Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/346

334 praise, before my coming to the country, and it was therefore, with not a little pleasure that I accepted the kind invitation of the director, Señor Don Francisco De P. Cendejas, to inspect it in all its details, and accompanied my kind friend Colonel Enrique A. Mejia, to the place.

This great establishment was founded, not as a matter of speculation, but as an act of practical Christian charity, by Pedro Romero de Torres Count de Regla, who on the 2d day of June 1774, gave three hundred thousand dollars in coin, for a perpetual fund for loans, and himself wrote out the rules and regulations under which, with some modifications, it is conducted to this day.

The object of the pious and philanthropic founder, was to provide the poor and temporarily needy, with a place where they could deposit whatever they might have of valuables in safety, and obtain upon them an advance in coin, at such a rate of interest as would not put it out of their power to reclaim them; thus protecting them, effectually, from the rapacity of the proprietors of the old-fashioned pawn-broker's shops; and how well he succeeded the present condition of the institution testifies.

The Spanish Vice Rey of Mexico, designated for the use of the institution, the great and magnificent house erected by Hernando Cortez for his own use, immediately after the conquest, and into which he built the great cedar beam found in possession of the Aztecs, which was regarded, for its immense size, as a curiosity in its day, comparable with the great trees of California in ours, with a certain amount of religious veneration thrown in. That beam nearly cost him