and of loyalty.

It had become necessary to tame the hostile Nayares Indians, who had
caused the Spaniards great trouble in the province of Jalisco; and in
this campaign Alvarado joined Mendoza. The Indians retreated to the top
of the huge and apparently impregnable cliff of the Mixton, and they
must be dislodged at any cost. The storming of that rock ranks with the
storming of Acoma as one of the most desperate and brilliant ever
recorded. The viceroy commanded in person, but the real achievement was
by Alvarado and a fellow officer. In the scaling of the cliff Alvarado
was hit on the head by a rock rolled down by the savages, and died from
the wound,--but not until he saw his followers win that brilliant day.

The man who, next to Alvarado, deserves the credit of the Mixton was
Cristobal de Onate, a man of distinction for several reasons. He was a
valued officer, a good executive, and one of the first millionnaires in
North America. He was, too, the father of the colonizer of New Mexico,
Juan de Onate. June 11, 1548, several years after the battle of the
Mixton, the elder Onate discovered the richest silver mines on the
continent,--the mines of Zacatecas, in the barren and desolate plateau
where now stands the Mexican city of that name. These huge veins of
"ruby," "black," arsenate, and virgin silver made the first
millionnaires in North America, as the conquest of Peru made the first
on the southern continent. The mines of Zacatecas were not so vast as
those developed at Potosi, in Bolivia, which produced between 1541 and
1664 the inconceivable sum of $641,250,000 in silver; but the Zacatecas
mines were also enormously productive. Their silver stream was the first
realization of the dreams of vast wealth on the northern continent, and
made a startling commercial change in this part of the New World.
Locally, the discovery reduced the price of the staples of life about
ninety per cent! Mexico was never a great gold country, but for more
than three centuries has remained one of the chief silver producers. It
is so to-day, though its output is not nearly so large as that of the
United States.

Cristobal de Onate was, therefore, a very important man in the working
out of destiny. His "bonanza" made Mexico a new country, commercially,
and his millions were put to a better use than is always the case
nowadays, for they had the honor of building two of the first towns in
our own United States.

IX.

THE AMERICAN