At Guanajuato, one of the most famous of the silver mining centres, prospecting was begun in 1525, only a few years after the Conquest, and the mining regions still further away to the north, as those of the famous Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi, had already been discovered. History relates that the silver deposits of Guanajuato were discovered as a result of a camp-fire, made by some muleteers, who found refined silver among the ashes, melted from the rock beneath! Shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century the great Veta Madre, or "mother lode," of Guanajuato was pierced, with an ore-body 100 feet wide. This place, which to-day boasts a population of fifty thousand souls, had begun to grow and was granted a charter as a Villa Real at the beginning of the seventeenth century. This before the sailing of the Mayflower! So, as we look back upon those strenuous times of Mexican mining, we shall see much of good arising from the metallurgical conquest. We have a vision of fair cities, established within mountain fastnesses, within fertile plains, long centuries before the advent of the locomotive, cities whose wealth came from the fabulous riches of the great silver mines, whose ore was quarried from its lodes and deposits, cities where fine cathedrals arose, built from the taxes levied upon the product of these mines, by which fortunate national trait some good at least was perpetuated for the inhabitants and toilers who produced it. Does the mining director and shareholder of to-day loosen his greedy and capacious pocket for such works? We might ask the toiling nigger—Kaffir, or Chinese, and his Jewish employer in the mines of Africa. The Spaniards did not suck out the wealth of Mexico's soil only to enrich a decadent monarch and his coffers, thousands of miles away, for which we have reproached them. Some of the wealth their enterprise produced formed beautiful cities and made the desert blossom where, before, savage tribes of Indians roamed; and stimulated great thoughts and actions in men whose historic names remain upon the country's history.
It was a laborious journey from Spain to Mexico in those days, and mining was marked by difficulties due to the remoteness of the region from means of communication, and also from the hostile Indian tribes, who resented the advent of the white man into their territory. An example of the tenacity and courage of the invaders against these odds is shown in the founding of the fine city of Durango, 350 years ago. At that time this region was the home of savage tribes of Indians, who continually made raids upon the Spaniards. A marvellously rich mine, the Avino, worked as a huge open quarry, which exists to-day, was deeded by its owner to those white inhabitants there who would consent to build their houses together for mutual protection. Thus the beginning of the city of Durango was made.
Another famous mining centre in those early days, just as it is at present, was Zacatecas, and its name alone conveys the idea of silver and gold. In 1546 it was, that a lieutenant of Cortes, traversing the country, arrived there, observed its promise of mineral wealth, and formed a settlement. So rapidly did the place become renowned that, forty years afterwards, a Royal Charter was given to the city, and a coat of arms, with the title, "Noble and Loyal." The curious archives of the Alvarado Mines—they were worked by Fernando Cortes—which were kept, and which show the care in these matters exercised by the Spaniards, still exist; as is the case, indeed, with the records of many of the great mining centres of Mexico and Peru. Here it is shown that an enormous output of silver was made, the total from 1548 to 1867 amounting to nearly eight hundred million dollars.
The great lodes of the famous mining centre of Pachuca, which at the present day are the most productive, were discovered by the companions of Cortes soon after the Conquest. But knowledge of the great wealth in silver there was held by the Aztecs, who, in fact, showed the main veins to the Spaniards. It was here that Bartolomé de Medina discovered the famous method of treating silver ores by amalgamation with quicksilver, known as the patio process, in 1557. An improvement on his invention came from Peru, in 1783, which was the use of mules instead of men in treading out the crushed ore. From far-away Peru other matters had come, as the quicksilver from the great Huancavelica mines, the mercury necessary for the process. And the beautiful Peruvian pepper trees, which were brought to ornament the plaza of Pachuca by one of the last of the Viceroys from Lima, form another reminiscence of the sister land of the Incas, in Mexico. There is at Pachuca a link with the world of Anglo-Saxon mining—the cemetery where to-day lie the bones of clever Cornish miners, who, in the time of the British revival of Mexican mining, taught the native their more useful methods. There lie these hardy sons of Cornwall, "each in his narrow cell," within the foreign soil whereon he had laboured.
