The city, situated at the base of the far-famed Cerro de Potosi—the rich sister of Cerro de Pasco, in Peru—has a population of 16,711.
In the Cerro de Potosi and neighborhood there are twenty-six silver mines worked, and eighteen hundred standing idle. Besides which, the government accounts show us that, in the provinces of Porco, Chayanta, Chichas, and Lepiz, there exist three thousand and eighty-nine silver mines which have been abandoned, and only sixty-five mines worked now.
In former days the department of Potosi excited the envy of the world. The silver ore was found rising from the top of the peak; the vein being followed below the water-line, when it was given up and a new one sought. The work was carried on in this manner until few new veins remained. The people are now burrowing in at the base of the peak, striving to strike the vein below, where it was left in its richness. This is an expensive business, and some have given up the plan, after an unsuccessful entrance into the very core of the mountain, with heavy losses.
There is a mint at Potosi, where the miner finds a ready market for silver and gold. It received and coined in the year 1849 one million six hundred and twenty-one thousand five hundred and thirty six dollars in silver, and eleven thousand nine hundred and eighty-four dollars in gold.
The government purchases quicksilver to trade with the miner. It is a singular fact that, while the rich quicksilver mines of Huancavelica are so close at hand, Bolivia annually imports two hundred thousand pounds of this important fluid mineral, in iron jars, from England, around Cape Horn, and over the Cordilleras, one hundred and fifty-eight leagues from Cobija.
Owing to the imperfect apparatus used for separating quicksilver from the silver ores, the waste of the imported metal is very great. Five thousand pounds of ore, yielding one hundred and fifty pounds of pure silver, required four hundred and fifty pounds of quicksilver for the amalgamation; of which, I was told, not less than one hundred pounds were lost. A simple cast-iron silver burner, or distilling apparatus, would probably save half this waste, and certainly much labor—both the labor and mercury being the most expensive items in the miner's list of expenditures.
It is supposed that much silver is smuggled out of Bolivia every year. The miner hands one bar to the mint, while another he pays to the merchant for clothing, rum, coca, and so forth, for the use of the Indian laborers, from whom he reaps a profit in the retail business.
It is difficult to get a near estimate of the real annual amount of silver and gold taken from the mines of this country. The following table, taken from the government account, may prove interesting. It is the yield of these two metals given every five years:
| From 1800 to 1806 | $21,186,460 |
| 1811 | 16,288,590 |
| 1816 | 10,789,816 |
| 1821 | 9,749,350 |
| 1826 | 9,089,787 |
| 1831 | 9,784,620 |
| 1836 | 9,848,342 |
| 1841 | 9,678,420 |
| 1846 | 9,789,640 |
However much short of the annual product, this table may show at a glance the decrease under the present system of mining.