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The yearly output of gold fluctuated, but it continued steadily, as Velasquez wrote to the emperor in 1521, when he made a remittance of 5,000 pesos. Six or seven years later, the placers, for such they were, were becoming exhausted. Castellanos, the treasurer, wrote in 1518 that only 429 pesos had been received as the king's share of the last two years' smelting.

Now that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the mines. A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls: those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.

They carried to Panama and Nicaragua spoils to the amount of 30,000 castellanos, as well as a great number of emeralds, a rich booty, which would, according to Pizarro, determine many adventurers to come and join him.

I very well know that after my departure he must have received more than 5000 castellanos.

Castro and Castellanos asked for the appointment of a supreme judge in March, 1539, because an appeal to the authorities in la Española was made against every decision of the alcalde. Alderman La Fuente and Martel confirmed this in December, 1541. They wrote: " ... There is great want of a supreme judge.

Many of the principal colonists, also, from the same wish to show their sense of his important services, sent to him, after he had embarked, a magnificent donative of fifty thousand gold castellanos. "As he had taken leave of Peru," they said, "there could be no longer any ground for declining it." But Gasca was as decided in his rejection of this present, as he had been of the other.

Contentions frequently occur among them, and if the magistrates of the island are unable to settle them, the cases are appealed to the Royal Council, the decisions of that tribunal being without appeal in the King's dominions of Castile. He gives its weight as 3600 castellanos, equivalent to thirty-five pounds.

Valdivia was sent back with these letters, and he was charged to deliver to the King's fiscal agent in Hispaniola the royal fifth due to the treasury, represented by three hundred pounds of gold, at eight ounces to the pound. This pound is called a marc in Spanish, and is composed of fifty gold pieces, called castellanos.

But Oviedo records several lumps of gold of considerable size: one was Bobadilla's lump, found, during his government, at Bonne Aventure, which was worth thirty-six hundred castellanos, or $19,153. This was lost at sea on the way to Spain.

Its rage made the journey by water I had planned to Ribera Castellanos inadvisable, even had an owner of one of the little open boats of the fishermen been willing to trust himself on its treacherous bosom, and by blazing eleven I was plodding back over the road of yesterday. The orange vendors of Atequisa gathered around me at the station, marveling at the strength of my legs.