524 TIIE NATURE AND CAUSES OE

and silver mines are at present known which are supposedto be worth the working. The quantities of those metalswhich the first adventurers are said to have found there, hadprobably been very much magnified, as well as the fertilityof the mines which were wrought immediately after the firstdiscovery. What those adventurers were reported to havefound, however, was sufficient to inflame the avidity of alltheir countrymen. Every Spaniard who sailed to America expected to find an* Eldorado. Fortune too did upon thiswhat she has done upon very few other occasions. Sherealized in some measure the extravagant hopes of her vo-taries, and in the discovery and conquest of Mexico andPeru (of which the one happened about thirty, the otherabout forty years after the first expedition of Columbus), shepresented them with something not very unlike that profu-sion of the precious metals which they sought for.

A project of commerce to the East Indies, therefore, gaveoccasion to the first discovery of the West. A project ofconquest gave occasion to all the establishments of theSpaniards in those newly-discovered countries. The motivewhich excited them to this conquest was a project of goldand silver mines; and a course of accidents, which no hu-man wisdom could foresee, rendered this project much moresuccessful than the undertakers had any reasonable groundsfor expecting.

The first adventurers of all the other nations ol Europe ,who attempted to make settlements in America , were ani-mated by the like chimerical views; but they were not equallysuccessful. It was more than a hundred years after the firstsettlement of the Brazils before any silver, gold, or diamondmines were discovered there. In the English, French ,Dutch, and Danish colonies, none have ever yet been dis-covered ; at least none that are at present supposed to beworth the working. The first English settlers in NorthAmerica , however, offered a fifth of all the gold and silverwhich should be found there to the king, as a motive forgranting them their patents. In the patents to Sir WalterRaleigh, to the London and Plymouth companies, to thecouncil of Plymouth, See. this fifth was accordingly reservedto the crown. To the expectation of finding gold and silvermines, those first settlers too joined that of discovering anorth-west passage to the East Indies. They have hithertobeen disappointed in both.