The
total amount of the gold was found to be one million, three
hundred and twenty-six thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine
pesos de oro, which, allowing for the greater value of money in
the sixteenth century, would be equivalent, probably, at the
present time, to near three millions and a half of pounds
sterling, or somewhat less than fifteen millions and a half of
dollars. *4 The quantity of silver was estimated at fifty-one
thousand six hundred and ten marks. History affords no parallel
of such a booty - and that, too, in the most convertible form, in
ready money, as it were - having fallen to the lot of a little
band of military adventurers, like the Conquerors of Peru. The
great object of the Spanish expeditions in the New World was
gold. It is remarkable that their success should have been so
complete. Had they taken the track of the English, the French,
or the Dutch, on the shores of the northern continent, how
different would have been the result! It is equally worthy of
remark, that the wealth thus suddenly acquired, by diverting them
from the slow but surer and more permanent sources of national
prosperity, has in the end glided from their grasp, and left them
among the poorest of the nations of Christendom.
[Footnote 4: Acta de Reparticion del Rescate de Atahuallpa, Ms -
Xerez, Conq. del Peru, ap. Barcia, tom. III. p. 232.
In reducing the sums mentioned in this work, I have availed
myself -as I before did, in the History of the Conquest of Mexico
- of the labors of Senor Clemencin, formerly Secretary of the
Royal Academy of History at Madrid.
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