The present book relates in vivid and graphic words the history of Mexico during the time that it served as a milch cow to the insatiable Spanish kings and their satellites. But for the gold and silver that came in the fleet from New Spain, when, indeed, it was not captured by English or Dutch rovers, the gigantic imposition of Spanish power in Europe could not have been maintained even as a pretence throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century as it was. For nearly three centuries one set of greedy Viceroys and high officials after another settled from the mother country upon unresisting Mexico and sucked its blood like vampires. Some of them, it is true, made attempts to palliate their rapacity by the introduction of improved methods of agriculture, mining, and the civilised arts, and Mexico, in close touch with Spain, was not allowed, as the neighbouring Spanish territory of the isthmus was, to sink into utter stagnation. The efforts of the Count of Tendilla to keep his Viceroyalty abreast of his times in the mid sixteenth century are still gratefully remembered, as is the name of his successor Velasco, who struck a stout blow for the freedom of the native Indians enslaved in the mines, and emancipated 150,000 of them. But on the whole, especially after the establishment of the Inquisition in Mexico, the story of the Spanish domination is generally one of greed, oppression, and injustice, alternating with periods of enlightened effort on the part of individual viceroys more high-minded than their fellows.