country--was intimately associated with the leading chiefs and
revolutions of Mexico--had fought desperately, bore the marks of
honorable wounds, and was a man of much military experience and
acknowledged bravery; but latterly, owing to strong personal hostility
existing between him and Santa Anna, he had not been employed in battles
of the North or valley of Mexico. I found Monsieur Ribaud delightful in
conversation, and he related to me many adventures that had befallen him
during his long residence in the republic. On alighting from the coach,
I attended him to the commandante's, where my passport was properly
considered and countersigned, and an aide-de-camp kindly volunteered to
be my guide to the mint of the English directory. Here I was presented
to the superintendent, Mr. Jones, an American, from Connecticut, who
appeared pleased to meet a countryman, and showed me over the
establishment.

The machinery was of the most primitive kind--the stamping process
worked by hand, with a lateral wooden beam acting upon a perpendicular
screw; at each end of the beam there was attached a small rope, pulled
by four men, with an aperture in the floor sufficiently large to admit a
man, just within arm's length of the stamp, who was employed placing
smooth coins beneath the dies--one would naturally suppose at the
imminent risk of having his finger and thumb nipped off at every half
revolution of the lever; but practice renders the operative skilful at
the manipulation, and the screw descends, makes the impression, which is
as regularly displaced by the smooth dollar and ready fingers of the man
below. There were two of these apparatus, and they were only able to
coin about thirty thousand pieces in twenty-four hours. The contrivance
is surely a bad one, very tedious and expensive. The coiners received
seven-eighths of a dollar per thousand, and instances of dishonesty were
rarely known. The dies were of English manufacture, but the reason why
Mexican money presents such a rough and unfinished appearance, is purely
owing to their government, who insist upon the impressions being
facsimiles of those heretofore coined at their own mints.

The smelting process, the rolling, nipping, and milling machines, were
all much behind the age, and although the silver mines were producing
more than ever before known, and more than, at the period of my visit,
could by any possibility be coined, yet the directory have taken no
measures to i