160

AMERICAN MINES.

CHAP. XXII.

Buenos

Ayres.

of the gold was procured by washing. In thelatter part of the century Humboldt states thecoinage at Santiago, the capital, where the taxwas collected, amounted to seven hundred andtwenty-one thousand piastres in gold, and onehundred and forty-six thousand in silver. Ar-giielles makes the amount in the first years ofthe present century about thirty thousand moreof silver and forty thousand more of gold. As,however, some of the earlier years may have beendeficient, it will be assumed that in the period ofone hundred and ten years from 1700 to 1809,the annual amount was eight hundred and fiftythousand dollars, being in the whole term ninety-three million five hundred thousand dollars, ornineteen million five hundred and thirty-twothousand one hundred and sixty-six poundssterling.

The viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, which inthe view we now take of it included Potosi , LaPaz, and the other western parts called the pro-vincias de la Sierra, produced chiefly silver.The mountain of Potosi had declined in producefrom an annual delivery of upwards of a milliondollars to less than a third of that amount; butas that source had failed others had become morecopious, especially La Paz, Carangas, and Oruro .Humboldt states the annual produce at four mil-lion two hundred thousand dollars. Agreeingto this estimate, the amount afforded in the one