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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Such Are The Changes Which A Few Years Have Produced,
And Which Are Proceeding With Increasing Rapidity.
They are the
effects of knowledge and of long-restrained activity; and they render
less striking the contrast in manners and civilization which I
observed at the beginning of the century, at Caracas, Bogota, Quito,
Lima, Mexico and the Havannah.
The influences of the Basque,
Catalanian, Galician and Andalusian origin become every day more
imperceptible.
The island of Cuba does not possess those great and magnificent
establishments the foundation of which is of very remote date in
Mexico; but the Havannah can boast of institutions which the
patriotism of the inhabitants, animated by a happy rivalry between the
different centres of American civilization, will know how to extend
and improve whenever political circumstances and confidence in the
preservation of internal tranquillity may permit. The Patriotic
Society of the Havannah (established in 1793); those of Santo
Espiritu, Puerto Principe, and Trinidad, which depend on it; the
university, with its chairs of theology, jurisprudence, medicine and
mathematics, established since 1728, in the convent of the Padres
Predicedores;* (* The clergy of the island of Cuba is neither numerous
nor rich, if we except the Bishop of the Havannah and the Archbishop
of Cuba, the former of whom has 110,000 piastres, and the latter
40,000 piastres per annum. The canons have 3000 piastres. The number
of ecclesiastics does not exceed 1100, according to the official
enumeration in my possession.) the chair of political economy, founded
in 1818; that of agricultural botany; the museum and the school of
descriptive anatomy, due to the enlightened zeal of Don Alexander
Ramirez; the public library, the free school of drawing and painting;
the national school; the Lancastrian schools, and the botanic garden,
are institutions partly new, and partly old. Some stand in need of
progressive amelioration, others require a total reform to place them
in harmony with the spirit of the age and the wants of society.
AGRICULTURE.
When the Spaniards began their settlements in the islands and on the
continent of America those productions of the soil chiefly cultivated
were, as in Europe, the plants that serve to nourish man. This
primitive stage of the agricultural life of nations has been preserved
till the present time in Mexico, in Peru, in the cold and temperate
regions of Cundinamarca, in short, wherever the domination of the
whites comprehends a vast extent of territory. The alimentary plants,
bananas, manioc, maize, the cereals of Europe, potatoes and quinoa,
have continued to be, at different heights above the level of the sea,
the basis of continental agriculture within the tropics. Indigo,
cotton, coffee and sugar-cane appear in those regions only in
intercalated groups. Cuba and the other islands of the archipelago of
the Antilles presented during the space of two centuries and a half a
uniform aspect: the same plants were cultivated which had nourished
the half-wild natives and the vast savannahs of the great islands were
peopled with numerous herds of cattle.
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