it is confirmed to him whose case is best established. Abandoned and forfeited properties are "denounced by a similar formality. Veins or mines may be denounced not only on common lands, but those of any private individual, on paying for the surface occupied. In order, however, to obviate malicious or idle destruction, the searcher may be made to give security, before beginning his trial, for any damage he may occasion to the owner of the ground. Sites and waters for reducing works are included in the same permission.
The denouncer must take possession and begin the prescribed work within sixty days. The discoverer may have three pertenencias, or claims, continuous or interrupted, on any principal vein which is absolutely new. The pertenencia consists of two hundred metres along the line of the vein and one hundred on each side (or as the miner may desire), as measured on a level. A person, not the discoverer, can denounce two contiguous mines, on the same vein, but one may acquire as many others as he likes by purchase.
The ancient code created a General Tribunal of Mining for New Spain, and gave it cognizance of all mining matters. It was composed of a President, Director-general, and three Deputies-general, elected by the Reales, or mining districts, and two Deputies besides, elected by each Real. The Real had to be a place containing a church, six mines, and four reducing establishments, in actual operation. The qualifications for holding office were, that one should have been engaged in practical mining for ten years, that he should be an American, or European Spaniard, free from all inferior blood, and that he should agree to "defend the mystery of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady."
It would seem that offices were not always in as active
