252
CORN RIOT IN THE CAPITAL.
shed the capital of New Mexico, and received the submission of several other towns. In 1696 another revolt occurred, in which five missionaries and twenty colonists lost their lives and many towns were abandoned, but before the end of the year quiet was restored. Henceforth the natives continued submissive to Spanish rule.[1]
Owing to ill-health the viceroy had several times asked to be relieved, and his petition was finally granted in July of 1695. He left Mexico City on the 10th of May of the following year, and died soon after his arrival in Spain. His justice, moderation, zeal, and ability won for him the esteem of the people and the approval of the crown. At his residencia the oidor Charcon brought thirty charges against him, but failing to prove them was banished from the city.[2]
Prominent among noted Mexicans of colonial times stands Cárlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, a man of learning and varied attainments. A native of the capital, where he was born in 1645, he inherited his taste for study from his father, Cárlos de Sigüenza, a man of superior intelligence who had in his native country been instructor to the prince Don Baltazar Cárlos. At an early age he gave indications of possessing talents of a high order, and at seventeen such was the proficiency which he had attained in literature, mathematics, physics, and astronomy, that in Mexico, a country then almost void of educational facilities, he was regarded as a prodigy. This drew upon him the attention of the Jesuits, in whose order at that time centred the learning of New Spain. Seduced by the wiles of these crafty fathers, as some authors assert, Sigüenza, after a novitiate of less than two years at the college of Tepotzotlan, took his first vows on the fifteenth of August 1662. Under the instruction of the Jesuits, which at this period produced a Clavigero and an Alegre, Sigüenza continued his studies, perfecting himself in the classics, and acquiring the superior literary judgment and taste for archaeological studies which in later times added to his fame. After a few years' stay among the Jesuits, in his twentieth year he abandoned them and retired to the hospital of Amor de Dios in Mexico City, of which he had been appointed chaplain. Cavo, Tres Siglos, ii. 93, is the only author who gives any motive
statement and that of Cavo, already cited, disproving the prohibition of pulque, is only too apparent. Besides, Robles, who derived his information from the same source as the so-called Rivera, Diario, makes no allusion to this fact.
- ↑ Hist. N. Mex. States, i. 374-5, this series.
- ↑ Robles, Diario, ii. 193-8, 214; Ordenes de la Corona, MS., iii. 68; Rivera, Gob. Mex., i. 278.
