Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/46

32 per cent, in Europe between 1514 and 1610, a fall which was caused by the working of the silver mines of Potosi in Bolivia. These yielded, between 1545 and 1564, 641,250,000 pesos or piastres in silver. The discovery of New Granada had an especial effect on the value of emeralds.

It cannot be denied that this sudden depreciation of the metallic media of exchange had a great influence on the demand for them, while it covered the search for them with the mantle of a legitimate want. The need of specie was evident, and the less the material of which coins were made was worth, the more of it must be had. To this was added the fact that the simple necessities of life on which Europeans depended for existence were at first not to be got, for example, in Peru. The first horses sold there brought 6000 pesos (equivalent to at least $28,000 in present values); and in 1554 Alonzo de Alvarado offered in vain 10,000 pesos, or $29,300, for an ordinary saddle-horse. Between thirty and forty pesos were paid in Cassamarca soon after the division of the spoil for a pair of half-boots, and forty or fifty pesos for a sword. The first cow was sold in Cuzco in 1550 for two hundred pesos. Nine years later the price of a cow had fallen to seventeen pesos. Wine began to be cheaper about 1554, when a ship landed at Truxillo with two thousand casks; the first cask was sold for six hundred ducats, and the last one for two hundred ducats. Still, no explanation or excuse can be found in these extreme instances for the reckless, passionate eagerness with which the Spaniards, without waiting to secure one treasure, pursued the visions of others.