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Updated: June 5, 2025
The next thing we perceive in this promising movement for liberty is the spectacle of Hidalgo and his host of enthusiastic followers marching on the rich and flourishing city of Guanajuato, capital of a mining state, the second largest in Mexico. This city occupies a deep but narrow ravine, its houses crowded on the steep slopes, up which the streets climb like stairways.
It has been said in another chapter that the Apaches had extended their depredations beyond the first tier of States, and had entered Durango, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, and even Guanajuato, making this second tier of states their stamping ground, while Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, over which they now rode without opposition to a country more abundant in plunder, are left as political waifs to any who may choose to take possession of them.
The constitution provided that in the absence of the President his office should devolve upon the chief justice of the supreme court; and General Comonfort having left the country, this functionary, General Juarez, proceeded to form at Guanajuato a constitutional Government.
In Guanajuato is found the richest vein of silver-bearing ore in the country, known as the Veta Madre, and though the most primitive modes of mining and milling have always been and still are pursued here, over eight hundred million dollars in the argentiferous metal have been realized from this immediate vicinity since official record has been kept of the amount; and with all this Mexico is still poor!
Silao is just fifteen miles from Guanajuato, the capital of the state, with which it is connected by railway. The rainfall is comparatively very slight on the entire Mexican plateau, limited, in fact, to two or three months in the year, which renders irrigation a universal necessity to insure success in farming; but the means employed for the purpose, as we have seen, are singularly primitive.
By law a Mexican injured in the mine could not be treated on the spot, but must be first carried to Guanajuato often dying on the way to be examined by the police and then brought back to the mine hospital. Small hurts were of slight importance to the peons.
"That is the Count de Galvez," said my companion, "the son of the late Count Perez Galvez, the lucky proprietor of the bonanza in the mine of La Suz at Guanajuato." "But that bonanza has given out," said I. "No matter; this boy's inheritance is sometimes estimated at $9,000,000." A snug capital with which to begin the world!
The ride to it, 8200 feet above the sea, up along and out of the gully in which Guanajuato is built, and by steep rocky trails sometimes beside sheer mountain walls, opens out many a marvelous vista; but none to compare with that from the office veranda of the mine itself.
The main avenue ran like a stream along the bottom, and he who lost himself in the stair-like side streets had only to follow downward to find it again as surely as a tributary its main river. Masses of rocky mountains were piled up on all sides. The climate of Guanajuato is unsurpassed.
Guanajuato, when it yielded its six millions a year of silver, besides a fair supply of gold, was one of the most important States in the republic.
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