Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/797

Rh mayor of San Luis Potosí, who controlled all this region, for a grant of the lands and water of the hacienda San Francisco. This petition was signed by Montemayor as royal treasurer, showing that even then he was a prominent personage.

The favorable features and resources of the region soon became known, and Luis de Carabajal y de la Cueva, a frontiersman, made a contract to effectually colonize it at his own expense, in consideration for the appointment of governor. His original jurisdiction under the name of Nuevo Reino de Leon was to comprise a vaguely defined territory, from the port of Tampico along the River Pánuco as a basis, thence extending northward, but not to exceed two hundred leagues either way, which would seem to have included all of Tamaulipas. To pacify and colonize the new territory Carobajal was allowed to employ one hundred soldiers and take with him sixty married laborers, including their wives and children. Armed with this concession he appeared at Mexico in the early autumn of 1580, and began to prepare for occupying his territory. But the allurements of the rich mining districts of San Luis Potosi and Guanajuato tended to eclipse the more pastoral vistas offered by New Leon, and the enrolment proved slow. In 1584, however, he appears to have set out, and on reaching the Spanish settlement already established at Santa Lucía, in Estremadura Valley, he determined there to plant his colony, changing the name of the place to