Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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(* Notwithstanding The Political
Changes Which Have Taken Place In The South American Colonies, I Shall
Throughout This Work Designate The Country Inhabited By The Spanish
Americans By The Denomination Of Spanish America.
I call the country
of the Anglo-Americans the United States, without adding of North
America, although other United States exist in South America.
It is
embarrassing to speak of nations who play a great part on the scene of
the world without having collective names. The term American can no
longer be applied solely to the citizens of the United States of North
America; and it were to be wished that the nomenclature of the
independent nations of the New Continent should be fixed in a manner
at once convenient, harmonious, and precise.) The United States
contain five-eighths of the proportion of the Spanish possessions, and
yet their area is not one-half so large. Brazil comprehends tracts of
country so desert toward the west that over an extent only a third
less than that of Spanish America its population is in the proportion
of one to four. The following table contains the results of an attempt
which I made, conjointly with M. Mathieu, member of the Academy of
Sciences, and of the Bureau des Longitudes, to estimate with precision
the extent of the surface of the various states of America. We made
use of maps on which the limits had been corrected according to the
statements published in my Recueil d'Observations Astronomiques. Our
scales were, generally speaking, so large that spaces from four to
five leagues square were not omitted. We observed this degree of
precision that we might not add the uncertainty of the measure of
triangles, trapeziums, and the sinuosities of the coasts, to the
uncertainty of geographical statements.
TABLE OF GREAT POLITICAL DIVISIONS.
COLUMN 1 : NAME.
COLUMN 2 : SURFACE IN SQUARE LEAGUES OF 20 TO AN EQUINOCTIAL DEGREE.
COLUMN 3 : POPULATION (1823).
Surface Pop.
1. Possessions of the Spanish Americans : 371,380 : 16,785,000.
Mexico or New Spain : 75,830 : 6,800,000.
Guatemala : 16,740 : 1,600,000.
Cuba and Porto Rico : 4,430 : 800,000.
Columbia - Venezuela : 33,700 : 785,000.
Columbia - New Grenada and Quito : 58,250 : 2,000,000.
Peru : 41,420 : 1,400,000.
Chili : 14,240 : 1,100,000.
Buenos Ayres : 126,770 : 2,300,000.
2. Possessions of the Portuguese
Americans (Brazil) : 256,990 : 4,000,000.
3. Possessions of the
Anglo-Americans (United States) : 174,300 : 10,220,000.
From the statistical researches which have been made in several
countries of Europe, important results have been obtained by a
comparison of the relative population of maritime and inland
provinces. In Spain these relations are to one another as nine to
five; in the United Provinces of Venezuela, and, above all, in the
ancient Capitania-General of Caracas, they are as thirty-five to one.
How powerful soever may be the influence of commerce on the prosperity
of states, and the intellectual development of nations, it would be
wrong to attribute in America, as we do in Europe, to that cause alone
the differences just mentioned.
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