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 South-East Of Asia With Its
Neighbouring Archipelago And, Above All, The State Of The
Mediterranean In The Time
Of the Phoenician and Greek colonies, prove
that the nearness of opposite coasts, not having the same productions
and not
Inhabited by nations of different races, exercises a happy
influence on commercial industry and intellectual cultivation. The
importance of the inland Caribbean Sea, bounded by Venezuela on the
south, will be further augmented by the progressive increase of
population on the banks of the Mississippi; for that river, the Rio
del Norte and the Magdalena are the only great navigable streams which
the Caribbean Sea receives. The depth of the American rivers, their
immense branches, and the use of steam-boats, everywhere facilitated
by the proximity of forests, will, to a certain extent, compensate for
the obstacles which the uniform line of the coasts and the general
configuration of the continent oppose to the progress of industry and
civilization.
On comparing the extent of the territory with the absolute population,
we obtain the result of the connection of those two elements of public
prosperity, a connection that constitutes the relative population of
every state in the New World. We shall find to every square sea
league, in Mexico, 90; in the United States, 58; in the republic of
Columbia, 30; and in Brazil, 15 inhabitants; while Asiatic Russia
furnishes 11; the whole Russian Empire, 87; Sweden with Norway, 90;
European Russia, 320; Spain, 763; and France, 1778. But these
estimates of relative population, when applied to countries of immense
extent, and of which a great part is entirely uninhabited, merely
furnish mathematical abstractions of but little value.
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