Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/573

Rh of the original population, if we may believe the chroniclers. Comets and earthquakes added their terrors, imaginary or real. Nevertheless the province prospered, thanks to its fertility and manifold resources, and the abundance of mines, which afforded a ready market for produce and live-stock.

While not choosing to engage in the severer occupation of farming, the Spaniards could always raise cattle and sheep, and their broad grants were rapidly stocked with animals, which offered material for manufacture.

Information is meagre concerning the early history of that singularly ill-peopled province of Zacatecas, as it is denominated by Humboldt, and yet its capital is even to-day, next to Guanajuato, the most celebrated mining-place in that country. From the visit of Captain Chirinos in 1530 to the year 1546 we have no definite record that any Spaniard penetrated farther north than Nochistlan and Juchipila. The Cascanes, Zacatecs, and other Chichimecs of the north had, as we have seen, taken a prominent part in the Mixton rebellion of 1541, and since its suppression they had continued to some extent their hostile raids on the frontier. In 1543 the emperor and viceroy were petitioned by the municipal authorities of the New Galicia towns to authorize war on these marauders, and their extermination or enslavement. The coveted