, whose strength might be employed in a manner more advantageous to society, and less hurtful to the health of the individual. Interior pits communicating from one gallery to another and serving for the extraction of minerals, might be provided with cranes (haspel) to be wrought by men, or baritels, to be moved by cattle. For a long time (and this arrangement undoubtedly deserves the attention of the European miner) mules have been employed in

* £624 Sterling. Trans.

the interior of the mines of Mexico. At Rayas these animals descend every morning without guides and in the dark, the steps of a pit of an inclination from 42° to 46°. The mules distribute themselves of their own accord in the different places where the machines for drawing up the water are placed; and their step is so sure, that a lame miner was accustomed several years ago, to enter and leave the mine on one of their backs. In the district of the mines of Peregrino, at the Rosa de Castilla, the mules sleep in subterraneous stables, like the horses which I saw in the famous rock salt mines of Wieliczka in Gallicia.

The smelting and amalgamation works of Guanaxuato and Real del Monte, are so placed that two navigable galleries, the mouths of which should be near Marfil and Omitlan might serve for the carriage of minerals, and render every sort of draught above the level of the galleries superfluous. Besides the descents from Valenciana to Guanaxuato, and from Real del Monte to Regla are so rapid, that they would admit of the making of iron roads, on which waggons loaded with the minerals destined for amalgamation might be easily rolled along.

We have already spoken of the truly barbarous custom of drawing off the water from the deepest mines, not by means of pump apparatus, but by means of bags attached to ropes, which

roll on the drum of a horse baritel. The same bags are sometimes used in drawing up the water, and sometimes the mineral; they rub against the walls of the pit and it is very expensive to uphold them. At the Real del Monte for example, one of these bags only last seven or eight days; and it commonly costs six francs and sometimes eight or ten. A bag full of water, suspended to the drum of a barritel with eight horses (malacate doble) weighs 1250 pounds it is made of two hides sowed together. The bags used for the baritels called simple, those with four horses (malacates sencillos) are only the half of the size, and are made of one hide. In general the construction of the baritels is extremely imperfect, and they have besides, the bad custom of forcing the horses, by which they are, moved to run with by far too great a speed. I found this speed at the pits of San Ramon, at Real del Monte, no less than ten feet and a half per second*; at Guanaxuato in the mine of Valenciana from thirteen to fourteen feet; and every where else I found it more

* The water being drawn from a depth of eighty metres, (262 feet. Trans.) The malacate doble had four arms, the extremity of each arm has a shaft (timon) to which two horses are yoked. The diameter of the circle described by the horses was seventeen varas and a half (about 47 feet. Trans.) The diameter of the drum was twelve (32 feet. Trans.) The horses are changed every four hours.

than eight feet. Don Salvador Sein, professor of Natural Philosophy at Mexico, has proved, in a very excellent paper on the giratory motion of machines, that notwithstanding the extreme lightness of the Mexican horses, they produce only the maximum of effect on the baritels when, exerting a force of 175 pounds, they walk at a pace of from five to six feet in the second.

It is to be hoped that they will introduce at last, in the mines of New Spain, pump apparatus, moved either by horse baritels of a better construction, or by hydraulical wheels, or by machines a colonne d'eau. As wood is very scarce on the ridge of the Cordilleras, and coal has only yet been discovered in New Mexico, they are unfortunately precluded from employing the steam engine, the use of which would be of such service in the inundated mines of Bolaños as well as in those of Rayas and Mellado.

It is in the drawing off the water that we particularly feel the indispensable necessity of having plans drawn up by subterraneous surveyors (geometres). Instead of stopping the course of the water, and bringing it by the shortest road to the pit where the machines are placed, they frequently precipitate it to the bottom of the mine *, to be afterwards drawn off

* At Rayas, for example, where they draw off from a depth of 338 varas, water, which might be collected

at a great expence. Moreover, in the district of mines of Guanaxuato nearly two hundred and fifty workmen perished in the space of a few minutes on the 14th June, 1780, because, not having measured the distance between the works of San Ramon and the old works of Santo Christo de Burgos, they had imprudently approached this last mine while carrying on a gallery of investigation in that direction. The water with which the works of Santo Christo were full, flowed with impetuosity through this new gallery of San Ramon into the mine of Valenciana. Many of the workmen perished by the effect of the sudden compression of the air, which in taking a vent threw (to immense distances) beams, and large pieces of rocks. This accident would not have happened, if in regulating the operations they could have consulted a plan of the mines.

After the picture which we have just drawn of the actual state of the mining operations, and of the bad economy which prevails in the administration of the mines of New Spain, we ought not to be astonished at seeing works, which for a long time have been most productive, abandoned whenever they have reached a considerable depth, or whenever the veins have appeared

towards the south east, in a drain at the depth of 780

varas.