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the frontier of the kingdom of Buenos-Ayres has been made to pass to the west of the lake of Chucuito, between the lake and the city of Cuzco, and since on the one hand the kingdom of Quito and the provinces of Jaen de Bracamoros and Maynas, and on the other the governments of Paz, Oruro, Plata, and Potosi have been separated from Peru, this last kingdom is divided into seven intendancies, Truxillo, Tarma, Huancavelica, Lima, Guamanga, Arequissa, and Cuzco, of which each comprehends several departments or partidos*. We We can only arrive at false results when, as has been done in works of the greatest estimation, we compare the produce of the mines of old Peru, with that of the present Peru, which since the year 1778, includes within its limits neither the Cerro del Potosi nor the mines of Oruro and Paz. The Peruvian gold partly comes from the provinces of Pataz† and Huailas, where it

* The old provinces of Pataz, Guamachuco, and Chachapoyas are now considered as partidos of the intendancy of Truxillo; and those of Caxatambo, Huailas, Conchucos, and Huamalies, belong to the intendancy of Tarma. The capitals of the seven intendancies are: Lima with 52,600 inhabitants; Guamanga with 26,000; Arequipa with 24,000; Truxillo with 5800; Huancavelica with 5200; Tarma with 5600; and Cuzco with 32,000. (Guia politica, ecclesiastica y militar del Vireynato del Peru, para el año 1793, por Don Jose Hipolito Unanue).

+ Among the five districts of mines of the partido of

is extracted from veins of quartz which traverse primitive rocks, and partly from Lavaderos established on the banks of the Alto Marañon, in the partido of Chachapoyas.

As in Mexico, almost the whole produce is derived from the mines of Guanaxuato, Catorce, Zacatecas, Real del Monte, and New Biscay, so in Peru nearly the whole silver is extracted from the great mines of Yauricocha or Lauricocha (commonly called mines of Pasco and the Cerro de Bombon*) and those of Gualgayoc or Chota, and Huantajaya (pronounced Guanta-ha-ya).

The mines of Pasco, which are the worst wrought in all Spanish America, were discovered by Huari Capca an Indian in 1630 ; and they annually furnish nearly two millions of piastres. To form a just idea of the enormous mass of silver which nature has deposited in the bowels of these calcareous mountains, at an elevation of more than four thousand metres (13 thousand feet) above the level of the ocean,

Pataz which we named above, only that of Chilia furnishes silver.

* The high table land of the Cordilleras on which we find the small lake de los Reyes, to the south of the Cerro de Yauricocha, is called the Pamba de Bombon. We must not seek the position of Pasco on the map of La Cruz, but on the map of the Rio Huallaga, drawn up by Father Sobreviela, and published in 1791 by the Sociedad de los Amantes del pais de Lima.

we must bear in mind that the bed of argentiferous oxide of iron of Yauricocha has been wrought without interruption since the beginning of the seventeenth century, and that within the last twenty years more than five millions of marcs of silver have been extracted from it, while the greatest part of the pits are not more than thirty metres in depth, and none of them one hundred and twenty metres. The water which is very abundant in these mines is drawn off, not by hydraulical wheels or horse baritels as in Mexico, but by pumps moved by men, so that notwithstanding the small depth of these miserable excavations which go by the names of pits and galleries, the drawing off the water from the mines is excessively expensive. In the mine of Lima, the expence amounted a few years ago to more than a thousand piastres per week. The mines of Yauricocha would supply the same quantity of silver as Guanaxuato, if they would but construct hydraulical machines or steam engines, for which they might make use of the turf of the lake of Giluacocha. The metalliferous bed (manto de plata) of Yauricocha appears at the surface for a length of 4800 metres* and a breadth of 2200†. The following table extracted from the books of the provincial treasury

* 15,747 feet. Trans.

† 7217 feet. Trans.

of Pasco, specifies the number and weight of the ingots of silver smelted at Pasco, between the years 1792 and 1801.

Mining operations of Yauricocha.

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It appears from this table that the produce of Pasco has almost never been below two hundred thousand marcs* and that it amounted in 1794 and 1801 nearly to the sum of three hundred thousand marcs of silvert.

The mines of Gualgayoc and Micuipampa, commonly called Chota, which I had occasion to visit very minutely in 1802, were only discovered in 1771 by Don Rodriguez de Ocaño

* 131,263 lb. troy. Trans.
† 196,894 lb. troy. Trans.

a European Spaniard. In the time of the Incas, the Peruvians wrought veins of silver in the Cerro de la Lin near Cutervo, at Chupiquiyacu, to the west of the small town of Micuipampa, where the thermometer descends almost every night to the freezing point, and which is seven hundred metres higher than the town of Quito. Immense wealth has been found even at the surface both in the mountain of Gualgayoc, which rises like a fortified castle in the midst of the plain, and at Fuentestiana, at Cormolache, and at la Pampa de Navar. In this last plain for an extent of more than half a square league wherever the turf has been removed, sulphuretted silver has been extracted and filaments of native silver adhere to the roots of the gramina. Frequently the silver is found in masses (clavos y remolinos) as if smelted portions of this metal had been poured upon a very soft clay. The produce of the mines of Gualgayoc or Chota is very unequal in proportion to the inconstancy of the veins which traverse at Fuentestiana and Cormolache, calcareous limestone; at Gualgayoc and the Purgatorio as well as at the Cerro de San Jose, horn-stone, called panizo. This horn-stone forms a subordinate bed in the calcareous rock as has been clearly recognized on digging the pits of Chiropampa to the east of the Purgatorio,

* 2296 feet. Trans.

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