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Updated: October 5, 2025
There is a no less fine view from the hill behind, on which sits the Panteon, or city cemetery. It is a rectangular place enclosing perhaps three acres, and, as all Guanajuato has been buried here for centuries, considerably crowded.
For a half hour we had Guanajuato in full sight in its narrow gully far below. Many donkeys pattered by under their loads of encinal fagots, the ragged, expressionless drivers plodding silently at their heels. Ahead grew the roar of "Peregrina's" stamp-mill, and I was soon winding through the gorge-hung village.
Many of the better class of houses in the upper portion of Guanajuato, some of which are extremely attractive, are built from a peculiar sandstone quarried in the neighborhood, which is of many colors, giving the fronts an odd, but not unpleasant appearance. The balconies of these dwellings are rendered lovely by a great variety of creeping vines and flowers in blossom.
Farther away was a rocky ridge beaten with narrow, bare, crisscross trails, and beyond, the old Valenciana mine on the flanks of the jagged range shutting off Dolores Hidalgo, appearing so near in this clear air of the heights that it seemed a man could throw a stone there; yet down in the valley between lay all Guanajuato, the invisible, and none might know how many bandits were sleeping out the day in their lurking-places among the wild, broken valleys and gorges the view embraced.
The town is reached through the suburb of Marfil, along the precipitous sides of whose mountain road large adobe and stone mills are constructed, resembling feudal castles; while beside the roadbed, broken by sharp acclivities, the small, muddy, vile-smelling river Guanajuato flows sluggishly along, bearing silver tailings away from the mills above, and wasting at least twenty-five per cent, of the precious metal contained in the badly manipulated ore.
Having thus described with some minuteness one of the most extensive silver mines in the world, where an average of 5000 men and unnumbered animals are employed, it will not be necessary to go into details as we notice the many other celebrated mines of Mexico. Toluca. Queretaro, Guanajuato, and Zacatecas. Fresnillo. "Romancing." A lucky Priest. San Luis Potosi. The Valenciana at Guanajuato.
Referring to the fact, he says: "In about forty days I may receive an acknowledgment of this report, and by that time, if the treaty of peace be not accepted, I hope to be sufficiently re-enforced to open the commercial line between Zacatecas and Tampico. The occupation of Queretaro, Guanajuato, and Guadalajara would be the next in importance, and some of the ports of the Pacific third.
After passing through miles of dreary territory which produced little save an abnormal growth of cacti of several species, exhibiting great variety in shape and the color of its blossoms, which were sometimes white, but oftener red or yellow, twenty miles southeast of Leon and two hundred and thirty-eight north of the national capital, we reach the small city of Silao, in the State of Guanajuato, which has a population of about fifteen thousand.
Since 1840, notwithstanding the frequent wars, Mexico, in favored localities, may have slightly increased in population; but this increase is more than balanced by the Indian wars of the northern departments, which have depopulated large tracts of country, sometimes extending across one tier of states even into the heart of Durango and Guanajuato; so that I hazard nothing in affirming that the population of the whole country must be less to-day than it was in 1794, notwithstanding that Humboldt sets down an estimate of 5,800,000 for the year 1803, and 6,500,000 for the year 1808.
Two men in gay sarapes, with guns and belts of huge cartridges, reached it at the same time, and we squatted together on the ground at an angle of the wall below the window and ate with much exchange of banter the food poked out to us. The two had come that morning from Guanajuato, whither I was bound, and were headed for Dolores.
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