Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/381

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MEXICO.

The Baron Humboldt estimates it to have been in the year 1803, 5,837,100; and Mr. Poinsett, in 1824, (from the best data of the period,) 6,500,000.

In 1830, Mr. Burkhardt, an accurate German traveller, rates the several classes of Mexicans thus:

Indians, 4,500,000
Whites, 1,000,000
Negroes, 6,000
Mestizos, and other castes 2,490,000
Total 7,996,000

Another estimate in 1839, reduces the sum to 7,065,000, and gives eight inhabitants to the square mil; but the most complete, and; probably, the most accurate of the recent calculations, is the one which was made by the Government itself, (without special enumeration,) and served as a basis for the call of a Congress to form a new Constitution, under the plan of Tacubaya in 1842.

Department. Population.
Mexico, 1,389,590
Jalisco, 679,311
Puebla, 661,903
Yucatan, 580,948
Guanajuato, 519,606
Oajaca, 500,278
Michoacan, 497,906
San Luis Potosi, 321,340
Zacatecas, 373,575
Vera Cruz, 354,380
Durango, 163,618
Chihuahua, 147,600
Sinaloa, 147,000
Chiapas, 141,306
Sonora, 134,000
Queretaro, 130,560
Nuevo Léon, 101,108
Tamaulipas, 100,068
Coahuila, 75,340
Aguas Calientes, 69,698
Tabasco, 63,580
Nuevo Mexico, 57,096
Californias, 33,439
Total in 1842, 7,015,509

Since the year 1830, the population of the Republic has been dreadfully ravaged by smallpox—measles and cholera. In the Capital alone, it is estimated that about 5000 died of the first named of these diseases. 2000 of the second, and from 15,000 to 20,000, of the third. The mortality must have been in a corresponding ratio throughout the territory.