194 



fruitful, especially the natives ; but though the 

 small-pox be yet unknown in this country, the 

 mortality of infants is prodigious, on account 

 of the extreme carelessness in which they live, 

 and the pernicious custom of eating green and 

 indigestible fruits. The number of births* ge- 

 nerally amounts from five hundred and twenty 

 to six hundred, which indicates at most a popu- 

 lation of sixteen thousand eight hundred souls. 

 We may be assured, that all the Indian children 

 are baptised, and inscribed on the registers of 

 the parishes ; and supposing, that the popula- 

 tion in 1800 had been twenty-six thousand souls, 

 there would have been but one single birth to 

 forfy-three individuals ; while the ratio of births 

 to the whole population is in France as twenty- 

 eight to a hundred, and in the equinoctial regi- 

 ons of Mexico as seventeen to a hundred. 



It is to be presumed, that the Indian suburb 



* The following are the results which I drew from the 

 registers communicated to me by the parish priests of Cu- 

 raana. Births in the year 1798, in the district of the Curas 

 rectoreSf 237 ; in the district of the Curas castrenses, 57 ; in 

 the suburb of the Guayquerias, or parish of Alta Gracia, 

 209 : i he suburb of the Serritoes, or parish of Socorro, 19, 

 Tota 522. We see, by these parish registers, the great fe- 

 cundity of the Indian marriages : for though the suburb of 

 the Guayquoriacj contains a number of individuals of other 

 tribe, we ^e struck with the quantity of children born on 

 this left bank of the Manzanares. Their number amounts to 

 two fifths of the whole births. 



