account many little establishments, with from two to five horse-mills, with one bad furnace for the fusion of metals. Three of these are situated in Alamas, five in Aduana, one in Promontorio, another in Tatagiosa, and the last in Minas Nuevas (New Mines). There are many abandoned mines, as the rubbish and ruins indicate, which we have noticed, in all the abandoned mineral districts.
The methods which they have observed in extracting the metals from the ore are the patio [by application of quicksilver in an open yard], and that of fusion, with the aid of some metals that assist the fusion; but from the fact that the quicksilver augments considerably the price, the few that there carry on the business have preferred the process of fusion to that of the patio, from being less costly, and because the docility of the metals afford facilities to this process.
No machines of new invention have been introduced into that state, either for the drainage of the mines or for facilitating the extracting of the metals. This ought not to surprise us, in places so desert and distant from the metropolis, unaccustomed to the vivifying movements of commerce, and to the necessities which civilization has engendered in the more important populations in the central parts of the republic. That which is rare, and ought to call attention, is the exception of some mines, where malacatos [water-sacks of bull-hides, drawn up by a windlass] are used for discharging water. In almost all those which have thus been worked, they have not had an opportunity to exhibit their riches, as the abundance of water in many of them was the principal cause of their abandonment.
The greatest difficulty in the way of giving an exact idea of the products of the mines and placers of Sonora is the scandalous contraband