CHAP. XXV.

OF VARIOUS MINES.

235

mines. Under the denomination of buscones, orsearchers, they have never ceased to work; andalthough, from the want of method in their ope-rations, they have done the most serious injury tothe mines themselves, they have in general con-trived to extract from the upper levels, or fromthe old workings, neglected in better times forothers of greater promise, a very considerablequantity of silver. This desultory system is stillpursued in many parts of the country, and atZirmapan, Zaculapan, el Doctor, and many ofthe northern districts, a large population is evennow maintained by it 1 .”

The silver obtained during the revolutionaryconvulsions which agitated the country with moreor less violence during the whole period we areconsidering was of very various degrees of fine-ness, as appears by the dollars coined both atthe royalist and the insurgent mints. Much ofthe silver coined in that time in those places wasso impure from the mixture of other substancesarising from the haste with which it was necessaryto convert it into coin, that at the present time itcan only pass current at a discount of from fifteento twenty per cent.; but, on the other hand, muchof the gold contained in the silver, which wasconsiderable in some of the mines, was not sepa-

1 Ward, vol. ii. p. 24.