Joseph de la Borda was one of the romantic characters of this age. He was a wandering Frenchman who came from Canada in the first half of the eighteenth century and no one ever learned anything further about him. He made three fortunes and lost two of them because of his lavish gifts, most of which went to the church. He built several large churches in what is now the state of Hidalgo. After losing his second fortune, the Archbishop of Mexico gave him permission to sell a magnificent diamond-studded ornament that he had given to the church in Tasco. From this he realized $100,000, and after a great deal of prospecting, finally discovered another rich mine which yielded him many more millions. Pedro Romero de Terreros, from a humble shopkeeper, became Count of Regla, after acquiring great wealth from his mine, La Viscayne. He built two large ships, one of one hundred and twelve guns, and presented them to his sovereign. He also loaned the crown $1,000,000 as freely as a man gives a friend a dollar, which sum the king never found it convenient to repay. In later life he founded the national pawn-shop, which he called the Mount of Piety and which has grown to be such a great humanitarian institution in the capital and other cities. The Conde de Valenciana who discovered the famous Valenciana mine of Guanajuato is reported to have made and spent $100,000,000 in a few years. One man discovered a rich mine on his ranch near Durango that rendered him immensely wealthy. He sent a present of $2,000,000 to the king of Spain and asked permission to build galleries and _portales_ of silver around his fine new home. This was refused on the ground that such display was the privilege of royalty only. A Guanajuato miner paved the street with silver ingots for a distance of sixty yards for the procession to pass over on their way to the church on the occasion of the christening of his son. Another story is told of a mining king who, on a similar occasion, paved the main aisle of the church with bars of silver for the baptismal party to walk upon. After the ceremony he wanted to remove the silver bars, but the wily priest told him that it would be an act of impiety which the Almighty would surely punish. It was not done and the occasion proved to be an expensive christening for the crœsus. Godfathers became so reckless in throwing away money that one viceroy issued a proclamation forbidding them to fling handfuls of money in the street as had been their custom, because such acts encouraged improvidence. I have seen the statement that there is one man at Mazatlan to-day who owns a mine whose entrance is protected by massive walls and gates. Whenever he wants a hundred thousand or so of lucre, he simply takes in a few miners and digs out the ore and then gambles it away.