into a Spanish aristocracy, half-caste artisans and mechanics, and Indian cultivators and servants.[1] Something like this seems to be the general division, and if it embraced all the inhabitants of the country, it would mean that the families of Spanish descent were an insignificant minority who must sooner or later be absorbed into the inferior population. Statistics, in fact, show that the whites so-called are only as one in eight of the whole nation of Ecuador. Now Ecuador is a good specimen of a country in which the white race holds its own. When we go farther north, we find Mr. Boyle, a very acute observer, and who spent some time in Central America, declaring his conviction, "that the descendants of the Spaniards, after the lapse of three centuries, are still but squatters in the land; round them on every side are the sons of the old races."[2] Mr. Boyle estimates the free Indians of Guatemala at 1,000,000 at least; and official statistics declare that in the capital itself only one-tenth are pure-blooded whites. That anything like an accurate census has been taken, or is possible in these countries, may be doubted. Wild Indians will not give in returns; and among the free the tendency till lately must always have been to claim affinity with the dominant caste. Meanwhile, it may be noticed of the capital of Guatemala, that Whetham declares few of the inhabitants to have Spanish blood,[3] and of Mexico, that the Europeans, who in 1810 were classed as one in six of the population,
- ↑ Curtis's Capitals of Southern America, p. 329.
- ↑ Boyle's Ride Across a Continent, vol. i. p. 157.
- ↑ Across Central America, p. 22. Mr. Boyle says that in Masaya, 4 miles distant from Granada, out of 18,000 inhabitants nine-tenths are pure-blooded Indians. He adds a striking testimony to the thickness of the old Indian population: "In no part of the country, savannah, shore, or forest, can you dig without encountering pottery."—Ride Across a Continent, p. 7.
