In 1515 a fresh discovery of gold-bearing earth in this locality was reported to the king by Sancho Velasquez, the treasurer, who wrote on April 27th:  " ...  At 4 leagues’ distance from here rich gold deposits have been found in certain rivers and streams.  From Reyes (December 4th) to March 15th, with very few Indians, 25,000 pesos have been taken out.  It is expected that the output this season will be 100,000 pesos.”

The streams in the neighborhood of San German, on the south coast, the only other settlement in the island at the time, seem to have been equally rich.  The year after its foundation by Miguel del Toro the settlers were able to smelt and deliver 6,147 pesos to the royal treasurer.  The next year the king’s share amounted to 7,508 pesos, and Treasurer Haro reported that the same operation for the years 1517 and 1518 had produced $186,000 in all—­that is, 3,740 for the treasury.

A good idea of the island’s mineral and other resources at this period may be formed from Treasurer Haro’s extensive report to the authorities in Madrid, dated January 21, 1518.

" ...  Your Highness’s revenues,” he says, “are:  one-fifth of the gold extracted and of the pearls brought by those who go (to the coast of Venezuela) to purchase them, the salt produce and the duties on imports and exports.  Every one of the three smeltings that are practised here every two years produces about 250,000 pesos, in San German about 186,000 pesos.  But the amounts fluctuate.

“The product of pearls is uncertain.  Since the advent of the Jerome fathers the business has been suspended until the arrival of your Highness.  Two caravels have gone now, but few will go, because the fathers say that the traffic in Indians is to cease and the greatest profit is in that ...  On your Highness’s estates there are 400 Indians who wash gold, work in the fields, build houses, etc.; ... they produce from 1,500 to 2,000 pesos profit every gang (demora)....  I send in this ship, with Juan Viscaino, 8,000 pesos and 40 marks of pearls.  There remain in my possession 17,000 pesos and 70 marks of pearls, which shall be sent by the next ship in obedience to your Highness’s orders, not to send more than 10,000 pesos at a time.  The pearls that go now are worth that amount.  Until the present we sent only 5,000 pesos’ worth of pearls at one time.”

The yearly output of gold fluctuated, but it continued steadily, as Velasquez wrote to the emperor in 1521, when he made a remittance of 5,000 pesos.  Six or seven years later, the placers, for such they were, were becoming exhausted.  Castellanos, the treasurer, wrote in 1518 that only 429 pesos had been received as the king’s share of the last two years’ smelting.  Some new deposit was discovered in the river Daguao, but it does not seem to have been of much importance.  From the year 1530 the reports of the crown officers are full of complaints of the growing scarcity of gold; finally, in 1536, the last remittance was made; not, it may be safely assumed, because there was no more gold in the island, but because those who had labored and suffered in its production, had succumbed to the unaccustomed hardships imposed on them and to the cruel treatment received from their sordid masters.