In the following ten or twelve years, there were a succession of contests for power between different parties of the Spaniards, during which time we lose sight of Manco Capac and the Peruvians, except that we know that these people, pressed by hard service, were rapidly wasting away. The representations of the benevolent Las Casas at length reached the Spanish monarch, and influenced him to avert some of the evils with which the natives were threatened, by the establishment of a more firm and equitable government. This was finally accomplished by the wisdom of the viceroy, Pedro de la Gasca, after the entire defeat and death of the last of the Pizarros, who had rebelled against the king’s appointment, in 1549. This officer made regulations concerning the treatment of the Indians, by which they might be protected from oppression, and be instructed in the principles of religion. Still they were obliged to labor for the Spaniards, being attached to the land itself, and apportioned out to the various persons who owned the estates. Like almost all conquered and enslaved people, their numbers have lessened, while they have been subjected to the fluctuations of ages. They are now said to be feeble and depressed beyond any people of America, seeming scarcely capable of bold and manly exertion. Some whole districts, especially in the ancient kingdom of Quito, have continued to be occupied almost entirely by the Indians. In some places they exercise the mechanic arts, and belong to the lower class of the population. Some of them have become converts to the Roman Catholic priests; while some still remember and reverence the institutions of their fathers, and sometimes secretly assemble and engage in ancient idolatrous rites. Robertson computed the number of native Indians in Peru at the time he wrote to be 2,449,120. They are said to have “small features, little feet, sleek, coarse, black hair, and scarcely any beard.” They have been represented as sunk in apathy and insensibility, but the shy, reserved, and gloomy, though tame aspect which they present, is the fruit of long oppression, and accumulated wrongs. They still retain the deepest and most mournful recollections of the Inca, and celebrate his death by a sort of rude drama, accompanied by the most melting strains of music. [Illustration] FOOTNOTE: [2] In the “Lives of Famous Indians,” we have offered a few suggestions on this subject. If the reader perceives some repetition of facts in this article, to be found in that just mentioned, he will consider that it is a part of our design to render each volume of the “Cabinet Library,” complete in itself. THE ARAUCANIANS.