Visit to the Mining Town of Jesus-Maria -- Critical Roads -- Losing Speculations -- Mine of Santa Juliana -- Curious mining Operations -- Different Modes of working the Ore -- The Crushing-mill, etc. -- _Barras de Plata_ -- Value of Bullion -- The Silver Trade -- Return to Chihuahua -- Resumption of the regular Narrative -- Curious Wholesales -- Money Table -- Redundancy of Copper Coin -- City of Chihuahua and its Peculiarities -- Ecclesiastical Architecture -- Hidalgo and His Monument -- Public Works, and their present Declension -- _Fête_ in honor of Iturbide -- Illiberality towards Americans -- Shopping Mania -- Anti-Masonic _Auto de Fe_. Before resuming my regular narrative, I trust the reader will pardon me for introducing here a brief account of an excursion which I made in the fall of the year 1835, to the mining town of Jesus-Maria, one of the most important mineral districts in the department of Chihuahua, situated about a hundred and fifty miles west of the city, in the very heart of the great Cordilleras.[123] I had long been desirous of visiting some of the mining establishments of Mexico, and seeing a favorable opportunity of embarking in a profitable enterprise, I set out from Chihuahua on the 15th of October. My party consisted of but one American comrade, with {106} a Mexican muleteer--and three or four mules freighted with specie to be employed in the _silver trade_: a rather scanty convoy for a route subject to the inroads both of savages and robbers. For transportation, [Pg179] we generally pack our specie in sacks made of raw beef hide, which shrinks upon drying, and thus presses the contents so closely as to prevent friction. A pair of these packages, usually containing between one and two thousand dollars each, constitutes an ordinary mule-load on the mountain routes. The road in this direction leads through the roughest mountain passes; and, in some places, it winds so close along the borders of precipices, that by a single misstep an animal might be precipitated several hundred feet. Mules, however, are very surefooted; and will often clamber along the most craggy cliffs with nearly as much security as the goat. I was shown the projecting edge of a rock over which the road had formerly passed. This shelf was perhaps thirty feet in length by only two or three in width. The road which leads into the town of Jesus-Maria from the west side of the mountain is also extremely perilous and steep, and seems almost to overhang the houses below. Heavily laden mules have sometimes slipped off the track, and tumbled headlong into the town. This place is even more pent up between ridges than Zacatecas: the valley is narrower and the mountains much higher; while, as is the case with that remarkable city, the houses are {107} sometimes built in successive tiers, one above another; the _azoteas_ of the lower ones forming the yard of those above.