ice (that
is to say, between the ages of eighteen and fifty); now, the same parish
contains at most 140 individuals, of whom one-third are Mestizos. The
whole coast of Peru, now almost totally depopulated, was once so thickly
inhabited, that to subdue King Chimu, in North Peru alone, an army of
80,000 men was requisite. The causes of the diminished Indian population
of Peru have been so frequently and fully detailed by previous writers,
that I need not here do more than briefly advert to them. They are found
in the extensive and reckless massacres committed by the Spaniards
during the struggle of the conquest; in the suicides and voluntary
deaths resorted to by the natives to escape from the power of their
oppressors; in the mita, the small-pox, the scarlet fever, and the
introduction of brandy. The mita alone, especially the labor in the
mines, has swept away four times as many Indians as all the other causes
combined. Since the abolition of the mita, the Indian population has
been on the increase, though there has not yet been time for any marked
result to become manifest; the more especially, considering the numbers
of lives sacrificed during the frequent civil wars. Nevertheless, it is
easy to foresee that a decided augmentation of the Indian inhabitants of
the western parts of South America will, ere long, be apparent.

Among the aboriginal inhabitants of Peru a variety of languages are in
use. In the southern parts of the country, particularly about Cuzco, the
_Quichua_ is spoken. It was the dialect of the court, and that which was
most generally diffused, and the Spaniards therefore called it _la
lengua general_. In the highlands of Central Peru, the Chinchaysuyo
language prevailed. The Indians of the coast, who belonged to the race
of the Chunchos, spoke the _Yunga_. The _Kauqui_ was the language of
that part of Central Peru which corresponds with the present province of
Yauyos. The inhabitants of the north-eastern parts of Peru, as far as
the Huallaga, spoke the _Lama_ language,[103] and the natives of the
highland regions of Quito spoke the _Quitena_.[104] These different
languages, which, with the exception of the Lama, proceed all from one
source, differ so considerably, that the inhabitants of the several
districts were reciprocally incapable of understanding each other, and
the Incas found it necessary to introduce the Quichua among all the
nations they subdued. The other dialects were thereby much corrupte