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Rh forty-four thousand two hundred and twenty-two. In all the other districts there was a proportionate diminution.

This immense vacuity is not to be ascribed to the Spanish possessions alone: it appears to be the destiny of all uncultivated and savage nations, to be extinguished by a proximity to, and communication with, those that are civilized and enlightened. The five powerful nations of Canada, which, in 1530, brought fifteen thousand warriors into the field, could not, at the present time, assemble three thousand. In 1730, thirty thousand natives resided on the western coast of Greenland: the numbers were reduced, in 1746, to nineteen thousand; and in 1770, did not amount to seven thousand.

To repair, in the Americas, this very mischievous deficiency, recourse was had to the introduction of negroes at a very early date after the discovery. If it were to our purpose to dwell on the totality of the supplies drawn from Africa, and which, on a fair estimate, may amount annually to forty thousand, we should find, that since the year 1517, the epoch of the first importation, to that of 1790, nearly eleven millions of these unfortunate creatures have been transplanted from their native soil. But, setting aside those required by other nations for their establishments, the annual importation into the viceroyalty of Lima may be regulated at five hundred, that number coming the nearest to the computation of the ninth article of the assiento treaty.

The Africans thus imported are, however, so many individuals lost to the growth of the population. The radical defeat of the climate, which, in the new world, according to the opinion of several celebrated naturalists, resists the multiplication of the human species, is sensibly evinced in the groes,