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 404 them to his king, and promised his sovereign that if he would only visit him in Mexico he should everywhere tread only upon silver—that he would pave the road from the coast to the mines with solid silver bars!

When this man's children were baptized the entire procession, as it passed from his house to the church, walked all the way upon glistening silver bars! What wonder that, in those corrupt times, this man, possessed of fabulous wealth, should have been created Count of Regla! Yet all his great possessions have long since vanished—swept away in the revolution—and his descendants were reduced to beggary.

In the year 1778 there died another famous miner, named La Bord, who accumulated a fortune of fifty million dollars, and who spent upon a single church more than half a million.

No one can estimate what would have been the result if these mines had been uninterruptedly worked, nor the benefit to Spain if Mexico had been retained in her possession to the present time.

[A. D. 1785.] The Spanish government became alarmed about this time at the persistence of the then reigning viceroy, Galvez, in fortifying and embellishing the Castle of Chapultepec. Up to that time above one hundred thousand dollars had been expended upon it, and it was then the strongest citadel in the interior of Mexico. But their fears were allayed upon the death of the viceroy, and the beautiful castle was not dismantled until a date long subsequent.

[A. D. 1788.] In December of this year the King of Spain, Charles III., departed this life, and was succeeded on the throne by the weak and dissolute Charles IV. In the year following there entered the capital as viceroy one of the most remarkable who had filled the office, Don Juan