ven intendencies, which comprehend one thousand three hundred and sixty towns, and the forty-nine departments, as they are now named, to which the seventy-seven jurisdictions that, prior to this establishment, formed its government, have been reduced.
The population does not correspond to so great an extent of territory. According to the highest computation, the number of its inhabitants does not exceed a million; in which amount are included four hundred thousand Indians, the remainder consisting either of whites, or of individuals of the different casts. This estimate, when compared with the exaggerated relations of the enemies of the Spaniards, who have endeavoured to tarnish their laurels by the odious epithet of the exterminators of the Americans, holds out to the view an immense depopulation; but is conformable to the degree of industry and subsistence attained by the nations by whom these territories were anciently occupied.
In reality, it is not possible to believe, that, in the short space of time which elapsed between the year 1513, the epoch of the first expeditions to Peru, and the year 1517, that of the first regular importation of negroes[1], intended to supply the sensible deficiency of hands requisite for the cultivation of the grounds, so much blood should have been spilled, and so
- ↑ Fernando the Catholic conveyed, on his own private account, several negroes to America in the year 1510; but the exclusive privilege was granted to an individual named Chevris, in 1516. The latter ceded this right, for the sum of twenty three thousand ducats, to a company of Genoese merchants, by whom the first debarkation, consisting of five hundred Africans, and as many females, was made in the island of St. Domingo, at the commencement of the year 1517. See the Discourse on the Origin of the Slave Trade.
