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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The Most
Active And Enterprising Colonists Cannot, In The Mountainous Districts
Of Merida, Antioquia, And Los Pastos, In The Llanos
Of Venezuela and
Guaviare, in the forests of the Rio Magdalena, the Orinoco, and the
province of Las Esmeraldas, west
Of Quito, extend their agricultural
conquests as they have done in the woody plains westward of the
Alleghenies, from the sources of the Ohio, the Tennessee and the
Alabama, as far as the banks of the Missouri and the Arkansas. Calling
to mind the account of my voyage on the Orinoco, it may be easy to
appreciate the obstacles which nature opposes to the efforts of man in
hot and humid climates. In Mexico, large extents of soil are destitute
of springs; rain seldom falls, and the want of navigable rivers
impedes communication. As the ancient native population is
agricultural, and had been so long before the arrival of the
Spaniards, the lands most easy of access and cultivation have already
their proprietors. Fertile tracts of country, at the disposal of the
first occupier, or ready to be sold in lots for the profit of the
state, are much less common than Europeans imagine. Hence it follows
that the progress of colonization cannot be everywhere as free and
rapid in Spanish America as it has hitherto been in the western
provinces of the United States. The population of that union is
composed wholly of whites, and of negros, who, having been torn from
their country, or born in the New World, have become the instruments
of the industry of the whites.
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