AMERICA.

OUR object in this article is to take a comprehensive survey of the American continent in its physical, moral, and general relations. In attempting this, we do not intend to go much into detail upon those subjects which will be more fully and appropriately discussed in the distinct articles assigned in this work to the several states included in the western world; but we shall dwell at some length upon those great features, peculiarities, and classes of faets, which either belong to it as a whole, or can be most advantageously considered or described when all its parts are viewed in connection with one another. Such are the climate and physical structure of the country, the geographical distribution of its cultivated plants, its indigenous population, its animal tribes, its commercial and political capabilities, and its means of progressive improvement. The new continent may be styled emphatically, “a land of promise.” The place it now occupies in the civilized world is insignificant compared with [7:2:606] what it must attain. The present there sinks into nothing in itself, and derives all its importance from the germs it contains of a mighty future. The change must not· only be great, but rapid, beyond all which the past history of mankind would lead us to expect. Even after we have familiarized our minds with the principles upon which its progress depends, we find it difficult to reconcile ourselves to the consequences that inevitably result from them. But time will do its work; and the great-grandsons of those now in existence may live to see the new world contain a greater mass of civilized men than the old. It is this greatness in prospect which lends an interest to the western continent, similar to that which the eastern derives from its historical recollections. The same circumstance requires that We should dwell at some length on the physical structure of America, and on those indigenous tribes which, in the course of three centuries, will only live in poetry and tradition. The future history of the new world must be read by us in the configuration of its surface, the distribution of its mountains and rivers, the productions of its soil, its natural and political capabilities, and in the habits and character, rather than the numbers or the actual progress of its civilized inhabitants. .

The continental part of America extends from the 54th degree of south to the 71st of north latitude, its extreme length, from the Straits of Magellan to those of Behring, being 10,500 English miles. The island of Terra del Fuego reaches one degree beyond its south extremity into the Antarctic Ocean; and Greenland, which is connected by geographers with America, has been traced to the 78th degree of north latitude, and probably is prolonged much farther into the polar circle. The late discoveries of Captains Parry and Franklin have given us much more exact ideas than we formerly possessed of the northern regions of America. The coast of the mainland has been traced from 108° to 149° of west longitude, and is found to run in a direction nearly east and west, in an uneven line lying between the parallels of 67° and 71°. From the strong current which sets eastward through the Straits of the Fury and Hecla, there is little doubt that the arm of the sea visited by Franklin extends from Point Turnagain, in latitude 68⅜°, towards these straits, in latitude 70°. On the western side an interval of no more than 160 miles separates the discoveries of Captain Franklin and Captain Beechy; and as the coast at the two nearest points known is almost precisely in the same latitude, there can be little hazard in assuming that the intervening part does not deviate far from the parallel of 71°. The bounds of continental America may therefore be considered as nearly determined on every side. The additional lights furnished by Captain Parry’s voyages render it extremely probable that a great archipelago of islands occupies all the space between the northern coast of the continent and the 80th parallel; and there is even some reason for believing that the country known by the name of Greenland is traversed from east to west by arms of the sea, like the regions recently explored on the west side of Baffin’s Bay.

The new continent, when compared with the old, enjoys three important advantages. First, it is free from such vast deserts as cover a large part of the surface of Asia and Africa, and which not only withdraw a great proportion of the soil from the use of man, but are obstacles to communication between the settled districts, and generate that excessive heat which is often injurious to health, and always destructive to industry. Secondly, no part of its soil is so far from the ocean as the central regions of Asia and Africa. Thirdly, the interior of America is penetrated by majestic rivers, the Mississippi, Amazon, and Plata, greatly exceeding in magnitude those of the old continent, and surpassing them still more in the vast facilities they present for enabling the remotest inland districts to communicate with the sea.

According to the geographical system adopted in the old world, America ought to be considered as two distinct continents, connected by the isthmus of Darien. Its two great divisions have evidently more of a defined and separate character than Africa and Asia, or than Asia and Europe; but though this arrangement may be very properly adopted for the purpose of description, it is too late now to think of assigning separate names to regions which have so long been known by a common appellation. In the physical arrangement of the parts of South and North America there is a remarkable resemblance. Both are very broad in the north, and gradually contract as they proceed southward, till they end, the one in a narrow isthmus, and the other in a narrow promontory. Each has a lofty chain of mountains near its western coast, abounding in volcanoes, with a lower ridge on the opposite side, destitute of any trace of internal fire; and each has one great central plain declining to the south and the north, and watered by two gigantic streams, the Mississippi, corresponding to the Plata, and the St Lawrence to the Amazon. In their climate, vegetable productions, and animal tribes, however, the two regions are very dissimilar.

The extent of the American continent and the islands connected with it is as follows:
[table]

The American continent, therefore, with its dependent islands, is fully four times as large as Europe, about one third larger than Africa, and almost one half less than Asia, if we include with the latter Australia and Polynesia. It constitutes about three tenths of the dry land on the surface of the globe. Of the continental part of North America, a considerable part is condemned to perpetual sterility by the rigour of the climate, as we shall explain more fully by and by. At present it is sufficient to state, that if we draw a line from the head of Cook’s Inlet, in latitude 61°, on the west side, to the Straits of Bellisle on the east, so as to pass through Fort Churchill, on Hudson’s Bay, we shall cut off a space rather exceeding one. million and a half of square miles, which may be considered as incapable of cultivation. At the south extremity of America, a small tract, extending 200 miles north of the Straits of Magellan, though far within the limits of the temperate zone, is nearly in the same condition. These and the summits of the Andes are the only parts of the American continent which are rendered incapable of cultivation by the severity of the climate.

The vast chain of the Andes is distinguished by several peculiar features from all other mountains in the world. It has its principal direction nearly north and south, while all the great ridges of the old continent run from east to west; it is unparalleled in its prodigious length, in the richness of its mineral treasures, and in the number and magnitude of its volcanoes. The Andes, ∏ we connect with them the Mexican Cordillera and thθ Rocky Mountains, extend from the Straits of Magellan, m [7:2:607]a line which may be considered as unbroken, to Point 'Brownlow on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, in the latitude of 70°, over a space equal to 10,000 miles in length, or two fifths of the circumference of the globe. Their height, which attains its maximum within the tropics, declines towards both poles, but in such a manner that, with a few exceptions, its higher summits ascend to the line of perpetual snow from one extremity to the other. It may thus be said to carry the temper of the pole over the whole length of the American continent. The chain of the Andes is common to the two parts of America, and is in fact the link which connects them and makes them one continent. As we propose, however, to describe North and South America separately, we shall reserve the details for another part of this article.

South America is a peninsula of a triangular form. Its greatest length from north to south is 4550 miles; its greatest breadth 3200; and it covers an area, as already mentioned, of 6,500,000 square English miles, about three fourths of which lie between the tropics, and the other fourth in the temperate zone. From the configuration· of its surface, this peninsula may be divided into five distinct physical regions, of which at present it will be sufficient to sketch the outlines. 1. The low country skirting the shores of the Pacific Ocean, from 50 to 150 miles in breadth, and 4000 in length. The two extremities of this territory are fertile, the middle a sandy desert. 2. The basin of the Orinoco, surrounded by the Andes and their branches, a country consisting of extensive plains or steppes, called Llanos, either destitute of wood or merely, dotted with trees, but covered with a very high herbage during a part of the year. During the dry season the heat is intense here, and the parched soil opens into long fissures, in which lizards and serpents lie in a state of torpor. 3. The basin of the Amazon, a vast plain, embracing a surface of more than two ’millions of square miles, possessing a rich soil and a humid climate. It is covered almost everywhere with dense forests, which harbour innumerable tribes of wild animals, and are thinly inhabited by savages, who live by hunting and fishing. 4. The great southern plain, watered by the Plata and the numerous streams descending from the eastern summits of the Cordilleras. Open steppes, which are here called Pampas, occupy the greater proportion of this region, which is dry, and in some parts barren, but in general is covered with a strong growth of weeds and tall grass, which feeds prodigious herds of horses and cattle, and affords shelter to a few wild animals. 5. The high country of Brazil, eastward of the Parana and Araguay, presenting alternate ridges and valleys, thickly covered with wood on the side next the Atlantic, and opening into steppes or pastures in the interior.

The Andes skirt the shores of the Pacific Ocean, like a vast rampart opposed to its encroachments, along the whole line of the western coast, from 12° of north to 53° of south latitude. They derive their name from anti, a Peruvian word signifying copper. Except at some points where they have been examined by scientific men, their structure is yet but imperfectly known; and hence they are often incorrectly exhibited in our maps. Though often described as a single chain, they generally consist of a succession of ridges, divided by high and narrow valleys; but these ridges, instead of running in parallel lines, generally ramify from central points in all directions, and thus present the appearance of a confused assemblage of small chains. Between the latitudes of 33° and 6° they Spread out their base to an extent of 300 miles, and even much farther, if we take in the smaller subordinate chains. In the intervals between the ridges are situated many lakes, of which the most considerable are Ondalgola, Pataipo, Hages, and the great lake of Titiaca, 200 miles in length’. This lake, and the lake Parimé, in Guiana, are the only sheets of fresh water in South America which vie in magnitude with those singular reservoirs placed on the course of the St Lawrence. From the latitude of 6° south to 2° north, the Andes contract their breadth, and form an elevated plateau. One part of this constitutes the Paramo, or desert of Assuay, a plain at the height of 13,000 feet above the sea, and embracing a surface of 50 square miles, where snow-storms are frequent, and only a few alpine plants grow. Farther north lies another range of table-land, from 9000 to 9400 feet in height, near the north extremity of which the town of Quito is situated. On this elevated plain are placed two lines of lofty summits, standing detached from each other, and crowned with diadems of perpetual snow. Their symmetrical disposition led Bouguer to consider the space between the eastern and western lines as a valley; but Humboldt remarks that it is really the crest of the Cordillera, upon which, as a base, the cones or masses of Pinchincha, Antisana, Atacazo, Chimborazo, and others, rest. When we have lived in this elevated spot for some time, “we forget that every thing which surrounds the observer, those villages which proclaim the industry of a mountainous people, those pastures covered with herds of lamas and flocks of European sheep, those orchards, those fields cultivated with care, and promising the richest harvests, hang as it were suspended in the lofty regions of the atmosphere, at a height exceeding that of the Pyrenees.” From Quito, a single chain extends to Popayan, where it parts into three parallel chains. The westmost of these ridges, which scarcely rises to an elevation of 5000 feet, divides the valley of the river Cauca from the Pacific Ocean; and a branch proceeding from it passes through the isthmus of Panama, where it sinks to the small elevation of 600 or 800 feet above the sea. The second or central ridge maintains nearly the general height of the main trunk, and has summits which rise into the regions of perpetual snow. It separates the valley of the Cauca from that of the Magdalena. The pass of Quindiu, described by Humboldt, is one of the Quebra-das, or transverse ravines, which open a path through this mountain. It is so narrow in some places as to have the appearance of a gallery cut artificially and open to day. It is steep and uneven, and is kept almost perpetually wet by the rains. Travellers are carried through this ravine in chairs strapped on the backs of porters, who follow this mode of life voluntarily for the sake of gain, and think themselves sufficiently paid with twelve or fourteen piasters, for a toilsome journey of fifteen or twenty days. Even the bottom of this ravine, at its highest point, is 11,400 feet above the sea, and of course exceeds the highest summit of the Pyrenees in altitude. The third or eastern ridge separates the valley of the Magdalena from the plains of the Rio Meta, and has its northern termination at Cape Vela, in longitude 72°. This chain, though lower than the central one, has summits which reach to the height of 14,000 feet. Between the eastern and central chains is situated the capital of Colombia, Santa Fe, in a large and beautiful plain 8700 feet above the sea, and which, from the perfect level of its surface, and the barrier of rocks that incloses it, appears to have been an ancient lake. The waters of this plain escape by a narrow outlet, and rushing down a cleft, leap at two bounds to a depth of 573 feet, forming the celebrated fall of Tequen-dama, which, in the attributes of beauty and sublimity, is said not to be surpassed in the world. These three parallel ridges are properly component parts of the main trunk, like the two ridges of Upper Peru.
[7:2:608]

The mean height of the Andes in Peru, or that of the continuous ridge, independent of projecting cones, is ' estimated by Humboldt at 11,000 or 12,000 feet (1850 toises); in Chili, according to Mr Miers, the most elevated summits, at the latitude 33°, only reach the height of 15,000 feet, and the mean height of the chain is in some places as low as 8000; in Patagonia its height is unknown. Till lately, the loftiest summits were supposed to be in Quito, where Chimborazo attains the prodigious altitude of 21,400 English feet, and the volcanic caves of Antisana and Cotopaxi have the elevations of 19,100 and 18,900 feet respectively; but Mr Pentland, an English gentleman attached to the Peruvian embassy, has ascertained, by measurements performed with care, that the mountains of Quito are greatly surpassed in altitude by those of Upper Peru. The Andes here form two chains, which are separated by a large district of table-land, the northern extremity of which is occupied by the lake Titiaca. The eastern chain presents, between the 14th and 17th parallels, a range of snow-covered peaks, of which several have an elevation exceeding 20,000 feet. Among these, towards the north, in the latitude of 15° 30', is Sorate, 25,250, and farther south Illimani, 24,300 feet in height. The former, therefore, is nearly 4000 feet higher than Chimborazo, and only about 1000 feet lower than Mount Jahaver, the highest in the chain of the Himalaya. The western chain is lower than the eastern, but one of its summits has an altitude of 18,800 feet. Mr Pentland concludes, from astronomical observations, that the eastern chain is 310 geographical or 360 English miles from the coast. The mineral wealth of the district has attracted a large population to this table-land, which, with the single exception of Thibet, is probably the highest inhabited soil on the face of the globe. Here are flocks, gardens, cultivated fields, and populous cities, suspended above the region of the clouds. La Paz, with 20,000 inhabitants, and Potosi, which had once 150,000, are situated in this plain, at the height of 12,190 and 13,500 feet above the level of the sea; and there are cottages near the mines at 15,700 feet, an elevation exceeding that of Mont Blanc.^[1. Bulletin des Sciences Géographiques, Mars 1829; Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, April 1830, p. 353. ] This table-land, from Cusco to Potosi, was the primitive seat of the empire of the íncas, and the centre of Peruvian civilisation.

