AMERICAN MINES. CHAP. xxn. 



towards civilization had been made. The country 

 was divided into regular provinces, was subject to 

 one chief who ruled them by his deputies, and who 

 by an hereditary right seemed to have exercised the 

 offices of magistrates and priests. Whatever rude 

 institutions existed were under their protection, 

 and they were the sole possessors of that kind of 

 knowledge which, slight as it may be, was suf- 

 ficient to keep the great body of the people in tran- 

 quil submission to the power that was exercised. 



When the Spaniards invaded the country, the 

 opposition that was offered originated with these 

 privileged classes, and they were the chief victims 

 of the conquest. The royal, the noble, and the 

 priestly families were almost wholly destroyed, 

 either by the contests, or by the victors after all 

 regular opposition had ceased. The mass of the 

 people, though they had been thinned in their 

 numbers by war and famine, still remained without 

 any such diminution as could make a scarcity of 

 labourers. Though there was abundance of la- 

 bourers, there was a want of inducements to labour. 

 The soil supplied with little exertion the slight 

 and inferior food they needed. Their clothing 

 and their residences were of a description suitable 

 to a climate where the severity of seasons is un- 

 known. Their knowledge of the arts of life and 

 their skill in the exercise of them had reached 

 only the very lowest steps of improvement, and 

 those who had conducted them to that step wer6 



