gallery continues for a hundred yards, where there is an iron tramway laid down. The metal was dragged down to the head of navigation in cars, by two old mules, one of which had not seen daylight for fifteen years when they ceased to work the mine. At the point where the tramway comes to an end, the gallery still continues for 1200 yards; but this part is very narrow and tortuous, and the metal was carried down to the cars on the backs of Indians. The rock at the extreme end of the excavation is a very hard green porphyry, with quartz and veins of silver ore. The Cachi Vieja works are high up on the Laycaycota hill, and not far from the famous "Veta de la Candelaria." The mouth of the shaft is in a building opening on a courtyard, where women were sorting the ores in small heaps. The most abundant ore is called _brosa_, containing forty marcs of silver in the cajon of fifty quintals (cwts.); other ores are called _rosicler_, _pavonado_, and _polvarilla_. The _rosicler_, or ruby silver, is a most beautiful rose-coloured mineral, containing a considerable quantity of silver.[141] Besides Cachi Vieja in the immediate vicinity of Puno, there are some very productive silver-mines at San Antonio de Esquilache, twenty miles south-west of that town, which have been worked since 1847 by Don Manuel Costas, one of the most influential citizens of Puno, and my host during my stay in that city. Wool and silver are the great staple products of the department of Puno; the whole value of exported articles being about 1,200,000 dollars.[142] The population is rather under 300,000 souls; that of the town of Puno 9000.[143] Upwards of 1,500,000 dollars come into the department yearly, either in payments for wool, or in salaries for officials, without counting the expenditure for the troops; and it is calculated that more than half this sum eventually finds its way into the hands of the Indians, who bury it. Thus, in considering the mineral wealth of Peru, the enormous quantities of coined money, and vases or other articles made of the precious metals, which have been buried by the Indians, must be taken into consideration; for this practice has been going on since the time of the Incas. Now that the currency consists almost entirely of the debased half-dollars of Bolivia, if a Spanish dollar or any other good coin is accidently received by an Indian, it is immediately buried.