aster; for the
peculiar hydrographic conditions of the Valley of Mexico rendered it
liable to floods, the first of which had occurred 1553. In 1580 plans
were formulated for drainage by means of a canal which should give
outlet through the surrounding hills. In 1603 this project was again
brought forward and again abandoned; and in 1607 work was actually
begun, with a force of nearly half a million Indians, upon the great
cut of Nochistongo, which still exists and lies open to the view of the
traveller upon the Mexican railway to-day.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century the ports of New Spain,
especially Vera Cruz, were visited by those enterprising and
unscrupulous sea-rovers of Britain, Drake, Cavendish, Hawkins, and
others, who took toll of coast towns and plate-ships throughout the
regions which Spain claimed as her own, but which pretensions were not
respected by others of the maritime nations of Europe. A memorable
period was this in the history of the New World, as of the Old, for
this flood-tide of staunch buccaneers from Britain and Holland did but
swell onward and culminate in the defeat of the Invincible Armada off
the Elizabethan coast, 1588. The student of the history of Spanish
America at this period will not spare much sympathy for Spain and
Spanish misrule. Under Philip II. a constant drain of treasure from
Mexico and Peru for the needy Mother Country had given rise to serious
abuses in the mines, and silver was extracted to fabulous values and
sent to Spain under the system of forced labour.

[Illustration: GUANAJUATO AS SEEN FROM THE HILLS: THE HISTORIC
TREASURE-HOUSE OF MEXICO.]

In 1622 acute questions arose between the Court and ecclesiastical
authorities, as ever inevitably took place in Spain's colonial
dominions. Bishops excommunicated viceroys, and viceroys fulminated
banishment against bishops: riotings and beheadings followed, and royal
interpositions were constantly necessary to uphold or condemn the
action of one or the other side. In 1629 an appalling inundation of the
City of Mexico took place, following a similar occurrence in 1622, due
to the discontinuance of the drainage works which had earlier been
begun; and it is stated that thirty thousand of the poor inhabitants of
the valley perished as a result. Two years later acute dissatisfaction
began to arise at the great acquisition of wealth and power by the
clergy, and a memorial sent to Philip IV. by the municipality of Mexic