2.29 America: a.d. 1501 to 1600  (Page 7/12)

Year by year the map of the New World was charted in gold, silver and blood. Quickly the Spaniards superimposed their own civilization and by 1539 there was a printing press and by 1551 a university in Mexico City. By mid-century some 20,000 Negroes had been brought to Cuernavaca and Vera Cruz. There were productive silver mines in Mexico by the 1540s. Thomas (Ref. 213) says that while the Spaniards conquered Central and South America on horses, mules sustained the conquest. Convoys carrying gold and silver and linking Lima, Cuzco, Panama, Vera Cruz and Mexico were established with these valuable animals. The great harbor at Porto Bello, Panama, became the most thriving town in the Americas as the Atlantic terminal of the mule track across the isthmus carrying the Spaniards' treasure from South America. (Ref. 95 , 8 , 213 , 150 ) Additional Notes

Some of the relative values of things in Central America may be seen in Braudel's (Ref. 292 ) comments about Panama in 1519. A horse was worth 24 1/2 pesos, an Indian slave 30 pesos and a skin of wine 100 pesos. Pedro de Alvarado, who had become governor of Guatemala, heard of rich lands in Peru and led an expedition of 500 men to Quito in 1534, by boat. It is probably an indication of the long time, extensive maritime experience of the people of that area that Alvarado's Indian navigator carried him directly from the Port of Iztopa (near present San Jose, Guatemala) to the Bay of Manta in Ecuador. That was a trip across open ocean of about 1,300 miles, minimum. Land travel, however, would have been at least 1,900 miles, not considering the ups and downs in the mountains, lake detours and the like through mountainous jungles that were actually probably almost impassable. (Ref. 36 )

The situation in the Caribbean Basin in this century deserves further discussion. By 1501 Spanish settlers in Hispaniola (Santa Domingo) had already introduced black slaves, the first in the New World. While Columbus was kept in the Spanish court, still under the cloud from his 3rd voyage, Amerigo Vespucci returned from the west Atlantic, proclaiming that there was an entire continent there, a fact which resulted eventually in its being named after him. Columbus was finally allowed a 4th trip, although refused permission to visit his old Santo Domingo domain. He had 150 men in 4 ships and they made the Atlantic crossing on the trade winds, landing on an island just south of Dominica in 21 days