CHAPTER XXV. SILVER. Its ancient Discovery—Its uses among the luxurious Romans—The Mines of Laurium—Silver Mines of Bohemia, Saxony, and Hungary—Colossal Nuggets— Silver Ores—Silver Production of Europe—Mexican Silver Mines—The Veta Madre of Guanaxuato—The Conde de la Valenciana—Zacatecas and Catorce— Adventures of a Steam-engine—La Bolsa de Dios Padre—The Conde de la Regla—Ill-fated English Companies—Indian Carriers—The Dressing of Silver Ores—Amalgamating Process—Enormous Production of Mexican Mines— Potosi—Cerro de Pasco—Gualgayoc—The Mine of Salcedo—Hostility of the Indians—The Monk’s Rosary—Chilian Mines—The Comstock Lode. Like that of gold, the first discovery of silver precedes the historic times, and must no doubt be sought for in the remotest antiquity; for as it is not seldom found in a native state, its brilliancy could not fail to attract attention at a very early age. Veins of silver ore, moreover, not seldom crop out on the surface, a circumstance which likewise greatly facilitated the accidental discovery of the metal. Thus Diodorus relates that streams of melted silver flowed out of the calcined soil where some shepherds had set fire to a forest in the Pyrenees. The cunning Phœnician merchants, who were trading in the neighbourhood, bought the metal for a trifle from the natives, who, ignorant of its value, gladly exchanged it for some worthless trinkets. Our earliest annals show us silver in common use among the more polished nations of antiquity, both for ornamental purposes and as a means of exchange. When we read in the Bible that Abraham weighed to Ephron the Hittite ‘four hundred shekels of silver, _current money_ with the merchant’ for the purchase of the field of Machpelah, where Sarah was buried, we cannot possibly doubt that, long before the patriarch’s time, great quantities of silver must have circulated among the traders of the East, and that even then it belonged to the discoveries of ancient days. Homer describes the shields and helmets of his heroes as inlaid with silver, and in Northern Asia silver ornaments have been found in the tumuli of the Tschudi, a mysterious people who have left no vestiges of their existence save their tombs.