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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Even In Spain The Deviations From
The Average Number Rise, With Few Exceptions, Only From Half To
Double.
In America, on the contrary, it is only in the Atlantic
states, from South Carolina to New Hampshire, that the population
begins to spread with any uniformity.
In that most civilized portion
of the New World, from 130 to 900 inhabitants are reckoned to the
square league, while the relative population on all the Atlantic
states, considered together, is 240. The extremes (North Carolina and
Massachusetts) are only in the relation of 1 to 7, nearly as in
France, where the extremes, in the departments of the Hautes Alpes and
the Cote-du-Nord are also in the relation of 1 to 6.7. The variations
from the average number, which we generally find restricted to narrow
limits in the civilized countries of Europe, exceed all measure in
Brazil, in the Spanish colonies and even in the confederation of the
United States, in its whole extent. We find in Mexico in some of the
intendencias, for example, La Sonora and Durango, from 9 to 15
inhabitants to the square league, while in others, on the central
table-land, there are more than 500. The relative population of the
country situated between the eastern bank of the Mississippi and the
Atlantic states is scarcely 47; while that of Connecticut, Rhode
island, and Massachusetts is more than 800. Westward of the
Mississippi as well as in the interior of Spanish Guiana there are not
two inhabitants to the square league over much larger extents of
territory than Switzerland or Belgium. The state of these countries is
like that of the Russian Empire, where the relative population of some
of the Asiatic governments (Irkutsk and Tobolsk) is to that of the
best cultivated European districts as 1 to 300.
The enormous difference existing, in countries newly cultivated,
between the extent of territory and the number of inhabitants, renders
these partial estimates necessary. When we learn that New Spain and
the United States, taking their entire extent at 75,000 and 174,000
square sea-leagues, give respectively 90 and 58 souls to each league,
we no more obtain a correct idea of that distribution of the
population on which the political power of nations depends, than we
should of the climate of a country, that is to say, of the
distribution of the heat in the different seasons, by the mere
knowledge of the mean temperature of the whole year. If we take from
the United States all their possessions west of the Mississippi, their
relative population would be 121 instead of 58 to the square league;
consequently much greater than that of New Spain. Taking from the
latter country the Provincias internas (north and north-east of Nueva
Galicia) we should find 190 instead of 90 souls to the square league.
The provinces of Caracas, Maracaybo, Cumana and Barcelona, that is,
the maritime provinces of the north, are the most populous of the old
Capitania-General of Caracas; but, in comparing this relative
population with that of New Spain, where the two intendencias of
Mexico and Puebla alone contain, on an extent scarcely equal to the
superficies of the province of Caracas, a greater population than that
of the whole republic of Columbia, we see that some Mexican
intendencias which, with respect to the concentration of their
culture, occupy but the seventh or eighth rank (Zacatecas and
Guadalajara), contain more inhabitants to the square league than the
province of Caracas.
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