ries of the Peruvians, but geographical position and political convenience only were consulted. The new government was made to contain the then five great provinces of Buenos Ayres, Paraguay, Tucuman, Charcas, and Chiquitos. Now it was mostly in Charcas and Chiquitos, and their dependencies along the Cordillera of the Andes, and in the districts of Upper Peru, that the insurrection raged, breaking out in Peru in the country on the north eastern shore of lake Titicaca, and extending north through the bishopric of Cuzco towards Lima, and south to Jujui and Salta. Of course, as will be seen in the sequel, both viceroyalties were inplicated in the war, and compelled to bring their respective forces into the field. Upper Peru, the principal seat of the war, known also by its civil name as the Audience of Charcas, was subdivided into twentyone smaller provinces, all included in the seven governments of Potosi, Charcas, Chuquisaca or La Plata, Cochabamba, La Paz, Santa Cruz de la Sierra or Puno, Moxos, and Chiquitos. The rest of Peru belonged to the Audience of Lima. These geographical explanations may be necessary to the ready understanding of the localities referred to in the course of this article.*

This region is traversed in its entire extent by the Cordillera of the Andes, which breaks it up into every diversity of soil, climate, and face of country. Here the mountains shoot upwards into bold and lofty peaks, or spread out into extensive highlands, interrupted sometimes by quebradas, or deep. ravines, where they are cloven down to their very bases, and at others by beautiful smiling valleys, with hill and dale,

*A very good map of the theatre of this insurrection may be found in Pazos' Letters, also in Tanner's American Atlas; and Lucas's Cabinet Atlas. According to Humboldt, the Viceroy Lemos counted 600,000 Indians in Lower Peru, in 1793. The gross population at that period must have been somewhat below a million. As one third of the inhabitants are said to have perished in the rebellion, and as the increase during the eleven years from 1782 to 1793, was probably insufficient so supply this loss, we shall not err much, perhaps, in estimating the whole number of Indians in Lower Peru in 1780 at 650,000. Now the population of each of the districts of Upper and Lower Peru has been estimated by the Patriots, within a few years, at about 1,700,000, including about 1,150,000 Indians. Guided by these data, and supposing the population of the two Audiences to have increased pari passu since 1780, we may consider the aggregate number of Indians in both, at that time, as amounting to 1,300,000, leaving 700,000 for the number of Spaniards, white Americans, negroes, and persons of the mixed cast.

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streamlet and lake, to contrast their graces with the sublimity of the surrounding scenery. The mountains are filled with metallic wealth; and although their barren summits rise into the region of perpetual snows, their sides afford pasturage to vast herds of cattle, horses, and mules; and the numberless waters, which spring from their bosom, the birthplace of the mighty rivers of Plata and of the Amazon, diffuse fertility through the luxuriant plains, which they irrigate. In some of the more barren districts of the highlands, they are bristled all over with broken masses of rock, and huge cliffs and precipices, where the mountains appear split into fragments, and upheaved from their foundations by the great convulsions of nature. Here, amid these savage wilds, the fit scene of savage warfare, the insurrection was longest maintained, and derived its peculiar character from the extraordinary features of the country.

Jose Gabriel Tupac Amaru, Cacique of Tungasuca, in the province of Tinta, and the bishopric of Cuzco in Peru, claimed to spring from the illustrious stock of Peruvian monarchs. He was directly descended, by the maternal line, from the last of the acknowledged Incas, Sayri Tupac and Tupac Amaru, the unfortunate sons of Manco Capac.

Dr Robertson's popular work has made all English readers familiarly acquainted with the situation of the Peruvian empire, when first visited by the Spaniards, and with the history of the Incas down to the year 1550, where his account terminates. The splendor of the monarchy in its best days, under Huayna Capac, the division of Peru at his death between his sons Inta Cusi Hualpa, or Huascar, and Atahuallpa, the usurpation of Atahuallpa, the invasion and conquest of the kingdom in his reign by Pizarro, the murder of Huascar by his brother, Atahuallpa's decapitation, the succession of Manco Capac, his well conducted, but unsuccessful effort to profit by the dissensions of the first conquerors and slaughter every Spaniard in Peru; all these incidents are fully described by him in the History of America. And although his credit as a historical authority has been shaken, and the accuracy of many of his statements disputed by the investigations of later writers, the Abbé Clavigero for instance, yet his work still continues to be the source of popular information in regard to the first conquest of the New World. A continuation of

his narrative, detailing the subsequent fortunes of the Incas, as set forth by Garcilasso, and other Spanish writers, might serve as a suitable introduction to the present subject; but this we are constrained to pass over, that we may have the more room to dwell on the topics immediately in hand.

