A very interesting problem remains to be resolved. Was the pest, which is said to have desolated from time to time. the Atlantic regions of the United States before the arrival of the Europeans, and which the celebrated Rush and his followers look upon as the principle of the yellow fever, identical with the matlazahuatl of the Mexican Indians? We may hope that this last disease, should it ever re-appear in New Spain, will be hereafter carefully observed by the physicians. A third obstacle to the progress of population in New Spain, and perhaps the most cruel of all, is famine. The American Indians, like the inhabitants of Hindostan, are contented with the smallest quantity of aliment on which life can be supported, and increase in number without a proportional increase in the means of subsistence. Naturally indolent, from their fine climate and generally fertile soil, they cultivate as much maize, potatoes, or wheat as is necessary for their own subsistence, or at most for the additional consumption of the adjacent towns and mines. Agriculture, it is true, has made great progress within these last twenty years; but the consumption has also increased in an extraordinary manner from the augmentation of population, and an excescive luxury formerly unknown to the mixed casts, and from the working of a great number of new seams, which require additional men, horses, and mules. Few hands, no doubt, are employed in manufactures in New Spain; but a great number are withdrawn from agriculture from the necessity of transporting on mules goods and the produce of the mines, iron, powder, and mercury, from the coast to the capital, and from thence to the mines along the ridge of the Cordilleras. Thousands of men and animals pass their lives on the great roads between Vera Cruz and Mexico, Mexico and Acapulco, Oaxaca and Durango, and the cross roads by which provisions are carried to the habitations established in arid and uncultivated regions. This class of inhabitants, called by the economists in their system, sterile and nonproductive, is consequently more numerous in America than might be expected in a country where manufacturing industry is yet so little advanced. The want of proportion between the progress of population and the increase of food from cultivation renews the afflicting spectacle of famine, whenever a great drought or any other local cause has damaged the crop maize. Scarcity of provisions has always been accompanied in all times and all parts of the globe with epidemical diseases fatal to population*. The want of nourishment in 1784 gave of * This position requires qualification. Dr. Smith has, I believe, Ii2 rise 4 rise to asthenical diseases among the most indigent class of people. These accumulated calamities cut off a great number of adults, and a still greater number of children; and it was computed that in the town and mines of Guanaxuato more than 8000 individuals perished. A very remarkable meteorological phenomenon contributed principally to the scarcity: the maize, after an extraordinary drought, was nipt by frost on the night of the 28th of August, and, what is more singular, at an elevation of 1800 metres*. The number of inhabitants carried off by this fatal union of famine and disease throughout the whole surface of the kingdom was estimated at more than 300,000. This number will appear the less astonishing to us when we consider, that even in Europe the population is sometimes diminished by scarcity, more than it is augmented by the excess of births above the deaths for four consecutive years. There perished in Saxony, for example, in 1772, near 66,000 inhabitants, while the excess of births above the deaths was not, communibus annis, from 1764 to 1784 more than 17,000+. well remarked that in years of scarcity there are, perhaps, fewer diseases and deaths than usual, from the diminished consumption of spirituous liquors by the common people, one of the most productive sources of disease. The position will undoubtedly, however, hold with regard to a Hindoo or Indian population, who, in years of plenty, have no more than merely supports animal life, and to whom, therefore, any reduction must always prove fatal. Trans. * 5904 feet. Trans. †The translator is afraid that this number of 66,000 includes the whole deaths of Saxony in 1772, in which case the statement that the diminution of population from the famine exceeded the augmentation from the excess of births for four consecutive years will fall to the ground. Every one knows that it is impossible to state exactly the number of deaths from famine in any country, as literally few or none die of famine, but of diseases occasioned by a defective diet, which can never be separated in any bill of mortality from diseases owing to other causes. The nearest approximation, however, is to be found by deducing the average mortality from the increased mortality in any given year of scarcity. I think it extremely probable that M. de Humboldt has not adopted this method. He elsewhere states that the adjacent country of Prussia had, in 1802, on a population of nine millions, 282,109 deaths. If we take Mr. Pinkerton's estimate of the Saxon population, 2,104,000, say, however, 2,000,000, and assume a mortality for it proportionate to that of Prussia, we shall find the number of deaths 62,869. If, supposing then 60,000 the mortality of 1772, and 62,869 the average mortality, the increase by famine in 1772 would only be 3311. This is a much more likely number than the enormous one given by M. de Humboldt; but the fact can easily be ascertained. Trans. The The effects of famine are common to almost all the equinoxial regions. In the province of New Andalusia in South America I have seen villages whose inhabitants were forced by famine to disperse themselves from time to time in the desarts to pick up a subsistence from the wild plants. In vain the missionaries employ their authority to prevent this dispersion. In the province de los Pastos, the Indians when the potatoes fail, which are their principal nourishment, repair sometimes to the most elevated ridge of the Cordillera to subsist on the juice of the achupallas, a plant related to the genus pitcarnia. The Otomacks at Uruana, on the banks of the Orinoco, swallow, during several months, potter's earth, to absorb by this load the gastric juice, and to satisfy, in some sort, the hunger which torments them*. In the islands of the South Sea, in a fertile soil, where nature has lavished all her blessings the inhabitants are frequently driven by famine to devour one another. Under the torrid zone, where a beneficent hand