Though nothing appears more capricious than the distribution and elevation of mountains, they yet afford, on the great scale, striking proofs of beneficent design, and of adaptation to the wants of civilized man. Many chains of mountains, for instance, enter within the regions of eternal frost with one or more of their summits; but there is not a single great chain in any of the fruitful and habitable parts of the world which so far transcends this limit as to present an unbroken line of snow along its whole length. The height of the curve of congelation diminishes as we approach the pole; and if there were not a corresponding diminution in the elevation of the mountains, or if the principal chains in the different habitable zones were raised a little higher, they would sever the nations living on their opposite sides as effectually as a wall of brass reaching above the clouds. The Andes, if we disregard their projecting summits, form an unbroken dike about 2∣ miles high, and 4500 miles long. Were three or four thousand feet added to their height, all access across, from one side of the chain to the other, would be denied to the foot of man. If great perils attend the short journey to the summit of Mont Blanc, what human skill or power could encounter the terrors of a snowy desert a hundred miles in breadth, beset with avalanches and visited with storms. In these circumstances, such towns as Arica and La Paz, or Mendoza and Santiago, which are separated only by a journey of three days, would be as far asunder for the purposes of traffic or intercourse as England and Jamaica. But the line which bounds the means of communication varies from clime to clime. Were the Alps as elevated as the Andes, all the passes across the former would be closed; and were the Dofrines as high as the Alps, Sweden and Norway could only communicate by sea. Though the altitude of the Andes in Chili and Patagonia bas never been measured, various circumstances show that the chain descends as it advances from the torrid zone to its southern termination. In Quito and Peru, the back or crest of the ridge is free from snow, which only rests upon isolated summits; and with the aid of such arrangements as would be created by a dense population, the means of passing from one side to the other might perhaps be found wherever they were deemed necessary. In Chili, beyond the latitude of 30°, the highest point of the most frequented pass was found by Mr Miers to be 11,920 feet above the sea; and the courier travels through it even in winter. In Peru and Quito the passes in many cases consist of deep fissures, called quebradas, apparently produced by earthquakes, extremely narrow, and often descending to the depth of nearly a mile.^[2. Humboldt’s Researches, vol. i. p. 53; Miers’ Travels in Chili and La Plata, vol. i. p. 319. ] In Patagonia, where the snow descends much lower, the passes must be few; but there are some, —and this circumstance authorizes the conclusion, that the height of the chain is smaller here than in Chili.

Three branches or transverse chains proceed from the Andes, nearly at right angles to the direction of the principal chain, and pass eastward across the continent, about the parallels of 18° of south, and 4° and 9° of north latitude. The most northern of these is the “Cordillera of the coast,” which parts from the main trunk near the south extremity of the lakd Maracaybo, reaches the sea at Porto Cabello, and then passes eastward through Ca-raccas to the Gulf of Paria. Its length is about 700 miles, and its medium height from 4000 to 5000 feet; but the Silla de Caraccas, one of its summits, has an elevation of 8400 feet; and its western part, which is at some distance from the sea, contains the Sierra of Merida, 15,000 feet in height. The second transverse chain is connected with the Andes at the parallels of 3° and 4° north, and passing eastward, terminates in French Guiana, at no great distance from the mouth of the Amazon. It is sometimes called the Cordillera of Parimé, but is named by Humboldt the “Cordillera of the Cataracts of the Orinoco, because this river, which flows amidst its ridges in the upper part of its course, forms the cataracts of Maypure at the point where it descends into the plains. Its mean height is estimated at 4000 feet above the level of the sea; but only a small part of it has been visited by any European. This chain divides the waters of the Orinoco and the rivers of Guiana from the basin of the Amazon, and is covered with magnificent forests. Its breadth is supposed to be from 200 to 300 miles, and it incloses amidst its ridges the great lake Parimé, in longitude 60°, and several of smaller size. On a table-land forming part of it, about the 67th degree of longitude, the Cassiquiary forms an intermediate channel, which connects the rivers Orinoco and Amazon, so that during the annual floods a part of the waters of the former flow into the latter[7:2:609]. This singular phenomenon was made known long ago by the Spanish missionaries, but was thought to be a fable, till the truth was ascertained by Humboldt. The length of this chain is about 1500 miles. The third transverse chain, which bears various names, and is little known, crosses the continent between the parallels of 12 and 18 degrees, connecting the Andes with the mountains of Brazil, and dividing the waters of the Amazon from those of the Plata. It is a broad plateau of elevated land rather than a distinct mountainous ridge, and consists of low hills or uneven plains, with very little wood, presenting in some places extensive pastures, and in others tracts of a poor sandy soil. Its average height probably does not exceed 2000 or 3000 feet above the level of the sea.^[3. Travels of Spix and Von Martins in Brazil, vol. ii. p. 144. Eng. edit. ]

The mountains of Brazil, which are of moderate height, and occupy a great breadth of country, form an irregular plateau, bristled with sharp ridges and peaks. They extend from the shores of the Plata to within a short distance of the Amazon, over a space of 2000 miles; and their greatest breadth may be nearly equal to half their length. Itacolumi, about 250 miles north-west of Rio Janeiro, which is celebrated for its auriferous sands and gravel, and gives birth to three great rivers, the Parana, the St Francisco, and the Tocantin, is considered the most elevated summit, and the stem of the whole group. According to the German miner Eschwege, it rises to the height of 5710 English feet^[4. Spix’s 7VαwZf, vol. n. p. 269. ] above the level of the sea; and the ordinary elevation of the numerous ridges which branch off from it is supposed to be 3000 or 4000 feet. The western parts of this chain, which are near the centre of the continent, are supposed to be lower than those on the coast; but they are probably as high, if Dr Spix is correct in stating that the mean heat of the year is below G5° of Fahrenheit (15° or 16° of Reaumur).

The geology of the South American mountains, particularly the Andes, is distinguished, like their physical form and arrangement, by some remarkable peculiarities. The chain of the Andes, as we have already stated, may be considered as an immense dike, from two to three miles in height, and from one to two hundred in breadth. The first and most peculiar feature of this chain is, that it contains within its limits thirty active volcanoes,^[5. On some maps 40 are marked, but erroneously. See Memoir on Active Volcanoes, in the French Annuaire for 1824. ] or nearly one fifth of all that are known in the world. They are irregularly distributed over the whole line from Pasto to Terra del Fuego, but they are most numerous in Chili and Colombia. Some of them throw out smoke merely, some mud and water, and only a few produce eruptions of lava. These must be viewed as the funnels of an« immense laboratory of subterranean fire, extending along the whole chain, and producing, by its internal agitations, those tremendous earthquakes, which have been more frequent and destructive here than in any equal range of country elsewhere in the world. The second peculiarity in the structure of the Andes is closely connected with the first; it is the prodigious space occupied by the basalts, porphyries, and trachytes, that is, by rocks of igneous origin. It is foreign to our purpose to go minutely into geological details; but a general idea of the composition of these mountains may be communicated in a few sentences. The base of the chain consists of granite, which may be conceived to form a long elevation, protruded from below, in the shape of a swoln ridge, from 5000 to 11,000 feet in height. Incumbent on this are strata of gneiss, mica slate, clay slate, and graywacke, but seldom all together, and probably resting generally on the sides of the granite, without covering its summit. Above these, sometimes in beds, but more frequently in amorphous masses, rest immense deposits, first of an old porphyry, next of a newer porphyry rich in metals, then of basalt, clinkstone, and amygdaloids, with masses of trachyte and sienite interspersed in various parts of the series. The order, however, must not be understood to be uniform, or very perfectly determined. Trachyte, it may be necessary to mention, is the oldest rock recognised as a volcanic product: but in the Andes, Humboldt thinks that it graduates into the older porphyry; and the two formations, with all the trap rocks resting above them, must therefore be held to be of igneous origin. Now these volcanic rocks, which occupy but a trifling space in Europe, and never occur at great elevations, form almost everywhere the summits of the Andes, and exhibit at some places the enormous thickness of 10,000 or 12,000 feet. Rocks, therefore, which are the acknowledged progeny of* fire, crown this gigantic chain, and constitute probably one third of its bulk; a remarkable fact in geology, and one that associates naturally with the existence of so great a number of active volcanoes. On the flanks of the Andes are found vast beds of sandstone and coal, of limestone containing fossil shells, and of other secondary formations, up to the quadersandstxin, or Green Sand of the English geologists. Fossil shells and coal have been discovered at the height of 14,000 feet above the sea, and gypsum and rock-salt occur at various elevations. The third peculiarity in these mountains is the abundance of their mineral treasures, which include extremely rich veins of gold, silver, and copper, and all the other metals. Lastly, the Andes are distinguished by having their sides invested with a thick Coat of clay, in which deep gullies have everywhere been worn by the streams. The great diffusion of internal fire in this chain, the newness of some of the strata found in its interior valleys or on its flanks, the frequency of earthquakes in it, and the singular phenomenon of part of its western margin in Chili, over an extent of thirty leagues, having ascended three or four feet during the subterranean concussions in 1822, have led geologists to infer that the Andes, though surpassing in elevation all other mountains, with a single and doubtful exception, are among the last which have been heaved up from the bottom of the ocean.^[6. Humboldt’s Personal Narrative, vol. iv. p. 308; Daubeny on Volcanoes, p. 342; Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, January 18-9; fliers’ Travels in Chili and La Plata, vol. i. p. 394. ]

The transverse chain of the coast of Caraccas consists partly of primitive and partly of secondary formations. The Cordillera of Parime, so far as it has been examined, is entirely composed of primitive rocks, viz. granite, gneiss, mica slate, and hornblende; the Cordillera of Chiquito, which divides the Plata from the Amazon, is only known at its eastern extremity, where it joins the mountains of Brazil. These last consist of a great number of ridges, running in general south and north. Granite abounds in those nearest the Atlantic, but the prevailing rock everywhere else, as far westward as the mountains of Cujaba, in longitude 55°, is a quartzy mica slate, intermixed however with granite, gneiss, and quartz rock, and having portions of secondary sandstone resting on its sides or in its low valleys. This quartzy mica slate, in Brazil, is the ma- , trix of the gold and diamonds; and the former is generally accompanied with platinum and iron. The direction of the strata approaches to north-east and south-west, and the dip, where observed, is from 50° to 70° to the southeast[7:2:610]. These mountains, like the Andes, are in many parts covered with a stratum of clay.^[7. Spix and Von Martius, vol. ii. p. 142, &c. ] The rocks of the great plains have been but partially examined. Humboldt thinks that the northern Llanos of Caraccas are of old red sandstone. Marls and clays, apparently of the tertiary class, were found by Mr Caldcleugh in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres; and since deposits of rock-salt exist on the east side of the Andes, it is probable that the whole plain of the Plata is occupied by secondary and tertiary formations.^[8. Bulletin des Sciences Naturelles et de Géologie, Février 1829. Humboldt’s Personal Narrative, vol. iv. p. 384. ]

The latitude and elevation of the land in each country, its position in reference to the sea, with the direction of the prevailing winds, are the chief circumstances which determine the nature of the climate. We have already mentioned that three fourths of South America lie within the tropics, and the remaining fourth in the temperate zone; but, in both divisions, it might be naturally inferred that a huge wall like the Andes, rising into the atmosphere to the height of two or three miles, and running across the course of the tropical and extra-tropical winds, would exert a powerful influence on the temperature, humidity, and the distribution of the seasons. This is actually the case; and it is this vast chain of mountains, with its prolongation in North America, which affords a key to the most remarkable peculiarities in the climate of the whole continent. The subject, we think, has not been hitherto well understood, but admits of being explained in a very simple manner.

The trade-winds blowing from the east occupy a zone 60 degrees in breadth, extending from 30° of south to 30° of north latitude. Beyond these limits are variable winds; but the prevailing direction in the open sea, where no accidental causes operate, is well known by navigators to be from the west. Now these winds are the agents which, transport the equable temperature of the ocean, and the moisture exhaled from its surface, to the interior of the great continents, where it is precipitated in the shape of rain, dew, or snow. Mountains attract the moisture which floats in the atmosphere; they obstruct also the aerial currents, and presenting great inequalities of temperature, favour precipitation. Rain, accordingly, in all countries falls most abundantly on the elevated land. Let us consider, then, what will be the effect of a mural ridge like the Andes in the situation which it occupies. In the region within the 30th parallel, the moisture swept up by the trade-wind from the Atlantic will be precipitated in part upon the mountains of Brazil, which are but low, and so distributed as to extend far into the interior. The portion which remains will be borne westward, and, losing a little as it proceeds, will be arrested by the Andes, and fall down in showers on their summits. The aerial current will now be deprived of all the humidity which it can part with, and arrive in a state of complete exsiccation at Peru, where no rain will consequently fall. That even a much lower ridge than the Andes may intercept the whole moisture of the atmosphere, is proved by a well-known phenomenon in India, where the Ghauts, a chain only 3000 or 4000 feet high, divide summer from winter, as it is called; that is, they have copious rains on their windward side, while on the other the weather remains clear and dry; and the rains regularly change from the west side to the east, and vice versa, with the monsoons. In the region beyond the 30th parallel, this effect will be reversed. The Andes will in this case serve as a screen to intercept the moisture brought by the prevailing west winds from the Pacific Ocean; rains will be copious on their summits, and in Chili on their western declivities, but none will fall on the plains to the eastward, except occasionally, when the winds blow from the Atlantic. The phenomena of the weather correspond in a remarkable manner with this hypothesis. On the shores of the Pacific, from Coquimbo, at the 30th parallel, to Amotape, at the 5th of south latitude, no rain falls; and the whole of this tract is a sandy desert, except the narrow strips of land skirting the streams that descend from the Andes, where the soil is rendered productive by irrigation. From the 30th parallel southward the scene changes. Rains are frequent; vegetation appears on the surface, and grows more vigorous as we advance southward. “At Conception,” says Captain Hall, “the eye was delighted with the richest and most luxuriant foliage; at Valparaiso the hills were poorly clad with a stunted brushwood and a poor attempt at grass, the ground looking starved and naked; at Coquimbo the brushwood was gone, with nothing in its place but a vile sort of prickly pear bush, and a thin sprinkling of grey wiry grass; at Guasea (latitude 28⅜°) there was not a trace of vegetation, and the hills were covered with bare sand.”^[9. Hall’s Extracts from a Journal, vol. ii. p. 12. ] It follows from the principle we have laid down, that in this southern part of the continent the dry tract should be found on the east side of the mountains, and such is the fact. At Mendoza, in latitude 30°, rain scarcely ever falls, and the district along the east foot of the Andes is known to consist chiefly of parched sands, on which a few stunted shrubs grow, and in which many of the streams that descend from the mountains are absorbed before they reach the sea. The whole country, indeed, south of the Plata, suffers from drought; but on the eastern side this is remedied to some , extent by winds from the east or south-east, which bring occasional rains to refresh the soil. From Amotape northward, on the other hand, the west coast is well watered and fruitful; and this is easily accounted for. The line of the coast here changes its direction, and trends to the north-east as far as the Isthmus of Panama, where the mountains sink to a few hundred feet in height, and leave a free passage to the trade-witìd, which here often assumes a direction from the north-east, or even the north. The exhalations of the Atlantic are thus brought in abundance to the coast of Quito, which is in consequence well watered; while the neighbouring district of Peru suffers from perpetual aridity.

