Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/251

Rh enlightened nobleman the colony prospered rapidly, and his services in increasing the royal revenues were so signally successful that he was retained in power for nine years. Mexico had become a large and beautiful city. The mining districts were extraordinarily prolific, and no year of his government yielded less than eleven millions of dollars;—the whole sum that passed through the national mint during his term being one hundred and fourteen millions, two hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars of the precious metals! The population of the capital amounted to fifty thousand families composed of Spaniards, Europeans and Creoles,—forty thousand mestizos, mulattoes, negroes,—and eight thousand Indians, who inhabited the suburbs. This population annually consumed at least two millions arobas of flour, about a hundred and sixty thousand fanegas of corn, three hundred thousand sheep, fifteen thousand five hundred beeves, and about twenty-five thousand swine. In this account, the consumption of many religious establishments is not included, as they were privately supplied from their estates, nor can we count the numerous and valuable presents which were sent by residents of the country to their friends in the capital.

It has been already said that this viceroy augmented largely the income of Spain. The taxes of the capital, accounted for by the Consulado, were collected yearly, and amounted to three hundred and thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three dollars, whilst those of the whole viceroyalty reached seven hundred and eighteen thousand, three hundred and seventy-five. The income from pulque alone,—the favorite drink of the masses,—was one hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars, while other imposts swelled the gross income in proportion.

The collection of tributes was not effected invariably in the same manner throughout the territory of New Spain. In Mexico the Administrator-General imposed this task on the justices whose duty it was to watch over the Indians. The aborigines in the capital were divided into two sections, one comprising the Tenochas of San Juan, and the other the Tlaltelolcos of Santiago, both of which had their governors and other police officers, according to Spanish custom. The first of these bands, dwelling on the north and east of the capital, was, in the olden time, the most powerful and noble, and at that period numbered five thousand nine hundred families. The other division, existing on the west and south, was reduced to two thousand five hundred families. In