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 Isthmus Of Panama Forms Part Of The Territory Of
Columbia, And That Neck Of Land, If Traversed By Good
Roads and
stocked with camels, may one day serve as a portage for the commerce
of the world, even though
The plains of Cupica, the bay of Mandinga or
the Rio Chagre should not afford the possibility of a canal for the
passage of vessels proceeding from Europe to China,* or from the
United States to the north-west coast of America. (* 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. 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. In countries
uniformly cultivated - in France, for example - the number of
inhabitants to the square league, calculated by separate departments,
is in general only a third, more or less, than the relative population
of the sum of all the departments. Even in Spain the deviations from
the average number rise, with few exceptions, only from half to
double. In America, on the contrary, it is only in the Atlantic
states, from South Carolina to New Hampshire, that the population
begins to spread with any uniformity. In that most civilized portion
of the New World, from 130 to 900 inhabitants are reckoned to the
square league, while the relative population on all the Atlantic
states, considered together, is 240. The extremes (North Carolina and
Massachusetts) are only in the relation of 1 to 7, nearly as in
France, where the extremes, in the departments of the Hautes Alpes and
the Cote-du-Nord are also in the relation of 1 to 6.7. The variations
from the average number, which we generally find restricted to narrow
limits in the civilized countries of Europe, exceed all measure in
Brazil, in the Spanish colonies and even in the confederation of the
United States, in its whole extent. We find in Mexico in some of the
intendencias, for example, La Sonora and Durango, from 9 to 15
inhabitants to the square league, while in others, on the central
table-land, there are more than 500. The relative population of the
country situated between the eastern bank of the Mississippi and the
Atlantic states is scarcely 47; while that of Connecticut, Rhode
island, and Massachusetts is more than 800. 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.
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