Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/213

Rh. The alms were augmented yearly, and many pious legacies bequeathed, until at length, in 1637, a particular fund was assigned by the sovereign to the purposes of the establishment. In 1648, the infants who had been admitted were so numerous as to find employment for seventy nurses, together with two masters for the young girls who were of an age to receive instructions, and a master for the youths. It should be noticed, that at the above time the population of Lima scarcely amounted to the one half of what it does at present; but the children of spurious birth were proportionally more numerous.

In 1657, the brotherhood became extremely opulent, the privilege of becoming a member being no longer confined to the class of notaries and receivers, but extended to every virtuous member of society, whatever his profession might be, on payment of the customary sum of thirty piastres. The buildings and chapel having suffered greatly from the injuries of time, and from the shocks of the earthquakes which have been in every age the scourge of Peru, it was resolved to rebuild them. The established rents not sufficing, however, for this undertaking, the inhabitants voluntarily came forward, and subscribed in a few days ten thousand piastres. A pension of three thousand piastres was settled, in 1669, on the hospital, by the count of Lemos, the viceroy; and this sum was afterwards augmented to four thousand piastres.

Such was the prosperous state of the establishment in question, when the great earthquake of 1687 buried the orphan-house in the deplorable ruins of the whole of the capital. The funds were annihilated; the brotherhood dispersed; and the wretched children, in want of an asylum, and of food, dered