BOOK FOR GOLD-SEEKERS.             485
580,200 pieces of eight, and the ineffectual ransom of Adahualpa cost the unfortunate Inca a sum exceeding $I5,o00,000 of our money. The Spanish army in Peru received and sent home four times as much as the followers of Cortez sent from Mexico. It is diverting to observe how the ill-gotten gains operated precisely as the discovery of a bonanza does in a mining camp. The chronicler says: "Every article rose in value. A quire of paper sold for ten pieces of eight, a bottle of wine for sixty, a sword for forty or fifty, a cloak for a hundred, a pair of shoes for thirty or forty, and a horse for twentyfive hundred." A piece of eight was equivalent to an ounce of gold.
It is assumed that Spain drew from her American possessions in the first half of the sixteenth century $40,ooo,ooo of gold, the estimate will be liberal; but it was enough to revolutionize commerce throughout the world and to lead Spain to adopt the policy which crippled her energies, stifled her intellect, and reduced her in three centuries to such a condition of decrepitude that she became the laughing stock of the nations. In the meantime, however, her best blood flowed across the ocean to America and founded nations which promise to outstrip the mother country in the true elements of greatness.
From the spoliation of the South and Central American countries in the first half of the sixteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth there was no startling discovery of gold anywhere. The world's stock kept steady, the loss from abrasion and accident being just about balanced by the production of the working mines.