many victims sacrificed, for the barbarous and insensate pleasure of destroying, and committing crimes. It being at the same time certain that the territories into which the Spanish armies did not penetrate, constitute the most complete wastes, insomuch that throughout an extent of many leagues, not the slightest trace of a human dwelling is to be found; and that, under the government of the Yncas, there was not, in all Peru, with the exception of Cuzco, a single place which could have formed a city; a regard to justice requires that the false ideas which have been entertained relatively to the ruin and destruction of America, should be laid aside.
This destruction would have been horrible, if the calculation which makes its aborigines amount to three hundred millions, were not destitute of all probability. The absurd author[1], however, of this contemptible estimate, has not been supported in his extravagances. Those who come the nearest to him, do not rate the population of America, running from south to north, with all the islands in its dependency, at more than a hundred millions; and, with this notable deduction even, they depart considerably from the truth, since the political arithmeticians who have treated the subject with impartiality, allow forty millions only to the whole of the new world, at the time of its discovery.
The true causes of the depopulation of America, taken in the general sense which has already been expressed, are to be traced in the kind of life to which its primitive inhabitants were confined. Depending principally on hunting and fishing, their days were spent in a violent agitation, at the same
- ↑ Riccioli.