Our principle applies equally to the explanation of some peculiar facts connected with the climate of North America. The western coast of Mexico as far as St Blas or Mazatlan, in latitude 23°, is well watered, because, first, the continent here is narrow; secondly, the tableland of Mexico which is much lower than the Andes of Chili, is not so effectual a screen to intercept the moisture; and, thirdly, there is reason to believe that a branch of the trade-wind, which crosses the low part of the continent at Panama and Nicaragua, sweeps along the west coast during part of the year, and transports humidity with it. But beyond the point we have mentioned drought prevails. Sonora, though visited occasionally by rains, consists of sandy plains without herbage, where the streams lose themselves in the parched soil without reaching the sea; and even Old California, which has the ocean on one side, and a broad gulf on the other, and ought apparently to be excessively humid, is covered with sterile rocks and sandy hills, where the vegetation is [7:2:611]scanty, and no timber is seen except brushwood.^[10. Shelvocke’s Voyages, in Harris’s Collection, vol. i. p. 232; Hardy’s Travel} in Mexico p. 128, 163, 330. ] This dry region extends as far as 33° or 34°; but immediately beyond this we have another change of scene. New California is described as in all respects a contrast to the Old. It is rich, fertile, and humid, abounding in luxuriant forests and fine pastures; and the American possessions to the northward preserve the same character. How can we account for this singular diversity of climate, except upon the principle which has been explained, namely, that in all regions where ranges of mountains intersect the course of the constant or predominant winds, the country on the windward side of the mountains will be moist, and that on the leeward dry; and hence parched deserts will generally be found on the west side of countries within the tropics, and on the east side of those beyond them? Our hypothesis applies equally to the country east of the Rocky Mountains. For the space of about 300 miles from the foot of this chain the surface consists of dry sands or gravel, sometimes covered with saline incrustations, al-mostdestitute of trees and herbage, and watered by streams flowing from the mountains, which are sometimes entirely absorbed by the arid soil.^[11. James’s Expedition from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains; Supplement by Major Long, in vol. iii. ] The central and eastern part of the basin of the Mississippi would in all probability have been equally barren had the configuration of the land been a little different in the south. A tract of country extremely low and level extends along both sides of this river; and a portion of the trade-wind blowing from the Mexican Gulf, finding its motion westward obstructed by the high table-land of the Cordillera, is deflected to the right, and ascends the valley of the Mississippi and Ohio. This wind, whose course was first traced by Volney, bears with it the humidity of the torrid zone, and scatters fertility over a wide region that would otherwise be the abode of barrenness.

The views on the subject of climate we have been unfolding will enable us to throw some light on an interesting point—the distribution of forests. We are induced to think, that in all countries having a summer heat exceeding 70°, the presence or absence of natural woods, and their greater or less luxuriance, may be taken as a measure of the amount of humidity, and of the fertility of the soil. Short and heavy rains in a warm country will produce grass, which, having its roots near the surface, springs up in a few days, and withers when the moisture is exhausted; but transitory rains, however heavy, will not nourish trees, because after the surface is saturated with water, the rest runs off, and the moisture lodged in the soil neither sinks deep enough, nor is in sufficient quantity to furnish the giants of the forest with the necessary sustenance. It may be assumed that 20 inches of rain falling moderately, or at intervals, will leave a greater permanent supply in the soil than 40 inches falling, as it sometimes does in the torrid zone, in as many hours. It is only necessary to qualify this conclusion by stating, that something depends on the subsoil. If that is gravel, or a rock full of fissures, the water imbedded will soon drain off; if it is clay or a compact rock, the water will remain in the soil. It must be remembered, also, that both heat and moisture diminish as we ascend in the atmosphere, while evaporation increases; and hence that trees will not grow on very high ground, though its position in reference to the sea and the prevailing winds should be favourable in other respects. In speaking of the region of forests, we neither restrict the term to those districts where the natural woods present an unbroken continuity, nor extend it to every place where a few trees grow in open plains. It is not easy to give a definition that will be always appropriate; but in using the expression, we wish to be understood as applying it to ground where the natural woods cover more than one fourth of the surface.

The small map of America prefixed will enable the reader to follow our statements with ease. The long hatched lines show the positions of the chains of mountains; the shading represents the regions of forests; the dense forests being marked by the double shading, and the thinner ones by the open lines. The white spaces represent the lands on which little or no wood grows. The equator and the parallel of 30° on each side are indicated by the
horizontal
lines marked 0 and 30. The arrows show the direction of the prevailing winds; but it must be remembered that, though the intertropical wind is assumed to have its course right from the east, this is only true at the equator, its direction inclining to north-east as we approach the northern tropic, and to the south-east as we approach the southern. In North America A is the woody region on the west coast, extending from latitude 35° to about 58°, and of unknown breadth. B the region on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, partly a bare desert, partly covered with grass and dotted with trees. C the forests of the Allegany chain, thick on the east and south, and thin on the west; bounded by a curved line passing from St Luis, in Mexico through lake Huron, to the mouth of the St Lawrence, in latitude 50°. The arrow at M points out the direction of the wind, which ascends the valley of the Mississippi, and nourishes the western part [7:2:612]of thèse forests; and the arrow at R that which blows across the isthmus of Panama. D is the table-land of Mexico graduating on the north-west into the dry plains of Sonora and California, all bare, or nearly bare, of wood. E is the Llanos or bare plains of Caraccas, nearly fenced round with mountains. F G is the long strip of bare dry sands on the west side of the Andes which constitutes Lower Peru and the north part of Chili; and N is Amotape, its northern boundary. H is the great region of forests which constitutes the basin of the Amazon, and occupies all the rest of Brazil. Near the equator the moisture is so excessive, that after 150 or 200 inches of rain^[12. Humboldt’s Personal Narrative, vol. vi. p. 277. ] have fallen on the east coast, there is still sufficient humidity in the atmosphere to afford copious showers to all the country up to the Andes. Here, therefore, the woods reach from side to side of the continent. But as we recede from the equator the humidity diminishes rapidly; and though the continent becomes narrower towards the south, the supply of rain falls off in a still greater proportion, and the forests extend over a much smaller space. At the foot of the Andes, the forests extend to 16° or 18° of south latitude; on the east coast to 25° or probably 30°. K L are the Pampas or open lands of Buenos Ayres, extending on the east side of the Andes, from Cape Horn to the latitudes just mentioned. If we divide this region into three parts, the eastmost, refreshed by occasional rains from the Atlantic, is covered with a strong nutritive herbage; the second, which is drier, displays a thin coarse wiry grass; and the third portion, which extends to the Andes, receiving little or no f rain, is nearly a desert: all the three are destitute of timber, but the surface of the third is dotted with dwarfish shrubs.^[13. See Mr Miers’ Journey to Chili, in the first volume of his Travels, chan. i. and ii.; and Captain Head’s Rough Notes, p. 2. ] I is the southern part of Chili. Here the prevailing winds, which are from the west, coming loaded with the moisture of the Pacific Ocean, produce copious rains to nourish the herbage and the forests. This applies, however, chiefly to the country south of the 35th parallel. From that to Coquimbo, in latitude 30°, the wood is scanty. Beyond 50° on the east coast of North America, and 55° or 58° on the west, very little wood grows, in consequence of the rigour of the climate.

Great misapprehensions have arisen with regard to the climate of America, from comparisons being drawn between the east side of the new continent and the west side of the old. We have already pointed out the influence of winds blowing from the sea, in modifying the state of the atmosphere over the land, both as to heat and humidity. When this circumstance is attended to, and when the east and west sides of the old and the new continents are respectively compared with one another, the difference is found to be small, and easily accounted for. In the torrid zone, and on the sea-shore, the temperature of both continents is found to be the same, viz. 82°; but in the interior the difference is rather in favour of America. There is no counterpart in the new world to the burning heats felt in the plains of Arabia and Gedrosia. Even in the western and warmest part of the parched steppes of Caraccas, the hottest known region in America, the temperature of the air during the day is only 98° in the shade, while it rises to 112° in the sandy deserts which surround the Red Sea. At Calabozzo, farther east in the Llanos, the common temperature of the day is only from 88° to 90°; and at sunrise the thermometer sinks to 80°.^[14. Humboldt’s Personal Narrative, vol. iv. p. 315-325. ] The basin of the Amazon is shaded with lofty woods; and a cool breeze from the east, a minute branch of the trade-wind, ascends the channel of the stream, following all its windings, almost to the foot of the' Andes. Hence this region, though under the equator, and visited with almost constant rains, is neither excessively hot nor unhealthful. Brazil, and the vast country extending westward from it between the Plata and the Amazon, is an uneven table-land, blest with an equable climate. At Rio Janeiro, which stands low, and is exposed to a heat comparatively great, the temperature in summer varies from 16° to 22° of Reaumur, and the mean is only about 19° (74° Fahr.) Farther north, and in the interior, the Indians find it necessary to keep fires in their huts; and in the country near the sources of the Paraguay, hoar-frost is seen on the hills during the colder months, and the mean temperature of the year falls below 65° or 67°.^[15. Spix s Travels, vol. ii. p. 145.' ] On the declivities of the Andes, and on the high plains of Upper Peru, the heats are so moderate that the plants of Italy, France, and Germany, come to maturity. Lower Peru, though a sandy desert, enjoys a wonderful degree of coolness, owing to the fogs which intercept the solar rays. At Lima, which is 540 feet above the sea, the temperature varies from 53° to 82°, but the mean for the whole year is only 72°. In the plains of La Plata, the mean temperature of the year is very nearly the same as at the corresponding north latitudes on the east side of the Atlantic. At Buenos Ayres, for instance, the mean annual heat is 19° 7 ’ of the centigrade thermometer (68° Fahr.), while that of places on the same parallel in the old world is 19° 8 ’. The range of temperature is probably greater in the basin of the Plata; but as we advance southwards, the diminishing breadth of the continent makes the climate approximate to that of an island, and the extremes of course approach each other. In the Straits of Magellan the temperature of the warmest month does not exceed 43° or 46°; and snow falls almost daily in the middle of summer, though the latitude corresponds with that of England. But the inference drawn from this, that the climate is unmatched for severity, is by no means just, for the winter at Staten Island is milder than in London. In point of fact, the climate of Patagonia is absolutely colder than that of places in the same latitude in Europe; but the difference lies chiefly in the very low temperature of the summer. This peculiarity no doubt results chiefly from the greater coldness of the sea in the southern hemisphere; for beyond the parallel of 48°, the difference of temperature in the north and south Atlantic amounts, according to Humboldt, to 10 or 12 degrees of Fahrenheit’s scale.^[16. De Distributione Geographica Plantarum, p. 82; Pers. Nar. vol. ii∙ p∙ ^5∙ ] If we push our researches a step farther, and inquire what is the cause of the greater warmth of the northern sea, we shall be forced to admit that a very satisfactory answer cannot be given. Something may be due to the influence of the gulf stream, a minute branch of which is supposed to carry the waters of the torrid zone to the shores of Shetland and Norway; but such an agent seems too trifling to account for the phenomenon. The sum, then, of the peculiar qualities which distinguish the climate of South America may be briefly stated. Near the equator the new continent is perhaps more humid than the old; and within the tropics generally, owing to its vast forests, the absence of sandy deserts, and the elevation of the soil, it is cooler. Beyond the tropics the heat is nearly the same in the southern temperate zone of America and the northern[7:2:613] one of the old continent, till we ascend to the neighbourhood of Cape Horn, where we have cold summers, and a very limited range of the thermometer in the western hemisphere.

Nine tenths of North America lying under the temperate zone, the climate follows a different law from what is observed in the southern peninsula, and presents more striking contrasts with that of the best known parts of the old world. The long narrow region now denominated Central America, which connects the two great divisions of the continent, stretching from Panama to Tehuantepec, has in general a very humid atmosphere; but, for a tropical country, it must be only moderately hot, as every part of it is within a small distance of the sea. At Vera Paz the rains fall during nine months of the year. Mexicois hot, moist, and unhealthy on the low coasts; but two thirds of its area, comprising all the populous districts, consist of table-land, from 5000 to 9000 feet in height. In consequence of this singular configuration of its surface, Mexico though chiefly within the torrid zone, enjoys a temperate and equable climate. The mean heat at the capital, which is 7400 feet above the sea, is 621°, and the difference between the warmest and coldest months, which exceeds 30° at London, is here only about 12°; but the atmosphere is deficient in moisture, and the country suffers from drought. Beyond the parallel of 24°, the western shores are hot and arid.

In the extensive region lying between the parallels of 30° and 50°, which comprehends three fourths of the useful soil of North America, we have three well-marked varieties of climate, that of the east coast, the west coast, and the basin of the Mississippi. On the east coast, from Georgia to Lower Canada, the mean temperature of the year is lower than in Europe by 9° at the latitude of 40°, and by 12½° at the latitude of 50°, according to Humboldt’s calculation. In the next place, the range of the thermometer is much greater than in Europe, the summer being much hotter and the winter much colder. At Quebec the temperature of the warmest month exceeds that of the coldest by no less than 60∙∣∙ degrees of Fahrenheit; while at Paris, which is nearly under the same latitude, the difference is only 31 degrees. In the third place, the climate undergoes a more rapid change in America as we proceed from south to north, a degree of latitude in the middle of the temperate zone producing a decrease of annual temperature of 1∙13° in Europe, and of 1∙57° in America. The comparison is greatly to the disadvantage of America when made in this form; but when the east coasts of the two continents are compared, the case is altered: the old world is found to have no superiority over the new, for Pekin has still colder winters and warmer summers than Philadelphia, which is under the same latitude. It is the west coast of the new continent which ought to exhibit the climate of Europe; and from the few facts known, we have reason to believe that it is quite as mild and equable. At the mouth of Columbia River, in latitude 46⅜°, Captains Lewis and Clarke found the rains to be copious and frequent; but they had very little frost, and saw no ice even in the depth of winter. From observations made in 1822-3-4, it appears that the mean heat of the warmest month was about 62°, of the coldest about 36°, and of the whole year 51°.^[17. Edinburgh Journal of Science, April 1827. ] Now, the place is under the same latitude with Quebec, where the snow lies five months, and the mean temperature during the three winter months is 18° below the freezing point. This single circumstance marks emphatically the contrast in the climate of the east and west coasts of North America. But the mouth of Columbia River is also under the same parallel with Nantes at the mouth of the Loire, where snow and ice are no strangers in the cold season of the year. We have, therefore, good grounds to conclude that the west coast of America, in the middle latitudes, has fully as mild and equable a climate as the west coast of Europe. The climate of the great central valley, or basin of Mississippi, has a considerable affinity to that of the east coast. It was long a matter of dispute in what the difference between the two consists; but this seems at last to have been clearly settled, by the meteorological registers kept at the military posts of the United States. From a comparison of four of these registers, from posts near the centre of this great valley, with others kept on the Atlantic coast in the same latitudes, it appears that in the hottest month the temperature is from 5° to 6° higher, and in the coldest month as much lower, in the basin of the Mississippi, than on the coasts of New England. The proportion of fair weather to cloudy is as 5 to 1 in favour of the east coast.^[18. Keating’s Account of Major Long’s Second Expedition, 1824, vol. ii. p. 417. ] The climate of the interior, therefore, exhibits in still greater excess those extremes of temperature which distinguish the eastern coast of this continent from the western, and from the shores of Europe. The fourth region of extra-tropical America includes the parts beyond Mount St Elie on the west coast, and, in the interior, the plains extending from the 50th parallel to the Polar Seas. The intensity of the cold in this tract of country is scarcely equalled by any thing that is known under the same parallels in northern Asia. The northmost spot in America where grain is raised is at Lord Selkirk’s colony, on Red River, in latitude 50°. Wheat, and also maize, which requires a high summer heat, are cultivated here.^[19. Ibid. vol. ii. chap. ii. ] Barley would certainly grow as far north as Fort Chippcwyan, in latitude 58¾°, where the heat of the four summer months was found by Captain Franklin to be 4 degrees higher than at Edinburgh. There is even reason to believe, that both this species of grain and potatoes might thrive as far north as Slave Lake, since the spruce fir attains the height of 50 feet three degrees farther north, at Fort Franklin, in latitude 65°. These, however, were low and sheltered spots; but in this dreary waste generally, it will not be found practicable, we suspect, to carry the arts of civilized life beyond the 60th parallel; and the desirable country, capable of supporting a dense population, and meriting the name of temperate, can scarcely be said to extend beyond the 50th parallel. At 65° the snow covers the ground in winter to the depth of only two feet, but small lakes continue frozen for eight months. The sea is open only for a few weeks, fogs darken the surface, and the thermometer in February descended, in one instance, to minus 58°, or 90° below the freezing point. At Melville Island, under the 75th parallel, such is the frightful rigour of the climate, that the temperature of the year falls 1° or 2° below the zero of Fahrenheit’s scale. It is a peculiarity in the climate of America, that beyond the parallel of 50° or 52°, it seems to become suddenly severe at both extremities. At the one, summer disappears from the circle of the seasons; at the other, winter is armed with double terrors.

