y. They came, not as religious teachers, but as spiritual
scavengers, who had consecrated their lives for gold to clean out the
road to heaven for the vilest sinners. Cortez, who had been the
greatest sinner, was now the greatest penitent. The whole city was
moved at the coming of these holy men, who carried the cross before
them, but forgot not the cards and the dice in their pockets--who
daily, in the mass, consecrated spiritual bread for famishing souls,
and at night spent the wages of their piety at the gambling-table. To
the surprise of his fellow-profligates, and to the astonishment of the
Indians, Cortez, walking bare-footed, led the procession that escorted
the monks from near the spot where his brigantines had sailed among the
corn-fields of Iztapalapan to the little chapel he had partly finished,
and which now stands in the yard of the Franciscans.[50] He was so
zealous in the performance of his devotions and his penances that he
won the affections of the holy fathers to such a degree that he ever
found faithful supporters in the powerful order of Saint Francis in all
his troubles at the Spanish court. The question of his sincerity
mattered little to them. It was the benefit of his public example which
they, above all things, desired in their search after golden treasures.
To get gold and to gratify their vices was their pious calling. Though
they boast of having baptized some 6000 Indians, this argues nothing,
except as it tends to show the numbers of the Indian population of the
valley; for, as a badge of their subjugation, the Indians received
Christian baptism; and truly it has been said of them, "They feared the
Lord, but served their graven images."

We have now a sadder tale to tell; one that philanthropists have
grieved over so often. Gold-washings are soon exhausted, but they
frequently lead to the discovery of silver mines, which become so
profitable as to drive away the very memory of the gold-washings. Thus
the fact that gold-washings ever existed in Mexico, or even in Brazil,
is almost forgotten, and the places where those washings were rests in
vague tradition.

But while gold is procured by the most simple process, to extract
silver requires science, and an immense expenditure of labor and
machinery, in delving to the very bowels of the earth, and in
separating the slight percentage of pure silver from the mass of ore.
In this exhausting labor, which is often assigned to convicts, Indians
were