Note 6 — Expeditions to the Province of Tuy

The city of Potosi in Bolivia is situated on the slope of the Cerro Gordo de Potosi, a mountain 16,152 feet high, which contains silver mines of a richness that has become proverbial; they were discovered in 1545, by an Indian. It is estimated that the silver obtained from this mountain, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, amounted to $1,600,000,000. Humboldt gives the figures for its yield, from 1566 to 1789, amounting to 60,864,359 pounds troy; see his New Spain (Black’s trans., London, 1811), iii, pp. 171, 172. He also endeavors to estimate (pp. 353–379) the value of the total yield from its discovery to 1789, which he places at 5,750,000,000 of livres tournois (£234,693,840 sterling). The mines now are almost abandoned, and the annual yield is about $800,000.