New-York daily tribune., 1856-03-18
THE PROSPECTS OF THE TROPICS

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some details as to hat emigrants from the United
States who might go to Nicaragua, under the idea
of engaging in agricultural enterprise, had to ex-
pect from that soil and climate The letter which
we published yesterday, from gentleman just re-
turned from Nicaragua, and who spent the Winter
there for the purpose of spying out the land, more
than confirms all the statements which we then
made.
1t is now about three hundred aud fifty years
since Europeans first began to form establishments
in tropical countries and the whole experience of
that long period goes to show that, if the tropical
regions of the wcrld-embracing very large pro-
portion of its habtable surface-are ever to be-
come the seats of civilization and productive in
dustry such as shall rival Europe and the Eu-
rOpean colonies of North America, it can only be
under the auspices and through the agency of the
native races of those regions, or of mixed races,
such as shall combine the power Of the tropical
breeds of men to resist the peculiar miasmata of
those countries, with the energy, activity and in
ttlligence which are claimed-we stop not now to
consider whether or not upon sufficient founda
tomas the peculiar characteristics of the 80
called Caucasian race.
That terrible disorder, the yellow fever, was un-
know to the native races of The tropics 1t is only
since considerable bodies of Europeans, either as
sailors soldiers or settlers, have been introduced
into the tropical countries, that this fatal disease
has committed such ravsges to attract attention.
and to this day it is almost entirely to persons of
European blood that it confines ITSELF sparing al
most wholly those of tropical origin. Indeed, the
whole brood of remittent and intermittent fevers,
for which the tropics so famous, assai the white
man with q ferOcity never known in their attacks
upon the native races; and they may be regarded
almost as the destroying angel with his flaming
sword that ecctually gr 'rds this paradise against
any permanent occupation by intruders from the
North
The white race in that climate cannot propagate
itself. The Island OF Barbados, two hundred years
ago, and within thirty or forty years of its settle
ment had population of fifty or sixty thousand
white people. 1t now has scarcely four or five
thousand, and even those not so much descendants
of the old settlers as fresh recruits from Great
Britain. Jamaica at this moment has far less
number Of white inhabitants than she had within
tWtutl years VI r<pSiisu CuHQutsl.
The Spanish and Portuguese, being the natives of
climate approaching in some measure to the tropi-
CAL and having besides noinconsiderable mixture of
Jewish and Moorish blood, have far better wihstOOd
the effects of the tropical climate than the Teutonc
races of the North of Europe. But even their
increase of numbers is perhaps due in no small de-
gree to their greater readiness in amalgamating
with the native races, since il is an unquestiOnabe
fact that a very large proportion of the persons
born in the Spanish and Portuguese tropical Col
onies who pass for being of pure European blood
are nevertheless more or less dashed with tropi-
cal intermixure. 1t is common ruse in those
countries to obtain an official or judicial decree
that Mr. So and So and his family shall pass for
white and that even in CAGES where the evidences
of mixed blood are obvious TO the most careless
observer.
The only hold ever yet obtained by the white
European races on tropical countries has been
either by entering them as conquerors, as the Por-
tuguese, Dutch and English did in Africa, India,
and the Oriental Archipelago, and the Spaniards in
Mexico Central America, New Grenada and Peru,
or by establishing themselves planters, the cap
te necessary for their operations being mainly fur
nished by European commercial houses, aud the
labOrers being slaves imported from Africa, as was
tho case in the West Indies, Brazil and on the
Spanish MsiO. But in the present age neither of
these operations are any longer feasible. The AZ.
ricau slave trade is condemned by the universal
sentiment of the civilized world, and is no longer
carried on except BY few scOundrels in New
York and elsewhere, who are ready t. risk