The legal measures of land and water of New Spain

Spanish America measured water as an aperture, not a volume: a buey was a hole one vara square, subdivided into surcos, naranjas, reales and pajas, so that a grant was a fixed share of a moving stream. The same formulary fixes the caballeria at 1,104 by 552 varas and prints the cedulas on the 600 varas owed to every Indian pueblo - together with the landowners' brief against them. Its fifth edition appeared in 1868, still in force.