In Tejuco there are about nine or ten principal shopkeepers, to whom the establishment itself, and the officers belonging to it, are frequently indebted; indeed, these men receive the greater part of the money due to the various persons employed in the works, in exchange chiefly for English commodities of one description or other. The establishment is paid once a year, and for this purpose a sum not less than 300,000 crusades is sent from Villa Rica, to which may be added 60,000 or 100,000 more, found in the gold mines of the district. The greater part of this money flowing into the hands of the shopkeepers, as above stated, is immediately employed in a way injurious to the interests of Government; nor can worse policy be imagined than that of allowing so large an expenditure in a place which offers such temptations.
Some years ago many gold-mines were washed in this district, but as information was given that diamonds were found in them, they were ordered to be abandoned. At present more equitable measures are adopted, and the proprietors are commencing to work some of them again, under an agreement to give up whatever diamonds they find.[57]
There is a general order to work all the gold-mines which were formerly confiscated, and this measure will, it is hoped, increase the quantity of gold, and have a good effect in every respect.
If Government are obliged to hire negroes wherever they can obtain them, (which appears to be the case), it would be at least expedient to have a store to supply them, in order that the money paid in wages to them might return into the funds of the establishment.
The hiring of negroes to the diamond works is the favorite occupation of all ranks in Tejuco; rich and poor endeavour to engage in it to as great an extent as their property will allow. The pay of the slaves is trifling compared with the risk, their labor being heavy, their maintenance poor, and their treatment harsh; there must, therefore, be some temptation not openly seen, yet as well known as light from darkness. Numbers of persons are thus induced to reside in Tejuco under various pretexts, but with no other real view than to get their negroes into the service, and to live idly on their wages, and on what they conceal or pick up. Thus all fatten upon the pasture, except those in the extreme of indigence, and others who, from the neglect of economy, are always poor. There are a numerous class, from the age of seven years to upwards of twenty, who are without any visible means of earning their subsistence, and would remain idle even if manufactories were established; for though they are brought up from their infancy with negro-children, yet in the working department they would abandon their former play-fellows. The people in general are rendered more averse from habits of regular industry by the continual hopes which they indulge of becoming opulent by some fortunate discovery of mines; these fallacious ideas, which they instil into the minds of their children, strongly prejudice them against labor, though they all exist miserably, and not unfrequently depend upon donations. Their education is extremely limited: they are in general total strangers to the sciences, and are very scantily informed on any useful subject.