THE CALLEJÓN DEL MUERTO
pinas to live here in the City of Mexico; and he came in the time when the Viceroy was the Marqués de Villa Manrique, and most likely as the result of that Viceroy's doings and orderings: because the Marqués de Villa Manrique gave great attention to enlarging the trade with the East through the Filipinas—as was found out by the English corsairs, so that Don Francisco Draco, who was the greatest pirate of all of them, was able to capture a galleon laden almost to sinking with nothing but silver and gold.
With Don Tristan, who was of an elderliness, came his son to help him in his merchanting; and this son was named Tristan also, and was a most worthy young gentleman, very capable in the management of mercantile affairs. Having
in their purses but a light lining, their commerce at its beginning was of a smallness; and they took for their home a mean house in a little street so poor and so deserted that nobody had taken the trouble to give a name to it: the very street that ever since their time has been called the Alley of the Dead Man—because of what happened as the result of Don Tristan's unfulfilled vow. That they were
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