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Updated: June 25, 2025
But after the middle of the sixteenth century, the inhabitants were pillaged by the public enemies of the mother-country, and by private adventurers of all lands. And yet, in 1587, the year after Drake's expedition, their fleet carried home 48 quintals of cassia, 50 of sarsaparilla, 134 of logwood, 893 chests of sugar, each weighing 200 pounds, and 350,444 hides of every kind.
I know every one in the place and feel that I am acquiring the local accent through my prolonged conversations with the natives. I am utterly incapable of thinking of desirable parcels of real estate, and bonds leave me indifferent. I reckon in codfish now, like the rest of the population. I caught myself wondering, yesterday, how many quintals the Flatiron Building was worth."
There was not money enough of any kind, in many parts of the country, to pay the salaries of the ministers; so that they sometimes had to take quintals of fish, bushels of corn, or cords of wood, instead of silver or gold. As the people grew more numerous, and their trade one with another increased, the want of current money was still more sensibly felt.
The present cacique of the village of Simijaca alone threw into the lake forty loads of gold of one quintal each, carried by forty Indians from the village, as is proven by their own statements and those of the nephew of the cacique sent to escort the Indians." Forty quintals, Wilson computed, is £8820, which would make this single offering worth to-day $26,460,000!
They were so well stored of biscuit, that for the space of halfe a yeere they might allow eche person in the whole fleete halfe a quintall every moneth, whereof the whole summe amounteth unto an hundreth thousand quintals. "Likewise of wine they had 147,000 pipes, sufficient also for halfe a yeere's expedition. Of bacon, 6500 quintals. Of cheese, 3000 quintals.
To accomplish this object fresh advances to an enormous amount were necessary, for M. Ouvrard had to begin by furnishing 2,000,000 of quintals of grain at the rate of 26 francs the quintal. Besides all this, before he could realise a profit and be reimbursed for the advances he had made to the Treasury of Paris, he had to get the piastres conveyed from America to Europe.
The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady, which, I heard with interest, weighed fifty quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October.
Quintals of dried fish were piled up in one part of the store-room, in another, bundles of furs procured from the Indians, in a third, casks and barrels containing spirituous liquors, and elsewhere were stored cloths of various descriptions, and hardware, and staves and hoops, and, in short, almost everything necessary to prosecute a trade between the old country and the new.
"Their pieces of brazen ordinance were 1600, and of yron 1000. "The bullets thereto belonging were 120 thousand. "Item of gun-poulder, 5600 quintals. Of matche, 1200 quintals. Of muskets and kaleivers, 7000. Of haleberts and partisans, 10,000. "Moreover they had great store of canons, double-canons, culverings and field-pieces for land services.
As to provisions, they had above four hundred quintals of biscuit, five hundred bags of maize, and a large store of salt meat; so that they were victualled sufficiently for a considerable time, and they could easily procure water on any part of the coast.
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