4. The Imperial City of Potosi

!668- This same year the diminishment of the grandeurs of Potosi began,

that although they continued, they were not with the same pomp and

brilliance as before; and so that you learn something of that grandeur

up to this year, when they began to diminish, I say that gold, silver,

pearls and precious metals of such worth were so abundant that there was

no limit to all of these: the riverbank had 132 refineries; five

thousand Indians came each year to work in the great Cerro and the

refineries; there were 48 watermills where they refined rich bars of

metal, and from which very many bars of silver left each week. There

were twelve merchants of silver, all of them powerful; and 72 merchants

of very fine merchandise; and in each store were found 200, 300, 400

thousand pesos of rich fabrics and noble materials. 


- The Annals of Potosi,  1803