Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/803

Rh witness the mining excitement which confines exploration within the latitudes of Querétaro and Chihuahua, and the coast ranges east and west. Here a number of metalliferous districts and towns sprang up under the protecting wing of presidios and armed camps, most of which still exist as famous mining centres and state and county capitals.

Then the long and fitful dream of treasures which had danced the early adventurers hither and thither, bringing blood-hounds and fire-tortures on many a luckless chief, had become fixed and realized. And although for a time the numerous mines discovered proved the chief attraction and the more immediate source of wealth, gradually attention was turned to the more enduring forms of prosperity, agriculture and manufactures, which will more clearly be brought to light in the succeeding volumes of this history.

And all along through the century we have seen explorers and conquerors, city-builders and miners, side by side with self-denying and exemplary friars, who, while replacing a cruel and debasing worship with a gentler faith, sought to ameliorate the condition of their charge, ever mysteriously fading into the immaterial before their pitying eyes.

Meanwhile able men appear at the head of ecclesiastical affairs, and the church rises into power, gaining for the millions lost in the Old World millions in the New. Government becomes organized; conquerors give way to encomenderos; adelantados to audiencias and viceroys, who by mutual aid and restraint form an administration which with a few exceptions may be called beneficial. Society improves, wealth and refinement come, education advances, and the aboriginal culture is replaced by a higher civilization. As with increasing age the conscience of Philip becomes yet more tender, gradually fall the shackles of an enslaved people; sympathizers of the superior class born upon the soil come to their support, and from