Bolaños, in Guadalajara, and Tasco in Oajaca, are the central points of the sixth, seventh and eighth.[12]
The reader who will cast his eye over the map of Mexico, will at once perceive that the geographical space covered by this metalliferous region, is small when compared with the great extent of the whole country. The eight groups into which the mining districts are divided occupy a space of twelve thousand square leagues, or one tenth only of the whole extent of the Mexican republic as it existed previous to the treaty of 1848 and before the mineral wealth of California and probably of New Mexico was known to the world. But as that treaty confirmed and ceded to the United States more than one half of the ancient territory of Mexico, we may estimate the mining region as covering fully one fifth of the remainder.
Before the discovery and conquest of the West Indies and the American continent, Europe had looked to the east for her chief supplies of treasure. America was discovered by Columbus, not as was so long imagined, because he foresaw the existence of another continent, but because he sought a shorter route to the rich and golden Zipangou, and to the spice regions of eastern Asia. Columbus and Vespuccius both died believing that they had reached eastern Asia, and thus a geographical mistake led to the greatest discovery that has ever been made. In proof of these assertions we may state that Columbus designed delivering at Cuba, the missives of the Spanish king to the great Kahn of the Mongols, and that he imagined himself in Mangi the capital of the southern region of Cathay or China! "The Island of Hispaniola," (Hayti) he declares to Pope Alexander VI., in a letter found in the archives of the Duke of Varaguas,—"is Tarshish, Ophir, and Zipangou. In my second voyage, I have discovered fourteen hundred islands, and a shore of three hundred and thirty-three miles, belonging to the continent of Asia." This West Indian Zipangou produced golden fragments or spangles, weighing eight, ten and even twenty pounds.[13]
Before the discovery of the silver mines of Tasco, on the western slope of the Mexican Cordillera, in the year 1522, America supplied only gold to the Old World, and consequently, Isabella of Castile was obliged, already in 1497, to modify greatly, the relative value of the two precious metals used for currency. This was doubtless the origin of the Medina edict—which changes the old legal ratio of 1:10.7. Yet Humboldt has shown that, from 1492 to 1500, the quantity of gold drawn from the parts of the New World then known, did not amount, annually, to more than about one thousand pounds avoirdupois;—and the Pope Alexander VI., who, by his famous Bull, bestowed one half the earth upon the Spanish kings, only received in return, from Ferdinand the Catholic, some small fragments of gold from Hayti, to gild a portion of the dome of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore;—a gift that was suitably acknowledged in a Latin inscription in which the offering is set forth as the first that had been received by the Catholic sovereigns from India.
Although the income of treasure must have increased somewhat, yet the working of the American mines did not yield three millions of dollars yearly until 1545. The ransom of Atahualpa amounted, according to Gomara, to about four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars of our standard, or fifty-two thousand marks of silver, whilst, the pillage of the Temples at Cuzco, if Herrera is to be credited, did not produce more than twenty-five thousand seven hundred marks, or a little more than a quarter of a million of our currency.[14]
It has been generally imagined that the wealth of the New World immediately and largely enriched the Spanish kings or their people; and that the sovereigns, under whose auspices the discovery was made, participated, at once, in the treasures that were found in the possession of the Indian rulers. Such, however, was not the case. The historian Ranke, in his essay on the Spanish finances, has shown, by new documents and official vouchers, the small quantity of the precious metals which the American mines, and the supposed treasures of the Incas yielded.[15] It is probable that the conquerors did not make exact returns to the court of their acquisitions, or that the revenue officers, appointed at an early period of American history, were not remarkable for the fidelity with which they transmitted the sums that came into their possession as servants of the crown; and thus it happened that neither the king of Spain nor his kingdom, was speedily enriched by the New World. Baron Humboldt, in one of his late publications, gives an interesting extract from a letter written by a friend of Ferdinand the Catholic a few days after his death, which exhibits the finances of that king in a different light from that in which they have been hitherto viewed. In an epistle to the bishop of Tuy, Peter Martyr says, that this "Lord of many realms,—this wearer of so many laurels,—this diffuser of the Christian faith and vanquisher of its enemies,—died poor, in a rustic hut. Whilst he lived no one imagined that after his death it would be discovered that he possessed scarcely money enough either to defray the ceremony of his sepulture, or to furnish his few retainers with suitable mourning!"[16] The adventurers in America, were doubtless enriched, and duly reported their gains to friends at home; but Spain itself was not speedily improved by their acquisitions.
The rise in the prices of grain and other products of agriculture or human industry, about the middle of the sixteenth century, and especially from 1570 to 1595, indicates the true beginning of the plentiful flow of the precious metals to the Old World, in consequence of which their value diminished and the results of European industry increased in price. This is accounted for by the commencement of the beneficial working of the American mines about that period. The real opening of the mines of Potosi, by the Spanish conquerors, dates from the year 1545; and it was between this epoch and 1595, that the splendid masses of silver from Tasco, Zacatecas, and Pachuca, in New Spain; and from Potosi, Porco and Oruro, in the chain of Peruvian Andes, began to be distributed more uniformly over Europe, and to affect the price of its productions. From the period of the administration of Cortéz to the year 1552, when the celebrated mines of Zacatecas were just opened, the export from Mexico, rarely reached in value, annually, 100,000 pesos de oro, or nearly $1,165,000. But from that date it rose rapidly, and in the years 1569, 1578 and 1587, it was already, respectively—
| 931,564 | Pesos de oro. | —The Peso de oro, is rated by Prescott,at $11.65 cents, and by Ramirez,at $2.93 cents.[17] |
| 1,111,202 | "" | |
| 1,812,051 | "" |
During the last peaceful epoch of the Spanish domination, Baron Humboldt calculates the annual yield of the mines of Mexico at not more than $23,000,000, or nearly 1,184,000 pounds, avoirdupois, of silver, and 3,500 pounds, avoirdupois, of gold. From 1690 to 1803—$1,330,772,093 were coined in the only mint of Mexico; while, from the discovery of New Spain until its independence, about $2,028,000,000, or two-fifths of all the precious metals which the whole of the New World has supplied during the same period, were furnished by Mexico alone.[18]
It appears from these data that the exhaustion of the mines of Mexico is contradicted by the geognostic facts of the country, and as we shall hereafter show, by the recent issues of Mexican mints. The mint of Zacatecas, alone, during the revolutionary epoch, from 1811 to 1833, struck more than $66,332,766, and, in the eleven last years of this period, from four to five millions of dollars were coined by it every year uninterruptedly.