Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/509

481 REVIEW OF THEIR ADMINISTRATION. 481 had converted the land trade with India into a chapter sea trade ; and the nations of the Peninsula, who ^ ^^" had hitherto lain remote from the great highways of commerce, now became the factors and carriers of Europe. The flourishing condition of the nation was seen in the wealth and population of its cities, the rev- enues of which, augmented in all to a surprising extent, had increased in some, forty and even fifty fold beyond what they were at the commencement of the reign ; ^^* the ancient and lordly Toledo ; Burgos, with its bustling, industrious traders ; ^^^ Valladolid, sending forth its thirty thousand war- riors from its gates, where the whole population now scarcely reaches two thirds of that number ; ^^ Cordova, in the south, and the magnificent Grana- da, naturalizing in Europe the arts and luxuries of the east ; Saragossa, " the abundant," as she was called from her fruitful territory ; Valencia, " the beautiful " ; Barcelona, rivalling in indepen- 128 The sixth volume of the Me- sa, ni baldia, sino que todos traba- raoirs of the Academy of History, jan,ansi mugeres como hombres, y contains a schedule of the respec- los chicos como los grandes, bus- tive revenues afforded by the cities cando la vida con sus manos, y con of Castile, in the years 1477, 1482, sudores de sus carnes. Unos exer- and 1504 ; embracing, of course, citan las artes mecanicas : y otros the commencement and close of las liberales. Los que tratan las Isabella's reign. The original mercaderias, y hazen ricalaciudad, document exists in the archives of son muyfieles, y liberales." (Cosas Simancas. We may notice the Memorables, fol. 16.) It will not large amount and great increase of be easy to meet, in prose or verse, taxes in Toledo, particularly, and with a finer colored picture of de- in Seville ; the former thriving from parted glory, than Mr. Slidell has its manufactories, and the latter given of the former city, the vane- from the Indian trade. Seville, in rable Gothic capital, in his " Year 1504, furnished near a tenth of the in Spain," chap. 12. whole revenue. Ilustracion 5. ^^o Sandoval, Hist, del Emp. 129 li No ay en ella," says Ma- Carlos V., torn. i. p. 60. rineo of the latter city, " gente ocio- VOL. III. 61