Page images
PDF
EPUB

Cuba, of Darien, and the coast of Paria, had bracelets, rings, and necklaces of gold; but it is probable that the greatest part of that metal was not derived from the countries in which these tribes were found, at the end of the fifteenth century. In South America as well as in Africa, commercial communications existed, even among the hordes the most remote from civilization. Coral and beads of sea-shells were frequently found in the possession of men who lived at a great distance from the coast. We ascertained, during our journey on the Orinoco, that the famous Mahagua stone, or the Amazons jade, is conveyed, by means of an exchange established among different tribes of savages, from Brazil to the banks of the Carony, inhabited by the Caraib Indians. Besides, it is to be remarked, that the people found by the Spaniards in Darien, or the island of Cuba, had not always inhabited the same countries. In America the great migrations have taken place from the north-west, to the south-east: and frequently whole tribes have been forced by wars to quit the mountains, and settle in the the plains. We can conceive, therefore, in what manner the gold of Sonora, or the valley of the Rio Cauca, might have been found among the savages of the Darien, or at the mouths of the river Madalena. Besides, the smaller the population the more deceitful the appear

X

ance of wealth. The accumulation of gold is particularly striking in countries where all the metal possessed by the people is converted into objects of ornament. We must not, then, judge of this pretended wealth of the mines of Cibao, of the coast of Cumana, and the isthmus of Panama, from the recital of the first travellers. We must recollect that rivers become less auriferous, in proportion as during the course of ages their course becomes less rapid. A horde of savages, who settle in a valley, where man had never before penetrated, find grains of gold accumulated there for thousands of years; while, in our days, the most careful washing hardly produces a few scattered particles. These considerations, to which I wish to limit myself in this place, may serve to clear up the problem, so frequently agitated, why those regions which immediately after the discovery of America, and especially between 1492 and 1815, were considered as eminently rich in precious metals, furnish scarcely any in our days, although very laborious and welldirected trials have been made in several of them.

To form some idea of the spoil in gold and silver transmitted by the first conquerors to Europe, before the Spaniards began to work the mines of Tasco in Mexico, or Porco in Peru, let us cast our eyes over the facts re

[graphic]

lated by the historians of the conquest. I have carefully examined these facts, and endeavoured to collect all the passages where the wealth which fell into the hands of the Europeans is estimated in pesos ensayados, or in castellanos de oro; for it is from these data, and not from the vague, and frequently repeated expressions of "enormous quantity of gold or immense treasures," that we shall be able to obtain satisfactory results.

In 1502, Ovando sent to Spain a fleet of eighteen vessels, commanded by Bovadilla and Roldan, and laden with a great quantity of gold. The greater part of these vessels perished in the famous tempest in which Christopher Columbus nearly lost his life, in his first voyage, on the shores of St. Domingo. The historians of the time consider this fleet as one of the richest; and yet they all agree that the freight in gold did not exceed 200,000 pesos, which, reckoning them as pesos de minas at 14 reals, make the moderate sum of 1,750,000 livres tournoist, or 2,560 marcs of gold. The pre-de sents which Cortez received on his passage through Chalco only amounted to 3000 pesos de orot, or to 38 marcs of weight in gold.

*Herrera, Decada i. Lib. i. Cap. i. (T.i. p. 126.)

+ £71,427 Sterling. Trans.

Cartas de Hernan Cortez, Carta i. § xviii.

Calentati

+

When Montezuma assembled his vassals to take the oath of fidelity to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who, as they were made to believe, descended in a straight line from Quetzalcoatl*, the Bouddha of the Aztecs, Cortez demanded a tribute in gold: "I feigned," he writes to the Emperor," that your highness was in great "want of this metal for certain works which 66 you wished to execute." The fifth of the tribute, paid into the chest of the army, amounted to 32,400 pesost; from which we are to conclude that the quantity of gold collected by the stratagem of the general, amounted to 2080 marcs. At the taking of Tenochtitlan, the spoil which fell into the hands of the Spaniards did not, according to the assertion of Cortez, exceed in weight, 130,000 castellanos, or 2600 marcs of gold‡; and, according to

[ocr errors]

*See my Vues des Cordillères, and Monumens de l'Amérique, Pl. vii.

+ Cartas de Hernan Cortez, Carta i. § xxix. p. 98.

Carta iii. § li. p. 301. The expression se fundiò mas de 130,000 castellanos is doubtful. We are ignorant whether Cortez speaks of castellanos as a weight, or as an imaginary coin. I follow, with the Abbé Clavigero, the former hypothesis, (Storia de Messico, T. iii. p. 232.) In the second case, the spoil would only have been 1660 marcs of gold; for Herrera expressly says, that " Castellano y peso es uno," and, according to him, a peso de minas is worth 14 reals; a peso ensayado, thirteen reals (de plata) and one quartillo. Decada viii. Lib. ii. c. 10. T.v. p. 41.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Bernal Diaz, it amounted to 380,000 pesos, which are equivalent to 4,890 marcs.

The two periods of the conquest of Peru in which the Spaniards collected the greatest quantity of wealth are those of the proceedings against Atahualpa, and the pillage of Cuzco. The ransom of the Inca, which was divided in 1531 among 60 cavaliers and 100 foot, amounted, according to Garcilasso, to 3,930,000 ducats in gold, and 672,670 ducats in silver. Reducing these sums into marcs, we find 41,987 marcs of gold, and 115,508 marcs of silver, amounting together in value to 3,838,058 piastres, at 8 reals de plata Mexicana, or 20,149,804* livres tournois. † This treasure, which was collected together in one house, the ruins of which I saw during my stay at Caxamarca in 1802, had served as ornaments in the temples of the sun of Pachacamac, Huailas, Cuzco, Guamachuco, and Sicllapampa. Gomara‡ only estimates the ransom of Atahualpa at 52,000 marcs of silver, and at 1,326,500 pesos de oro, or to 17,000 marcs of silver. In whatever relates to numbers, it seldom happens that the

* £822,438 Sterling. Trans.

+ Garcilasso, P. ii. Lib. i. c. 28. and 38. (T. ii. p. 27. and 51.) Father Blas Valera reckons 4,800,000 ducados.

Historia de las Indias, 1553, p. 67.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »