It was about that time, also, that Spain made most important changes in her colonial system. The exclusive and pernicious monopoly of the whole trade of South America, till then possessed by the merchants of Seville and Cadiz, was put an end to, and a comparatively free intercourse was, for the first time, permitted with many ports in the new world, with which till then it was death to communicate. Buenos Ayres reaped a large share of the advantages of this alteration in the commercial views and policy of the mother country; and from a nest of smugglers became one of the first trading cities in Spanish America. The rapid increase of her population, under these new circumstances, is worth notice. FOOTNOTES: [12] See annexed plate, copied from the original in the account published by Ulric Schmidel, a volunteer under Mendoza, and one of the garrison besieged by the Querandis. CHAPTER IV. POPULATION OF BUENOS AYRES. Statistics of the Population. Its great increase in the last fifty years. Castes into which it was formerly divided now disappearing. Numbers of Foreigners established there, especially British. Their influence on the habits of the Natives. The Ladies of Buenos Ayres; the Men and their occupations. In the year 1767, when M. de Bougainville visited Buenos Ayres, he tells us that the number of the inhabitants did not exceed 20,000. In 1778, the year in which the port was partially thrown open under the free-trade regulations of Spain, as they were called, a census was taken, by which it appears that the inhabitants of the city and of its campaña, or country jurisdiction, amounted to 37,679 souls, of which 24,205 belonged to the city, 12,925 to the country, and 549 were members of religious communities; divided as follows, viz.:--