An extract from a memoir presented in the year 1832 to the congress in Lima by Mr. Tudela, the Peruvian minister of “Hacienda” or home affairs, may give an idea of the returns of the mines. “To animate mining industry,” says he, “one most essential thing is the convenient supply of quicksilver, with which our metals are generally extracted from their ores; because smelting is not suited for the greater number of these, neither is it used for those ores to the refining of which it is adapted.[3] The price of the quicksilver determines the profit or loss on the poorer metals; and neither exemption from duties of _cobos_[4] and tithes, nor any other protection which the law dispenses to the mining corporation, compensate for the expense of this article. “In Huancavelica, Peru possesses one of the richest quicksilver mines on earth,—a mine which comprehends forty-one hills, examined and found intersected with veins, of which one part alone, that of Saint Barbara, called the “Great,” yielded five thousand quintals of quicksilver per annum for two centuries. It was, therefore, a matter of importance to inquire if it could be conveniently worked; and it has been found that, with moderate support and certain arrangements, quicksilver may be procured at sixty-five dollars per quintal.[5] “The operations of the mints concur in proving the necessity of banks: for, granting the mint of Lima has stamped in the last three years 4,902,762 dollars, and the mint at Cuzco, in the years 1829 and 1831, 969,939 dollars, the augmentation of coinage does not correspond to that which should result from the abolition of the duties of cobos and tithes since the 26th February 1830, and the increase in the coinage at Cuzco proceeds from other causes. When these duties” (viz. cobos and tithes) “were yet exacted, in the Lima mint alone, in the year 1827, more than 2,700,000 dollars were coined; but in that year, in addition to the beneficial drainage of the Pasco mines, the contraband trade had not extended itself as afterwards it did. To diminish the evils produced by contraband trade in mining places or in their immediate environs, funds, in addition to banks of ‘Rescate,’ are necessary in the houses of coinage; with which being provided, neither the holders of bullion shall be deterred from presenting it because of the delay they experience in being paid its value, nor, if this delay be shortened, shall the treasury suffer the severe losses to which it is actually subjected. One hundred thousand dollars in the Lima mint, and fifty thousand in the mint of Cuzco, should prove sufficient to meet all difficulties.”