FROM BUENOS AYRES, BY POTOSI, ΤΟ LIM A. WITH NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR, CONTAINING TOPOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF THE SPANISH Drawn from the Last and Best Authorities. B.Y ANTHONY ZACHARIAH HELMS, FORMERLY DIRECTOR OF THE MINES NEAR CRACOW IN London: PRINTED FOR RICHARD PHILLIPS, BRIDGE- STREET, BLACK-FRIARS. 1806. 7 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 9960 Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. R. Taylor and Co. Printers, Shoe Lane. INTRODUCTION. THE improvement which M. de Born of Vienna had introduced into Metallurgy, by his new method of amalgamation, attracted in the year 1787 the attention of the Court of Spain, in whose American Provinces they had, from the scarcity of wood, been obliged to have recourse to a rude kind of amalgamation for separating and purifying the nobler metals. M. d'Elhujar, director general of the Mexican mines, whose works prove him to be an intelligent mineralogist, was accordingly sent to Hungary to make himself master of Born's method of amalgamation, and to engage expert German miners in the Spanish service, for the purpose of restoring with their assistance the American gold and silver mines to their former flou rishing state. M. Helms, then chief assayer of the mines and mint at Cracow, and the Baron von Nordenflycht, a Swedish mineralogist, director of the mines at MicZanagora in the district of Cracow, entered on the most advantageous terms into the Spanish service; the former as director of the smelting-houses and of the process of amalgamation, and the latter as director general of the mines in Peru. Accompanied by their families, a few negro servants, and a great number of German miners, they sailed from Cadiz for Buenos-Ayres; and on the 29th of October, in 1789, the spring season in that part of the globe, began their journey at first in carriages, and afterwards on horseback, by the common route of the post, in an oblique direction across South America, through Tucuman and over the Cordilleras, to Potosi and Lima; an extent of way amounting from Buenos-Ayres to Potosi to 1700 miles, and from thence through Cusco and Guancavelica to 1300 miles. |