structed or repaired.[1] In order to relieve the city, the funds for these operations were obtained chiefly by means of a tax on imported wines.[2] By 1637 the expenditure on the drainage works had risen to nearly three millions. During the following decade only three hundred and thirty-eight thousand pesos were expended, and after that still smaller amounts, till 1768-77, when they rose to somewhat over half a million.[3]
Mexico was not very successful in her appeals to the virgin patrons, as we have seen, and her religious fortitude received a further shock from the circumstance that, just before her greatest misfortune, she had celebrated the canonization of the protomartyr San Felipe and enrolled him as one of her guardians. Among a population so largely composed of creoles, with an immense Indian support, all looking on New Spain as their native country, and regarding Spaniards from the peninsula with more or less antagonism—among such a people, deeply imbued with religious feeling, the possession of a national saint must have been ardently desired. This longing was finally satisfied in the person of Felipe de Jesus, the eldest of ten children born at Mexico to Alonso de las Casas[4] and his wife Antonia Martinez. Casas had grown rich as a trader in the capital, and eager for the redemption of his soul, he designated three of his six sons for the service of God. One, Juan, became an Augustinian, and found martyrdom at the Moluccas in 1607; another, Francisco by name, labored actively in the same order as a priest till 1630;[5] and
- ↑ By Father Garibay of Mexicaltzinco. Vetancurt, Chrón., 121.
- ↑ Of 25 pesos on the barrel, half going toward the fortifications at Vera Cruz. This tax continued to be levied, though in later years but a fraction was applied to the drainage. Fonseca, Hist. Hac., v. 368-9.
- ↑ Details of cost and amount of different work are given in the full official report of Cepeda, Relacion, pt. iii. 21, etc.; also in Instruc. Vireys, 263. Fonseca specifies 1,504,531 as expended during 1628-37, and 1,464,883 previously. Hist. Hac., v. 532.
- ↑ Wrongly called Canales by several writers.
- ↑ Named Francisco and dying on San Francisco's day, he must have had
