Page:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu/83

The story is that one of the "old fellows" overheard this outburst, reported it to his friends, and promptly went off and married the daughter of a powerful cacique.

Besides assisting his colonists to get wives, Mendoza did a great deal to foster the agricultural interests of the province. He continued the importation of cattle, which Cortes had begun, and also procured horses and sheep from Spain. He writes in one of his letters of the especial satisfaction that he felt because of the rapid increase of his merino sheep, in spite of the depredations of the natives and of wild animals. The chief concern of the officials of the audiencia had been the gold mines, which yielded a considerable revenue in certain districts; but Mendoza, without neglecting these, proved how large and reliable was the additional revenue which could be derived from other sources. The viceroy's success in developing the province can not be shown more clearly than by repeating the description of New Spain in 1555, written by Robert Tomson, an English merchant engaged in the Spanish trade. In the course of a business tour Tomson visited the City of Mexico. His commercial friends in the city entertained him most hospitably, and did their best to make his visit pleasant. He refused, however, to heed their warnings, and his indiscreet freedom of speech finally compelled the officials of the Inquisition to imprison him, thus adding considerably to the length of his residence in the city. After he returned home, he wrote a narrative of his tour, in which he says of New Spain:

"As for victuals in the said Citie, of beefe, mutton, and hennes, capons, quailes, Guiñy-cockes, and such like, all are very good cheape: To say, the whole quarter of an oxe, as much as a slane can carry away from the Butchers, for fine Tomynes, that is, fine Royals of plate, which is iust two shillings and sixe pence, and a fat sheepe at the Butchers for three Royals, which is 18. pence and no more. Bread is as good cheape as in Spaine, and all other kinde of fruites, as apples, peares, pomegranats, and quinces, at a reasonable rate. . . . [The country] doth yeeld great store of very good silke, and Cochinilla. . . . Also there are many goodly fruits, whereof we haue none such, as Plantanos, Guyanes, Sapotes, Tunas, and in the wildemes great store of blacke cheries, and other wholsome fruites. . . . Also the Indico that doeth come from thence to die blew, is a certaine hearbe. . . . Balme, Salsaperilla, caua fistula, suger, oxe hides, and many other good and serniceablo things the Countrey doeth yeeld, which are yeerely brought into Spaine, and there solde and distributed to many nations."^[1]

The other class among the colonists of New Spain in the second quarter of the sixteenth century "floated like cork on the water" on those who had established their homes in the New World.^[2] The men

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1. Tomson's whole narrative, in Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. iii, p. 447 (ed. 1600), is well worth reading. Considerable additional information in regard to the internal condition of New Spain, at a little later date, may be found in the "Discourses" which follow Tomson's Narrative, in the same volume of Hakluyt.
2. The proof text for this quotation, as for many of the following statements which are taken from Mota Padilla a Historia de la Nueva Galicia, may be found in footnotes to the passages which they illustrate in the translation of Castañeda's narrative. I hope this arrangement will prove most convenient for those who study the documents included in this memoir. I shall not attempt in the introductory narrative to make any further references showing my indebtedness to Mota Padilla's invaluable work.