in connection with the famous mines of Guanajuato. Many years ago an English company bought the famous Real del Monte mine, near Pachuca, which is reported to have yielded in a single year, with rude labor, $4,500,000. It was assumed that two things only were requisite to insure even greater returns; namely, the pumping out of the water which had accumulated in the abandoned shafts, and the introduction of improved machinery for working at lower levels. Large steam-engines and other machinery were accordingly imported from England, and dragged up by mule-power from Vera Cruz, at immense cost and labor. But the new scheme proved utterly unprofitable, and after some years' trial was abandoned. The expensive machinery was sold for about its value as old iron; the mines reverted to a Mexican company; the old methods were again substantially introduced, and then the property once more began to pay.
Deposits of coal of good quality are from time to time reported as existing, and readily accessible. But the fact that the "Mexican Central Railroad" supplies itself from the coal-fields of Colorado, nearly fifteen hundred miles from the city of Mexico, and that the "Vera Cruz Railroad" and the great silver-mines at Pachuca import their coal from England—the latter at a reported cost
