Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/759

Rh now decayed figured as populous centres, for which the Spaniards erected but sparse equivalents. Mexico appears from monumental and documentary evidence to have been more extensive and populous, and in Tlascala a census was taken by Cortés which showed that there were several times more occupants than toward the close of the colonial period. Franciscan missionaries alone claimed to have baptized 6,000,000 natives between 1524 and 1540, and Dominicans and Augustinians worked hard to swell the number, yet immense fields remained untrodden. These claims cannot of course be relied upon, nor the estimates of deaths from small-pox and other ravages. In 1576 about 2,000,000 are said to have been swept away in the central provinces alone, and at other times whole districts to have been almost depopulated.

We find the population distributed in a somewhat different manner from that of South America and the United States, not along the coasts, which are here low-lying and malarious, but mainly on the interior plateau, where culture and wealth had ever centred, notably along a narrow strip embracing Puebla and Mexico, and two other towns of from 35,000 to 130,000 inhabitants, and only one or two days' journey apart, while elsewhere great stretches of fine country lie almost uninhabited. With the influx of negroes the coast line received in time an increase of occupants, on whom the fevers had little effect, and with their aid thriving plantations of sugar-cane and other produce drew riches from a hitherto neglected soil. The Indians maintained their preponderance at the rate of three fourths to seven eighths in Puebla,