What is the earliest time at which man began to dig for minerals in Mexico? It is not possible to determine this, as it is involved in the obscure history of the races of prehispanic days. But it has been affirmed that the method of recovering gold by amalgamation with quicksilver must have been known to the Maya civilisation which preceded the Aztec times. This is adduced from the discovery of a vessel containing quicksilver, during the excavations, in 1897, of the celebrated ruins of Palenque, in Chiapas. The native miners of Mexico have always won gold from the rocks, it is stated, by the method of crushing ore and treating it with quicksilver in amalgamation, and it is considered that the method has not been derived from the white man, but was handed down from the Mayas. Be this as it may, the early Mexicans carried on regular mining operations, extracting metals and metallic ores from the rocks by means of pits and galleries, and these, in some cases, furnished the Spaniards, after the Conquest, with the first indication of the existence of mineral-bearing veins. Gold was taken, however, among these prehistoric people, mainly from the stream-beds, or placer deposits, where it had been concentrated by nature. Gold was used more as a decorative or useful material than as a medium of currency, among the Aztecs, as among the Incas of Peru. However, in Mexico, transparent quills full of gold-dust were used as money. Gold ornaments figured largely in the military pomp and domestic decoration. The wonderful representations of animals and plants which they fashioned, and the remarkable presents of gold and silver which Montezuma made to Cortes, among them two great circular plates "as large as the wheel of a carriage," attest the relative abundance of the precious metal which the early Mexican possessed. How similar were these objects to those which figured in the dramatic scenes enacted in the Andes of Peru nearly three thousand miles away, a few years later, the student will recollect. Cortes told Montezuma that the Spaniards "suffered from a disease, which only gold could cure," and the Aztec monarch sent supplies of the yellow metal to alleviate this!
In addition to the mining and reduction of the ores of the three noble metals, gold, silver, and mercury, which these people understood and practised, were similar operations regarding lead, copper, and tin. Of the two latter they formed an alloy, and made tools of the bronze. Small T-shaped pieces of tin, moreover, were used as a medium of exchange or currency. As to iron, it appears to be the case that they were unacquainted with its use, notwithstanding that the ore of the metal is exceedingly plentiful. Nevertheless, it is stated that iron was mined and wrought into use at Tula, the Toltec centre, in the State of Jalisco, long before the advent of Cortes and the Spaniards.
Regarding the subject of the mining and metallurgy of the Aztecs and their predecessors in prehispanic days, it must be recollected that historical knowledge about it is exceedingly meagre, and the details of their operations in this field of industry are buried in much obscurity.
The Spanish advent wrought a marked change in the history of mining in the country. The Spaniards began to work mines as early as 1526, and continued their exploitation until 1810, the time of the War of Independence, at which period the value of the yearly output was 27,000,000 dollars. There was a general expulsion of the Spaniards in 1829. It was, however, in 1700 that the most marked period of Spanish mining began. The production of gold and silver from 1522 to 1879, according to the most reliable authorities, is given approximately as 3,725,000,000 dollars, of which gold formed 4 to 8 per cent. Indeed, the staple product of Mexico has ever been silver, in those remote times as it is to-day, and it has been calculated that possibly one-third of the existing quantity of silver in the world has come from the lodes of the Sierra Madre of Mexico.
The early Spaniards, whilst they did not despise the indication left or given by the Aztecs in the discovery of rich mines, struck out for themselves and found the great lodes which yielded fabulous fortunes in silver to their fortunate owners. These adventurous spirits spread over the whole of the country bordering upon the Sierra Madres, stimulated by the rich finds of silver mines successively made in one region or another. They have left old workings in almost every region where minerals exist, and they extracted great bonanzas with their crude, old-fashioned appliances. Ancient corkscrew-like workings, analogous more to the burrowings of animals than the excavations of man, honeycomb the crests of lodes and veins in every part of the country. After yielding fortunes to their workers these mines were abandoned, not because they were worked out, but for lack of appliances for drainage and hoisting, and in this condition, flooded or caved-in, remain innumerable of their old treasure-chambers to this day.
But not all the Spaniards' workings were of this nature. Magnificent tunnels were run by them into the bowels of hills, tunnels whose enormous dimensions excite the wonder of the mining engineer of to-day. In some instances these socavones, or great adits, are of such a size that a mounted horseman can enter with ease, or a locomotive might easily traverse them. Indeed, the engineer of to-day hesitates to attack the mountain sides with such bold adits as the Spaniard, with inferior materials, drove into them. Similar tunnels were driven by the Spaniards in some of the famous mines of Peru.[33]