but, if they can raise funds to carry it on, there is no mining enterprise in the country of which the Mexicans have so high an opinion; and I should myself be inclined to estimate their probable profits, for some years, at from sixty to seventy per cent, upon their advances.
The former produce of Catorce, during its best years was 2,854,000 dollars, (the average on five years, from 1800 to 1804). The mines from which by far the largest proportion of this sum proceeded, are now unworked, and must remain so, until the great Adit, the contract for which the Catorce Company has taken up, be concluded.
There is, however, every probability that, if carried on, the annual produce would equal that of the most flourishing periods before the Revolution; the riches of the vein having continued undiminished, at the time when the increase of the water obliged the proprietors to abandon the works.
Mr. Alaman, the principal director of the United Mexican Company, in a Report full of curious information, which he had the goodness to draw up for me, declined hazarding any positive calculation as to the probable amount of the produce of the mines worked by that Association, "because, (to use his own words,) "the produce of a mine could never be said to bear any exact proportion to the capital invested in it; sometimes exceeding all reasonable expectations, and at others, falling short of the most moderate estimate, particularly when confined to any given time."
