138 POPULATION". 



and will serve as a guide to the calculations of future po- 

 liticians. 



The first enumeration made in this capital, according to 

 the documents which have been handed down to the present 

 times, was in the year 1 600, when the Marquis of Salinas 

 was viceroy of Peru. The total number of the inhabitants 

 amounted to fourteen thousand two hundred and sixty-two.. 

 An original note in manuscript, which refers to this subject,, 

 and which is in our possession, states that doubts were throwa 

 on the accuracy of the above number, by suspicions of con- 

 cealment on the part of the inhabitants, who were constantly 

 disposed to apprehend that the registers of the population, 

 were framed with a view to the levying of a new tribute. 

 These doubts were in some measure justified in the progress of 

 time. 



In the year 1614, under the viceroyalty of the Marquis of 

 Montes-Claros, an enumeration was made of the inhabitants 

 of Lima, within the limits of which twenty-five thousand four 

 hundred and fifty-four persons were found. The augmenta- 

 tion of eleven thousand one hundred and ninety-two souls, in 

 the lapse of fourteen years, which results, without the con- 

 currence of any extraordinary causes, is so very rapid and 

 considerable, as to justify the opinion that there was an incor- 

 re6tness in the preceding enumeration. Provided this was not 

 the case, it is at least certain, that there never has been since, 

 in the capital of Peru, so great an augmentation in a similar 

 space of time. 



His excellency Count Monclova, who was removed from 

 the government of New Spain to that of Lima in the year 

 1689, being desirous to obtain a precise knowledge of the 



number 



