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 Old
Vice-Royalty Of Buenos Ayres Extended Also Along A Small Portion Of
The South Sea Coast.)
When considering the influence which the configuration of countries
(that is, the elevation and the form of coasts) exercises in
Every
district on the progress of civilization and the destiny of nations, I
have pointed out the disadvantages of those vast masses of triangular
continents, which, like Africa and the greater part of South America,
are destitute of gulfs and inland seas. It cannot be doubted that the
existence of the Mediterranean has been closely connected with the
first dawn of human cultivation among the nations of the west, and
that the articulated form of the land, the frequency of its
contractions and the concatenation of peninsulas favoured the
civilization of Greece, Italy, and perhaps of all Europe westward of
the meridian of the Propontis. In the New World the uninterruptedness
of the coasts and the monotony of their straight lines are most
remarkable in Chili and Peru. The shore of Columbia is more varied,
and its spacious gulfs, such as that of Paria, Cariaco, Maracaybo, and
Darien, were, at the time of the first discovery better peopled than
the rest and facilitated the interchange of productions. That shore
possesses an incalculable advantage in being washed by the Caribbean
Sea, a kind of inland sea with several outlets, and the only one
pertaining to the New Continent. This basin, whose various shores form
portions of the United States, of the republic of Columbia, of Mexico
and several maritime powers of Europe, gives birth to a peculiar and
exclusively American system of trade.
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