[6,200,000 livres. The greater part of this quicksilver has been furnished of late years by the mine of Almaden in Spain, and the residue was obtained from Istria in Carniola; in 1802, Almaden alone supplied more than 20,000 quintals. Huencavelica in Peru, which in the 16th century afforded for some years more than 10,000 quintals of quicksilver a year, does not yield at present quite 4000: such being the case, it comes to be a question of infinite importance to America, how its mines are to be provided with quicksilver, if the supply from Spain and Germany should be cut off. Humboldt seems to be of opinion that there are mines of cinnabar in America, sufficient for the purpose; he enumerates several in Nueva España and Nueva Granada, as well as in Peru; but till they are worked or examined with greater care than they have been hitherto, it is impossible to judge what quantity of mercury they are capable of yielding. It is the supply of mercury that determines the productiveness of the silver mines; for such is the abundance of the ore both in Mexico and Peru, that the only limit to the quantity of silver obtained from those kingdoms, is the want of mercury for amalgamation. The sale of quicksilver in the Spanish colonies has been hitherto a royal monopoly, and the distribution of it among the miners a source of influence, and possibly of profit, to the servants of the crown. Gulvez, to whom America is indebted for the system of free trade, reduced the price of quicksilver from 82 to 41 dollars the quintal, and thereby contributed most essentially to the subsequent prosperity and increase of the mines.

The annual produce of the mines of Nueva España, as calculated from the amount of the royal duties, and therefore considerably under the truth, amounts to 7000 Spanish marks of pure gold, and 2,250,000 do. of pure silver; the value, in dollars, of both is 22,170,740; the gold being estimated at 145, dollars, and the silver at 9 dollars, the Spanish mark; besides this we must add for contraband 829,260 dollars, and the total produce will then be 23,000,000.

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4. Agriculture and productions.-The backwardness of agriculture in Spanish America, has been usually attributed to its mines of gold and silver: this error Mr. Humboldt successfully refutes; he admits, that in some districts, as in Choco and other parts of New Grenada, the people leave their fields uncultivated, while they mispend their time in searching for gold dust in the beds of rivers. It is also true, that in Cuba, Caracas, and Guatemala, where there are no mines, many highly cultivated tracts of country are to be found;

but, on the other hand, the agriculture of Peru is not inferior to that of Cumaná or Guayana; and in Mexico, the best cultivated district is the territory extending from Salamanca to Guanaxuato and Leon, in the midst of the most productive mines of the world. So far from mining being prejudicial to agriculture, no sooner is a mine discovered and wrought, than cultivation is seen in its neighbourhood; towns and villages are built; provisions are wanted for the workmen, and subsistence for the cattle employed in the mine: whatever the surrounding country can be made to produce, is raised from it in abundance. A flourishing agriculture is established, which not unfrequently survives the prosperity of the mines, to which it was indebted for its origin; the husbandman remains and cultivates his fields, after the miner, who had at first set him to work, is gone to another district, in search of a more abundant or less exhausted vein. The Indians, in particular, who prefer a mountainous situation to living in the plains, seldom quit the farms they have established, though the mines are abandoned, which were, perhaps, their original inducement for settling there. Indian villages and farms are continually found in the valleys, and amidst the precipices of the highest mountains. In the same manner, the agriculture of Lombardy and Flanbers continues to flourish, though the manufacturing industry of these countries has been long extinguished.

In his account of the agriculture of Nueva España, Mr. Humboldt enters into many curious and interesting details concerning the origin, natural history, and cultivation of the different vegetable productions of that kingdom, in which our limits will not permit us to follow him: we shall, therefore, confine ourselves to a few extracts from this part of his work.

Of all the vegetable productions cultivated for the use of man, there is none which affords so much food from the same quantity of land, as the plaintain or banana tree: a field of 100 square metres in plantain trees affords 4000 lbs. weight of food; the same field in wheat will produce about 50 lbs.; and in potatoes 90 lbs. The quantity of food from the plantain tree is, therefore, to the quantity of food from wheat as 133 to one, and to the quantity from potatoes as 44 to one: the quantities of nourishment, it must be owned, are not proportioned to the weights, for the fruit of the plantain tree contains a greater portion of mucilaginous juice than the seeds of the cerealia. An arpent, covered with plantain trees, will maintain 50 persons: the same quantity of ground]

[sown with wheat will not support two individuals. The plantain tree does not thrive where the medium temperature is below 24° (centign. therm. or 75°.2 F.), but there are 50,000 square leagues of the Mexican territory in that situation. The fruit of the plantain tree is farinaceous, but contains a small portion of vegetable gluten, and a great quantity of saccharine matter. Mr. Humboldt remarks, that in all tropical countries, saccharine matter is considered to be eminently nutritious.

