The amount of the treasure is greatly underestimated in the foregoing assertion, for the annual voyage of the plate fleet had carried to Spain an average lading worth from thirty to forty million dollars, and this doomed flota bore the accumulated treasure of three years. Not more than ten million dollars in bullion and merchandise could have been looted by the Dutch and English victors, according to the most reliable official records. Our enthusiastic friend, Signor Don Carlos Iberti, he who had been "flying from province to province," in behalf of the latest treasure company of Vigo Bay, dug deep into the musty records of the "Account Books of the Ministry of Finance, of the Colonies, of the Royal Treasury, of the Commercio of Cadiz, of the Council of the West Indies," and so on, and can tell you to the last peso how much gold and silver was sent from the mines of America in the treasure fleets, and precisely the value of the shipments entrusted to the magnificent flota of 1702. A score of English authorities might be quoted to confirm what has been said of the vastness of this lost treasure. The event was the sensation of the time in Europe, and many pens were busy chronicling in divers tongues the details of the catastrophe and the results thereof. In a letter from Madrid which reached England a few days after the event, the writer lamented: "Yesterday an express arrived from Vigo with the melancholy news that the English and Dutch fleets came before that place the 22nd past and having made themselves masters of the mouth of the river, in less than two hours took and burnt all the French men-of-war and galleons in the harbour. We have much greater reason to deplore our misfortune in silence and tears than to give you a particular account of this unspeakable loss, which will hasten the utter ruin of this our monarchy. "The inhabitants of this place, not being able to re-collect themselves from their consternation, have shut up their houses and shops for fear of being plundered by the common people who exclaim publicly against the government, and particularly against Cardinal Porto Carrero and others of the Council, who not being content with the free gift of three millions offered to the king out of the galleons, besides an _indulto_ of two millions, hindered the landing of the plate at Vigo before the enemy arrived there. But the Cardinal laid the blame upon the Consultat of Seville, who, mistrusting the French, would not suffer them to carry the galleons to Brest or Port Lewis, but gave orders that they should sail back from Vigo to Cadiz after the English and Dutch fleets were returned home. 'Tis said that only three of the galleons put their cargo ashore before the arrival of the enemy."