COMMERCE, 



121 



than Irvventy thousand measures* of corn. Throughout the 

 extent of the kingdom, it is added, from eight to ten thousand 

 square leagues of the richest land in Europe lie without 

 culture. 



Such a reduction of the ancient population must be liighly 

 detrimental to the prosperity of Spain ; but that of Peru being 

 still more considerable, is attended by more serious losses, and 

 renders the application of a remedy proportionably difficult. 

 In the enumeration which was made in 1 5 5 1 , by virtue of a 

 royal mandate, the commissioners appointed for that purpose 

 returned eight millions two hundred and fifty-five thousand 

 ■Indians of either age and sex ; but as the population of the 

 provinces which now form the viceroyalties of Santa Fe and 

 Buenos- Ayres was comprehended in this number, the aggre- 

 gate amount does not militate against the principle which it 

 has been the aim of this dissertation to establish, that America 

 has always been a country thinly peopled. 



The depopulation which is so much to be deplored, has 

 been, however, accelerated in an extreme degree, by the 

 multiplied causes which, in two centuries and a half, have 

 united to contribute to the extermination of the Indians. The 

 small-pox, unknown in Peru until the year 1588, was the 

 devastating scourge of that nation, as it has constantly been 

 of every uncivilized tribe, the individuals constituting which, 

 expose, by their nudity, the body to the impressions of the 

 air, and acquire, by the use of pigments and oleaginous fric- 

 tions, to preserve them from the annoying bites of inserts, a 



* The measure :(Janega)^ the half of the sextier, weighs about 120 pounds. 



R hard 



