At the close of the war with Chile there was an indemnity debt due to citizens of that republic of 6,550,830 bolivianos, which had been nearly liquidated in 1904 when Chile took over the unpaid balance.
The first part of his life was devoted to mercantile and financial pursuits at Cadiz and then in Madrid, where he managed the affairs of and liquidated a mercantile and industrial society to the satisfaction and profit of the shareholders.
The unfortunate thing is that it has not been completely liquidated.
A fourth of this sum was to be handed to the communes to be employed on works of beneficence or education as soon as a surplus was obtained from that part of the annuity assigned for the payment of monastic pensions; and in Sicily, 209 communes entered on their privileges as soon as the patrimony was liquidated.
The coal deposits, which are of somewhat indifferent quality, have been worked with varying degrees of failure by a succession of companies, one of which, the Labuan & Borneo Ltd., liquidated in 1902 after the collapse of a shaft upon which large sums had been expended.