Silver exists in most countries side by side with lead, but the chief mines are in South America, and those of Pachuca in Hidalgo, Mexico, are said to be the first mines in which the Spanish forced slaves to work for them. Near there, is the Real Del Monte, where Peter Terreros, originally a poor muleteer, after a long labour found silver to the value of £3,000,000 sterling, and was rewarded with the title of Count by the Spanish monarch for the loan of £1,000,000, which was never repaid.

Terreros invited his Majesty to the mine, promising him that wherever he should alight from his carriage it should be on a pavement of silver, and that wherever he lodged, it should be lined with the same metal. The King did not go ;   but when Terreros’ own childrenr were baptized the procession is said to have walked on bars of silver.

Equally romantic was the finding of the Comstock Lode,-and the subsequent rush to that spot, the enor¬mous amount of money spent upon development and the colossal failure of the enterprise at the finish. The stories of the Leadville and Silverland Mining Enter¬prises are also fascinating ; but all these belong to the romance of mining rather than of commerce.

Long, however, before the silver of the West was known to Europeans it was being worked in Spain by the Phoenicians, and Diodorus Siculus states that the anchors of ships returning from Spain were of silver. Earlier still is the record that in the days of Abraham silver was being used as a medium of exchange, not coined, but weighed.