Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/189

Rh would have saved one-eighth of their taxation or twelve and a half per cent, they allowed the time to pass without providing the required bird in their homesteads, so that when the tax gatherer arrived they were forced to buy the fowl instead of selling it. This of course raised the price, and the consequence was that the Indian was obliged often to pay two or three reales more than the original amount of the whole taxation of one dollar! It is related that one of the oidores who had taken eight hundred fowls, reserved two hundred for the consumption of his house, and through an agent sold the rest at three reales, or thirty-seven and a half cents each, by which he contrived to make a profit of two hundred per cent. Various efforts were made to remedy this shameful abuse or to revoke the decree, but the system was found to be too profitable among the officials, to be abandoned without a severe struggle. We are unable to discover that the viceroy, in this instance, used his authority to restore the Indians to their original rights.

In 1595, it was determined to colonize the supposed kingdom of Quivara, which now received the name of New Mexico, but, before the expedition could set forth under the command of Juan de Oñate, Velasco received a despatch informing him that he had been named viceroy of Peru, and that his successor Don Gaspar de Zuñiga Acebedo, Conde de Monterey, would soon appear in the colonial metropolis.

The Count of Monterey arrived at San Juan de Ulua on the 18th of September, 1595, and on the 5th of the following November, entered the capital as viceroy. At first he exhibited a cold and apathetic temper, and appeared to take but little interest in the affairs of the government; but it is supposed, that being a prudent and cautious man, he was in no haste to underake the direction of affairs whilst he was altogether unacquainted both with the temper of the people and the nature of their institutions. An early measure, however, of his administration deserves to be recorded and remembered. He found the Indians still suffering and complaining under the odious fowl tax, created by his predecessor for the protection of domestic industry, but which had been perverted for the