The mountains of North America will not detain us long. The branch of the Andes which divides the seas at the isthmus of Panama is very low, the highest point of the road which crosses it, from this city to the mouth of the river Chagres, having been found, by levellings executed[7:2:614] in 1829, to be only 633 feet above the Pacific.^[20. Paper by Mr Lloyd, read at a meeting of the Royal Society of London in January 1830. ] Of the height of the ground, from this point to the tableland of La Puebla, 1400 miles to the westward, Humboldt remarks that nothing certain is known. The most considerable elevations are on the south-west side; and twenty-one volcanoes, scattered over this limited space, afford proof that the sources of internal fire exist here in unexampled abundance. From Puebla to Durango the Mexican mountains no longer present the appearance of a chain, but spread out to a table-land or elevated plain, from 5000 to 9000 feet in height, and from 100 to 300 miles in breadth. Across this plain, exactly at the 19th parallel, five volcanoes are distributed, in a line running east and west, as if a vast rent, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, had opened a passage for the internal fires of the globe at this spot. Two of these on the east side of the continent, with a group of four or five other cones lying between Jalapa and Cordoba, have an elevation exceeding 17,000 feet, and are the only mountains in New Spain that rise to the region of perpetual snow, which commences here at 15,000 feet above the Ievel of the sea. Jorullo, the lowest of the five volcanoes, rose suddenly, in the middle of a plain, in September 1759, after fearful concussions of the ground, continued for fifty or sixty days. It is 1600 feet high, and is surrounded by a number of smaller cones or burning masses, all resting on a portion of the plain four square miles in extent, which was heaved up in the form of a tumefied dome. Near the tropic the Mexican Cordillera divides into three parts. One runs parallel to the eastern coast, at the distance of thirty or forty leagues, and terminates in New Leon. Another proceeds in a north-western direction, and sinks gradually as it approaches the Californian Gulf, in Sonora. The third or central Cordillera traverses Durango and New Mexico divides the sources of the Rio Gila from the Rio Bravo del Norte, and forms the eastern ridge or main trunk of the Rocky Mountains, which terminates at the Arctic Ocean, about 125° of west longitude. From the southern point of California, a lower chain skirts the coast as far as the volcano of Mount St Elie, in latitude 60°; and between this chain and the eastern several intermediate ones occur, the whole forming apparent-Iy an elevated plateau from 200 to 800 miles in breadth. This extensive region is at present a terra incognita, but the lower valleys included in it between the parallels of 34° and 50°, having neither the excessive humidity of the west coast, nor the extreme heat and cold of the east, will probably be found to present a fine soil, and the most desirable climate in North America. Many of the summits of the Rocky Mountains are within the region of perpetual snow; and their height, where Lewis and Clarke crossed them, and farther south, has been estimated at 10,000 or 12,000 feet.^[21. See Major Long’s Memoirs, and the sections in James’s Account of an Expedition to the Rocky Mountains. ] A shorter route from the valley of the Mississippi to the west coast has since been found, in the direction of the Platte River, about latitude 41°, where an opening in the chain presents a passage so easy of access, that a waggon drawn by horses, it is said, might travel through it.^[22. Warden’s Account of the United States, vol. iii. p. 180. ]

The Allegany Mountains are composed of three, four, and in some places of five parallel chains, extending in a north-east direction from Alabama to New Brunswick, over a space 1100 miles in length, with a breadth varying from 100 to 150 miles, and a mean height of 2000 or 3000 feet. They are almost everywhere clothed with forests, and interspersed with delightful valleys. Between the Alleganies and the great western chain, the Ozark Mountains, from 1000 to 2000 feet in height, and 500' miles in length, extend along the middle of the great valley of the Mississippi in a south and north direction. The Arkansas and Red River are the only streams that have cut a passage through these mountains, which, though low, occupy a great breadth, and are covered with wood.

The Allegany Mountains present what must be considered their scarp or steepest side to the east, where granite, gneiss, and other primitive rocks are seen. Upon these repose, first, a thin formation of transition rocks, dipping to the westward; and next a series of secondary rocks, including a very extensive coal formation, reachm«· from Pittsburg, beyond the Mississippi. The Ozark Mountains exhibit similar strata, from the granite to the coal, in the same position and order, and therefore consist, in all probability, of a western portion of the same beds, heaved to the surface by one of those slips or dislocations with which miners are familiar. In the Rocky Mountains primitive rocks are found in the centre or axis of the chain, with old red standstone, coal, and new red sandstone, containing rock-salt leaning against its sides. A great tract eastward of this chain is covered by granitic sands, and near the bed of the Mississippi there is a deep formation of alluvium. The geology of Mexicowould require a more ample development than we have room for. Suffice it to say, that the table-land consists chiefly of transition slaty rocks, having their direction south-east and north-west, intermixed with which are two species of limestone, and enormous masses of porphyry, trachyte, sienite, phonolite, basalt, volcanic tuff, and other rocks of igneous origin. The veins of silver and gold are found chiefly in the older porphyry, the granular limestone, sienite, and transition slates.^[23. Bulletin de Géologie, Février 1829, p∙ 198- ]

In no single circumstance is the superiority of America over the old world so conspicuous, as in the number and magnitude of its navigable rivers. The Amazon alone discharges a greater quantity of water than the eight principal rivers of Asia, the Euphrates, Indus, Ganges, Oby, Lena, Amour, and the Yellow River and Kang-tse of China.^[24. See article Physical Geography in this work. ] The Mississippi, with its branches, affords a greater amount of inland navigation than all the streams, great and small, which irrigate Europe; and the Plata, in this respect, may probably claim a superiority over the collective water of Africa. But the American rivers not only surpass those of the old world in length and volume of fluid, but they are so placed as to penetrate everywhere to the very heart of the continent. By the Amazon, a person living at the eastern foot of the Andes, 2000 miles of direct distance from the Atlantic, may convey himself or his property to the shores of that sea in forty-five days, almost without effort, by confiding his bark to the gliding current. If he wishes to return, he has but to spread his sails to the eastern breeze, which blows perennially against the stream. The navigation is not interrupted by a single cataract or rapid, from the Atlantic to Jaen, in west longitude 78°, where the surface of the stream is only 1240 feet above the level of its estuary at Para. The remotest and least accessible part of North America is the great interior plain extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleganies and the lakes, between the parallels of 40° and 50°; but the Mississippi, Missouri, and St Lawrence, with their branches, are so
[7:2:615]
[table]

wonderfully ramified over this region, that when it is filled 'with civilized inhabitants, two centuries hence, those who dwell in its inmost recesses, at the falls of the Missouri, for instance, 1700 miles from the Atlantic, will have a more easy communication with the ocean than the population of the interior of Spain and Hungary. It is only necessary to cast the eye over a map of South America, to see that all the most sequestered parts of the interior are visited by branches of the Plata and the Amazon. These streams, having their courses in general remarkably level, and seldom interrupted by cataracts, may be considered, without a figure, as a vast system of natural canals, terminating in two main trunks, which communicate with the ocean at the equator and the 35th degree of south latitude. Since the invention of steam navigation, rivers are, in the truest sense of the term, Nature’s highways, especially for infant communities, where the people are too poor, and live too widely dispersed, to bear the expense of constructing roads. There is little risk in predicting, that in two or three centuries the Mississippi, the Amazon, and the Plata, will be the scenes of an active inland commerce, far surpassing in magnitude any thing at present known on the surface of the globe. The Mississippi is navigable for boats from the sea to the falls of its principal branch the Missouri, 1700 miles from the Mexican Gulf in a direct line, or 3900 by the stream; and the whole amount of boat navigation afforded by the system of rivers, of which the Mississippi is the main trunk, has been estimated as equal to 40,000 miles in length, spread over a surface of 1,350,000 square miles. Perhaps this is rather beyond the truth; but let us call the navigation 35,000 miles, and the following table will exhibit the lengths, size of the basins, and probable extent of the navigable waters of the greater rivers of America.

Among the branches of the Amazon, the Tunguragua, or Upper Maranon, which rises in a lake 100 miles north of Lima, has generally been considered as its source; but this honour is rather due to the Beni, a branch of the Ucayale, which has its origin in the table-land of Upper Peru, near the town of La Paz, in south latitude 18°. The Amazon contains many islands, is broad, and in the upper part so deep, that on one occasion Condamine found no bottom with a line 103 toises long. At its mouth, two days before and after the full moon, the phenomenon called a Bore occurs in a very formidable shape. It is a wave of water rushing from the sea, with its front as steep as a wall and as high as a house. No small vessel can encounter it without certain destruction.

The estuaries of all these great American rivers open to the eastward; and thus Providence seems to have plainly indicated that the most intimate commercial relations of the inhabitants of America should be with the western shores of the old world. It should at the same time be observed, that this position of the great rivers of America is but one example of a physical arrangement which is common to the whole globe; for it is remarkable that, in the old world as well as the new, no river of the first class flows to the westward. Some, as the Nile, the Lena, and the Oby, flow to the north; others, as the Indus and the rivers of Ava, to the south; but the largest, as the Wolga, Ganges, Great River and Yellow River of China, the Euphrates, and the Amour, have their courses to the east or south-east. This arrangement is not accidental, but depends most probably on the inclination of the primary roqķs, which, in all cases where their direction approaches to south and north, seem to have their steepest sides to the west and their longest declivities to the east. We have examples in the Scandinavian Alps, the mountains of Britain, the Ghauts of India, the Andes, and the Rocky Mountains.

North America, like the southern peninsula, naturally divides itself into five physical regions: 1. The tableland of Mexico with the strip of low country on its eastern and western shores; 2. The Plateau lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, a country with a mild and humid atmosphere as far north as the 55th parallel, but inhospitable and barren beyond this boundary; 3. The great central valley of the Mississippi, rich and well wooded on the east side, bare but not unfertile in the middle, dry, sandy, and almost a desert on the west; 4. The eastern declivities of the Allegany Mountains, a region of natural forests, and of mixt but rather poor soil; 5. The great northern plain beyond the 50th parallel, four fifths of which is a bleak and bare waste, overspread with innumerable lakes, and resembling Siberia both in the physical character of its surface and the rigour of its climate.

The indigenous population of America presents man under many aspects, and society in various stages, from the regular but limited civilisation of Mexicoand Peru, to savage life in its most brutal state of abasement. At one extremity of the country we find the pigmy Esquimaux of four feet and a half in height, and at the other the Patagonian giants of seven feet. In complexion the variety is great, and may be said to embrace almost every hue known elsewhere on the face of the earth, except the pitchy black of the negro. About one half of all the known languages belong to America; and if we consider every little wandering horde a distinct community, we have a greater number of nations here than in all the rest of the world. Amidst all this diversity, philosophers have thought they were able to discover certain general characters, sufficiently marked to distinguish the American nations from those of the old continent. It is foreign to our purpose to inquire whether the varieties of form, stature, and complexion, in the human species, are modifications produced by external causes operating differently on distinct portions of the progeny of one primitive pair, or whether several races were originally created, and have given birth, by their mixture, to the amazing varieties we witness. We assume the former opinion as true, because the probabilities seem to be in its favour; but the phenomena present themselves to us in the same light in whichever way they originate.

Physiologists are not at one in their accounts of the characteristics of the aborigines of the new world, nor are they agreed as to whether they should be considered one race or several. Blumenbach places them all under one class, except the Esquimaux. Bory St Vincent, an ingenious but fanciful writer, in a recent work,^[25. L'Homme i Essai Zoologique, vol. ii. Paris, 1827. ] divides them into four races, or into five if we include the Esquimaux, under the following[7:2:616] designations :—1. The Colombian·, which comprehends the tribes formerly inhabiting the Allegany Mountains, Canada, Florida, the eastern coasts of Mexico and Central America; and the Caribs, who occupied the West India Islands and Guiana. 2. The American, embracing the tribes which occupy all the other parts of South America east of the Andes, except Patagonia. 3. The Patagonian race, inhabiting the south extremity of the continent. 4. The Neptunian, inhabiting the western coasts of both divisions of the continent, from California to Cape Horn, and which he considers as essentially the same with the race spread over the Malay Peninsula and the Indian Archipelago. ' With this race he classes the Mexicans and Peruvians. By another writer^[26. Histoire Naturelle des Races Humaines, par A. Desmoulins. Paris, 1826. ] the species are reduced to two, the Colombian and the American, the former including all the North American tribes, with the Caribs, the Mexicans, and Peruvians, and other inhabitants of the Cordillera; and the latter the Brazilian Indians and Patagonians. None of these systems, when compared with facts, is very satisfactory. Dr Prichard thinks that the mutual resemblance among the American nations has been exaggerated by some writers; yet it is certain that there is more of a common family character in their organization than in that of the indigenous population of Asia or Africa. “The Indians of New Spain,” says Humboldt, “bear a general resemblance to those who inhabit Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil. We have the same swarthy and copper colour, straight and smooth hair, small beard, squat body, long eye, with the corner directed upwards towards the temples, prominent cheek-bones, thick lips, and expression of gentleness in the mouth, strongly contrasted with a gloomy and severe look. Over a million and a half of square leagues, from Cape Horn to the river St Lawrence and Behring’s Straits, we are struck at the first glance with the general resemblance in the features of the inhabitants. We think we perceive them all to be descended from the same stock, notwithstanding the prodigious diversity of their languages. In the portrait drawn by Volney of the Canadian Indians, we recognise the tribes scattered over the Savannahs of the Apure and the Carony. The same style of features exists in both Americas.”

