added for bullion wrought into jewellery, and for that which was not included in the official returns. These results were due, not only to the influence of the Mining Board, but to a reduction in the price of quicksilver, and to a more liberal colonial policy on the part of the home governments. The mining region of New Spain covered, in 1800, an area of about 12,225 sq. leagues, and was divided into thirty-seven departments, with about 500 sub-divisions, containing approximately 3,000 mines.
The most prominent districts were those of Guanajuato, Catorce (in San Luis Potosi), and Zacatecas, all of them situated between latitudes 21° and 24°. The first was discovered in the middle of the sixteenth century by muleteers employed on the route between Zacatecas and Mexico. Official returns give the aggregate product from 1701 to 1809 at 37,290,617 marks of silver and 88,184 marks of gold, valued at £6,380,110. A single vein named the Valenciana yielded in less than five years about £3,000,000, and in 1791 as much silver as all the mines of Peru.
Even these results were eclipsed by the veins in the Catorce district, discovered in 1773, and worked with success since 1778. One mine alone, belonging to a priest named Flores, yielded during the first year £300,000. The product of a whole district from 1778 to 1810 was estimated at £1,000,000 a year; and the total output of the entire intendencia of San Luis Potosi, from 1556 to 1789, at 92,736,294 marks of silver, representing £158,000,000. Other mines in this region also yielded enormously, giving rise to the belief that they were practically inexhaustible.
A similar impression prevailed concerning the district of Zacatecas, which, since its discovery in the middle of the sixteenth century, had always offered a vast field for enterprise. That it was not unfounded is evident from the fact that for the 180 years ending with 1732 the total product was estimated at £160,000,000. The principal vein, the Veta Grande, produced in eighteen years from 1790 to 1808,
