Of late years the companies have been doing very well, and now export nearly as much silver as during the latter years of the Spanish government--nearly, but not quite.

The financial history of the Real del Monte Company is worth putting down.

The original English company spent nearly one million sterling on it, without getting any dividend.

They sold it to two or three Mexicans for about twenty-seven thousand pounds, and the Mexicans spent eighty thousand more on it, and then began to make profits.

The annual profit is now some L200,000.
I have said that the modern Mexican Indian has but little idea of arithmetic.