The number of the _espuestos_ is almost incredible, and shows the prevalency of great poverty; for it is but charitable to think that no one would thus cast away a child’s remains who was not deprived of the ordinary means of covering the expense of an humble interment: but it is said that, in this business, much fraud is committed by the parents of the deceased, who, to avoid paying the regular funeral dues, give the hearse-men a few reals for picking up the exposed bodies, and carrying them to the cemetery to be buried. For these considerations, it will not be unwarrantable to infer that the increase of deaths during the last four years on the table has not been so much in reality as in appearance, from the omission of duly registering the _espuestos_. Nor does it appear from a document now before us, titled, “Guia politica, eclesiastica, y militar del Peru,” by the celebrated and praiseworthy Dr. D. H. Unanue, published in the year 1793, that the gross amount of deaths has altered, in proportion to the existing population, to that extent which many persons would incline to believe, in consequence of the great increase of poverty and demoralization which have been experienced since that period. In 1793 the population was quoted in the “Guia” at 52,627, and the number of deaths at 2795, not including such as occurred among nuns or ecclesiastics; all of whom, conjointly, formed a large item in the population of Lima, and must have had a good many deaths among their number to increase the real bill of mortality.[5] It cannot be supposed either, that war had much share in swelling the Pantheon list of dead in these latter years, because, though civil broils were frequent since the year 1826, yet Lima itself was not the usual seat of conflict. Some troops there were always stationed in this city; but, should these be excluded from the estimate of the regular population of the place, still, however, any difference in the sum of mortality thus produced from soldiers dying in hospitals and registered at the cemetery would be, most likely, more than equalled by the default in the account of the _espuestos_, especially young children, whose remains were irregularly interred, and so not at all entered upon the books. And as for the Montonera troops, or others who met with violent death in or about town during the late noisy skirmishes, they were, upon the whole, too inconsiderable to merit much notice in this place, as appears very clearly from the various entries made in the register by Pasos, the present administrator and book-keeper of the cemetery. CHAPTER III. Food, fruit, and water used in Lima. As the degree of health, and vigour of constitution, enjoyed by individuals, depend in a great measure upon the diet, as well as on the air they breathe, climate, and caste, we shall offer a few general observations on the dietetic habits of the Limenians.