In the year 1824, when the frenzy of mining speculations was at its height, a company was formed in London, with a capital of 400,000_l._, for the purpose of working the mine of Tlalpujahua, in the State of Mejoacan, which had long since been abandoned. Without any accurate information, a number of supervisors and workmen were sent to the spot in 1825, when they found all the mines under water. Yet, in spite of this rather unpromising state of affairs, the company, not satisfied with its first acquisitions, entered into new engagements, so that at the end of 1825 it had contracted for no less than eighty mines, for which it bound itself to pay the proprietors annuities amounting to more than 50,000 dollars during the first three years. Operations were now begun in many places at once, but every one of them ended in disappointment; and in 1828 the company, after spending every farthing of its capital, vanished into ‘airy nothing,’ abandoning the mines to their original proprietors, and leaving the ill-fated shareholders to mourn over their credulity and folly. Subsequently another English company undertook the working of the mines of Real del Monte, and after spending no less than 15,381,633 dollars, against a produce of 10,481,475 dollars, was dissolved in 1848. Mr. Buchan now undertook the management for a Mexican company, and almost immediately struck the great Rosario vein, which opened a long career of prosperity, and yielded a profit of a million of dollars in 1867. Every fortnight a conducta, or escort, of one hundred and fifty armed men[45] conveys the silver, in bars of seventy pounds, inclosed in an iron safe, to the capital. Footnote 45: _Illustrated London News_, No. 1477, Saturday, April 11, 1868. It would be vain to seek in the Mexican mines for the scientific arrangement which is to be found in most of the English or German subterranean workings. One of their chief faults consists in a want of communication between their various parts, so that they resemble those ill-arranged houses where, to go from one room to another, one is obliged to traverse long and crooked passages. Hence the impossibility of introducing in most of the mines an economical transport by means of tramroads and waggons, and hence also the necessity of conveying the ore to the surface by human labour. The native Indians, however, are admirable carriers, for they will climb steep ladders, with 240 to 380 pounds, and perform this hard work for six hours consecutively. Their muscular strength seemed truly astonishing to Humboldt, who, though having no weight to carry but his own, felt himself utterly exhausted after ascending from a deep mine.