stances, the same Capital might have been laid out, elsewhere, with a much more immediate prospect of advantage.
Besides, however good the Mines, the price which has been paid for their former celebrity in the shape of "Alimentos," (a yearly allowance to their owners,) has proved a very serious addition to the first outlay of the Adventurers.
Those paid by the Real del Monte Company to Count Regla, amount to 20,000 Dollars. The Anglo-Mexican Company, for the Mine of Valenciana alone, pays yearly 24,000 Dollars. On the preparations for draining the first, (the great Biscaina Vein,) nearly two millions of Dollars had been expended when I left Mexico; and at Guanajuato, the Valenciana Mine had cost, on the 1st of September, 1826,—672,264 Dollars. Farther advances will be required in both cases, before the drainage can be completed; and certainly, there ought not, in reason, or justice, to have been any surcharge, in the shape of Alimentos, where so large an investment of Capital was necessary for the preliminary works.
But this was one of the effects of that competition between the different Companies, which made each fear to find a rival in the rest: another, was the little attention paid to the terms of the Contracts, which are not always as favourable as they might have been made. Some of the most expen-
