romance; but it must be remembered that sixty years have elapsed since the Independence, and there have been plenty of prospectors with a shrewd eye for gain in the country in the mean time. The Mexicans themselves are good miners. It will not do to look on with amused contempt even where very primitive processes are largely retained, for these are often better adapted to the peculiar conditions than any others. Thus the puddling of the tortas by mules and human legs, with labor at but thirty cents a day, is deliberately preferred to machinery.
Whoever might care to make purchases in such a place would do well to buy among the newly discovered mines. Or one may yet prospect for himself, for the district appears by no means exhausted. Robbers in the state of Hidalgo long served as an impediment to freedom of prospecting in out-of-the-way places, and it is only of late that their power has been broken. The last Governor is said to have shot three hundred of them. Wild-cat properties and pitfalls of the usual sort await the unwary here. That perversity which, by some natural law seems to take hold upon dealers in mines as well as in horses possesses them in Mexico not less than elsewhere.
The Mexican mine is divided into twenty-four imaginary equal parts, barras, and fractional parts of these are bought and sold as its stock.
IV.
As to the mining laws of the country, I have heard them described by some Americans as better than our own. In certain respects this is true. The reprehensible looseness with which our American "district recorders" receive conflicting claims covering the same property many times over is unknown. An official goes to the
