I 



273 



were exercised on the unhappy Indian slaves and 

 negroes employed in the pearl fishery. At the 

 beginning of the conquest, the island of Coche 

 alone furnished the value of fifteen hundred 

 marks of pearls a month. 



The quint 9 which the king's officers drew from 

 the produce of pearls, amounted to fifteen thou- 

 sand ducats ; which, according to the value of 

 the metals in those times, and the extensiveness 

 of the contraband trade, might be considered as 

 a very considerable sum. It appears, that till 

 1530 the value of the pearls sent to Europe 

 amounted yearly on an average to more than 

 eight hundred thousand piastres. In order to 

 judge of the importance of this branch of com- 

 merce to Seville, Toledo, Antwerp, and Genoa, 

 we should recollect, that at the same period the 

 whole of the mines of America * did not furnish 

 two millions of piastres ; and that the fleet of 

 Ovando seemed to be of immense wealth, because 

 it contained nearly two thousand six hundred 

 marks of silver. Pearls were so much the more 

 sought after, as the luxury of Asia had been in- 



* I have endeavoured to prove in another place (Nouv. 

 Esp. t. ii, p. 652), by a history at large of the ancient mines 

 of Mexico and Peru, the accuracy of the ideas spread 

 throughout Europe on the exhausted state of the metallifer- 

 ous mines of America, on their deceasing richness, and on 

 the quantity of metals which Spain received during the reigns 

 of Charles the fifth and Philip the second. 