The American race is distinguished by the form of the skull, which strongly resembles the Mongol type. The forehead recedes more than in any other variety of the human species; the cheek-bones are prominent, but not so angular, as in the Mongol head; the occiput is rather flat, the cavity for lodging the cerebellum small, the orbits large and deep. The nose is generally aquiline, but in some tribes flat; and the nasal cavities are large. Compared with the head of the Negro, that of the American is much broader, and the teeth are less prominent: when placed by the side of the Caucasian head, it is seen to be smaller in size, less rounded and symmetrical, and less developed in the part before the ear. The skull is generally thin and light. There are, however, many deviations from this central form. The Carib skull, and the Araucanian, are large; the Peruvian small, and singularly flattened behind, so as to present a short line from the forehead to the occiput.

The colour of the Americans, though it includes a considerable diversity of shade, is more uniform than that of the inhabitants of Asia or Africa; and, what is more remarkable, its varieties do not bear any visible relation to the temperature of the climate. A brownish yellow, or copper colour, as it has been called, pervades nearly all the numerous tribes from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn but still with many different degrees of intensity. The eastern nations of Chili have but a slight tinge of the brown colour, and the Boroanes are said to be as white as the northern Europeans. On the north-west coast, from latitude 43° to 60°, there are tribes who, though embrowned with soot and mud, were found, when their skins were washed, to have the brilliant white and red which is the characteristic of the Caucasian race. But within the tropics, the Malapoques in Brazil, the Guayanis in Paraguay, the Guiacas of Guiana, the Scheries of La Plata, have tolerably fair complexions, sometimes united with blue eyes and auburn hair; and, in the hot country watered by the Orinoco Humboldt found tribes of a dark, and others of a light hue, living almost in juxtaposition. It is remarkable, too, that the nations whose colour approaches nearest to black are found in the temperate zone, namely, the Charruas of the Banda Oriental, in latitude 33° south, and the Cochimies, Peri eus, and Guaycurus, spread over the peninsula of California. These people have skins of a very deep hue, but are not absolutely black; and they have neither the woolly hair of the negroes, nor their social and good-humoured disposition. The Charruas especially are distinguished by a high degree of that austerity and stern fortitude which are common to the American nations.^[27. Mithridates Einleitung Amerikanischen Sprachen, p. 313; Prichard’s Researches, vol. ii. p. 396, 492. ] The Caribs and some Brazilian tribes have the yellowish hue of the Chinese, and the same cast of features. Among the nations dwelling on the west side of the Alleganies, and near the northern lakes, there is also a considerable variety of complexion; but the brown or copper shade is found more or less in them all. It may be said, then, of the American nations, that, with the exception of two or three tribes on the north-west coast, who probably arrived from Asia at a later period than the others, the two extremes of complexion, the white of Northern Europe and the black of Ethiopia, are unknown amongst them; and that, when compared with the Moors, Abyśsinians, and other swarthy nations of the old world, their colour inclines less to the yellow, ańd more to the reddish brown. In stature the variety is great. The North American tribes are generally above the middle size, and of a slender shape. The Brazilian nations and the Peruvians are short and squat. The Caribs of the Orinoco, and the Abipones, Mocoby, and other tribes which rove over the Pampas west of the Plata, are tall and strong; and the Patagonians, a Chilian tribe, exceed in strength and stature all the other races in the known world.

The origin, history, languages, and condition of the American natives, present ample materials for speculation; but before touching on these subjects, there are two interesting questions to which we must advert, namely, what is the present amount of the indigenous population of America? and into how many tribes or independent communities is it distributed? Humboldt, in a late edition of his work on Mexico estimates the whole number of Indians in the new world as follows :—
[table]
[7:2:617]

Though disposed to treat the authority of Humboldt with great deference in all questions respecting the new world, we are led to think that he has considerably underrated the number of savage or independent Indians. In a late edition of Morse’s Geography the number of Indians in the territories of the United States alone is estimated at 470,000, of whom even those on the east side of the Mississippi have only in part renounced the chase as a means of subsistence. The independent part of these must amount to fully 350,000, spread over a surface of 1,200,000 square miles, affording one inhabitant to less than four square miles. British and Russian America, under the 60th parallel, with the coasts and the northern parts of Mexico and the forests of Central America, occupy about 3,000,000 square miles more. If we suppose the southern portion of this space to be peopled to the same density as the former, and the northern to have one inhabitant for 20 square miles, we have about 300,000 in addition to those in the United States, and 650,000 in all North America, without reckoning the Esquimaux and Greenlanders, who may amount to 10,000 more. In South America, where the independent tribes occupy three fourths of the interior, and touch the coast in Brazil, Colombia, La Plata, and Chili, they may be considered as the possessors of 4,000,000 of square miles. As the fruits, fish, and wild animals on which these tribes subsist are more abundant in the torrid zone than elsewhere, the savage population of this region was probably at one time much more dense than that of North America. We know, however, that sad havock has been made among them by the small-pox and spiritous liquors; that they have been destroyed in open war, intentionally poisoned with infected clothes, kidnapped for slaves, or hunted down like wild beasts. Still all the facts we have been able to collect lead us to believe that their numbers cannot be much thinner than on the great plain of the Mississippi. In Colombia alone, an account professing to be official makes the number of independent Indians 203,000. We are therefore disposed to think that 750,000 is a moderate estimate for all the countries south of the isthmus of Panama. We shall thus have in both Americas 1,400,000 Indians, instead of 820,000, as estimated by Humboldt. The next question regards the number of the tribes or nations into which this mass of savage population is divided. Two circumstances seem to determine the size of these little communities—the nature of the country, and the degree of rudeness or intelligence possessed by the people. A tribe which has made some advances in arts and military skill is enabled to increase its numbers by gaining territory and means of subsistence from its enemies, and sometimes by compelling weaker tribes to court its protection, or incorporate themselves with it. Conquests and acquisitions are facilitated when the country is open; and they are rendered difficult when it is hilly, or covered with thick woods, or intersected by deep rivers. Hence it is that a single nation may be found in the steppes of Mississippi, or the pampas of La Plata, occupying a territory as large as a kingdom, while Humboldt ascertained that two hundred tribes were crowded into a space of 19,000 square leagues, amidst the dense forests of the Upper Orinoco. In the province of Quito alone there were, a century ago, 116 different tribes, speaking as many distinct dialects. We must attend also to the distinction which ought to exist between nations and tribes, though the words are used indiscri minately. A tribe includes those living under one chief, or one government; a nation, those who speak one language, or are confederated for their common defence. A nation may consist of many tribes. The Dacotas or Sioux, one of the most powerful nations of North America, numbers 20,000, some say 28,000 souls; but it is divided into seven, if not fifteen or twenty tribes.^[28. Major Long’s Expedition to the Source of St Peter’s River, vol. i. p. 378; a work which contains a great mass of valuable information respecting the Indian tribes. It was published in Philadelphia in 1824. ] The Powhattans of Virginia, a celebrated nation in former times, were divided into 33 tribes. The Iroquois, who are called “the Five Nations,” consisted of 15 tribes, and, though they made so great a figure in the early history of New England, never counted more than 2600 warriors, or 11,000 or 12,000 souls. On the other hand, vast numbers of tribes have become extinct; and many which are hastening to this state may be found reduced to a dozen of families, but still retaining an appearance of independence, perhaps under the protection of others of greater strength. In general, the tendency to subdivide is great; and the process seems to be carried as far as the necessity of being strong enough for self-defence will admit. On a general survey of the aborigines of both divisions of America, we are satisfied that the average number in a tribe (taking the word in the sense we have given to it) must be estimated at less than 1000 souls, probably at 700 or 800. Following out our calculation, we infer that there must be 1600 or 1800 independent communities of savages in America, who are united probably into 400 or 500 confederacies, of fluctuating extent and duration. Towards the two extremities of the continent, the magnitude of these primary communities is greater than in the basin of the Orinoco and Amazon, where the savages are more savage in their character and manners than elsewhere, and where the nature of the country favours their propensity to split into very small societies. Before the arrival of the Europeans, America probably contained three times as many of these children of the woods, divided into three times as many distinct hordes.

It is the absence of civilisation which has broken human speech into such a countless variety of dialects; and the lower any race of people have sunk m the abasement of savage life, the more languages multiply amongst them. Every unwritten tongue is subject to continual fluctuations, which will be numerous and rapid in proportion as the tribe using it is exposed to frequent vicissitudes of fortune, and the individuals composing it have little intercourse with one another. When the population of one of these societies increases, it splits into several branches; and if these have little intercourse, the original language divides by degrees into as many dialects. These smaller societies subdivide in their turn with the same effects; and, in such continual subdivisions, the dialects of the extreme branches deviate farther and farther from one another, and from the parent tongue, till time, aided by migrations and wars, producing mixtures of different hordes, obliterates all distinct traces of a common origin. The cause of these changes becomes more obvious when we reflect on the principles which give stability to a language. These are, 1. the abundant use of writing; 2. the teaching of a language as a branch of education 3. frequency of intercourse among all the people speaking it; 4. the existence of an order of men, such as priests or lawyers, who employ it for professional purposes; 5. stability of condition in the people, or exemption from vicissitudes and revolutions; 6. a large stock of popular poetry, which, if universally diffused, may almost become [7:2:618]a substitute for writing. All these conditions were wanting (with some trifling exceptions) in the whole of the wandering tribes of America. The great multiplication of languages, therefore, proves two things; first, that the people are in the lowest state of savage life; and, secondly, that they have been for many ages in this condition; for time is a necessary element in the process of splitting human speech into so many varieties. Now, it is a remarkable fact, that there were as many languages spoken among -a population of two or three millions of American savages, as among the six hundred millions of human beings scattered over the old continent! We call them two or three millions, because we exclude the civilized inhabitants of Mexicoand Peru, and because a considerable number of the facts collected by Hervasand Vater relate to a period from 50 to 100 years back, since which, some of the tribes they allude to have become extinct. Balbi, in his Ethnographical Atlas, has enumerated 423 languages, which are, or at no distant period were, spoken in America by the indigenous population. Of these, 211 belong to North, 44 to Central, and 168 to South America; but as the list includes only those tongues of whose structure something is known, it does not embrace more than one or two of the 116 dialects noticed by the missionaries in Quito, some of which have ceased to exist; and many others, unknown, or known imperfectly, are also left out. There cannot be a doubt that the greater multiplicity of tribes in South America is accompanied with a corresponding multiplicity of languages, and that we may add at least 100 for omissions in this section of the continent. Vater says expressly that the number of languages in America “exceeds five hundred.” As a general result, then, we may state, that there are (or were within a century past) from 500 to 600 distinct dialects in the new world, without including in our enumeration any which do not differ from one another as widely as the Spanish from the Italian, or the German from the Dutch.^[29. Mithridates Einleitung Amerikanischen Sprachen, p. 3Ĵ3. Balbi, Atlas Ethnographique du Globe. Paris, 182G. ]

Under this prodigious diversity of dialects, a remarkable analogy of structure has been detected in all those which are well known, and is believed to pervade the whole. The American languages are extremely complicated and artificial, and have extraordinary powers of combination. The verb, besides inflections applicable to the varieties of time, has numerous moods, which maybe described as reflected, transitive, compulsive, applicative, meditative, communicative, reverential, frequentative; and forms which indicate by suffixes and affixes whether the ohject be animate or inanimate, male or female, &c.^[30. See Prichard’s Researches, vol. ii∙ p. 341; and Tables 2G, 27, and 29 of Balbi’s Atlas. ] “From the country of the Esquimaux to the straits of Magellan,” says Humboldt, “mother tongues entirely different in their roots have, if we may use the expression, the same physiognomy. Striking analogies of grammatical construction are discovered, not only in the more perfect languages, as that of the Incas, the Ayemara, the Guarani, the Mexican, and the Cora, but also in languages extremely rude. It is in consequence of this similarity of structure that the Indians of the missions could learn the tongue of a different tribe much more easily than the Spanish; and the monks had hence adopted the practice of communicating with a great number of hordes through the medium of one of the native languages.” The complication of grammatical forms which these dialects display has induced Mr Duponceau of Philadelphia to give them the name of Polysynthic. Now the remarkable facts are, first, that this characteristic should not be found in any of the known languages of the old world, except in a faint degree in the Basque, and the dialect of Congo; and, next, that it should belong, not to one or two, but with slight exceptions, so far as is known, to all the languages of America, so extremely numerous, and many of which have nothing else in common. How is this diffusion of a peculiar and common character over materials so dissimilar to be accounted for? To us it seems to imply a community of origin in the tribes, whether few or many, which peopled the continent. As no person has the full command of all the vocables in his native language, individual terms must be continually dropping out of dialects preserved by oral communication; and new ones will be introduced as new wants and new objects solicit attention. But during the gradual change which thus takes place, the new words will be combined and modified according to the rules which belong to the genius of the spoken dialect with which they are incorporated; and thus it may happen that the grammatical forms of an ancient language may live, while its materials perish. The changes of structure which present themselves in the history of European languages, it must be remembered, took place in progressive communities. Among nations like the American Indians, whose barbarism, we may suppose, remained almost stationary, the forms of speech might be more permanent, though its substance was in a state of slow but constant mutation. We do not mean, however, that the community of origin alluded to was entire and absolute among the American nations. Since weak tribes are often incorporated with strong ones in the present times, it might happen that small parties of separate and dissimilar races might be blended by conquest or treaty with the larger nations of the American stock, and in a generation or two lose their distinctive character, by adopting the language and manners of their new confederates or masters. Neither must it be imagined that there is an entire absence of mutual affinities among the 423 tongues enumerated by Balbi. On the contrary, six, eight, or more, are sometimes united in one family by analogies, in their roots and grammatical forms, as strong as those which obtain among the languages of the Teutonic stem in Europe, the Icelandie, Swedish, Danish, German, Dutch, and English. If philologists had complete vocabularies of them all, it might probably be found that the 500 or 600 American languages could be arranged into eight or ten “reigns,” to use Balbi’s term, or into forty or fifty families, each characterized by affinities sufficiently clear to prove that its component members had sprung from a common parent. On the other hand, the complete absence, in so many instances, of common roots in the dialects of contiguous tribes,—the fading and almost obliterated traces of resemblance in languages which had once been identical,—are very remarkable phenomena, and prepare us for a result which could not have been anticipated otherwise—that none of all the American tongues has any distinct marks of a common origin with any one of those of Asia, Africa, Europe, or Polynesia. The sole exception is the Esquimaux idiom, which belongs to the same family with that of the Tchutkis, a people having the same physical aspect, who inhabit the extreme northeastern parts of Asia. Upon a painful comparison of the known languages of the new world with those of the old, only 170 words have been found ,in the former which have a distinct resemblance to words of the same signification in the latter. These are derived from 83 American tongues; three fifths of them have a resemblance to words in the Mantchou, Tonguse, Mongol, and Samoiede [7:2:619]dialects, and two fifths to words in the Celtic, Tschoud, Biscayan, Coptic, and Congoese. This number is too small to prove any thing by itself; but it is not entirely to be disregarded when taken in connection with the analogies which have been traced in the physical character, customs, superstitions, and monuments, of the people of the two continents. And if we admit, on the ground of their similarity of organization, that the greater number of the American languages have had a common origin, even in those cases where coincident terms are no longer to be discovered, perhaps it ought to be acknowledged that the affinity between the languages of the two continents is as great as could be expected. In this, as in many questions connected with geology, time is the element which solves the difficulty; and when a longer course of observation has enabled us to detect the laws which govern the changes of oral language among barbarous and savage nations, the facts will probably speak to us in clearer terms.^[31. Vater remarks, in the introduction to his account of the American languages, that they have, comparatively speaking, a considerable number of words in common with the Finnish. He finds, however, only 51 similar words where the affinity should be most distinct, namely, in all the languages of North America and Northern Asia. Ŵę subjoin a tabular view of the number of words he has detected in the American languages agreeing in sound and sense with words in some of the principal tongues of the old continent and its islands. [table] Vater admits that many of these resemblances may be accidental; and some of them are evidently too fain,t to be of any value. We must at the same time keep in view, that philologists have rarely the means of making a complete and satisfactory comparison. In general they are furnished with only 40 or 50 words, significant of the most common objects, out of some thousands constituting the dialect of a tribe or people; and these few words are taken down hastily by travellers, mariners, or missionaries, of different nations, who are often betrayed into errors by imperfect means of communication, and must in their turn mislead the philologist by their dissimilar systems o÷‘ orthography. To enable the reader to judge of the sort of resemblances collected by Vater, we give his comparison of six Irish words with six Algonquin, remarking, however, that this is decidedly the most favourable specimen in his tables [table] ]

