nes
does not permit us to consider them as in action.

Explorations of some mines of gold and silver have been made in
California, but they remain in the same state with the other
_minerales_. One and another have been worked superficially, but their
possessors abandoned them when they presented any obstacle, which made
the working more costly, so that it is no exaggeration to say they all
are now abandoned. In a country almost a wilderness (_desierto_), where
the want of conveniences in exploration of the mines failed to engender
the stimulus of acquiring and preserving the proprietorship of the
discoveries,[85] and where, with the same facility with which they
abandon one known vein, they proceed to work another new vein--in a
country where the great part of the inhabitants might well be
considered as tribes that have only reached the first grades of
civilization, rather than organized societies, it is not strange that
there is a want of mineral recognizances where only the mines at which
the metals are easily procured, and not costly in extracting from the
ore, are worked.

[85] The proprietorship of mines in Mexico is acquired by proof
being made to the mining court of discovery and actual working;
and is again lost by an abandonment of four months; there is no
other source of title to mineral lands.

Notwithstanding that which has been said, there are various residents
of the mineral districts referred to that extract gold and silver
sufficient to cover their commercial transactions, to pay their
laborers and the salaries of their operatives, to procure certain
necessaries, and to enjoy certain luxuries which many of their
fellow-citizens do not enjoy. To ascertain to what value these
extractions of metals ascend is extremely difficult for the want of
data with which to aid any calculation.

The benefiting (extracting the metals from the ores) is no less
imperfectly done than the labor of the mines. There are no haciendas
for benefiting; many persons that engage themselves in mining
speculations have in that territory one, two, and even five
horse-mills, with which they grind the metal; this they mix with
quicksilver and salt--imitating the process by the _patio_--in
proportion of 50 pounds of the first and 75 of the second to 625 (25
arobas) of metal, and, proceeding by means of fusion in bad ovens, they
obtain silver. Some others obtain it by means of vases of refining with
the aid o