Tupac Amaru, the hero of the insurrection, the history of which is now coming before us, first began to attract attention in Peru, by assuming the patronymic of the last Inca,* proving his descent from Manco Capac, and by virtue of it, urging his pretensions before the Audience of Lima, though unsuccessfully, to the vacant marquisate of Oropesa. 'If it were the privilege of royal blood,' says Dean Funes, 'to inspire magnanimous thoughts, the idea of the revolution would be the surest indication of the generous stream, which swelled his veins. Of a noble physiognomy, a robust frame, a majestic and gracious presence, vast designs, vehement passions, firmness of enterprise, and intrepidity amid dangers, but with only the imperfect education, which he could acquire by a few years of study at the colleges of Cuzco and Lima, he conceived the bold design of effecting the deliverance of his people from the tyranny under which they groaned.' What this extremity of tyranny was, our readers may partly conceive, by calling to mind the statements in the article of our Journal already quoted; for it is to the Peruvians, that the statements there made more particularly apply. The Indians elsewhere, in Mexico for instance, have been partially protected from the rapacity of the local magistrates, by many wise and humane regulations.† But in Peru it was, that the slavery of the repartimientos endured unsoftened

* His original name was Jose Gabriel Candor Canqui. He assumed the name of Tupac Amaru, the last Inca, by virtue of his maternal descent. + Humboldt's New Spain B. II. c. 6.

The word repartimiento means any division, partition, distribution, or apportionment. In the old Spanish historians, and in English books compiled from them, such as Zarate, Garcilasso de la Vega, Fernandez, Robertson, it is uniformly used to denote the well known allotment of lands and vassal Indians (genuine adscriptitii glebæ) granted to the first conquerors in reward of their services. In some later writers, the same word is applied to the monopoly of sales to the Indians, exercised by the corregidores, under pretext of protecting the Indians from imposition, by the official distribution of goods. As English readers are more accustomed to the word in its first sense than in its latter, we have preferred in this article, in imitation of the general practice of Funes, to employ the provincial word reparto, derived from the same root with repartimiento, to signify the commercial monopoly.

to the last; Peru, in which the repartos of avaricious monopolising magistrates stripped the poor Indians of their little substance; Peru, for whose inexhaustible silver mines in the bowels of mount Potosi, the odious and infamous conscription of the mita was ordained and preserved.

Tupac Amaru, in the first place, endeavored to procure some mitigation of these unparalleled burdens, by gaining the cooperation of several eminent dignitaries in the church, led by the bishop of Cuzco, a noble Peruvian of the family of Moscoso, and using their influence with the government in behalf of the oppressed Indians. Yet foreseeing that persuasion would avail but little with their avaricious and cruel masters, he set about paving the way for the employment of other means of redress, by assiduously courting popularity among his countrymen, exhibiting himself as the protector of the injured, alleviating the sufferings of the distressed by pecuniary aid, and thus gradually leading the whole nation to regard him as the descendant and rightful representative of their ancient sovereigns.

In the meantime they, who sympathised in the miseries of the Indians, urged upon the advisers of the crown the necessity of a reform in the internal administration of the country, in such strong terms, and expressed so decided a belief that some fearful political crisis was impending, that the court began to listen to their representations. Accordingly, two noble Peruvians, Don Ventura Santelices, and Don Blas Tupac Amaru, were successively called to Spain, to aid the Council of the Indies in devising means to meliorate the lot of the Indians. Probably they would have succeeded, had not they prematurely perished, by chance or by assassination, the one at Madrid, the other on his passage back to Peru.

Tupac Amaru now came forward in person, and made new exertions to procure a peaceful change in the condition of the Indians. But his zeal only served to draw upon him the animosity of the petty despots of the provinces, who lorded it over his subject race. The corregidores, seeing that the failure of Santelices, and of Don Blas Tupac Amaru, had not cooled the Inca's ardor, nor subdued his courage, now doubled the burdens of his countrymen, and thinking thereby to crush the rising spirit of resistance, pushed their tyranny beyond the utmost verge of human endurance.

Their madness hastened the crisis, which they strove to avert. The Indians grew desperate, and now first breaking forth into determined insurrection, rallied around the name of the Inca. The commencement of the revolution was signalised by an act of vengeance, performed in all the solemnities of law, and therefore the better calculated to strike terror into the hearts of the Spaniards, and to arouse the courage of the Peruvians. Don Antonio Arriaga, corregidor of Tinta, was infamous for the cruelty and rapacity, which he exercised on the Indians of his province. Tupac Amaru brought him to Tungasuca, under pretext of a sedition, and there instituting his trial with his own official registers, caused him to be condemned as a public robber, and executed on the gallows, in the name of the king of Spain, on the 10th of November, 1780. The mita, repartos, the alcavala, all the odious forms of taxation and bondage were abolished from this instant, and the flames of civil war enkindled in Peru.

Tupac Amaru was cautious and wary in the introductory scenes of the revolution, because he wished to conciliate the timid of his nation, by shunning the appearance of absolute rebellion, and to lull his enemies into security, by making them regard his proceedings in the light of a mere local tumult, that he might strike the more surely for the independence of Peru. Hence, all his proclamations, his decrees, and the other formalities attendant on the opening of his insurrection, were couched in the name of the king. Adhering to this plan, and pretending to be in the execution of the king's mandates, he passed rapidly into the province of Quispicancha, with the intention of causing the corregidor Cabrera, to undergo the fate of Arriaga. Cabrera, anticipating his purpose, escaped by a hasty flight, leaving his rich magazines and the treasures of the government to be distributed, like the spoils of Arriaga, among the insurgent Indians. By these movements, the neighboring provinces were now thrown into general consternation, and Tupac Amaru actively extended the flame, disseminating his edicts, wherein, calling on the names of the Incas and of liberty, he sought to awaken the national enthusiasm of the Peruvians.

There is one passage of our author, in this connexion, which deserves to be transferred entire to our pages.