As already we have said, the whole of Sonora is mineral; but as among us we only give this name to those places in which there have been discovered and worked a conjunction of veins, it results that the places in this state to which for this cause has been given the name of mineral are thirty-four. Some of the mines are amparadas [viz., worked sufficient to confer a legal title to the occupant], and are imperfectly in a state of operation. The names of all of these two classes, which are sixteen in all, are Hermosillo, San Javier, Subiate, Vayoreca, Alamas, Babicanara, Batuco, La Alameda, Rio Chico, El Aguaja, Aigame, El Luaque, Saguaripa, La Trinidad, San Antonio, and El Zoni.
The remaining eighteen are found abandoned, some for the want of water, and others for the want of laborers or capital, and by the fear which the barbarous Indians inspire. The names of these last minerals are San Juan de Sonora, that of the Sierra at the northwest of Guaymas, Arizuma, Bacauchi, Antunes, San José de Gracia, El Gavilau, San Ildefonso de la Cienequilla, San Francisco el Calou, Santa Rosa, San Antonio de la Huenta, Vadoseco Sobia, Mulatos, Basura, Alamo-Muerto, and San Perfecto.
In the same state have been discovered twenty-one placers; of these, one is of virgin silver, in grains and plates (planchas), and twenty of pure gold, in grains and dust; but as nearly all these are situated in the mineral districts (minerales) already mentioned, the names of those which are not given are the following: Agua Caliente, Quitovac, Las Palomas, La Canaca, and Totahiqui. With the exception of three, to which gold-hunters from time to time resort to relieve their necessities, all the others remain abandoned.
There was only one mineral district actually in work at the close of the last century and the beginning of the present; those now actually in process of being worked are fourteen, and their names are La Grande, La Quintera, El Subiate, Bulbaucda Europita, Vayoreca, La Cotera, Santo Domingo, Noercheran, La Sibertao, Minas-Núevas, El Tajo, Minas Prietas, and another near La Grande.
From the mineral districts (minerales) abandoned there ought to be inferred an increased number of mines, which are in the same condition, but we do not know their names, and we have only notices of the twenty following: Pimas, La Tarasca, Ubalama, Ojito de San Roman, Yaquis, La Guerita, Noaguila, Las Animas, Afuerenos, Piedras-verdes Navares, La Calera, Caugrejos, Guillarmena, San Atilano, San Teodoro, and El Gavilau. In those in Pinas, and in one of those of the mineral of San José de Gracia, have been found considerable amounts of pure silver deposited in their veins, and mineral taken from San Teodoro has produced one half silver. In extracting the silver from the ore in this place, we ought to mention that the greater part of these mines are susceptible of great bonanzas, from not having been worked extensively, as their proprietors abandoned them when the metals failed to appear upon the surface, and when the exploration was a little more costly.
There are eleven haciendas in the State of Sonora for purifying the metals which the mines and placers produce, without taking into the account many little establishments, with from two to five horse-mills, with one bad furnace for the fusion of metals. Three of these are situated in Alamas, five in Aduana, one in Promontorio, another in Tatagiosa, and the last in Minas Nuevas (New Mines). There are many abandoned mines, as the rubbish and ruins indicate, which we have noticed, in all the abandoned mineral districts.
The methods which they have observed in extracting the metals from the ore are the patio [by application of quicksilver in an open yard], and that of fusion, with the aid of some metals that assist the fusion; but from the fact that the quicksilver augments considerably the price, the few that there carry on the business have preferred the process of fusion to that of the patio, from being less costly, and because the docility of the metals afford facilities to this process.
No machines of new invention have been introduced into that state, either for the drainage of the mines or for facilitating the extracting of the metals. This ought not to surprise us, in places so desert and distant from the metropolis, unaccustomed to the vivifying movements of commerce, and to the necessities which civilization has engendered in the more important populations in the central parts of the republic. That which is rare, and ought to call attention, is the exception of some mines, where malacatos [water-sacks of bull-hides, drawn up by a windlass] are used for discharging water. In almost all those which have thus been worked, they have not had an opportunity to exhibit their riches, as the abundance of water in many of them was the principal cause of their abandonment.
The greatest difficulty in the way of giving an exact idea of the products of the mines and placers of Sonora is the scandalous contraband exportations of gold and silver which are made from the ports of the Sea of Cortéz [Gulf of California] on the one hand, and, on the other, the difficulties that have presented themselves to his Excellency, the Governor of that state, for giving the statistical notices which have been sought on repeated occasions by the Junta of the Mineria, both of which causes have made difficult the account which we furnish; but by those which they themselves furnished of the production of those minerals before and since the independence of the nation, and by the exhibits of various witnesses presented in the remission of bars which from thence they made to the capital of the republic, when the ports of the Pacific were sealed to foreign commerce, the production of precious metals having yielded in divers epochs not far from 4500 pounds of silver, without considering the gold (abundant enough in placers and in rivers), and from what is known, the quantities of this metal extracted have been considerable, and in more abundance than in the mineral districts of the other states of the republic.
Attention having been much called to the ley and weight of the grains of pure gold found on the surface in Quitovac, Cienequilla, and San Francisco, as well as those masses of virgin silver found in Arizuma, which wonderful riches stimulated the colonial government to despoil the proprietors of it, and afterward the King of Spain, in declaring that it pertained to his royal patrimony.