Humboldt relates of a Frenchman, Joseph Laborde, that he went to Mexico
very poor in 1743, and acquired a large fortune in a very short time by
the mine of La Canada. After building a church at Tasco, which cost him
84,000_l._, he was reduced to the lowest poverty by the rapid decline of
those very mines, from which he had annually drawn from 130,000 to
190,000 pounds' weight of silver. With a sum of 20,000l., raised by
selling a _sun_ of solid gold, which, in his prosperity, he had
presented to the church, and which he was allowed by the archbishop to
withdraw, he undertook to clear out an old mine, in doing which he lost
the greatest part of the produce of this golden sun, and then abandoned
the work. With the small sum remaining, he once more ventured on another
undertaking, which was, for a short time, highly productive; and he left
behind him, at his death, a fortune of 120,000_l_.
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