seems every where to have scattered the germ of abundance, man, careless and phlegmatic, experiences periodically a want of nourishment which the industry of more civilized nations banishes from the most sterile regions of the north. The working of the mines has long been regarded as one of the principal causes of the depopulation of America. It will be difficult to call in question, that at the first epoch of the conquest, and even in the seventeenth century, many Indians perished from the excessive labour to which they were compelled in the mines. They perished without posterity, as thousands of African slaves annually perish in the West Indian plantations from fatigue, detective nourishment, and want of sleep. In Peru, at least in the most southern part, the country is depopulated by the mines, because the bar barous law of the mita is yet in existence, which compels the Indians to remove from their homes into distant provinces, where hands are wanted for extracting the subterraneous wealth. But it is not so much the labour as the sudden change of climate, which renders the mita so pernicious to the health of the Indians. This race of men has not the flexibility of or ganization for which the Europeans are so eminently distinguished. The health of copper-coloured man suffers infi nitely when he is transported from a warm to a cold climate, particularly when he is forced to descend from the elevation of the Cordillera into those narrow and humid vallics, where all the miasmata of the neighbouring regions appear to be deposited. * See my Tableaux de la Nature, t. I. P, 62, 191, and 209. In the kingdom of New Spain, at leastwithin the last thirty or forty years, the labour of the mines is free; and there remains no trace of the mita, though a justly celebrated author* has advanced the contrary. No where does the lower people enjoy in greater security the fruit of their labours than in the mines of Mexico; no law forces the Indian to choose this species of labour, or to prefer one mine to another; and when he is displeased with the proprietor of the mine, he may offer his services to another master who may pay, perhaps, more regularly. These unquestionable facts are very little known in Europe. The number of persons employed In subterraneous operations, who are divided into several classes (Barenadores, Faeneros, Tenateros, Bareteros), does not exceed in the whole kingdom of New Spain 28 or 80,000. Hence there is not more than of the whole population immediately employed in the mines. The mortality among the miners of Mexico is not much greater than what is observed among the other classes. We may easily be convinced of this by examining the bills of mortality in the different parishes of Guanaxuato and Zacatecas. This is a phenomenon, so much the more remarkable, as the miner in several of these mines is exposed to a temperature 6 deg. above the mean temperatures of Jamaica and Pondicherry. I found the centrigrade thermometer at 34 deg. at the bottom of the mine of Valenciana (en los planes), a perpendicular depth of 513 metres,§ while at the mouth of the pit in the open air, the same thermometer sinks in winter to 4 deg. or 5 deg. || above 0. The Mexican miner is consequently exposed to a change of temperature of more than 30 deg. **. But this enormous heat of the Valenciana mine is not the effect of a great number of men and lights collected into a small space; it is much more owing to local and geological causes which we shall afterwards examine, It is curious to observe how the Mestizoes and Indians employed in carrying minerals on their back, who go by the name of Tenateros, remain continually loaded for six hours with a weight of from 225 to 350 pounds, and constantly exposed to a very high temperature, ascending eight or ten times successively, without intermission, stairs of 1800 steps. *Robertson's History of America, vol. ii. p. 378. f 1681 feet. Trans. Trans. The The appearance of these robust and laborious men would have operated a change in the opinions of the Raynals and Pauws, and a number of other authors, however estimable in other respects, who have been pleased to declaim against the degeneracy of our species in the torrid zone. In the Mexican mines, children (enfuns) of seventeen years of age* are able to carry masses of stone of a hundred pounds weight. This occupation of Tenateros is accounted unhealthy, if they enter more than three times a week into the mines. But the labour which ruins most rapidly the robustest constitutions is that of the Barenadores, who blow up the rock with powder. These men rarely pass the age of 35, if from a thirst of gain they continue their severe labour for the whole week. They generally pass no more than five or six years at this occupation, and then betake themselves to other employments less injurious to health. The art of mining is daily improving, and the pupils of the school of mines at Mexico gradually diffuse correct no. tions respecting the circulation of air in pits and galleries. Machines are beginning to be introduced in place of the old method of carrying minerals and water on men's backs up stairs of a rapid ascent. In proportion as the mines of New Spain resemble more and more those of Freiberg, Clausthal, and Schemnitz, the miner's health will be less injured by the influence of the Mofettes*, and the excessively prolonged efforts of muscular motion. From five to six thousand persons are employed in the amalgamation of the minerals, or the preparatory labour. A great number of these individuals pass their lives in walking barefooted over heaps of brayed metal, moistened and mixed with muriate of soda, sulphateof iron, and oxide of mercury, by the contact of the atmospheric air and the solar rays. It is a remarkable phenomenon to see these men enjoy the most perfect health. The physicians who practice in places where there are mines unanimously assert, that the nervous affections, which might be attributed to the effect of an absorption of oxid of mercury, very rarely occur. At Guanaxuato part of * I should be inclined to think that the author meant to say enfans de sept à dix ans, instead of enfans de dix sept ans, for enfant, it is believed; can hardly be applied with propriety to a youth of 17; and if a fullgrown man could ascend eight or ten times, without intermission, 1800 steps of a stair with 350 pounds, it certainly could not add to the evidence of the strength of this race to say, that a young man of 17 could carry little more than the fourth part of that weight. Trans. The translator professes his ignorance of the meaning of this word. the |