unding
mountains covered by perpetual snow--an evil which the half-clad
Indians of the tropics appear to dread more than perpetual fire.

The last and only enumeration of the inhabitants of Mexico or New Spain
was made in 1794, by that distinguished Vice-king to whom I have so
often referred, Ravillagigedo. This enumeration gave as the actual
population 3,865,529, besides the departments of Vera Cruz, Guanajuato,
and Cohahuila, which were estimated to contain 518,000 more, making a
sum total of 4,412,529. Since that time there has been a great deal of
extensive guessing, until by this simple process the population was
brought up to 7,661,520, in 1853.[62] The process by which this increase
is effected is to add one sixth for supposed omissions in the census,
and a like number for supposed increase in the subsequent fifteen years
till the breaking out of war, and taking for granted that the
population has not retrograded during forty-five years of intermittent
war. Such conclusions are made in violation of all the laws of
population.

POPULATION OF MEXICO.

It may not be uninteresting to my readers to run over the laws which
regulate the decrease of population, although it is too much our custom
to look only at the other side of the picture. The social and civil
wars of Mexico have been of such a character, as we have seen, as to
warrant the belief that from this cause alone population must have
constantly diminished, from their very commencement in 1810 until 1840,
when matters were comparatively resuscitated. The employment for labor
during the time that the large estates were neglected, and while the
canals of irrigation and the silver mines were in ruins, was of the
most limited character; and the very indigent circumstances to which it
reduced the majority of those who ranked above the _leperos_ must also
have diminished the population of the republic much below that of the
vice-kingdom under Ravillagigedo.

Since 1840, notwithstanding the frequent wars, Mexico, in favored
localities, may have slightly increased in population; but this
increase is more than balanced by the Indian wars of the northern
departments, which have depopulated large tracts of country, sometimes
extending across one tier of states even into the heart of Durango and
Guanajuato; so that I hazard nothing in affirming that the population
of the whole country must be less to-day than it was in 1794,
notwithstanding that Humboldt sets down