438 



sand. It certainly is not greater at Mexico than 

 sixty thousand ; and I find by several statements, 

 that, if we estimate the whole of the Spanish 

 colonies at fourteen or fifteen millions of inhabi- 

 tants, there are in this number at most three 

 millions of Creole Whites, and two hundred thou- 

 sand Europeans. 



When the young Tupac-Amaru, who believed 

 himself the legitimate heir to the empire of the 

 incas, made the conquest of several provinces 

 of Upper Peru, in 1781, at the head of forty 

 thousand Indian mountaineers, all the Whites 

 were seized with the same apprehensions. The 

 Hispano-Americans felt, like the Spaniards born 

 in Europe, that the contest was between the 

 Copper-coloured race and the Whites ; between 

 barbarism and civilization. Tupac- Amaru, who 

 himself was not destitute of intellectual cultiva- 

 tion, began with flattering the Creoles and the 

 European clergy ; but soon drawn on by events, 

 and the spirit of vengeance that inspired his 

 nephew, Andrew Condorcanqui, he changed his 

 plan. A rising for independence became a cruel 

 war between the different casts : the Whites were 

 conquerors, and, excited by a feeling of common 

 interest, from that period fixed a wakeful atten- 

 tion on the proportions, that exist in the different 

 provinces between their number and that of the 

 Indians. It was reserved for our times, to see 

 the Whites direct this attention toward them- 



