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 Cortez [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 hav