anxiously in the neighborhood of Acapulco to make a prize of the galeon which was to sail for the East Indies, laden with a rich cargo of silver to purchase oriental fabrics. But the inhabitants of Acapulco and the Audiencia were on their guard, and the vessel and treasure of New Spain escaped the grasp of the English adventurer.
Don Pedro Cebrian y Agustin, Count de Fuen-Clara. XL. Viceroy of New Spain. 1742–1746.
The Count de Fuen-Clara assumed the viceroyal baton on the 3d of November, 1742. His term of four years was passed without any events of remarkable importance for New Spain save the capture, by Anson, of one of the East Indian galeons with a freight of one million three hundred and thirteen thousand dollars in coined silver, and four thousand four hundred and seventy marks of the same precious metal, besides a quantity of the most valuable products of Mexico. This period of the viceroyalty must necessarily be uninteresting and eventless. The wars of the old world were confined to the continent and to the sea. Mexico, locked up amid her mountains, was not easily assailed by enemies who could spare no large armies from the contests at home for enterprises in so distant a country. Besides, it was easier to grasp the harvest on the ocean that had been gathered on the land. England contented herself, therefore, with harassing and pilfering the commerce of Castile, while Mexico devoted all her energies to the development of her internal resources of mineral and agricultural wealth. Emigrants poured into the country. The waste lands were filling up. North, south, east and west, the country was occupied by industrious settlers and zealous curates, who were engaged in the cultivation of the soil and the spiritual subjection of the Indians. The spirit as well as the dangers of the conquest were past, and Mexico, assumed, in the history of the age, the position of a quiet, growing nation, equally distant from the romantic or adventurous era of early settlement when danger and difficulty