Читать книгу The History of Mining - Michael Coulson - Страница 52

During the 16th century, following the establishment of Santiago in 1541 – now capital of Chile and its largest city – gold mining was carried out in the south, with a number of rich but relatively small alluvial operations having been established by Spanish settlers. Output is thought to have been around 50,000 ozs annually but by the end of the century the indigenous Mapuche Indians had pushed the Spanish back towards the centre of the country and gold mining declined rapidly.

In the 18th century, after hostilities between the Spanish and the Mapuche had ended, gold mining began to revive, partly in response to the building of a royal mint in Santiago. New gold mines were established in the north of the country in the Atacama region. These were high-grade mines where the gold was found in vein deposits and annual output reached around 100,000 ozs by the beginning of the 19th century, from where, as we will discover later, production fell away as interest turned first to copper and then to nitrates.