CHAPTER XXVI - MINES OF NEW SPAIN

Summary

The mines of Mexico have of late years engaged the attention and excited the enterprise of the English in a more than ordinary degree. The subject is therefore one of much interest; but as later information may be obtained in several works, and especially in Ward's “Mexico in 1827,” it is unnecessary to follow our author in all his details.

Long before the voyage of Columbus, the natives of Mexico were acquainted with the uses of several metals, and had made considerable proficiency in the various operations necessary for obtaining them in a pure state. Cortes, in the historical account of his expedition, states that gold, silver, copper, lead, and tin, were publicly sold in the great market of Tenochtitlan. In all the large towns of Anahuac gold and silver vessels were manufactured, and the foreigners, on their first advance to Tenochtitlan, could not refrain from admiring the ingenuity of the Mexican goldsmiths. The Aztec tribes extracted lead and tin from the veins of Tlacheo, and obtained cinnabar from the mines of Chilapan. From copper, found in the mountains of Zacotollan and Cohuixco, they manufactured their arms, axes, chisels, and other implements. With the use of iron they seem to have been unacquainted; but they contrived to give the requisite hardness to their tools by mixing a portion of tin with the copper of which they were composed.