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After replacing the stock employed in working those different

mines, together with its ordinary profits, the residue which

remains to the proprietor is greater, it seems, in the coarse,

than in the precious metal.

Neither are the profits of the undertakers of silver mines

commonly very great in Peru. The same most respectable and

well-informed authors acquaint us, that when any person

undertakes to work a new mine in Peru, he is universally looked

upon as a man destined to bankruptcy and ruin, and is upon that

account shunned and avoided by every body. Mining, it seems, is

considered there in the same light as here, as a lottery, in

which the prizes do not compensate the blanks, though the

greatness of some tempts many adventurers to throw away their

fortunes in such unprosperous projects.