ted to the stars, and also to have served as sepulchres for
illustrious men. We have mounds of a similar character and size to these
secondary ones in the Western and Middle States of the Union.

After passing through several small cities and towns, by taking a branch
road, the city of Pachuca is reached, at eighty-five miles from the city
of Mexico. It is interesting especially as being a great mining centre
which has been worked long and successfully. It was in this place that
the process of amalgamation was discovered, and a means whereby the
crude ores as dug from the mines are most readily made to yield up the
precious metal which they contain. It will be remembered in this
connection that for more than two centuries Mexico has furnished the
world with its principal supply of silver, and that she probably
exports to-day about two million dollars worth of the precious metal
each month. The production of gold is only incidental, as it were, while
the output of silver might be doubled. The ore of this district is
almost wholly composed of blackish silver sulphides. Mr. Frederick A.
Ober, who has written much and well upon Mexico and her resources, tells
us that the sum total coined by all the mints in the country, so far as
known, was, up to 1884, over three billions of dollars, while the
present annual product is greater than the amount furnished by all the
mines of Europe.

Pachuca is the capital of the State of Hidalgo, lying on a plain at an
altitude of eight thousand feet and more, environed by purple hills, and
is one of the oldest mining districts in the republic, having been
worked long before the Spanish conquest. It has a population of about
twenty thousand, nearly half of whom are Indian miners. The surrounding
hills are scarred all over with the opening of mines. In all, there are
between eighty and a hundred of them grouped near together at Pachuca.
The streets are very irregular and narrow, the houses being mostly one
story in height, and built of stone. The place is said to be healthy as
a residence, though in a sanitary sense it is far from cleanly. A muddy
river makes its way through the town, the dwellings rising terrace upon
terrace on either side. The market-place is little more than a mound of
dirt; cleanliness is totally neglected, and everything seems to be
sacrificed to the one purpose of obtaining silver, which is the one
occupation. The wages of the miners are too often gambled away or
waste