Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/164

138 and will serve as a guide to the calculations of future politicians.

The first enumeration made in this capital, according to the documents which have been handed down to the present times, was in the year 1600, when the Marquis of Salinas was viceroy of Peru. The total number of the inhabitants amounted to fourteen thousand two hundred and sixty-two. An original note in manuscript, which refers to this subject, and which is in our possession, states that doubts were thrown on the accuracy of the above number, by suspicions of concealment on the part of the inhabitants, who were constantly disposed to apprehend that the registers of the population; were framed with a view to the levying of a new tribute. These doubts were in some measure justified in the progress of time.

In the year 1614, under the viceroyalty of the Marquis of Montes-Claros, an enumeration was made of the inhabitants, of Lima, within the limits of which twenty-five thousand four hundred and fifty-four persons were found. The augmentation of eleven thousand one hundred and ninety-two souls, in the lapse of fourteen years, which results, without the concurrence of any extraordinary causes, is so very rapid and: considerable, as to justify the opinion that there was an incorrectness in the preceding enumeration. Provided this was not the case, it is at least certain, that there never has been since, in the capital of Peru, so great an augmentation in a similar space of time.

His excellency Count Monclova, who was removed from the government of New Spain to that of Lima in the year 1689, being desirous to obtain a precise knowledge of the number