It may seem strange to a generation accustomed to read day by day the notice of events occurring in the most remote parts of the globe almost as soon as they happen, that a nation such as Spain, possessing as it did enormous foreign possessions, could have been contented with receiving news concerning their progress once only in the course of each year. Such, however, was nearly always the case, until about the year 1740, when register ships were permitted. Previously to that date the annual fleet of _galleons_ was the sole means of postal communication between the mother country and her South American possessions. It is true that news of passing transatlantic events occasionally reached Spain through other nations, whose intercourse with her colonies it was her constant object to repress. It was not until the year 1764 that packet-boats were appointed to be despatched on the first day of each month from Coruña to _Havana_ or _Porto Rico_; whence letters were conveyed in smaller vessels to _Vera Cruz_ and _Porto-Bello_, to be forwarded from there to the north or to the south, as the case might be. A packet-boat sailed once in each two months for the river _Plata_, to supply the districts on the eastern side of the _Andes_. As these packet-boats were permitted to take out and to bring home a stated amount of produce, Coruña, from this time forward, shared with Cadiz the profits of the colonial trade. [Sidenote: 1774.] The year 1774 marks a further advance in Spanish liberal colonial legislation, the Viceroyalty or provinces of _New Spain_, _Guatemala_, _Peru_, and _New Granada_, respectively, being permitted the privilege of free-trade with each other. This was followed, four years later, by the promulgation of an entirely new commercial code for the Indies, the consideration of which more naturally falls within the chapter relating to the Viceroyalty of _Buenos Ayres_. I may conclude this _resumé_ of the Viceroyalty of _Peru_ by a statement of the actual profit in specie, which the mother country is estimated to have derived from that possession.