Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/221

Rh the viceroy, count Superunda, and his successors, to promote the erection of the building by every possible means. The hospital was not completed until 1770, at which time the viceroys were constituted sole patrons, and the administration vested in the above-mentioned Don Joseph De Guevara. It was constructed in the district del Cercado, in the vicinity of a religious community having the spiritual care of the Indians, to the end that the poor might profit by their instructions. Many necessitous persons were collected, conducted thither, and treated by the pious administrator with a paternal love and a generous compassion. By one of those miracles which have frequently attracted the public admiration, the blind suddenly recovered their sight, the cripples walked, and the impotent found the use of their limbs. The mask of fiction and falsehood was thrown off; and the vile vagabonds, the lazy impostors, the feigned sick, were quickly healed, and converted into useful subjects who laboured in the service of the public for their support. The number of truly necessitous poor, and invalids, was so much reduced, that ninety-six only could be found to occupy the hospital. With the exception of the fifteen hundred piastres assigned to the foundation by the sovereign, Don Diego De Guevara, the administrator, did not receive any aid, but maintained the establishment until his death, by a sacrifice of his own private property, to the amount of more than thirty thousand piastres. By a reference to the third table of the demonstrative plan of the lation