Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/115

Rh Census of the town of San Francisco de Lo Montaño, in Veragua, for the year 1825.

With regard to the above tables, Mr. Lloyd observes that the division into white and coloured is not strict. as most descendants of mestizos, and even mulattoes, if their circumstances are easy, are considered white. And also, that the excess of baptisms over deaths in the second table, multiplied by the five years intervening between its date, and that of the previous census, will not give the whole difference between the respective numbers:—whence he considers it probable that all those in the first are under-stated, and may be increased in the same proportion, in order to give the population in 1827. Some other observations, however, also occur respecting these tables; and may be advantageously inter-woven with the additional facts to be yet adduced.

It may reasonably be doubted, perhaps, how far tables of such extreme minuteness regarding a thinly-peopled, and by no means highly-civilized district, are quite so correct as they pretend to be;—but supposing them to approach the truth, a very remarkable disproportion is first observable between the males and females, both in the human species, and, as may be worthy notice, among brutes also, the return of men in Los Santos, in 1827, being 11,225 to 14,642 women; and of horses 4564, to 9544 mares. Of the first, above a half were whites, or so considered, all being creole, or born in the country. The remainder were coloured, chiefly Indians, condemned, by their position in society, to servile labour, at a low rate of wages and subsistence, but not slaves;—of which latter the return only gives 295 (probably Africans, but not so stated), out of the whole 26,000 inhabitants in the province. The deaths in 1827 were only one in twenty-eight, a very small mortality in a tropical climate; and confirming Mr. Lloyd's previous statements of the healthiness of the western districts of the department. The births were one in twenty-six persons, or thirteen couple,—the marriages were only one in 174 persons, or 87 couple. And they were more numerous among the coloured, than among the white population.