The Leyes de las Indias, or code for the government of the Spanish colonies, although in some instances severe and arbitrary, were mild and paternal compared with their administration by the viceroys and other officials. Amongst them were two enactments, the Mita and the Repartimiento, intended by their propounders to civilize and improve the Indians, but fearfully abused in practice. By the Mita, the Peruvians were compelled to work in the mines and plantations. Every Spaniard who possessed one of these, received from the corregidor a certain number of Indians, to each of whom he paid daily wages, and for each of them an annual contribution of eight dollars to the State. This plan, if fairly and conscientiously carried out, might have been made a means of reclaiming the Indians from barbarity and idleness. But the truck system, unlimited and excessive time of labour, and other abuses, caused it to produce the precisely opposite effect to that proposed by the framers of the law. One-third only of the stipulated wage was given in money, the remainder in European manufactures, charged at exorbitant prices; and the Indians, unable to purchase the bare necessaries of life, were compelled to incur debts with their employers--debts that they could never pay off, and which rendered them slaves for their whole lives. The field labourers were made to toil from three in the morning till an hour after sundown; even the Sunday was no day of rest for these unfortunate helots. Such increasing and painful exertions annually swept away thousands of Indians. Various writers estimate at nine millions the number of those killed by labour and accident in the mines, during the last three centuries. Dr Tschudi does not think this an exaggeration, and calculates that three millions more have been sacrificed in the plantations, especially in the coca fields of the backwoods.