The same country that affords the plantain tree produces the cassava root; the farina of the cassava root, called manioc, is made into bread, which the natives, to distinguish it from the bread of maize, call pan de tierra caliente. The flour of manioc has this inestimable advantage, that, when dried and toasted, it is secure from the depredations of worms and other insects: it contains, besides farinaceous fecula, a saccharine matter, and a viscous substance resembling caoutchouc. The cassava root is not cultivated in Nueva España at a greater height than 600 or 800 metres above the level of the sea; its poisonous juice becomes harmless by boiling, and separating the scum that rises to the top, and is then used by the natives for seasoning their food. The original inhabitants of Haité, after the conquest of their country by the Spaniards, used to poison themselves with this juice, and for that purpose assembled in parties of 50 or more to take it together.

:

Maize is the chief food of the inhabitants of Nueva España: it is cultivated from the coast to the height of 2800 metres above the sea; in very fertile lands, and in very good years, it gives a return of 800 for one; but the average return for the intra-tropical part of the country is not more than 150 for one, and in New California it is from 70 to 80 in very hot and moist districts two or three crops are obtained in the year, but in most parts of the country only one is taken. No crop is more uncertain than maize, and as it is seldom equally good in every part of the kingdom, the transport of maize comes to be the principal branch of internal commerce: a general failure of the crop is followed by scarcity, or even famine: its price varies from two livres and a half to 25 livres the fanega, and when it exceeds 10 livres for a length of time, the common people are forced to use other and less wholesome nourishment. The annual produce of Nueva España in maize is estimated at 17,000,000 of fanegas annually. It may be preserved for three years at Mexico, and in colder climates for six or seven years. The Indians prepare a fermented liquor from maize, and

before the arrival of the Spaniards, they extracted sugar from its stalks.

It appears, that a species of wheat and a species of barley were cultivated in Chile before the arri val of the Spaniards, but that none of the cerealia of the old continent were known in America when it was first discovered. The cerealia are not cultivated in the intra-tropical part of Mexico, at a lower elevation than 800 or 900 metres above the level of the sea, and in very small quantity at a less height than 1200 or 1300. At a greater elevation than 3500 or 4000 metres, neither wheat nor rye come to maturity, though the medium temperature of these regions is higher than in parts of Siberia and Norway, where both plants are cultivated with success: but then, the heat in the the latter countries is very great for a month or six weeks in the middle of summer; while, in the former, the thermometer never rises for a whole day above 10° or 12° (50° or 52°.6 F.) Mexican wheat is of excellent quality, and the medium return throughout the kingdom is from 22 to 25 for one: in some places it gives from 30 to 40 for one; and in New California, only 17 or 18. Much wheat is exported from Vera Cruz to Cuba: barley and rye thrive very well in Nueva España; oats are very little cultivated; the potato is a great object of culture in the high and cold parts of the country: rice is but little attended to, though well adapted for the marshy lands on the coast.

The

The Spanish government has always discouraged in its colonies the cultivation of the vine, the olive, the mulberry tree, and the plants producing hemp and flax. While Humboldt was in Nueva España, an order came from Madrid to grub up all the stocks of vines in the n. part of the kingdom, where they had been cultivated with so much success as to give alarm to the merchants of Cadiz, by the diminished consumption of wine from the mother country. There is but one olive plantation in Nueva España, and that belongs to the archbishop of Mexico: tobacco is another branch of culture, which has been in a great measure sacrificed to political considerations. Since 1764, when the royal monopoly was established, no tobacco can be planted, except in particular districts, and none can be sold, except to the king's officers. Parties of soldiers are employed to go about the country in search of tobacco fields; and where they find one on forbidden ground, they impose a fine on the owner, and direct the plantation to be destroyed: this odious and vexatious monopoly produces to the king of Spain, in Mexico alone, a clear revenue of more than 20,000,000 of livres annually.]

