232 QUITO. 



earthquakes. This was true at the time of our visit, and, 

 should we pass through the city now, we would find many 

 a ruin added by the late terrible earthquake of August 

 16, 1868, which entirely destroyed its sister cities, Ibarra, 

 Otovalo, and Atantaqui, situated in the northern prov- 

 inces of the valley. 



Quito contains a mixed Indian and Spanish population 

 of forty thousand ; the Negro element being scarcely rep- 

 resented. This city, in the preservation of the aboriginal 

 inhabitants, presents, in common with most other Hispano- 

 American towns, an anomaly in the history of coloniza- 

 tion. In North America we witness the indigenous 

 population swept away before the tide of Anglo-Saxon 

 civilization ; in Australia and New Zealand the primitive 

 inhabitants are rapidly becoming extinct upon the advance 

 of Europeans; Southern Africa presents a repetition of 

 this same fact ; in the East-Indian Archipelago the natives 

 of many of the islands have been extirpated by the more 

 energetic Malay race ; in Van Diemen's Land the entire 

 population was swept from the island in less than thirty 

 years after its settlement by Europeans, a portion being 

 lemoved to save them from entire extinction.* In view- 

 ing such facts as these, we are almost led to the adoption 

 of what has been termed the " Spencerian theory," and to 

 look for the future of mankind only in the " survival of 

 the fittest." But Hispano- America, as we have remarked, 

 presents an exception. There the native population was 

 spared, all barriers between the races were thrown down, 

 and the way left open to unrestrained and unparalleled 

 amalgamation. The deterioration attending this com- 

 mingling of Spanish and Indian races is painfully appar- 

 ent. "We observe a loss of intellectual force, a union of 

 the worst qualities of botli, of which there is no lack in 

 either, and an elimination of all the essential elements of 



* " Naturalist's Voyage round the World," Darwin. 



