Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 189 of 635 - First - Home
For The Year 1913 They Promise One Hundred And Twelve
Millions Of Inhabitants In Mexico, Of Which They Believe That The
Population Is Doubled Every Twenty-Two Years; And During The Same
Interval One Hundred And Forty Millions In The United States.
These
numbers, I confess, do not appear to me to be alarming from the
motives that may excite fear among the disciples of Malthus.
It is
possible that some time or other, two or three hundred millions of men
may find subsistence in the vast extent of the new continent between
the lake of Nicaragua and lake Ontario. I admit that the United States
will contain above eighty millions of inhabitants a hundred years
hence, allowing a progressive change in the period of doubling from
twenty-five to thirty-five and forty years; but, notwithstanding the
elements of prosperity to be found in equinoctial America, I doubt
whether the increase of the population in Venezuela, Spanish Guiana,
New Grenada and Mexico can be in general so rapid as in the United
States. The latter, which are situated entirely in the temperate zone,
destitute of high chains of mountains, embrace an immense extent of
country easy of cultivation. The hordes of Indian hunters flee both
from the colonists, whom they abhor, and the methodist missionaries,
who oppose their taste for indolence and a vagabond life. The more
fertile land of Spanish America produces indeed on the same surface a
greater amount of nutritive substances. On the table lands of the
equinoctial regions wheat doubtless yields annually from twenty to
twenty-four for one; but Cordilleras furrowed by almost inaccessible
crevices, bare and arid steppes, forests that resist both the axe and
fire, and an atmosphere filled with venomous insects, will long
present powerful obstacles to agriculture and industry.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 189 of 635
Words from 51565 to 51863
of 174507