"Sam": or The history of mystery./ By C. W. Webber.

" SAM:" OR, THE HISTORY OF MYSTERY.
pamphlet, suggests the probability that it was originally an
old Indian city, into which the Spaniards, as in several other
instances, had intruded themselves, and subsequently abandoned it. Further investigation, it is to be hoped, will clear
up this point.
Here are decidedly too many coincidences to be purely accidental and meaningless! Prescott mentions the fact that the
quantities of gold found in the possession of the Mexicans
by Cortez, are by no means accounted for, in the probable or
even possible productiveness of any of the known mines of
Mexico at the present day. How, then, is this great wealth
to be accounted for? We think we have shown. It came,
mostly, from New Mexico and the mysterious regions of the
Gila and Colorado; and since this massacre of the Spaniards
by the first, and the utter baffling of their search by the
latter, these mines have been as a sealed book. But it will
no longer continue to be sealed, when American enterprise
shall have passed over these buried treasures.
But hear what is said by yet other historians, of the seemingly incalculable quantities of gold obtained by the Spanish
conquest of Old and New Mexico, and no reader can be at
a loss to account for the European prosperity and predominating insolence of the Catholic Church of this period, any more
than he will find the insatiable cravings of the earlier Jesuit
missionaries on the north, a difficult riddle to solve.
We shall merely quote a single passage from Prescott, the
historian of the Conquest, in confirmation of the above, and
conclude this branch of our subject.
In a few weeks most of them returned, bringing back
large quantities of gold and silver plate, rich stuffs, and the
various commodities in which the taxes were usually paid.
To this store Montezuma added, on his own account, the
treasure of Axayacatl, previously noticed, some parts of which
had been already given to the Spaniards. It was the fruit
of long and careful hoarding-of extortion, it may be-by a
prince who little dreamed of its final destination. When
brought into the quarters, the gold alone was sufficient to
make three heaps. It consisted partly of native grains;
part had been melted into bars; but the greatest portion was
in utensils, and various kinds of ornaments and curious toys,
together with imitations of birds, insects, or flowers, executed
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