122 



COMMERCE. 



hard and callous skin, which prevents the free exudation from 

 the pores requisite to the preservation of health. 



The violent labours in the mines ; the immoderate intro- 

 dudlion of spirituous liquors ; and the oppressive service of 

 the met as*, which, separating the Indian from his little in- 

 heritance, and depriving him of the society of his wife and 

 children, forces him to banish himself to a distance of two or 

 three hundred leagues, exposed to all the inconveniences of 

 travelling, and to the diversity of climates, to be buried in 

 the gloomy bowels of the earth, where the air he respires is 

 replete with foul and pestilential vapours ; — all these causes 

 have so efFeftually conspired to their destru6tion, that the 

 number of Indians of the different classes, sexes, and ages, in 

 the whole of the jurisdidfion of the viceroyalty of Lima, does 

 not at this time amount to seven hundred thousand. 



A similar depopulation has been observed in the other parts 

 of South America. In the diocese of Mexico, which, accord- 

 ing to authentic documents, contained, in the year 1600, five 

 hundred thousand tributary Indians, not more than one hun- 

 dred and nineteen thousand six hundred and eleven could be 

 found, when an enumeration was made in 1741. The popu- 

 lation of the tribe of Los Angeles, which was estimated, at 

 the former of the above epochs, at two hundred and fifty -five 

 thousand souls, was reduced, at the latter, to eighty-eight 

 thousand two hundred and forty. That of Oaxaca, which 

 amounted to a hundred and fifty thousand, was diminished to 



* This personal service of the Indians, in the royal mines of Peru, is explained 

 in the note at the foot of page 78 



forty - 



0 



