indebted for the greatest kindness and attention during our stay at Zacatecas, where they, in conjunction with Mr. Schoolbred, gave us every assistance in our inquiries; and, by providing us beforehand with most excellent lodgings, enabled us to prosecute them with comfort.
One of the principal advantages of Zacatecas, as a mining district, consists in the superiority of the mint, (Casa de la Moneda,) to those of the surrounding States. Three hundred people are employed in it daily. The machinery is ponderous, and a great deal of labour is wasted in filing down and weighing each dollar separately; an operation that would be rendered unnecessary by the adoption of a series of cylinders calculated to reduce the bars at once to the necessary size and thickness, as in England. But notwithstanding these defects, sixty thousand dollars have been struck off at Zacatecas in twenty-four hours: and the total coinage, according to the Governor's report to the Legislature (of January 1827), has amounted, from the 1st of January 1821 to the 31st of May 1826, to 2,067,269 marcs, five ounces and seven-eighths, or 17,571,789 dollars and four reals.
The profits of the establishment, during this time, were 126,941 dollars two reals and six grains; yet the miners and rescatadores received dollars for their bars in the short space of four days. As the funds of the mint augment, the facilities for this operation will increase likewise; while mining enterprises, which always receive an impulse in proportion to
