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 199 of 635 - First - Home
Westward Of The
Mississippi As Well As In The Interior Of Spanish Guiana There Are Not
Two Inhabitants To The Square League Over Much Larger Extents Of
Territory Than Switzerland Or Belgium.
The state of these countries is
like that of the Russian Empire, where the relative population of some
of the Asiatic governments (Irkutsk and Tobolsk) is to that of the
best cultivated European districts as 1 to 300.
The enormous difference existing, in countries newly cultivated,
between the extent of territory and the number of inhabitants, renders
these partial estimates necessary. When we learn that New Spain and
the United States, taking their entire extent at 75,000 and 174,000
square sea-leagues, give respectively 90 and 58 souls to each league,
we no more obtain a correct idea of that distribution of the
population on which the political power of nations depends, than we
should of the climate of a country, that is to say, of the
distribution of the heat in the different seasons, by the mere
knowledge of the mean temperature of the whole year. If we take from
the United States all their possessions west of the Mississippi, their
relative population would be 121 instead of 58 to the square league;
consequently much greater than that of New Spain. Taking from the
latter country the Provincias internas (north and north-east of Nueva
Galicia) we should find 190 instead of 90 souls to the square league.
The provinces of Caracas, Maracaybo, Cumana and Barcelona, that is,
the maritime provinces of the north, are the most populous of the old
Capitania-General of Caracas; but, in comparing this relative
population with that of New Spain, where the two intendencias of
Mexico and Puebla alone contain, on an extent scarcely equal to the
superficies of the province of Caracas, a greater population than that
of the whole republic of Columbia, we see that some Mexican
intendencias which, with respect to the concentration of their
culture, occupy but the seventh or eighth rank (Zacatecas and
Guadalajara), contain more inhabitants to the square league than the
province of Caracas.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 199 of 635
Words from 54316 to 54667
of 174507
