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 84,000l., 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 120,000l.