to the old sovereign continued unabated; and during the unusually long and successful government of this viceroy, the greatest cordiality and confidence was maintained between himself and his royal master.
Casa-Fuerte despatched a colony of emigrants from the Canary Isles to Texas, and establishing a town for their occupation, he modestly refused the proffered honor of bestowing upon it his name, but caused it to be called San Fernando, in honor of the heir of the Spanish crown. Nor did he neglect commerce whilst he attended to a discreet colonization in the north which might encounter and stay the southern progress of the English and the French. In 1731, the oriental trade of New Spain had become exceedingly important. The galeons that regularly passed across the Pacific, from the East Indies, and arrived every year in America about Christmas, had enjoyed almost a monopoly of the Indian trade in consequence of the wars which continually existed during that century and filled the northern and southern Atlantic with pirates and vessels of war. The Pacific, however, was comparatively free from these dangers, and the galeons were allowed to go and come with but little interruption. The American Creoles, in reality preferred the manufactures of China to those of Europe; for the fabrics of silk and cotton, especially, which were sent to Mexico from Asia, had been sold at half the price demanded for similar articles produced in Spain. The galeon of 1731, which discharged its cargo in Acapulco, bore a freight of unusual value, whence we may estimate the Mexican commerce of that age. The duties collected upon this oriental merchandise exceeded one hundred and seventy thousand dollars, exhibiting an extraordinary increase of eastern trade with Mexico, compared with thirty-five years before, when the impost collected on similar commerce in 1697, amounted to but eighty thousand dollars. The anxiety to preserve the mercantile importance of Cadiz and to prevent the ruin of the old world's commerce, interposed many difficulties in the trade between the East Indies and New Spain; but the influence of Spanish houses in Manilla still secured the annual galeon, and the thrifty merchants stowed the vessels with nearly double the freight that was carried by similar ships on ordinary voyages. Acapulco thus became the emporium of an important trade, and its streets were crowded with merchants and strangers from all parts of Mexico in spite of the dangerous diseases with which they were almost sure to be attacked whilst visiting the western coast.
