THE ONLY STREET OF URIQUE.
Urique is most interesting in that vast and substantial mineral wealth of which the little town is practically the center. The discovery of the rich district of Urique is to be attributed, so I am told, to the "adelantados" or "conquistadores," Spanish names equivalent to "adventurers," and then given to the commanders of expeditions organized but a short time after the conquest to explore the country and extend the domains of the Spanish crown. Directly overlooking this beautiful little mountain town is the Rosario mine, one of the principal mines of the district. Its ore runs from two hundred to two thousand dollars to the ton. In fact only the richest ores of any mine can be worked in the Central Sierra Madres, where everything is carried for hundreds of miles on mule-back at rates that would make a freight agent's mouth water. Salt for chlorination works, that we get for five to ten dollars a ton where there are railways, here costs from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five dollars a ton, and even much more during the rainy season of about three months, when all the streams are swollen and the dizzy mountain trails are dangerous in the extreme. This rainy season in Northern Mexico lasts from about the first or middle of June until the middle of September. It is against such enormous odds that man has to battle with Nature in this secluded part of the earth in order to get at her wealth that is otherwise so lavishly strewn around. After one has passed ten or twelve days on the roughest of mountain trails in order to reach this point, and reflects that the discoverers must have been without even this poor aid to progress, one's respect for the old Spanish explorers of the seventeenth century is sure to be heartily accorded. They were undoubtedly a much hardier, more daring, persistent, and intrepid class of people than those who struck the Atlantic shores of our own country. But, great ghost of Cortes, how things have changed! It seems as if the will and energy of three centuries had been crowded into as many years, and then allowed to stand still, like a watch that loses its balance and spins off the twenty-four hours in nearly as many seconds.
LOOKING DOWN THE URIQUE BARRANCA TOWARD THE RIVER.
And right here I would refer to the frequent discussion of writers on Mexico as to whether Mexicans are opposed to the introduction of foreign labor and capital to develop their country. All around the town of Urique are to be found mines of gold and silver either operated or about to be operated by Americans, English, Germans, and other foreigners; while many other enterprises are starting toward this rich country opened by the Spanish before a white man had crossed the Alleghenies. I was therefore in a fair position to hear what their descendants had to say, and in giving it utterance let me compare them with our own countrymen. Individually the Mexican is never so bitter against foreigners as the American, although the latter nation is much more an aggregation of foreigners than the former, and of much later date from other countries. I often heard quite caustic comparisons from sensible Mexicans as to foreign methods of mining, railroading, etc., which I think were sometimes exaggerative, and they even expressed opposition to their coming in at all, but never in a manner so pronounced as with us.
The whole of the rich Urique district, formerly an old Spanish grant many square miles in extent, was granted the Becerra family of three brothers by the Mexican Government. Their wealth is reputed to be many millions, and this we could readily believe while passing through a portion of their vast possessions. There are now in the Urique district a dozen bonanza mines worked by the old Spanish system, which would yield enormous revenues if there were any method by which the ore could be transported at reasonable rates. From almost any point on the one street of the town you could look up the steep mountain sides and see three or four of these old Spanish mines. The method of working them was wholly on the same plan as that adopted a hundred years before, even the machinery being of the most primitive type.
That night I took a swim in the Urique River and found the water as warm as fresh milk, although the water I had used in the morning from some of its small tributaries on the cumbra was as cold as ice.