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passed through Potosi in 1549, at the period ❝ when the Licentiate Polo was Corregidor “of the town. The chests (royal) with three

keys are in the house of this Corregedor. "His Majesty received every week from twenty"five to thirty, and sometimes even forty thou"sand piastres. They complained at that time

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that the mines went on poorly, when the "fifth only amounted to 120,000 castellanos monthly. And yet all this money belonged to the Christians alone; for the Indians stole a great deal which was not registered; so that no where in the world was there ever "so rich a mountain and no where did any "Prince ever draw so great a revenue from

a single town; for between 1548 and 1551, the fifth brought into the King more than "three millions of ducats."

To understand this passage which contains three distinct valuations, we must recollect that the pesos or piastres of that time, and till 1580 at least*, were an imaginary money of 480 maravedis, or nearly 131 Reales de plata Mexicana. A marc of silver contained 57 of these piastres. Five piastres made a ducat of 11 reals. According to these data then, reckoning the fifth with Cieça, at 30,000 piastres per week, and

* Garcilasso, Coment. Reales, T. i. in the second preface which bears the title of Advertencias acerca la lengua generat del Peru; and T. ii. p. 51.

120,000 castellanos per month, the total produce of the mines of Potosi was (in registered silver), in the year 1549, either 1,549,000, or 1,440,000

marcs.

1

to

The same produce amounted according to Cieça, at an average from 1548 to 1551, only to 7,031,000 Mexican piastres of eight reals of plata, equal to 827,000 marcs of silver. This sum forms a singular contrast with the account of Sandoval and Ulloa; but it agrees very well with the fifth of the years when our first table commences. It might remain doubtful whether Cieça speaks really of the totality of the royal duties, levied between 1548 and 1551, or whether he affirms that during that period, the fifth amounted to three millions of ducats per annum. In this last case, the annual produce would have amounted 21,093,000 Mexican piastres, or 2,481,000 marcs of silver, a very considerable sum no doubt, but still very much below the calculation of Ulloa and Raynal. I am inclined to believe, that the historian of Peru estimates only at three millions of ducats, the sum total of the fifths of the four years, 1st. Because this valuation is more agreeable to the value of the fifth of 1556; 2d. Because Cieça to give the highest idea of the wealth of the mines, says, that the fifth sometimes amounted to 40,000 piastres, which would give for the maximum of annual produce at that time, a sum not

above 2,481,000, but hardly equal to 2,065,000 marcs; 3rd. Because Garcilasso* relates that about the same period, from ten to twelve millions of piastres in gold and silver of Peru, every year entered the Rio Guadalquivir.

Considering these data of Sandoval as accurate, and combining them both with those of Cieça, and the numbers contained in the official papers published by me, we shall find the following results for the average annual produce of the mines of Potosi, on which we can place but small reliance:

From 1545 to 1548 23,284,000 marcs of silver.

The following is the foundation for this calculation. Sandoval and Ulloa estimated the produce of the Cerro de Potosi, between 1545 and 1564, at an average 33,750,000 piastres per annum, or 3,970,000 marcs of silver. Now, we know from the chronicle of Cieça, what was the amount of the produce between 1548 and 1551; the registers of Potosi contain the produce from 1556 to 1564; and supposing for the intermediate period from 1551 to 1556, a decrease in arithmetical progression, it is easy to find from the 641,250,000 Mexican piastres,

* Garcilasso, ii. p. 52.

or 75,440,000 marcs of silver, stated by Sandoval as the total proportion of the first 19 years, the proportional amount for the small interval from 1545 to 1548.

If we admit what appears equally improbable, that Cieça indicated the fifth of each of the four years, contained in the period from 1548 to 1551, we find by an analogous operation, that the annual produce of the mines of Potosi amounted,

From 1545 to 1548 to 19;146,000 marcs of silver.

1556 1564 415,000.

Thus whatever interpretation we give to the passage of the chronicle of Cieça, we shall find, it is evident in both hypotheses, that the produce of the first three years differs so much from the following years, that we ought very much to suspect the accouut of Sandoval. We ought the more to suspect it, as on examining the table of fifths between 1556 and 1789, we discover in this long series of numbers, a law according to which they uniformly increase or decrease. Cieça visited the mines of Potosi, at the period of their greatest splendour; and he expressly says, that he described the mountain as he found it in 1549, "because that "wealth like every thing human, must vary in the course of time, either increasing or

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diminishing." If the produce of 1549, was really eight or ten times less than the produce of 1546, how should the traveller have passed over this enormous diminution of wealth in silence.

We shall conclude from the whole of these discussions, that the total produce of silver registered during the eleven years which are deficient in the preceding tables, far from amounting to 72 millions of marcs, as we might be led to suppose from Ulloa, and the celebrated author of the Recherches Philosophiques, has never exceeded the sum of 15 millions of marcs. We shall not give great faith to Solorzano*, who vaguely says that Potosi yielded between 1545 and 1628, that is in 83 years, the sum of 850 millions of pounds of silver, which is almost the double of what the mountain supplied in two centuries and a half. We may be surprized to see a writer, who was long a member of the audience of Lima, so very ill informed; for how can we suppose during 83 years an annual produce of 2,400,000 marcs, when the registers preserved in the treasury of Potosi, prove that during this period the mean sum of the produce seldom amounted to 800,000 marcs.

* Solorzano Pereira, de Indiarum jure, T. ii. Lib. v. c.i. (edit. Lugd.)