every town on white mules with red trappings, and the bells ringing. The Señores mulattos were finally expelled for knocking the priest of San Juan del Oro on the head while he was saying mass, after a drunken broil. There are many vestiges of washings, bridges, and cuttings made by these mulattos, in different parts of Caravaya.[294] The Spaniards, however, long continued to extract gold from the rivers of Caravaya, and established coca-farms and coffee-plantations in some of the ravines formed by spurs of the cordillera. Gold, however, was the product for which Caravaya was most famous. In 1615 the viceroy Marquis of Montes Claros spoke of the rich _lavaderos_ or gold-washings of Caravaya;[295] and his successor, the Prince of Esquilache, wrote a long report upon them in 1620. It appears that, at that period, the richest of the Caravaya mines was called Aporuma, and that it had then been worked for fifteen years by a company of adventurers. These men, the chief of whom were named Quiñones, Frisancho, and Perez, had excavated very extensive works to drain off the water, and they petitioned the Viceroy to grant them a _mita_ of Indians to complete the works, for that thus the royal fifths would be augmented. The Prince of Esquilache wrote a marginal note, which may still be seen on the original petition, ordering Don Pedro de Mercado, the "visitador-general" of Caravaya, to grant them a _mita_ of Indians within a circuit of twenty leagues of the Aporuma mine, with three dollars a month each, besides salt-meat and other provisions.[296] In 1678 the yield of the royal fifths from the Caravaya gold-washings was at the rate of 806 dollars in three months.[297] From this time to the end of the seventeenth century Franciscan missionaries were at work amongst the wild Chunchos in the forests of Caravaya.[298] Towards the end of the last century Caravaya was separated from Peru to form part of the new viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, and the population of whites and civilised Indians was then only estimated at 6500 souls. Just before that period the town of San Gavan, with four thousand families and a large treasure, had been surprised and entirely destroyed by the Carangas and Suchimanis Chunchos. This calamity took place on the 15th of December, 1767. The viceroy Don Manuel Amat swore vengeance on the Chunchos; but his famous mistress, Mariquita Gallegas, better known as La Perichola, interceded for them, and eventually nothing was done. The other town of San Juan del Oro had been abandoned some time before; and the very sites where they stood are now uncertain. In the great rebellion of Tupac Amaru the caciques and people of Caravaya took part with the Indians, probably owing to the influence possessed by the Inca, arising from the large coca estate which belonged to him near San Gavan.[299] At the independence Caravaya became a part of the Peruvian department of Puno.