Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-08-09
SILVER MINES II BOLIVIA.
AN AMERICAN ENTERPRISE AND IT'S
WONDERFUL SUCCESS.
Potosi and Other Famous Sections-Prim-
tive Methods of Mining-Lack
of Transportation,


| special Correspondence of the REcoRD-UNIoS.
BOLIVIA Is. Az, 1890.
From time immemorial the gold and sill
yer mines of Peru and Bolivia, both those
modern Republics having been included in
one province under the old Spanish regime,
have been celebrated in history and tradi-
ton as among the richest in the world
During the last two centuries and half
upwards of S50O,O00,0O0 worth have been
taken from Peru alone; while official data
prove that the single mountain of Potosl
in Bolivia has yielded in the years between
its discovery in 1915 up to the beginning
of 1864 the inconeeivable sum of S2,904,-
100000 worth of money.
The ores of Potosi, the Puno districts
Cerro del Pasco and other noted mines are
so rich that yield of 5000 worth per ton
is not uncommon, even with the primitive
methods now employed. Remembering
that miners of the United States find il
profitable to work mineral worth $40 per
ton, one may form some idea what these
Andean treasure-houses might be made to
disclose at the hands of wide-awake and
experienced workmen, aided by modern
machinery.
Nowadays the gold and silver fields OF
| these countries are producing compare
| lively little, owing to the poverty and ig-
norance of the people, their poor methods
and worse management. For many years
| numbers of the mines most famous in his.
tory have had nothing done to them be-
yond the reduction by modern processes Of
| the refuse of the ancient miners.
Perhaps the riches. region on this heml.
sphere, if not on the globe, is that of Pc.
tosi itself, signifying
GAN ERUPTION OF SILVER"
And the mountain is well named, for il
| is broken out all over with precious metal,
like a well-defined case of small-po
More than 5000 tunnels and opening:
have been made in it, every one of which
has produced gold, copper, iron, lead, tin
| quicksilver, zinc, anthony or some other
mineral, but silver in greatest abundance
Gold has been found in many places, but
has never been extensively mined, being
much harder to get at by the processes in
vogue, while silver is so plentiful that the
people can afford to dispense with the
more precious but troublesome metal. To
this day big nuggets of pure gold are oc
casionally picked up by some prospector
and these bring higher price when sold
as curiOs than the value of the bullion
|
boom by means of stroke of lightning
which detached mass of solid gold from
some unknown cliff away up the mountain
side and dropped it at the feet of some
miners in the vale below For long
time this mysterious nugget was the won
der of the world; then it was sold at a
fabulous price to the Royal Museum al
Madrid, where it may still be seen.
| Early in the seventeenth century the
city of Potosi boosted more than 100000
inhabitants, but to-day it has scarcely 25,.
600. Of late years its mines have been
comparatively neglected, 50 that the out.
put of them all does not exceed s., SOC, 00C
year. If the spirit Of revolution ever
remains "laid'' long enough for capitalist;
| to feel secure in investing their money
here, and if roads are constructed so that
| the products of interior Bolivia may find
an easy outlet to the sea and proper una
chinery for working the mines find ingres;
| by the same means,
A RENAISSANCE
May occur which will remind the world Of
| the Ell Dorado of olden times.
Bolivia is also very rich in copper, tin,
| iron and lead. The most valuable tin
mines in the world next to those of Bor-
neo, are said to be those of Oruro, about
midway between La Paz, the present capt.
tai, and Sucre, the capital proper. In the
mountains OF Corocoro, near the north
eastern edge of Lake Titicaca, copper is as
abundant as silver at Potosi, so much SO
that the chief freight business of the lake
steamer from the railway from Puno to the
Pacific, is transporting it for shipment to
Europe. Since the memory of the oldest
:nhabitant the little river in the outskirts
of La Paz has been worked, off and on, for
its gold washings in desultory and I'M.
skilled fashion, when the people who hap
pened to own that section of it got away
down at the heel and felt degraded to the
necessity of raising little money by the
sweat of their brows, and always with
good results. Recently foreign mining
expert, having examined the place, offered
the present owner rental of $4,000 per
annum for a term of years for the ex-
elusive right to the washings short dis
lance down the stream, but the proposition
was refused.
At present the most prosperous mining
enterprise in Bolivia is purely Ameri-
can one, carried on exclusively by United
States money and machinery and owned
by
W. H. CHRIsTY,
A young millionaire of Boston, Mass. His
principal mines, of silver-lead ore, lie at
the base of Sorato, the great mountain near
the southeastern shore of Lake Titacaca,
which is one of the grandest snow-clad
giants of the Andean system. He has also
some extensive smelling works, and has
been granted by the Government mo-
nopoly of the smelling business in Bolivia
for period of fifteen years. He is about
to import diamond drill from Chicago,
and the President has lately given him the
exclusive right to use such a machine in
this so-called republic for the next ten
years. All this business, of which Mr.
Christy is the sole owner, goes under the
general name of "Empresa Titicaca" and
includes not only one Of them most extensive
silver-lead mines known to man, and the
drill and smelling works above mentioned,
but several smaller silver mines in the ad-
jacent regions and the only coal mine in
Bolivia. The latter, in comparatively
treeless country, where the only fuel from
earliest times has been llama dung and
species of fungus, mine of good bitumin-
Gus coal, is worth about as much as so many