oke of the prospects of his people.
He told me that the Indians throughout the whole of the mountain
districts of Peru were up in arms, and that whenever they had
encountered the Spaniards the latter had been defeated; though he
confessed, with regret, that many atrocities had been committed by the
enraged natives, and that the white inhabitants of whole villages and
districts, including women and children, had been cruelly massacred, as
had also the negroes and those with any white blood in their veins.

I may as well here pause in my personal narrative to give a short
account of the cause of the disastrous revolt of the Indians of Peru,
from which so many thousand lives were sacrificed. I have already
spoken of the systematic cruelty practised by the Spaniards from their
first occupation of the country, and of the dreadful effects of the
_mita_ (as the parcelling out of the people among the conquerors as
slaves was called, under the pretence of enabling them to learn trades
and to become domestic servants, as also to make them work in the
mines); but another injustice was the immediate cause of the outbreak.
This was the _repartimiento_. It was a law originally made by the
Spanish Government, authorising the _corregidores_ to distribute among
the natives goods imported from Europe at fixed prices, and which they
were compelled to purchase whether they required them or not.
Consequently, all sorts of things damaged and useless were sent out from
Spain to Peru, where they were certain of realising a profit to be
obtained nowhere else. Among them might be found silk stockings,
satins, and velvets--razors for men who never shaved, and spectacles for
those whose eyesight was excellent. I remember especially a consignment
of spectacles arriving to a merchant at Lima. He could nowhere dispose
of them, till he bethought himself of applying to a _corregidor_ of a
neighbouring district, who was his friend, to help him. The latter
threw no difficulty in the way.

"Your goods shall be sold immediately, my friend," he replied; and
forthwith he issued an order that no Indian should appear at church or
at festivals unless adorned with a pair of spectacles, intimating the
place where they were to be sold. The poor people had to come and buy
the spectacles, and to pay a very high price for them into the bargain.

The Spanish Government, when they framed the law, had doubtless no idea
that it would be thus abused; their intent