the towns peopled by Spaniards had _cabildos_, or municipal councils, with _alcaldes_, or mayors, and aldermen; the Indians were governed through their _caciques_, whose authority was, and still is, recognized by the central government. One of the most illustrious of the viceroys, Don Francisco de Toledo, son of the Count of Oropesa, ruled Peru from 1567 to 1580, and his rigorous though well-ordered government marked a new epoch in the history of the colony. He began his administration by making a grand tour of all the provinces, during which he informed himself as to the needs of the people and the laws required for their well-being. Accompanied by the priests Ondegardo and Acosta, both of whom became celebrated afterward as historians of the Conquest, and having in his suite an _oidor_ and several eminent personages of his court, the great viceroy made an imposing progress, being received everywhere with a welcome fit for a king. Though autocratic in his methods, he was eminently successful in reforming the political organization of the country; the _corregidores_, _alcaldes_, municipal police, in fact, every employee of the government, received positive instructions as to the duties of his office. He abolished _encomiendas_ and obliged the Indians to live in communities, in each of which a church was built and priests were appointed to give the inhabitants religious instruction. Hundreds of these communities or _reducciones_ were founded by the viceroy’s order, and built up with adobe houses, straight, though narrow, streets, _cabildos_, jails, hospitals, and a tract of land to be held as community property and worked on shares. The viceroy also established a regular system for the labor by _mita_, or rotation, required of the Indians, as well as for the tribute they were obliged to pay from the age of eighteen to fifty; more than twelve thousand _mitayos_, as the rotation laborers were called, were consigned to the silver mines of Potosi, then at the height of their production, and three thousand to the mines of quicksilver in Huancavelica, recently discovered. The Crown granted ownership of the mines to any Spaniards who would guarantee to work them and to deliver to the king one-fifth of all the ores extracted, and the _mita_ was established in order to supply the necessary labor to work the mines; but so cruel was the oppression of the unhappy _mitayos_ that, it is said, only a tenth of them ever returned to their homes, the rest dying a miserable death under the heavy tasks inflicted on them by greedy and inhuman masters. The viceroys were charged, on the one hand, to protect the Indians, and on the other to increase by all means the royal fifth from the mines; their office was no sinecure. [Illustration: CHURCH OF THE COMPAÑIA, AREQUIPA, SHOWING EXQUISITE HAND CARVING.]