LA OBRA DEL CONSULADO NEGRO REVOLT. 183 



would be difficult when looking down from it, upon the stream 

 below, and, following with the eye the vast opening through which 

 it seeks an issue, to conceive that the whole is, indeed, the work 

 of man, did not the mounds on either side, as yet but imperfectly 

 covered with vegetation, and the regular outline of the terraces, 

 denote both the recentness of its completion, and the impossibility 

 of attributing it to any natural convulsion. 



" The Obra del Consulado, as the opening cut is called, was 

 concluded in the year 1789. It cost nearly a million of dollars ; 

 and the whole expense of the drainage from 1607 to the beginning 

 of the present century, including the various projects commenced 

 and abandoned when only partially executed, — the dykes con- 

 nected with the desague, — and the two canals which communicate 

 with the lakes of San Cristoval and Zumpango, — is estimated at 

 six millions two hundred and forty-seven thousand six hundred 

 and seventy dollars, or one million two hundred and forty-nine 

 thousand five hundred and thirty-four pounds. It is supposed that 

 one-third of this sum would have proved sufficient to cover all the 

 expenses, had Martinez been furnished in the first instance with 

 the means of executing his project upon the scale which he had 

 judged necessary; for it is in the reduced dimensions of the 

 gallery of Nochistongo, which was never equal to the volume of 

 water to which at particular seasons it afforded an outlet, that all 

 the subsequent expenditure has originated." 1 



We have judged it better to group together in this place all the 

 facts relative to this most important national work, — so as to 

 afford the reader a complete picture of the undertaking, — than to 

 relate the slow and tedious history of the work as it advanced to 

 completion during the reigns of many viceroys. The present 

 condition of the desague and its advantages will be treated in 

 another portion of this work; and we shall therefore revert at once 

 to the year 1609, in which a large number of negroes rebelled 

 against the Spaniards. It seems that the blacks in the neighbor- 

 hood of Cordova, who were in fact slaves on many of the hiciendas 

 or plantations, having been treated in an inhuman manner by their 

 owners, rose against them in great force, and gathering together 

 in the adjacent mountains menaced their tyrannical task-masters 

 with death, and their property with ruin. Velasco sent one hun- 

 dred soldiers, one hundred volunteers, one hundred Indian archers, 



1 Ward, vol. 2, p. 283, et seq. 



