Brought over

Piastres.

2,863,710,500

The mines of Pasco or Yauri

cocha, discovered in 1630,

yielded up to 1803, nearly

-300 millions of piastres, or 35,300,000 marcs, namely from 1630 to 1792, at 200,000 marcs per annum From 1792 to 1801, according

to the registers

Produce of the Cerro de Yauricocha, from 1801 till 1803 The mines of Gualgayoc, discovered in 1771, yielded from 1773, nearly 170,000 marcs of of silver, per annum

From 1774 till 1802, for the mines of Gualgayoc, Guama

chuco de Couchucos

Add for 1803

I estimate the produce of the mines of Huantajaya, Porco, and other less considerable Peruvian mines, from the 16th century till 1803, at 150,000 or 200,000 marcs of silver per

annum

274,400,000

21,501,600

3,400,000

4,300,000

185,339,900

504,000

350,000,000

Carried over 3,703,156,000

Brought over

Choco was peopled in 1539; the

province of Antioquia, then
inhabited by cannibals, was
conquered in 1541. The al-
luvious mines of Sonora and
Chili began only very late
to be worked. If we reckon
12,000 marcs of gold for the
total produce of the Spanish
Colonies, not including the
kingdom of New Spain, we
may add

Registered Gold and Silver of

Piastres. 3,703,156,000

332,000,000

B.

PORTUGUESE COLONIES.

Raynal supposes for the first sixty
years, a produce the double of
the present. He admits, that
according to the registers of
the fleets, since the discovery
of the mines of Brazil, till
1555, there has come into
Europe, in gold, the value

of

480,000,000

Carried over

480,000,000

II. Gold and Silver not registered, extracted from the mines of the New Continent, from 1492 to 1803.

A. SPANISH COLONIES. I reckon for New Spain, where the furtive extraction was very considerable till the middle of the eighteenth century, a seventh

For Potosi, the fourth of the total produce, on account of the enormous contraband at the beginning of working the

mines

Pasco, Gualgayoc, and the rest of Peru, where the silver flows by the river Amazons, towards Brazil

260,000,000

274,000,000

200,000,000

Carried over

734,000,300

VOL. III.

2 E

Brought over

For the gold of Chili, New Grenada, and the kingdom of

Piastres. 734,000,000

82,000,000

RECAPITULATION.

Value of Gold and Silver extracted from the mines of America, from 1499 to 1803.

This sum, which I believe myself warranted in fixing on, differs more than sixteen

thousand millions of francs from the sum stated by Robertson. It is not surprising that it approximates the estimates of several other writers; for it is with numbers in political economy, as with the positions fixed by astronomers; when we first observe the longitude of a place amid the great number of maps in which all the points are placed at random, we are sure to find one which indicates the true position.

It appears then that, of the 5,706,700,000 piastres, or 29,960,175,000 livres tournois furnished in gold and silver from 1492 till 1803, or in the space of 311 years, we owe: