The number of Christian settlers who actually stayed in the Alpujarra was approximately seven thousand. Many of these were single or came with only a small family, whereas the Moorish families had averaged five or six persons, making a population of some forty thousand before the rebellion. Gradually the settler families expanded, bringing the population to a peak of twelve thousand by the census of 1591. But then there was an outbreak of plague, infestation of locusts from Africa, and successive years of drought with much-reduced harvests. The population fell drastically and recovered slowly.