r 19S 



contain twelve thousand. Mr. Depons, in his 

 valuable work on the province of Caraccas, gives 

 Cumana, in 1802, near twenty- eight thousand 

 inhabitants ; others have carried this number, 

 for the year 1810, to thirty thousand. When 

 we consider the slowness, with which the po- 

 pulation increases in Terra Firma, I do not 

 speak of the country, but in the towns, we must 

 doubt whether Cumana be already a third more 

 populous than Vera Cruz, the principal port of 

 the vast kingdom of New Spain. It is even 

 easy to prove, that in 1802 the population 

 scarcely exceeded eighteen or nineteen thousand 

 souls. I was favoured w T ith a sight of the dif- 

 ferent memoirs, which the government had pro- 

 cured to be drawn up on the statistics of the 

 country, at the time when the question was agi- 

 tated, whether the revenue of the farm of tobac- 

 co could be replaced by a personal tax ; and I 

 flatter myself, that my estimation rests on solid 

 foundations. 



An enumeration made in 1792 gives Cumana 

 but 10740 inhabitants, reckoning the suburbs 

 and scattered houses a league around. Don 

 Manuel Navarete, an officer of the treasury, 

 asserts, that the error of this enumeration cannot 

 be a third, or even a fourth of the whole number. 

 On comparing the annual registers of baptisms, 

 we observe but a feeble increase from 1790 to 

 1800. The women, it is true, are extremely 



