B.
Report on the Mineral Riches of Chihuahua
The statistical notices which have until to-day been received, embrace five cantons or departments of that state, which show that there exist in it sixteen minerals [districts containing mines], of which twelve are in working, and four abandoned in consequence of the incessant incursions of barbarous Indians. Their names are Hidalgo del Parral, Minas Nuevas, San Francisco del Oro, Santa Barbara, Zopago, Chinipas, Guazapores, Batozegache, Guadalupe y Calvo, Cuacogornichie, Galeana, Cosihuiriachic, Santa Eulalia, Barranco, and two more, without names, in the canton Caleana.
Twenty-one mines are found in operation in the twelve minerals in action. The number of those abandoned is increasing, and is not permanent; and the only cause referred to is that many of them are abandoned for want of capital, and others from the hostility of the barbarians. The products of those that were worked in the year 1849 amount to 146,818 marks of silver, of a ley of eleven dineros, and 7 marks, 7 oz., and 4 eighths of gold to the twenty-two quintals. The number of haciendas and furnaces for extracting the metal from the ore was twenty, and the processes which they use in that state are the patio and the furnace; the last is the most general. Finally, there has been put in practice a third system, by the house of Manning and M’Intosh, for the purpose of separating the silver by means of the precipitate of copper. The consumptions of the last year, 1849, amount to $544,194, notwithstanding which the notices omit the returns of various mines, haciendas, furnaces, and water-mills. The items are quicksilver at $140 a hundred, gunpowder, lime, wood, sulphate of copper, salt, iron, steel, metals of aid [metals thrown into the compound to aid the process of extracting], tallow, grease, hides, leather, corn, straw, grain, flesh, beans, and bars of iron. The number of operatives is not known with exactness, because the reports only refer to certain mines and haciendas, but in these they amount to 1833, besides day-laborers at five reals (5/8ths of a dollar) a day for half the time. The most important improvements that have been introduced into some of these mines consist in the establishment of pumps for facilitating draining, and in the introduction of German ovens for fusing a greater quantity of mineral at a less cost and with greater perfection, being so much the more interesting as the condition of the metals presents itself more easily to this kind of benefiting.
Four companies have been established for prosecuting the labor of the mines, Preseña, Rosario, Tajo, and Prieta. The first takes its name from Señor Delille, the second is composed of Mexicans, and the last two are composed of Mexicans, English, and naturalized Spaniards. Nothing is known in relation to their capitals. Besides the precious metals, we find lead in Naica and Babisas, of the canton of Matamoros; copper, from which only magistral is taken, is found in the canton of Mina, and sulphur and saltpetre in the canton of Iturbide. The reports mention nothing in respect to the authorities that take cognizance of the affairs of the Mineria; but it is presumed that, as in the rest of the nation, the judges of first instance take knowledge of controversies, and the courts of mines, if by chance they are established, take cognizance of the economy and government of the mines.
The mint of Guadalupe and Calvo coined in 1848, $720,765, and in 1849, $665,225, of which two sums $1,027,130 were of silver, and $355,859 in gold, the whole being the proceeds of 116,015 marks, 1 oz., and 4 eighths of silver, of the ley of eleven dineros, and of 2351 marks, 5 oz., 2 eighths of gold, with ley of twenty-two carats. This appears from the reports of the mint of the capital of that state.