bodily and mental powers.
Stevenson mentions that on examining the church registers of Barranca,
he found that within an interval of seven years, eleven Indians had been
interred, whose united ages amounted to 1207, being an average of 109
years to each. In the year 1839 there was living in the valley of Jauja
an Indian who, according to the baptismal register shown to me by the
priest, was born in the year 1697. He himself declared that he had not
for the space of ninety years tasted a drop of water, having drunk
nothing but chicha. Since he was eleven years of age, he alleged that
he had masticated coca, at least three times every day, and that he had
eaten animal food only on Sundays; on all the other days of the week he
had lived on maize, quinua, and barley. The Indians retain their teeth
and hair in extreme old age; and it is remarkable that their hair never
becomes white, and very seldom even grey. Those individuals whose
advanced ages have been mentioned above, had all fine black hair.

Since the Spanish conquest, the population of Peru has diminished in an
almost incredible degree. When we read the accounts given by the old
historiographers of the vast armies which the Incas had at their
command; when we behold the ruins of the gigantic buildings, and of the
numerous towns and villages scattered over Peru, it is difficult to
conceive how the land could have been so depopulated in the lapse of
three centuries. At the time of the conquest it was easy, in a short
space of time, to raise an army of 300,000 men, and, moreover, to form
an important reserved force; whilst now, the Government, even with the
utmost efforts, can scarcely assemble 10,000 or 12,000 men. According to
the census drawn up in 1836, Peru did not contain more than 1,400,000
men, being not quite so many as were contained at an earlier period in
the department of Cuzco alone. Unfortunately there is no possibility of
obtaining anything approaching to accurate estimates of the population
of early periods; and even if such documents existed, it would be
difficult to deduce from them a comparison between Peru as it now is,
and Peru at the period when Bolivia, a part of Buenos Ayres, and
Columbia, belonged to the mighty empire. I will here quote only one
example of the immense diminution of the population. Father Melendez
mentions that shortly after the conquest, the parish of Ancallama, in
the province of Chancay, contained 30,000 Indians fit for serv