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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M.
Bonpland And I Passed Nearly Three Years In The Country Which Now
Forms The Territory Of The Republic Of Columbia; Sixteen Months In
Venezuela And Eighteen In New Grenada.
We crossed the territory in its
whole extent; on one hand from the mountains of Paria as far as
Esmeralda on the Upper Orinoco, and San Carlo del Rio Negro, situated
near the frontiers of Brazil; and on the other, from Rio Sinu and
Carthagena as far as the snowy summits of Quito, the port of Guayaquil
on the coast of the Pacific, and the banks of the Amazon in the
province of Jaen de Bracamoros. So long a stay and an expedition of
one thousand three hundred leagues in the interior of the country, of
which more than six hundred and fifty were by water, have furnished me
with a pretty accurate knowledge of local circumstances.
I am aware that travellers, who have recently visited America, regard
its progress as far more rapid than my statistical researches seem to
indicate. For the year 1913 they promise one hundred and twelve
millions of inhabitants in Mexico, of which they believe that the
population is doubled every twenty-two years; and during the same
interval one hundred and forty millions in the United States. These
numbers, I confess, do not appear to me to be alarming from the
motives that may excite fear among the disciples of Malthus. It is
possible that some time or other, two or three hundred millions of men
may find subsistence in the vast extent of the new continent between
the lake of Nicaragua and lake Ontario. I admit that the United States
will contain above eighty millions of inhabitants a hundred years
hence, allowing a progressive change in the period of doubling from
twenty-five to thirty-five and forty years; but, notwithstanding the
elements of prosperity to be found in equinoctial America, I doubt
whether the increase of the population in Venezuela, Spanish Guiana,
New Grenada and Mexico can be in general so rapid as in the United
States. The latter, which are situated entirely in the temperate zone,
destitute of high chains of mountains, embrace an immense extent of
country easy of cultivation. The hordes of Indian hunters flee both
from the colonists, whom they abhor, and the methodist missionaries,
who oppose their taste for indolence and a vagabond life. The more
fertile land of Spanish America produces indeed on the same surface a
greater amount of nutritive substances. On the table lands of the
equinoctial regions wheat doubtless yields annually from twenty to
twenty-four for one; but Cordilleras furrowed by almost inaccessible
crevices, bare and arid steppes, forests that resist both the axe and
fire, and an atmosphere filled with venomous insects, will long
present powerful obstacles to agriculture and industry. 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. In Mexico, Guatimala, Quito, and Peru,
on the contrary, there exist in our day more than five millions and a
half of natives of copper-coloured race, whose isolated position,
partly forced and partly voluntary, together with their attachment to
ancient habits, and their mistrustful inflexibility of character, will
long prevent their participation in the progress of the public
prosperity, notwithstanding the efforts employed to disindianize them.
I dwell on the differences between the free states of temperate and
equinoctial America, to show that the latter have to contend against
obstacles connected with their physical and moral position; and to
remind the reader that the countries embellished with the most varied
and precious productions of nature, are not always susceptible of an
easy, rapid, and uniformly extended cultivation. If we consider the
limits which the population may attain as depending solely on the
quantity of subsistence which the land is capable of producing, the
most simple calculations would prove the preponderance of the
communities established in the fine regions of the torrid zone; but
political economy, or the positive science of government, is
distrustful of ciphers and vain abstractions. We know that by the
multiplication of one family only, a continent previously desert may
reckon in the space of eight centuries more than eight millions of
inhabitants; and yet these estimates, founded on the hypothesis of a
continuous doubling in twenty-five or thirty years, are contradicted
by the history of every country already advanced in civilization. The
destinies which await the free states of Spanish America are too
glorious to require to be embellished by illusions and chimerical
calculations.
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