Though any attempt to reduce the American population under a few general classes, either on physical or ethnographical grounds, would be idle, a brief survey of the most remarkable nations, or families of nations, will enable us to form a more distinct idea of the whole.

All the northern coast of the new continent is tenanted by the Esquimaux, a dwarfish race, rarely exceeding five feet in height, and of the same stock with the Greenlanders, the Tchutkis, the Samoiedes, and the Laplanders. Near Mackenzie’s River their territories commence at the 68th parallel, and extend to the Arctic Ocean. They occupy all the northern Archipelago, the shores of Hudson’s and Baffin’s Bays, of Labrador, and of Russian America, round by Behring’s Straits, to the peninsula of Alyaska. They live entirely by fishing, the w hale and the seal being their most common food; they inhabit skin tents during their short summer, and in winter caves or houses built with snow in the shape of domes, within which a single rude lamp is kept perpetually burning. They are crafty and dirty, but appeared to Captain Franklin more intelligent and provident than the northern Indians. There is a wide diversity in their dialects, which still display decided marks of identity in their roots. They are the only American race whose Asiatic origin is indisputable.

The north-west coast of Russian America, from Cook’s Inlet to the 48th parallel, is inhabited by four tribes, of whom the Kaluschi are the most remarkable. These people are distinguished from all the native races of America by having as fair a complexion when their skins are washed as the inhabitants of Europe; and this distinction, accompanied sometimes with auburn hair, has been considered as indicating an origin different from that of the copper-coloured tribes who people all the rest of the continent.

The Indians of the east coast belong almost entirely to three stems; and, before the arrival of the English colonists, occupied both sides of the Allegany Mountains, from the Gulf of Mexicoto Canada and New Brunswick. 1. The Delaware or Algonquin Indians, comprehending the Ottogamies, Shawanese, Naragansets, Chippeways, Knisteňeaux, Delawares, and other nations, to the number of thirty or forty, were spread over the space between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, as far north as Hudson’s Bay; and all spoke dialects of one language. They preserved a tradition, to which some credit has been given, that they had migrated from the west many centuries before the white men crossed the Atlantic, and gained possession of their country by expelling the A∏egewis (or Alleganies), its former occupants. The latter nation, it is said, lived in towns; and it has been conjectured that they were the race who had constructed the long mounds and walls, and the circular and polygonal inclosures, like fortresses, which are scattered in great numbers over the region between the Ohio and the lakes. 2. The Iroquois, often called the “Five Nations,” and the “Six Nations,” but comprehending 15 tribes or more, among whom were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Hurons, and Senecas, all spoke dialects of one language. They lived on the south side of the great lakes, and finally obtained a complete ascendency over the Algonquin race. 3. The Florida Indians, including the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Natches, and Mobiles. The Cherokees and Creeks, two of these nations, who dwell in Alabama and Georgia, have made greater advances in agriculture and the useful arts than any of the other tribes within the territories of the United States. They not only cultivate maize, potatoes, and cotton, but raise cattle and hogs for the market. The former, who have some hundreds of negro slaves, have established schools, set up a newspaper, and even adopted a political constitution, modelled on those of the Anglo-Americans. It has been recently discovered that the [7:2:620]Osages, Missouris, Kanses, and some other tribes inhabiting the country beyond the Mississippi, as far as the Rocky Mountains, speak dialects which are allied to those of the Iroquois; a fact which tends strongly to confirm the opinion entertained by the latter, that their original residence was far in the west. The Natches, near the Mississippi, had a monarchical government, and a class of nobles like the Mexicans. They had temples in which the sun was worshipped, and a perpetual fire kept up. Traces of this superstition existed also among the Gaspes, in New Brunswick. Tribes belonging to these three families, with the Wocons and Katawbas, now almost extinct, occupied nearly all the region east of the Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexicoto Hudson’s Bay, comprising more than a million of square miles. The Katawbas alone, however, are said to have included 20 tribes, and nearly as many dialects. The Powhattans were a confederacy of 33 tribes, comprehending 10,000 persons. It is probable that when the English settlers landed in the country, the region mentioned was inhabited by a quarter of a million of Indians, divided into many tribes, and speaking dialects belonging to half a dozen of radically distinct languages. These nations have furnished brilliant models of the most shining qualities of savage life—a high sense of honour, according to their perceptions of duty, mutual fidelity among individuals, a fortitude that mocks at the most cruel torments, and a devotion to their tribe which makes self-immolation in its defence easy. On the other hand, they treat their wives cruelly, and their children with indifference. The apathy under the good and ill of life which the Stoic affected, is the grand element of the Indian’s character. Gloomy, stern, and severe, he is a stranger to mirth and laughter. All outward expression of pleasure or pain he regards as a weakness; and the only feeling to which he ever yields, is the boisterous joy which he manifests in the moment of victory, or under the excitement of intoxication. He is capable of great exertions in war or the chase, but has an unconquerable aversion to regular labour. He is extremely improvident; eats enormously while he has abundance of food, without thinking of the famine which may follow; and, when liquors are supplied to him, wallows in the most beastly intoxication day after day. Most of the Indians believe in the existence of a supreme being, whom they call the Great Spirit; and of a subordinate one, whose nature is evil and hostile to man. To the latter their worship is principally addressed, the Good Spirit, in their opinion, needing no prayers to induce him to aid and protect his creatures. In some cases, however, as when influenced by a dream, they offer sacrifices to the Good Spirit. These consist generally of part of an animal taken in the chase, which is stuck upon the head of a high pole set vertically in the ground, and left in this situation to decay by the action of the elements. The remainder of the carcass is boiled and eaten; and the feast is accompanied with prayers, dancing, and singing. Human sacrifices are not unknown amongst them, but are rare. In their fasts, which are long and severe, they smear the face and other visible parts of the body with charcoal, and abstain from food till the sun has gone down; and this is practised day after day for one or two weeks. Some of them believe in tutelar spirits; and in most of the tribes there are jugglers or soothsayers, who pretend to discover lost property, and foretell the issue of hunting or warlike expeditions. By some tribes, deities are supposed to reside in the sun and moon. They generally believe in a future state, in which the souls of brave warriors and chaste wives enjoy a tranquil and happy existence with their ancestors and friends, spending their time in those exercises in which they delighted when on the earth. The Dacotas believe that the road to these “villages of the dead” leads over a rock with an edge as sharp as a knife, on which only the good are able to keep their footing. The wicked fall off, and descend to the region of the Evil Spirit, where they are hard worked, and severely flogged by their relentless master. Suicide is common among the women of this tribe, in consequence of the cruel treatment they are exposed to; but the practice is viewed as immoral. It is commonly effected by the woman hanging herself upon a tree; and as the popular belief is, that she is doomed to drag this tree after her for ever in the land of spirits, it is said to be usual for a female in committing the act to select as small a tree as will bear her weight.

Polygamy is allowed; and a number of wives is considered as adding to a man’s consequence. When a youno∙ man has formed an attachment to a girl, he throws a deer, a gun, or some valuable article, into her father’s hut. This is repeated for several days, till the father asks the young man what his object is, and whether he wishes to obtain his daughter. The young man having answered in the affirmative, the relations of the girl, if they approve of his suit, signify their consent by preparing a dress for the youth, which they carry to his house, and put upon his person. The young man’s friends then prepare presents for the girl’s family, into which he goes to reside, serving his father-in-law for a year, during which he gives him all the produce of his hunting. At the end of this period the youth takes his wife home to his own house, and treats her as he pleases, his power over her being unlimited. This is the custom of the P∩towatomies. Other tribes have modes of courting and marrying which are very different; but among all the Indians, the presenting of gifts to the girl’s father is an essential feature of the transaction, and shows that the wife is considered as procured by purchase. Deformed children, and lame or decrepit old persons, are sometimes destroyed; but the practice is uncommon. Incest and unnatural vices are practised in some tribes, but they are always viewed as matters of reproach. The Indian funerals are conducted with much decorum. The deceased is dressed in his best clothes, and laid in a grave, in a vertical, horizontal, or inclined position, according to his own previous directions, with his mocassins, knife, money, and silver ornaments beside him, and a small quantity of food near his head. Some prefer having their bodies sewed up in a blanket, and suspended from the branches of a tree. In this position the corpse is frequently visited by the friends of the deceased, until they observe that it is in a state of decay. They then shake hands with it and bid it farewell; but this does not prevent them from paying a yearly visit to the spot, and leaving some food at the place. It is usual to mark the graves with a post, on which figures are carved expressive of the nature of the pursuits and achievements of the deceased.

Some nations of Indians wear little or no clothing; but the general dress of the men in the temperate and cold parts of the country, previous to the arrival of the Europeans, consisted of three articles: a cloak of buffalo-skin hanging from the shoulders, a piece of skin used as an apron, and a pair of mocassins or loose boots, made of undressed skin also. The women wore a long robe of the same material, which was fastened round the waist; but among the tribes living near the whites, coarse woollens are now frequently substituted for the hides of wild animals, except for the mocassins. The habitations of the Indians are huts or cabins, generally of a circular form and small size, but sometimes of 30 or 40 feet in diameter, formed by stakes fixed in the ground, and covered with [7:2:621] the bark of trees. Sometimes the spaces between the stakes are filled up with twigs, grass, and mud, and the roof is covered nearly in the same way. A hole in the top serves for the escape of the smoke, and the skins of wild beasts form the beds and seats. When they go to a distance to hunt, they erect for temporary use large tents, which are covered with skins. On the west side of the Mississippi, where the ground is open, many of the tribes make use of horses, which are seldom employed amidst the woods covering the territories east of that river. The custom of painting their bodies is nearly universal. They introduce the colours by making punctures on their skin; and the extent of surface which this ornament covers is proportioned to the exploits they have performed. Some paint only their arms, others both their arms and legs, others again their thighs; while those who have attained the summit of warlike renown have their bodies painted from the waist upwards. This is the heraldry of the Indians, the devices of which are probably more exactly adjusted to the merits of the persons who bear them than those of more civilized countries. Besides these ornaments, the warriors also carry plumes of feathers on their heads, their arms, or ancles. Their arms are the tomahawk, the war-club, knife, the bow and arrow; and, since they had intercourse with Europeans, many of them have muskets. Each tribe or community is governed by a chief and council, who are elective; but in matters of importance the whole warriors are consulted; and Mr Keating informs us that questions are not decided by the votes of a majority, but the resolution adopted must have the consent of every individual warrior. Their assemblies are conducted with much formality and decorum. The eldest chief commences the debate, which is often carried on by set speeches, abounding in bold figures and metaphors, and bursts of a rude but impassioned eloquence. The young are permitted to be present, and to express their approbation by cries, but not to speak. In their wars the object commonly is, to secure the right of hunting within particular limits, to maintain the liberty of passing through their accustomed tracts, and to guard from infringement those lands which they consider as their own tenure. War is declared by sending a slave with a hatchet, the handle of which is painted red, to the nation they intend to break with. They generally take the field in small numbers. Each warrior, besides his weapons, carries a mat, and supports himself till he is near the enemy by killing game. From the time they enter the enemy’s country, no game is killed, no fires lighted, or shouting heard, and their vigilance and caution are extreme. They are not even permitted to speak, but must communicate by signs and motions. Having discovered the objects of their hostility, they first reconnoitre them, then hold a council; and they generally make their attack just before day-break, that they may surprise their enemies while asleep. They will lie the whole night flat on their faces without stirring, and, at the fit moment for action, will creep on their hands and feet till they have got within a bow-shot of those they have doomed to destruction. On a signal given by the chief warrior, which is answered by the yells of the whole party, they start up, and, after discharging their arrows, they rush upon their adversaries, without giving them time to recover from their confusion, with their war-clubs and tomahawks. If they succeed, the scene of horror which follows baffles description. The savage fury of the conquerors, the desperation of the conquered, the horrid yells of both, and their grim figures besmeared, with paint and blood, form an assemblage of objects worthy of pandemonium. When the victory is secured, they select a certain number of their prisoners to carry home: they kill the rest in cold blood, take their scalps, and then march off with the spoil. The prisoners destined to death are soon led to the place of execution, where they are stripped, have their bodies blackened, and are bound to a stake. In this situation, while the burning faggots embrace his limbs, and the knives of his revengeful enemies are inflicting a thousand tortures, it is common for the warrior to recount his exploits, boast of the cruelties he has committed upon his enemies, and to irritate and insult his tormentors in every way. Sometimes it happens that this has the effect of provoking one of the spectators to dispatch him with a club or tomahawk. Sometimes the male adult prisoners are given äs slaves to women who have lost their husbands in the war, and by whom they are often married. The women taken are distributed among the warriors; the boys and girls are considered as slaves.

