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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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.
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