i 



210 



Mixteca and the Tzapoteca of the old Mexican 

 empire. This intendance is one third smaller 

 than the two provinces of Cumana and Barce- 

 lona * : yet it contains more than four hundred 

 thousand natives of the pure copper coloured 

 race -f\ The Indians of Cumana do not all live 

 assembled in the Missions. Some are found 

 dispersed in the neighbourhood of towns, along 

 the coasts, to which they are attracted by the 

 fisheries, and even in the little farms of the 

 plains or savannahs. The Missions of the Arra- 

 gonese Capuchins, which we visited, alone con- 

 tain fifteen thousand Indians, almost all of the 

 Chayma race. The villages however are less 

 populous there, than in the province of Barce- 

 lona. Their average population is only be- 

 tween five or six hundred Indians ; while 

 more to the west, in the Missions of the Fran- 

 ciscans of Piritoo, we find Indian villages of two 

 or three thousand inhabitants. In computing at 

 sixty thousand the number of the natives in the 

 provinces of Cumana and Barcelona, I have 

 considered only those who inhabit the main 

 land, and not the Guayquerias of the Island of 

 Margaretta, and the great mass of the Guaraou- 

 noes, who have preserved their independence in 



* The area of the two provinces is 6100 square leagues^ 

 of 25 to a degree. 



t Nouv. E*p. , T. i, p. 77, and 262. 



