298 BOOK LXXXIV. THE DESCRIPTION OF AMERICA CONTINUED. ed. Mexico, including New Mexico and the Captain-Generalship of Guatimala. General physical Description. Account of the Inhabitants. BOOK IT now remains for us to consider the human species. The LXXXIV. first official census, made in 1793, gave, as an approximating result, 4,483,500 inhabitants, as the minimum. Those Population Pnumerat- who examined the lists in detail, reasonably concluded that the great number of inhabitants who had evaded the general census, could not possibly be compensated for by those who, wandering without fixed habitation, had been counted several times. It was supposed that, at least, a sixth or a seventh ought to be added to the sum total, thus estimating the population of the whole of New Spain at 5,200,000 souls. Its increase. Since that period, the augmentation in the produce of tithes, and of the capitation of the Indians, that of all the taxes on articles of consumption, the progress of agriculture and of civilization, the appearance of a country covered with houses recently built, all combine to indicate a rapid increase of population in almost every part of the kingdom. The census has not, however, been renewed. M. de Humboldt BOOK has shown that the proportion of births to deaths, deduced LXXXIV. from a comparison of fifty years, is very nearly 170 to 100 at a medium. The proportion of births to the population appears to him to be as one to seventeen, and that of deaths, as one to thirty. He estimates the number of births at nearly 350,000, and that of deaths, at 200,000; so that, under favourable circumstances, the excess of births ought to be 150,000; and if nothing intervened or disturbed the order of nature, the population ought to be doubled every nineteen years.* Confining himself to the addition of only one-tenth for those who are omitted in the census, and of two-tenths of this for the increase of population in ten years, M. de Humboldt concluded that, at the close of the year 1803, the kingdom of Mexico must contain 5,800,000 inhabitants. According to the same progressive augmentation, Mexico ought to have contained, in 1815, a population of seven millions of inhabitants; but already, in 1810, the troubles of the interior had begun to overturn the kingdom. On the same principle, Mexico must have supported, in 1823, a population of 8,392,044; being about 60,000 more than 8,331,434, the population of England, exclusive of Wales and the public service, &c. in the census of 1811. Allowing half a million for wars, and the privations and diseases naturally incident to wars, eight millions still remain as a moderate estimate of the present population of this fine country. To Guatimala only a million of inhabitants are assigned, not including the Mosquito Indians, who are independent of Spain, and are allies of England. The physical causes that almost periodically check the Obstacles. increase of the Mexican population, are the small-pox, the matlazahuatl, a kind of plague, and especially poverty and famine. A. de Humboldt, Mexico, t. I. p. 324, 341. BOOK The smallpox. The small-pox was introduced in 1520, when, according LXXXIV. to the testimony of the Franciscan father Torribio, it carried off one-half of the inhabitants of Mexico. Returning like the black vomit, and many other diseases, at pretty regular periods, it committed dreadful ravages in 1763, and especially in 1779, when, in the captital of Mexico alone, more than 9000 persons fell a sacrifice to the disease, and it cut off a great part of the Mexican youth. The epidemic of 1797 was less destructive, chiefly in consequence of the zeal with which inoculation was performed. But since the month of January 1804, vaccination has been introduced into Mexico; and, thanks to the activity of Don Thomas Murphy, who has repeatedly obtained the virus from North America, this cause of the depopulation of Mexico will cease to exist for the future. The Mexi The mallazahuatl is said to be a disease peculiar to the can plague. race of Indians; and granting this to be the case, it shows itself only at very long intervals. It was particularly destructive in 1545, 1576, 1736, 1737, 1761, and 1762. Torquemada assures us that, in the first epidemic, 800,000 Indians died, and not less than two millions in the second, According to common opinion, this disease is identical with the yellow fever or black vomit; but, according to others, it ought to be looked upon as a genuine plague. The matlazahuatl, it is said, never attacks white persons, whether Europeans or descendants from Creoles; while, on the contrary, the yellow fever very rarely attacks the Mexican Indians. The neighbourhood of the sea is the situation which is chiefly liable to the black vomit; the matlazahuatl, on the contrary, carries dismay and death to the farthest interior of the country on the central plateau. These distinctions, however, appear to us to be delusive, or, at all events, but imperfectly ascertained. In the hot and humid valleys of the interior, the matlazahuatl finds as favourable a focus for the development of its miasmata as on the sea coast. In the ravages which it commits in the interior, this plague appears more especially to attack the Indians; because, constituting the principal part of the population, their wretchedness more completely exposes BOOK them to the effects of an epidemic. When desolating the LXXXIV. sea coasts, it appears to select its first and most numerous victims from among the European sailors and workmen that compose the great mass of the people. The symptoms of the two diseases, with which we are acquainted, bear a striking resemblance to each other. A third circumstance which proves exceedingly destruc- Famines. tive to the population, and perhaps becomes the most fatal of them all, is famine. Indolent by character, situated under a beautiful climate, and accustomed to content himself with little, the Indian cultivates only as much maize, potatoes, and wheat, as seems barely necessary for his actual subsistence, or, at the very most, as may be required for the consumption of the towns and mines in his immediate neighbourhood. Independently of this fact, agriculture is deprived of thousands of hands, in consequence of the necessity of transporting on the backs of mules their merchandise, provisions, iron, gunpowder, and mercury, from the coast to the capital, and thence to the mines and smelting houses, often established in arid and uncultivated regions. The disproportion between the natural progress of the population, and the increase of the quantity of aliments produced by cultivation, renews therefore the afflicting spectacle of famine every time that an excessively dry season, or other accidental cause, has ruined the harvest of maize. A want of provision is almost always accompanied by epidemic diseases. In 1804 alone, the maize having been destroyed by frost towards the end of August, it was estimated that more than 300,000 inhabitants were swept away in this kingdom, in consequence of want of nourishment and asthenic diseases. The civil war which has recently spread desolation over its surface, must have greatly increased the mortality annually arising from this circumstance. The 46,000 lives, which a late official paper states to have been sacrificed in this war of liberty, only comprehends those who died in battle. The number of slain nicious? BOOK at all times, constitutes merely a small portion of the loss LXXXIV. which the population of a country sustains by civil war.* For a long time the labour of the mines was looked upIs working in the on as one of the principal causes of the depopulation of mines per- America. It would, no doubt, be very difficult to deny that, at the period of its original conquest, and even long afterwards, a great number of Indians perished from excessive fatigue, want of nourishment and sleep, and especially from the sudden change of climate and temperature in passing from the summit of the Cordillera deep into the bowels of the earth, a change which renders the working of the mines so destructive to a race of men who are not endowed with that flexibility of organization which distinguishes the European. In the present day, however, the labour of the mines in New Spain is a voluntary occupation; no law forcing the Indian to engage in it, or to prefer the working of one mine to that of another. In general, the number of persons employed in these subterraneous works, and divided into several classes, does not exceed 28 or 30,000; and the mortality among the miners is not much greater than what is observed among the other orders of the people. Classes of the inha bitants. In Mexico the human species presents four great divisions, which comprehend eight casts; namely, (b) Creoles, born in America. (a) Africans, slaves. (b) descendants of negroes. IV. MIXED CASTS, (a) metis, the offspring of whites and |