Nearly all the Indian tribes raise maize, beans, and pumpkins, by the labour of their women, but only to a small extent, and as a resource against famine, their chief reliance being upon the chase. The buffaloes which wander over the prairies of the west, in herds of tens of thousands, are their great support; but deer, bears, and in time of need otters, beavers, foxes, squirrels, and even the most disgusting reptiles, are devoured. And last and worst, there is the horrid banquet of human flesh, which is still in use among some tribes, and to which, at one period of their history or another, perhaps few or none of them have been strangers. The fact has been doubted; but the decided testimony given by Major Long and his party, who all started on their journey with a disinclination to admit it, must be considered as setting the question at rest. After alluding to the incredulity which many felt on the subject, the narrator says,—“With such feelings the gentlemen of the expedition first heard the reports of the anthropophagy of the Potowatomies, and yielded but an unwilling ear to every thing that could induce a belief in the existence of this disgusting trait in the character of the North-West Indians. Truth compels them, however, to assert, that the reports which they have received on this subject were so frequent, so circumstantial, and derived from such respectable sources, that any concealment of it, or any apparent incredulity on their part, would be a dereliction of duty. Even the most incredulous of the party, or those disposed to entertain the most favourable opinion of the Indians, were at last compelled to acknowledge that all doubt on the subject had been removed from their minds.”^[32. Narrative of Major Long’s Expedition to St Peter’s River, vol. i. p. 101. Philadelphia, 1824. ] The practice seems to have its origin sometimes in famine, which drives the Indians to this resource, and sometimes in hatred or revenge towards a hostile tribe; for it is only enemies that are thus devoured; and the Indians have a superstitious idea, that the flesh of a brave man, when eaten, especially the heart, imparts a portion of his courage to the individual who consumes it. We have described the manners and dispositions of these nations at some length, because the lights and shadows of savage life, its grand features and marked peculiarities, in that state in which' a brutal ferocity has not obliterated every generous quality, are more strongly depicted in their character than in that of any other American race. For the sake of distinction, they may be denominated the Allegany Indians. [7:2:622] The Caribs, who have been compared to them, had the same courage and fierceness, but were more gross and brutal; and the Araucanians, who surpassed all the independent tribes of America in intrepidity, intelligence, and generosity, had a slight tincture of civilisation. In speaking of those other nations which make the most considerable figure in the new continent, our limited space will not permit us to do more than to describe very briefly the leading traits of their character.

It has been generally admitted by physiologists, that the temperate regions of the globe are best fitted to develope all the powers of our nature; and it is a fact in accordance with this opinion, that among the aborigines of America, civilisation followed very closely the chain of the Andes, and was found either upon their sides or the table-land of their summits, where the elevation of the ground moderates the heat of the tropical sun, and produces a climate analogous to that of Central and Southern Europe. This civilisation did not exist merely at the two distant and isolated points of Mexieo and Peru, but presented itself at intermediate places, and maybe said to have formed a continuous line from lat. 35. N. to lat. 35. S., with few interruptions, except at those parts where the mountainous chain disappears, or sinks down to a trifling elevation. Some large buildings near the Rio Gila, in lat. 33. N., with fragments of porcelain, indicate the existence of a people here who had some knowledge of the arts. These were most probably a branch of the Aztecks or Toltecks, who afterwards occupied Mexico as the annals of this country tell. Though some pursued their march southward, it may be reasonably supposed that a part remained in the district; and the Indians living here, who cultivate corn, weave cloth, and live in villages consisting of houses built of solid materials, sometimes two stories in height, may either be their descendants, or have borrowed from them the improvements they possess. Next in order as we proceed southward, are the various nations of Mexico of whose condition we shall speak by and by. In Chiapa were the Zapotecks, in Yucatan the Mayas, in Guatemala the Quiches and Kachiquels, all nearly as much advanced in civilisation as the Mexicans, and probably of the same primitive stock. From this point, where the Andes lose their elevation, or break into isolated cones, no distinct traces of civilisation appear till we enter the southern continent. Here were found the Muyseas or Moseas, on the table-land of Bogota, a nation consisting of several tribes, who worshipped the sun and practised some of the useful arts. To these sueceeded the nations of Peru, living under the Incas, whose dominion extended from the equator to the 35th degree of south latitude. Beyond this boundary were the Chilian tribes, who, though inferior to the Peruvians, had made some advances beyond the rudeness of the savage state. It is proper to mention that some of the nations named were extinct before the arrival of the Spaniards; but the degree of civilisation they had attained is attested by the monuments they have left behind them. There were no other tribes in the new continent which had made any progress in social improvement. We would not except the Guaranis of Brazil, and a few others, who derived their subsistence chiefly from agriculture, but were in other respects savages. We place among the exceptions, however, the extinct race of the Allegewis, or whatever was the name of the people, who erected the military works existing between the Ohio and the northern lakes; but they also, it must be remembered, inhabited a temperate climate, though not a mountainous country. It may be affirmed, then, as a general proposition, that from 35° of north to 35° of south latitude, the sides and summits of the Andes were the exclusive seats of American civilisation. We admit that some of the tribes in Chiapa, Oaxaea, and Yueatan, inhabited low districts; but they were still near the Cordillera, and may be fairly considered as offsets from the nations dwelling upon it. The faet is important, as marking the effect of climate on the active energies of our species. There is no doubt that, with the improved arts of modern times, civilisation can subsist under the burning sky of the torrid zone, but not in such vigour as in countries which enjoy a more moderate temperature. Perhaps it will be found that the moral and physical powers of man attain their highest perfection in those regions, where he is accompanied by w heat and the vine. The zone occupied by the former extends from the 30th to the 57th or 58th parallel; and within the tropics the corresponding climate is found on the flanks or summits of mountains, from 4500 to 10,000 feet above the level of the sea.

It is remarkable that the Mexican annals reach to a more remote date than those of any of the nations of northern Europe, though they were preserved merely by an imperfect species of hieroglyphics, or picture-writing. We do not pretend to enter into the question which may be raised, both as to the authenticity of the records themselves, and their susceptibility of a correct interpretation. It is enough that they have received credit from Humboldt, Vater, and other men of learning and judgment who have examined into their nature and origin. From the annals thus preserved, we learn that several nations belonging to one race migrated in succession from the north-west, and settled in Anahuac or Mexico The Toltecks, the first of these, left their original seat, far to the west, in 544 of our era, and after a long journey invaded Mexieo, then occupied by wandering hordes, in 648. This people, who penetrated to Nicaragua, if not to South America, were nearly destroyed after the lapse of some centuries; but were followed by the Chichimeks, a half-savage tribe, about 1170, and these a few years afterwards by the Anahuatlels, or seven tribes, including the Acol-huans, Elascaltcks, and the Aztecks or proper Mexicans. All these people spoke dialects of one language, and had similar arts, customs, and institutions. The town of Mexicoor Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325, and the series of Mexican kings which commenced in 1352 was continued through eight monarchs to Montezuma. The monarchy was small at first, and passed through many vicissitudes; but it was gradually enlarged, especially by the policy and enterprise of the later princes of the line. When Cortes arrived, it embraced what are now the provinces of Vera Cruz, Oaxaca, Puebla, Mexico and part of Valladolid, a surface of 130,000 square miles; but within this were comprehended three small independent states, Elascala, Cholullan, and Zapeaca. The pastoral state, which forms the intermediate stage between savage and civilized life, had never existed in Mexico for the native wild ox had not been tamed, and the use of milk as food was unknown. The Mexican nations derived their subsistence from agriculture, which, however, was conducted in the rudest manner, with very imperfect instruments. They cultivated maize, potatoes, plantains, and various other esculent vegetables. They raised cotton, and understood the art of spinning and weaving it into cloth, of a texture which excited the admiration of the Spaniards. They had no iron, but showed considerable skill in fashioning the gold, silver, and copper found in a native state, into domestic utensils and ornamental articles. In some of their buildings the stones were hewn into regular forms, and accurately joined; and from the ruins of the palace of Mitla, in Oaxaca, still existing, it appears that they had the art of designing ornaments like arabesques, in paste, [7:2:623]with great neatness, and attaching them to the walls; but solid structures of masonry evincing any considerable skill are extremely rare in the country. Their carvings in wood were tolerably well executed, but the figures were disproportioned and uncouth. The same remark applies to their hieroglyphical drawings, which were far inferior in taste and design to those of the Hindoos, Japanese, and Thibetians. For paper they employed sometimes the large leaves of the aloe, sometimes cotton cloth, or the skins of deer dressed. Their books consisted of strips or webs of such materials, composed of pieces neatly joined, one or two feet broad and twenty or thirty long, which were divided into pages by folding them in a zig-zag manner; and two pieces of thin deal attached to the outermost folds served as boards, and gave these manuscripts, when closed, an appearance very much like our old folios in wooden binding. The written language of Mexicocontained a few real hieroglyphics or symbols, purely conventional, to designate such objects as water, earth, air, day, night, speech, and also for numbers; but it was essentially a system of picture-writing, in which objects were represented by coloured figures having a resemblance more or less exact to themselves. With all its necessary imperfections, this instrument was familiarly employed to a prodigious extent in deeds and instruments for effecting the transmission and sale of property. The government kept couriers for conveying intelligence from all parts of the empire; and the capital was watched and cleaned by a sort of police establishment. This is the bright side of Mexican civilisation. On the other hand, it must be kept in view, that the Mexicans had no tame animals, no made roads, no money to serve as a universal medium of exchange in commercial transactions. The government was originally a perfect feudal monarchy, in which all power was monopolized by a numerous nobility and the priesthood. The great mass of the people were serfs, attached to the soil, and transferred with it from owner to owner by descent or purchase. The peasants or slaves of a nobleman were allowed a certain portion of land, which they cultivated in common for their subsistence: the rest of their labour belonged to their lord. The country swarmed with beggars, and thousands were swept off every few years by famine. As among the ancient Egyptians and the Chinese, immutable custom, regulating every act of civil and common life, chained up the course of improvement, and spread a languid monotony over society. The crown was elective, and the powers of the monarch small, till the privileges of the nobles were destroyed by the policy and ambition of Montezuma. The religion of the Mexicans breathed a savage spirit, which sinks them, in a moral point of view, far below the hordes of wandering Indians. Their deities, represented by mis-shapen images of serpents and other hideous animals, were the creation of the darkest passions of the human breast, of terror, hatred, cruelty, revenge. They delighted in blood, and thousands of human sacrifices were annually offered at their shrines. The places of worship, called Teocallis, were pyramids composed of terraces placed one above another, like the temple of Belus at Babylon. They were built of clay, or of alternate layers of clay and unburnt bricks, but in some cases faced with slabs of polished stone, on which figures of animals are sculptured in relief.^[33. Robertson was mistaken in believing that the Teocallis were in all cases mere masses of earth, without masonry. See Humboldt’s Researches, vol. i. p. III, English translation. ] One or two small chapels stood upon the summit, inclosing images of the deity. The largest known, which is composed of four stories or terraces, has a breadth of 480 yards at the base, and a height of 55. These structures served as temples, tombs, and observatories; and it is remarkable that their sides are always placed exactly in the direction of the meridian. This leads us to the most interesting fact connected with Mexican civilisation, we mean the perfection of their calendar. The civil year was composed of 365 days, divided into 18 months of 20 days, and 5 supplementary days. The Mexicans had besides a ritual or religious year for the regulation of their festivals; and, by means of a cycle of 52 years, and a very complicated method of computation, the religious and civil periods were connected with one another, and the civil year made to correspond with the natural by the intercalation of 13 days at the end of the cycle. The month was divided into four weeks of five days, but each day of the month had a distinct name; and Humboldt has given strong reasons for believing that these names were borrowed from an ancient zodiac formed of 27 or 28 lunar Houses, which was made use of from the remotest antiquity in Tartary, Thibet, and India. The calendar of the Mexicans bespeaks a degree of scientific skill, and an accuracy of observation, which are not easily reconciled with their semi-barbarous habits, their general ignorance in other things, and the recent date of their civilisation according to their own accounts. It is here, indeed, and not in their language, that we find distinct traces of their connection with Asiatic nations. The character of the Mexicans is probably the same at this day as before the conquest, which, we are disposed to think, made less change in the situation of the people than is often supposed, though it annihilated the rank and privileges of the nobles. The Mexican Indian is grave, suspicious, and taciturn; quiet and placid in his external deportment, but rancorous in his spirit; submissive to his superiors, harsh and cruel to those beneath him. His intellect is limited, and chiefly developes itself in imitative labours and mechanical arts. Slow, cautious, and persevering, he loves, both in his acts and thoughts, to travel in a beaten track. The people, though speaking many different languages, have nearly the same physical character. The Mexicans have olive complexions, narrow foreheads, black eyes, coarse glossy black hair, and thin beards. They are of the middle size, and well-proportioned in their limbs. A person with any defect or deformity is rarely seen amongst them. They are healthy, and live to an advanced age, when life is not shortened by drunkenness. The Tolteck and Azteck races, when they established themselves in the country, diffused their own language partially from the lake of Nicaragua to the 37th parallel. They reclaimed, by degrees, many of the neighbouring savage tribes to a settled mode of life, and spread a feeble degree of civilisation over a mixed mass of nations, speaking, according to Clavigero, 35 languages, of which Humboldt tells us that 20 still exist. The Azteck language is one of the most copious and polished of the American tongues, and abounds in words of the immoderate length of 12 or 15 syllables. It is uncertain what was the number of subjects over whom Montezuma ruled. The ruins in the valley of Tenochtitlan, on which the capital stands, show that it must have been more populous before the conquest than now; but the population at present is diffused over an incomparably wider space; and, upon the whole, there are no good grounds for believing that the number of civilized Indians was much greater when Cortes landed, than in 1803, when it amounted to 2,000,000.
[7:2:624]

The civilisation of Mexico as well as Peru, owed its existence to one single cause,—the patient, submissive, and superstitious character of the people, which fitted them to be beasts of burden, under an aristocracy of priests and nobles, who were led, perhaps, partly by lights derived from abroad, partly by the instinct of self-interest, to devise means for holding the mass of the community in subjection. Many of the nations which continued savage, such as the Algonquins and Iroquois, were probably equal to the Mexicans in intellect; but their propensity to superstition was less, and their energy of character was too great to permit of their being enslaved by their chiefs. It is chiefly in the variety of their primitive character that we must seek for the cause of the diversity of manners and institutions we find among the American nations.

