at not more than six thousand a year. ¹ It is difficult,
moreover, to see where and how any such number
as Campillo suggests could have got transportation,
for the fleet system was on the steady decline after
the treaty of Utrecht ( 1713).

In the previous centuries, notwithstanding the
first excitement of the conquests of Mexico and
Peru, there were no agencies of colonial companies
nor any system of indentured servants such as sup-
plied the English colonies. A record of the expense
of crossing the Atlantic in the sixteenth century was
made by the Englishman Miles Philips, who in
1581 paid sixty pesos for a passage from Honduras
to Spain, and provided his own chickens and bread. ²
The peso in Mexico at this time is usually the gold
peso, which was equivalent to about three dollars.
The legal fare for such as secured passage on the
war galleons was twenty silver ducats. ³

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