Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/236

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216
OFFICIAL VISIT
[CH. XIV.

himself:— wish I could be brought to think that a specification of them would be useful to the public.—The conviction seems not yet to have passed by, that the precious metals must have undergone an intestine, physical, disorganization, out of sympathy, as it were, to the moral revolution with which the political features of these noble and interesting countries have, recently, been agitated[1].—Owing to the duties on coinage in Mexico, Peru, and Chile, considerable quantities of the precious metals are in the habit of being sent from those countries to be coined at the Mint of Guatemala. The value of metals so transferred, appears, by an official return, to have amounted to 2,326 marks 5½ ounces of quicksilver, and 2,120 marks of silver in bullion. There is a mint in Tegucigalpa, in the province of Honduras, which

  1. One of Herrera's mines at Tabanco in St. Salvador has been since profitably worked by Messrs. Bennett of Belize.—The crude ores are about to be sent to England for want of a smelting apparatus.