[tinction of the vales, or paper money, with which the kingdom was theninundated. The execution of this order, which must have ruined the greater part of the landed proprietors of Nueva España, by withdrawing from them so large a portion of their capital, was attempted by the Mexican exchequer, but with so little success, that, in June 1806, they had not received payment of more than 1,200,000 dollars of the sum demanded.

The wages of labour in Nueva España are, as before observed, 24 reals de plata a day, on the coast, and two reals de plata, or one fourth of a dollar, on the table-land. The average price of maize on the tableland, where it is the principal food of the people, is estimated by Mr. Humboldt at five livres the fanega. The fanega is somewhat more than one bushel and a half; and consequently a labourer on the table-land of Mexico, earns about one peck and two thirds of Indian corn a day. The ordinary price paid for wheat upon the farm, in Nueva España, is about four or five dollars the carga or load, which weighs 150 kilograms; but the expence of carriage raises it, in the city of Mexico, to nine or 10 dollars; the extreme prices being eight and 15. The ordinary price of 150 kilograms of wheat at Paris, according to Mr. Humboldt, is 30 francs, or five dollars and a half. Wheat is therefore nearly twice as dear in the city of Mexico as it is at Paris. But, on the other hand, it must be considered, that wheat is not so much an article of the first necessity in Nueva España as it is in France. According to Mr. Humboldt, not more than 1,300,000 persons in the kingdom of Mexico use wheat habitually as an article of subsistence. There is, to be sure, a greater proportion of wheat-eaters in the city of Mexico than in any other part of the kingdom; but one-half of its population, and that the poorer part, consists of Indians and of mixed casts.

5. Manufactures and commerce.-Spain has been less rigorous than the other states of modern Europe in the prohibition of manufacturing industry in her colonies. The great extent and populousness of her foreign possessions, the remoteness of her principal settlements from the coast, the difficulty of transporting bulky commodities in the interior of America, the want of industry and commercial enterprise in her subjects at home, the exclusive attention of her government to the acquisition of the precious metals, and its indifference and ignorant contempt for other sources of opulence, have all contributed to produce this difference in her colonial policy. It may be thought that, as she was the only power in Europe which derived a direct revenue from her colonies, that consideration determined her to relax from the

usual strictness of colonial discipline; for it seems but fair, that where a colony is taxed for the benefit of the mother country, its commerce and internal industry should at least be free. But no such views of justice or liberal policy actuated the court of Madrid in this instance. In all that related to the commerce or navigation of her foreign possessions, Spain was equally jealous with other nations; and though her laws recognised the existence of many branches of manufacturing industry in her colonies, her government was ever ready to sacrifice those to the real or supposed interests of the mother country. About 60 years ago, an extensive plan for the establishment of European manufactures at Quito was proposed to the Spanish ministry, and undertaken with their consent and apparent approbation, but was defeated by secret instructions given to their agents in America; and very lately a flourishing manufacture of Indian chintz, in Mexico, was prohibited by an order from Madrid, lest it should interfere with the cotton manufactures of the peninsula.

The chief manufactures of Nueva España are woollens, cottons, gold and silver lace, hats, leather, soap and earthenware; but the total value of the goods which they produced, when Mr. Humboldt was in the country, did not exceed 7 or 8,000,000 of dollars annually. Some manufactures of silk have been introduced since that time; and in general, all the manufactures, the finer sorts especially, have increased considerably in consequence of the war with England and interruption of foreign commerce. Tobacco and gunpowder are royal manufactures and monopolies; and the former brings in to the crown a clear revenue of 4,000,000 of dollars annually. The Mexican tradesmen are remarkably skilful in works of plate and jewellery; and, like some of the eastern nations, they have a singular turn for imitation. Very good carriages are made at Mexico, though the best coaches come from England.

There are carriage roads from Mexico to most of the principal towns of the kingdom; but the transport of commodities is chiefly effected, as in the mother country, on the backs of mules. The new road from Perote to Vera Cruz is compared by Humboldt to the roads of Simplon and Mont Cenis; and appears, from his description, to be equally solid, useful, and magnificent.

In time of war, the indigo of Guatemala, the cacao of Guayaquil, and even the copper of Chile, pass through Nueva España in their way to Europe. But during peace, there is little commercial intercourse between the coasts of Mexico and Guatemala and those of S. America, on account of the]