Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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In Open Countries, Or In A State Of Advanced
Civilization, Communication By Rivers Contributes Powerfully To
Generalize Languages, Manners, And
Political institutions; but in the
impenetrable forests of the torrid zone, as in the first rude
condition of our species,
Rivers increase the dismemberment of great
nations, favour the transition of dialects into languages that appear
to us radically distinct, and keep up national hatred and mistrust.
Between the banks of the Caura and the Padamo everything bears the
stamp of disunion and weakness. Men avoid, because they do not
understand, each other; they mutually hate, because they mutually
fear.
When we examine attentively this wild part of America, we fancy
ourselves transported to those primitive times when the earth was
peopled by degrees, and we seem to be present at the birth of human
societies. In the old world we see that pastoral life has prepared the
hunting nations for agriculture. In the New World we seek in vain
these progressive developments of civilization, these intervals of
repose, these stages in the life of nations. The luxury of vegetation
embarrasses the Indians in the chase; and in their rivers, resembling
arms of the sea, the depth of the waters prevents fishing during whole
months. Those species of ruminating animals, that constitute the
wealth of the nations of the Old World, are wanting in the New. The
bison and the musk-ox have never been reduced to a domestic state; the
breeding of llamas and guanacos has not created the habits of pastoral
life.
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