Note 13 — Chapter XIII

The word caballería has many meanings, but probably only two are here involved; these are found in the supplement to Domínguez’s Diccionario nacional (ed. of 1878). One is, “In the Indias it is understood as the distribution of lands or seigniorial domains granted to the settlers or conquistadors in a country.” It is possible that the text refers to some of those military allotments, which might have descended unbroken to Maldonado’s time; but it is much more probable that he uses the word in the sense of a measure for land. Caballería, in Andalusia, means also the area of sixty fanegas (or 3.8758 hectares) of land. ↑