Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 558 of 777 - First - Home
These Local Considerations Are Combined With Others, Suggested By The
Moral Position Of Nations.
The north-west coast of America furnishes
to this day no other stable settlements but Russian and Spanish
colonies.
Before the inhabitants of the United States, in their
progressive movement from east to west, could reach the shore between
the latitude 41 and 50 degrees, which long separated the Spanish monks
and the Siberian hunters,* the latter had established themselves south
of the Columbia River. (* The hunters connected with military posts,
and dependent on the Russian Company, of which the principal
shareholders live at Irkutsk. In 1804 the little fortress (krepost) at
the bay of Jakutal was still six hundred leagues distant from the most
northern Mexican possessions.) Thus in New California the Franciscan
missionaries, men estimable for their morals, and their agricultural
activity, learnt with astonishment, that Greek priests had arrived in
their neighbourhood; and that two nations, who inhabit the eastern and
western extremities of Europe, were become neighbours on a coast of
America opposite to China. In Guiana circumstances were very
different: the Spaniards found on their frontiers those very
Portuguese, who, by their language, and their municipal institutions,
form with them one of the most noble remains of Roman Europe; but whom
mistrust, founded on unequal strength, and too great proximity, has
converted into an often hostile, and always rival power.
If two nations adjacent to each other in Europe, the Spaniards and the
Portuguese, have alike become neighbours in the New Continent, they
are indebted for that circumstance to the spirit of enterprise and
active courage which both displayed at the period of their military
glory and political greatness.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 558 of 777
Words from 151470 to 151747
of 211397