Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/24

4 The population of Peru, so far as relates to the original casts, is composed of Spaniards, Indians, and negroes. The secondary specieses best known, and proceeding from a mixture of these three, are the mulatto, the offspring of the Spaniard and negro woman; the Quarteron, of the mulatto woman and Spaniard; and the Mestizo, of the Spaniard and Indian woman. The final subdivisions which are formed by the successive mixtures, are as many as the different possible combinations of these primitive races.

The rural operations of sowing and planting, as well as domestic employments, have constantly fallen to the lot of the negroes. It is true, indeed, that within these four years past several white people have engaged in these different tasks. Prior to this, any one, neither a negro nor a mulatto, who should have hired himself as a valet or a labourer, would have been in a manner reputed infamous: to such a length was prejudice, or it may perhaps be said, pride, carried on this head. There are many enlightened politicians, who think it would be very unfortunate for the kingdom, and more especially for the capital, Lima, if this prejudice were to be entirely done away.

The commerce of Peru has been considerably augmented, since it has, by the arrival of the merchant vessels of Spain by Cape Horn, and by the grant of an unrestrained commerce, freed itself from the oppression under which it groaned in the time of the Galeons, and of the fairs of Porto-Bello and Panama. Prior to that epoch, the bulky and overgrown capitals circulated through, and were in a manner lost in, a few hands; and while the little trader tyrannized over the people, by regulating, at his own will, the prices of the various productions and