BENEVOLENT ESTABLISHMENTS. 



185 



tested. The alms were augmented yearly, and many pious 

 legacies bequeathed, until at length, in 1637, a particular 

 fund was assigned by the sovereign to the purposes of the 

 establishment. In 1648, the infants who had been admitted 

 were so numerous as to find employment for seventy nurses, 

 together with two masters for the young girls who were of an 

 age to receive instructions, and a master for the youths. It 

 should be noticed, that at the above time the population of 

 Lima scarcely amounted to the one half of what it does at pre- 

 sent ; but the children of spurious birth were proportionally 

 more numerous. 



In 1657, brotherhood became extremely opulent, the 

 privilege of becoming a member being no longer confined to 

 the class of notaries and receivers, but extended to every vir- 

 tuous member of society, whatever his profession might be, 

 on payment of the customary sum of thirty piastres. The 

 buildings and chapel having suffered greatly from the injuries 

 of time, and from the shocks of the earthquakes which have 

 been in every age the scourge of Peru, it was resolved to re- 

 build them. The established rents not sufficing, however, 

 for this undertaking, the inhabitants voluntarily came for- 

 ward, and subscribed in a few days ten thousand piastres. A 

 pension of three thousand piastres was settled, in 1669, on the 

 hospital, by the count of Lemos, the viceroy ; and this sum 

 was afterwards augmented to four thousand piastres. 



Such was the prosperous state of the establishment in ques- 

 tion, when the great earthquake of 1687 buried the orphan- 

 house in the deplorable ruins of the whole of the capital. The 

 funds were annihilated ; the brotherhood dispersed ; and the 

 wretched children, in want of an asylum, and of food, wan- 



B b dered 



