; ... they
produce from 1,500 to 2,000 pesos profit every gang (demora).... I
send in this ship, with Juan Viscaino, 8,000 pesos and 40 marks of
pearls. There remain in my possession 17,000 pesos and 70 marks of
pearls, which shall be sent by the next ship in obedience to your
Highness's orders, not to send more than 10,000 pesos at a time. The
pearls that go now are worth that amount. Until the present we sent
only 5,000 pesos' worth of pearls at one time."
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. Some new deposit was discovered in the river
Daguao, but it does not seem to have been of much importance. From the
year 1530 the reports of the crown officers are full of complaints of
the growing scarcity of gold; finally, in 1536, the last remittance
was made; not, it may be safely assumed, because there was no more
gold in the island, but because those who had labored and suffered in
its production, had succumbed to the unaccustomed hardships imposed on
them and to the cruel treatment received from their sordid masters.
Besides the river mentioned, the majority of those which have their
sources in the mountains of Luquillo are more or less auriferous.
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