The high price will cease with the monopoly. Spain has no longer the exclusive privilege of furnishing quicksilver for the mines in the New World. California possesses mines of cinnabar in abundance, and they are now in full work. Those of New-Almaden, situated at some leagues from San Francisco, are now producing [164]400 kilogrammes a day. At 300 day’s work this could give a provision of [165]120,000 kilogrammes, sufficient to work at least [166]80,000 kilogrammes of silver. At the mine itself this quicksilver is worth [167]25 piastres the cwt.; brought to Fresnillo, near the rich veins of Sombrerete, and on the backs of mules from the port of Mazatlan, it has been sold at [168]93 piastres in 1850. The proprietors of New-Almaden undertake to reduce the price whenever the price of Spanish quicksilver shall be lowered. They have sent some of it to Chili, where silver-mine working has taken a fresh start. They can sell it advantageously in Peru, for the quicksilver of Huancavelica cost at Pasco in August, 1850, [169]104 piastres the cwt. The mine of New Almaden is not the only one being worked in California; cinnabar is met with in several directions, and hereafter it is probable that California may be looked to as a country producing quicksilver as well as gold. The news of the discovery of quicksilver mines in Mexico, in the neighbourhood of San Luis de Potosi, was confirmed by accounts received in London in March last. Are they old mines formerly abandoned on account of their poverty, or have they really discovered an ore which, as at New Almaden, yields a produce of 50 per cent. of quicksilver? This is a point yet to be cleared up. In the meantime the price of silver has fallen in the district of Guanaxuato to [170]40 piastres the hundred weight, and it is now varying between a price of [171]55 and 56 piastres. In short, one of the conditions connected with silver mining has materially changed. An economy of [172]60 or 70 piastres per hundred weight in the cost of amalgamation can hardly fail to kindle a fresh spirit of enterprize.