TRAVELS IN MEXICO.
but his memory still lives, and it deserves to be perpetuated by a monument of silver at least a hundred feet high.
Besides the native population there is an English colony, comprising about three hundred and fifty men, women, and children, from the mining district of Cornwall. The first Cornish miners came here about sixty years ago, introducing English machinery and modes of working. More than half a century ago, England was afflicted with an "Anglo-Spanish" mining fever, which did not abate till more than $50,000,000 of English capital had been expended in Mexico. During the prevalence of that fever many of these miners came out here. Some of the original number are still living, and all agree as to the healthfulness of the climate of this region as a place of residence for English people. Though some of them had acquired wealth, and some had retired to Old England with enough and to spare, the majority had earned little more than a living, until they "struck it rich" in the Santa Gertrudis mine, which is now "in bonanza." It had been successively worked and abandoned years and years ago, and was finally "denounced "—or taken to work—by a Cornishman. Forming a small company, in 1877, he commenced active work; after it was proved that the mine was paying, he sold his share, nine twenty-fifths, for $15,000. Since then, one twenty-fifth has sold for $80,000, the present price being $85,000 or $90,000 per barra, or share. The mine has been "in bonanza" now for five years, and is yielding about 3,000 cargas of 300 pounds each of metal weekly, and giving a clear profit of $1,000 per day. From June, 1877, to March, 1881, the mine produced $2,300,000, and declared thirty-two dividends of $20,000 each,—$640,000. In June, 1877, there was but one shaft of sixty varas,—a vara is little less than a yard; now, the deepest shaft is two hundred varas; there are powerful pumping and hoisting engines, many large buildings, and all the appurtenances of a mine in this section, all paid for. This mine, which is located less than two miles from the centre of Pachuca, is owned principally by men who were poor at the time they commenced to work it. There are, it is said, two distinct lodes, running parallel, and at
