Volume 78 in The American Exploration and Travel Series After returning to his Italian monastery in 1770, a Capuchin friar named Ilarione da Bergamo wrote an account of his transatlantic crossing and five-year residence in colonial Mexico. Sent to Mexico to collect alms for missionary work, Friar Ilarione lived four years in the silver-mining camp of Real del Monte, fifty miles north of the viceregal capital. Ilarione relates how he secured silver donations from the miners, describes mining and refining techniques, and writes of a bitter and widespread labor strike. Ilarione also spent a...