3. The Mestizoes--offspring of the Spaniard and Indian. 4. The Mulattoes--offspring of the Spaniard and Negro. 5. The Negroes or Africans born. Of these five castes, however, the Indians and their Mestizo offspring formed a very small and insignificant proportion, and can only be regarded as accidentally domiciliated at Buenos Ayres in consequence of its being at that time the principal channel of communication between Peru, their proper soil, and Spain. [Illustration: _The City of_ BUENOS AYRES, _in 1767_ (_tinted thus_ [Black Square]) _and in 1825_, (_blank_).] The original Indians of Buenos Ayres were a hostile race, who would hold no intercourse with their conquerors. No mixture, therefore, of Spanish and native blood took place in that particular part of South America, which could produce a distinct caste, as in the Upper Provinces and in Peru, where the more peaceable and domesticated inhabitants continue to the present day to constitute the main stock of the population. In those parts we see a striking difference in the people; the further we advance into the interior, the more scarce become the white in proportion to the coloured inhabitants. The aboriginal Indian blood decidedly predominates in the Mestizo castes, whilst the negro and his Mulatto descendants, so common on the coast, are there almost unknown. The cause of this is easily explained; for a long period very few European women reached the interior of America: the Spaniards, therefore, who settled there, were under the necessity of mixing with the natives, from which connexion has arisen that numerous race, the Mestizoes, which forms so large a part of the present population of those countries. The same difficulty in transporting their women from Europe did not occur with respect to Buenos Ayres; there the European stock was easily kept up, though for a long period it increased but slowly; and, but for the adventitious circumstance of its having been for some years a depôt for the slave-trade, under the Asiento Treaties, the population of Buenos Ayres would have been nearly free from be seen that the Indian and Mestizo no longer appear: the division made is simply into the white and the coloured population; and, although the latter still at that time amounted to nearly a fourth part of the whole, it had ceased to increase. In the four years the births barely exceeded the deaths, and whilst the proportion of deaths amongst the coloured people increased, there was a striking falling off in the number of their marriages and births, even from 1822 to 1825. The slave-trade has in fact, been prohibited since 1813, by a decree of the Constituent Assembly, consequently any further supply from the Negro stock has ceased, and it cannot be very long ere all trace of its having ever existed must be merged in the rapid increase of the whites--a result which will be greatly accelerated by the introduction of fresh settlers from