The ancient empire of Peru, more extensive than that of Mexico embraced the whole sea-coast from Pastos to the river Maule, a line of 2500 miles in length. Its breadth is uncertain; but as it included both declivities of the Andes, it must have extended in some cases to 500 miles, and the entire surface of the empire probably exceeded 500,000 square miles. It is plain, however, from the imperfect history of the Incas which has been preserved, that within this space there were many districts where their authority was feeble, and others inhabited by tribes which were entirely independent. One part of the country, besides, consisted of a sandy desert, while the most elevated tracts were uninhabitable from cold. It must not therefore be supposed that the capacity of the country to support population was commensurate with the extent of its surface. Still the magnitude of the Peruvian empire, in the midst of an immense multitude of independent savage communities, so extremely minute, that a hundred of them might have been planted without crowding, in one of its provinces, is an extraordinary phenomenon. The creating and maintaining of such an empire is a proof that the Peruvians had made no trifling progress in the useful arts and in the science of government. To keep in subjection so many remote provinces, there must have been an efficient military force, rapid means of communication, considerable revenues, an organized magistracy capable of understanding and executing the plans of rulers, who had sufficient political skill and knowledge of human nature to adapt their institutions and arrangements to the wants, habits, and character of a great variety of dissimilar nations, spread over a territory reaching as far as from Lisbon to the banks of the Wolga. It is clear that the ruling tribe, which was able to extend its dominion, and to a considerable extent its language, over a space of 2500 miles, must have possessed a marked superiority of some kind over the hordes that surrounded it. We must remember, besides, that the Peruvians lay under the disadvantage of being destitute of even such an imperfect instrument of communication as the hieroglyphical language of the Mexicans, and that they were extremely deficient in military spirit. Indeed it is one of the most singular facts connected with the history of America, that by far the largest empire it contained was formed by the most unwarlike people in it. The dominion of the Incas was founded entirely on policy, superstition, and the arts. It could only be by the intelligence and skill which civilisation developes, that the Peruvians conquered tribes superior to themselves in courage; and it was by policy and superstition that the Incas tamed the rudeness of savage tribes, and held distant countries in subjection.

Robertson justly observes, that the Peruvians “had advanced far beyond the Mexicans, both in the necessary arts of life, and in such as had some title to the name of elegant.” In two points only were they inferior; in their calendar or mode of computing time, and in their want of such a substitute for writing as the Aztecks possessed in their hieroglyphics.

Agriculture was conducted with greater care and success in Peru than in Mexico The lands capable of cultivation were divided into three shares. One was consecrated to the service of religion, the erection of temples, and the maintenance of priests; the second was set apart as a provision for the support of the government; and the third and largest share, which was reserved for the people, was parcelled out, not among individuals, but among the hamlets and villages, according to the number and rank of the inhabitants; and a new division was made every year to meet any change that might arise in the circumstances of the parties. The members of each little community went to the fields under overseers, and cultivated the land by their joint labour. The produce was distributed among the families and individuals according to their wants, while the evils of famine were provided against by storing up the corn in granaries. The Peruvians having no draught animals, and no ploughs, turned up the earth with wooden mattocks; but their skill and care were exemplified in irrigation, which they practised extensively, and in their employing the dung of sea birds as manure, of which great stores exist on the islands near the coast. Their masonry was superior to that of the Mexicans. Like the ancient Egyptians, they understood mechanics sufficiently to move stones of vast size, even of 30 feet in length, of which specimens are still existing in the walls of the fortress of Cusco. They had the art of squaring and cutting blocks for building with great accuracy; and they did not effect their purpose, as Dr Robertson supposes, merely by chipping the stones, or rubbing them together so as to fit the surface of the one to that of the other, without regard to symmetry of form. It is now known that they had hard chissels, made of copper, with a mixture of 6 per cent. of tin; a proof of considerable skill in the working of metals. With these they hewed the stones into parallelopipeds, which were disposed in “courses as regular,” says Humboldt, "as those of Roman workmanship.” They arc joined with such nicety, that the line which divides the blocks can scarcely be perceived; and the outer surface is in some cases covered with carving. The palaces or lodges of the Incas, of which there are many remains, had doors with slanting sides like the Egyptian; sloping roofs, which, it is supposed, were covered with rushes or stone slabs; no windows, but niches symmetrically distributed.^[34. See Humboldt’s account of the ancient buildings of Callo and Cunnar, vol. i. and ii. of his Researches. ] Ancient stone structures, which are so rare in Mexico are pretty abundant in Peru; a fact for which we can only account by the difficulty with which the Mexicans erected buildings, in consequence of their inferiority in the art of masonry. The architecture of the Peruvians, like every thing else connected with their social state, displays a remarkable uniformity, not only of style, but of plan. “It is impossible,” says Humboldt, “to examine a single edifice of the time of the Incas, without recognising the same type in all the others which cover the ridge of the Andes, along an extent of 450 leagues.”

The ancient public roads of Peru are justly considered as striking monuments of the political genius of the government[7:2:625]. One of these extended along the sides of the Andes from Quito to Cusco, a distance of 1500 miles. It is about forty feet broad, and paved with the earth and stones which were turned up from the soil; but in some marshy places it is formed, like the old Roman roads, of a compact body of solid masonry. A tolerably level line is preserved, by filling up hollows, cutting down small eminences, and winding round the sides of large ones. At proper distances zambos or storehouses were erected, for the accommodation of the Inca and his messengers. A similar road was made along the coast in the low country. Fissures a few yards in breadth were passed by bridges formed of beams laid horizontally; and an invention, at once bold and ingenious, afforded the means of crossing deep ravines, or the channels of rivers, which happened to intersect the route. This consisted of a suspension bridge, perfectly analogous in its principle to those recently introduced in Britain. It was formed of half a dozen of cables of twisted osiers, passed over wooden supports, and stretched from bank to bank; then bound together with smaller ropes, and covered with bamboos. Humboldt passed over one of these pendulous bridges, of 120 feet span; and Mr Miers crossed one of 225 feet span, over which loaded animals might travel.^[35. Humboldt’s Researches, vol. ii. p. 72. Miers’ Travels, vol. i. p. 334. ] In low grounds the rivers were crossed on rafts with a mast and sail, which, by a particular contrivance, could be made to tack and veer. In this respect the Peruvians were a stage in advance of all the other American races, who had nothing superior to the canoe with paddles. The Peruvians manufactured a rude species of pottery: they understood the art of spinning, and, in an imperfect degree, that of weaving. They procured native gold by washing the gravel of rivers, and silver, and perhaps copper, by working veins downward from the outcrop. They knew how to smelt and refine the silver ore; and they possessed the secret of giving great hardness and durability to copper by mixing it with tin. Their utensils and trinkets of gold and silver are said to be fashioned with neatness and even taste. On the other hand, they had no money, no knowledge of iron or glass; and they were ignorant of the mode of mortising or joining beams, and of casting arches. They had no animals fitted for draught; but the llama, a small species of camel, which they had tamed, was employed to some extent as a beast of burden.

The political organization of Peru, which was artificial in a high degree, reminds one, in some of its features, of the old system of the Saxons in England, but bears a more general resemblance to that of the ancient Egyptians. The mass of the people were in a state of servitude, except a small number, who were free; above these in rank were the Curacas, or chiefs of districts, who formed a sort of nobility; and above the whole, the family of the Incas, the members of which, by intermarrying only with themselves, formed a numerous and distinct caste. For the purposes of police and civil jurisdiction, the people were divided into parties of ten families, like the tythings of Alfred, over each of which was an officer. A second class of officers had control over five or ten tythings, a third class over fifty or a hundred. These last rendered account to the Incas, who exercised a vigilant superintendence over the whole, and employed inspectors to visit the provinces, as a check upon maladministration. Each of these officers, down to the lowest, judged, without appeal, in all differences that arose within his division, and enforced the laws of the empire, among which were some for punishing idleness, and compelling every one to labour. It is probable that the tythings and hundreds, as in England, would lose their numerical signification in course of time, and become mere local allotments. In the hamlets and villages, a person mounted a tower every evening, and announced where and how the inhabitants were to be employed next day. The taxes were paid in the produce of the fields; and magazines for receiving them were established in every district. Such is the account given by Acosta and Garcilasso of the civil institutions of Peru, which may be correct with regard to the oldest possessions of the Incas near Cusco, where their power had been long established; but it is not probable that such a complicated system was ever fully in operation in the more distant parts of the empire.

The government of Peru was a theocracy. The Inca was at once the temporal sovereign and the supreme pontiff. He was regarded as the descendant and representative of the great deity the sun, who was supposed to inspire his counsels, and speak through his orders and decrees. Hence even slight offences were punished with death, because they were regarded as insults offered to the divinity. The race of the Incas was held sacred. To support its pretentions, it was very desirable that it should be kept pure and distinct from the people; but human passions are often too strong for the dictates of policy; and though the marriages of the family were confined to their own race, the emperor, as well as the other males of the blood royal, kept large harems stocked with beauties drawn from all parts of the empire, and multiplied a spurious progeny, in whom the blood of the “children of the sun” was blended with that of the " children of the earth.” Among a simple-minded and credulous people, the claims of the Incas to a celestial origin seem to have been implicitly believed. They were blindly obeyed, and treated with a respect bordering on adoration, by the nobles as well as the common people. The Peruvians worshipped the sun, the moon, the evening star, the spirit of thunder, and the rainbow; and had erected temples in Cusco to all these deities. That of the sun, which was the most magnificent, had its walls covered with plates of gold. The sacrifices consisted of the objects most prized by the people, of grain and fruits, of a few animals, and of the productions of their own industry. Sabeism, as it is the most rational of all the forms of idolatry, so it is generally the most mild; and doubtless this results from the tendency which it has to fix the thoughts on the marks of beneficence and wisdom which are displayed in the works of nature. The Peruvian temples were accordingly never polluted, like those of Mexico with the blood of human victims; and the Incas even went farther, and signalized their zeal against such horrid rites, by suppressing them in all the countries they conquered. Though their history exhibits some bloody deeds, the general character of their government was the reverse of cruel. The severe punishments prescribed by their laws were rarely inflicted, and rebellion was scarcely known in their dominions. The Inca not only assumed the title of the father of his people, but the vices as well as the merits of his government sprung partly from the attempt made to construct the government on the model of paternal authority, and partly from the blending of moral and religious injunctions with civil duties. Hence the idle pretension of the state to reward virtuous conduct, as well as to punish crimes; hence too the plan of labouring in common, the extinction of [7:2:626]individual property, the absurdities of eating, drinking, sleeping, tilling, building, according to fixed universal rules; in fine, that minute and vexatious regulation of all the acts of ordinary life, which converted the people into mere machines in the hands of an immense corps of civil and religious officers. Such a system may have served to reclaim some tribes from the savage state; but it must have stifled the seeds of improvement, and left the mass of the people more stupid and imbecile than it found them. The government was as pure a despotism, probably, as ever existed; but its theocratical character, no doubt, helped to mitigate the ferocity of its spirit. Superstition and force are the two bases on which tyranny rests in all countries; and in proportion as it is firmly seated on the one, it stands less in need of the support of the other. The Inca had so completely enslaved the minds of his subjects, and the apparatus he wielded for directing and controlling their acts was so perfect, that he was able in a great measure to dispense with those terrific examples of cruelty and bloodshed, by which the pure military despot operates on the fears of those who live under his authority.

This system of the Peruvian monarchs, by which the people were kept in a state of perpetual tutelage, merits the greater attention, because it is precisely that which the Jesuits employed, in Paraguay and other districts, to reduce the natives to a settled mode of life; and it seems in fact to be the only method by which a semblance of civilisation can be introduced amongst the American nations. Two things must be supposed to account for its prevalence: first, a certain amount of timidity, passiveness, and superstition, in the body of the people, implying weak passions, but not necessarily smallness of intellect; and, secondly, a few minds of a higher class, to give an impulse to the rest, and to control and regulate their acts. In the case of Peru did these ruling intellects spring from the body of the people, and, after striking out new lights in morals and legislation for themselves, devise a complex and artificial system for establishing their power over the minds of the rest, by the help of superstition and force? Or were they strangers from another country, and imbued with the principles of a higher civilisation? If we may believe the Peruvian annals, the latter was the case. About the year 1100 of our era, or perhaps a century later, Manco Capac, with his wife and sister Mama Ocello, appeared as strangers on the banks of the lake Titiaca. They were persons of majestic appearance, and announced themselves as “children of the sun,” sent by their beneficent parent to reclaim the tribes living there from the miseries of savage life. Their injunctions, addressed to a people who probably worshipped the god of day, were listened to by a few, who settled around them, and founded Cusco. By degrees, other tribes were induced to renounce their wandering habits. Manco Capac instructed the men in agriculture and the arts, and Mama Ocello taught the women to spin and to weave. Laws, institutions, and religious rites, were added. The form of a civilized society arose, which was gradually extended by persuasion or conquest; the Incas having always planted their arts and religion wherever they established their authority. Huana Capac, the twelfth in succession from the founder of the dynasty, occupied the throne when the first party of Spaniards visited Peru in 1527; and the empire was then still in a state of progress; for this prince had conquered Quito at no distant date, and nearly doubled the extent of his dominions.

Such is the account which the Peruvians give of the origin of their civilisation, which we should be disposed to reject as a fable, if there were not peculiar circumstances which give it some credibility. First, their institutions, taken in the mass, do not present what may be called the American type. The mild and paternal character which they display, the injunction to “love one another” raised to the rank of a positive precept, the preference of the useful arts to war, all breathe a spirit, not only foreign to the genius of the American tribes, but exactly opposed in character to any thing which a native self-taught legislator was likely to produce. Secondly, the artificial and systematic form of the Peruvian institutions renders it improbable that they were developed by the natural action of political causes, but strongly favours the idea, that they were framed by a few designing heads, as an instrument to tame and govern a patient, feeble, and credulous people, of rude or savage habits. A small number of Jesuits were led, by a sagacious study of the savage character, to devise a system extremely similar in its nature, which worked admirably. These missionaries were the Manco Capacs of Paraguay; and, like the Incas, might, in the course of two or three centuries, have extended their theocracy over as large a space as Peru, if their situation had permitted them to employ force. Thirdly, a million of native Peruvians yet survive, the living descendants of those who built the temples of Cusco; and their extreme stolidity, apathy, and feebleness of character, sufficiently testify that the chances were nearly as great against a legislator like Manco Capac arising amongst them, as against the Jews in the time of Augustus producing a being like Jesus Christ. They have the weakness and passiveness which fit them to receive an impression from superior directing minds; but they discover no trace of the intelligence, energy, and originality which must have been united in the persons who planned and carried into effect the political system of the Incas. We admit that oppression may have degraded their character; but it cannot have entirely changed it. Look at the Greeks of this day, who have been enslaved for a much longer period.

If, then, the civilisation of Peru was exotic, whence was it derived? To us it appears most probable, that the legislators of Peru were either Chinese, or persons who had received at second-hand a knowledge of the arts and institutions of China; and our opinion is grounded on traits of resemblance in the manners, laws, arts, and institutions of the two nations, which, in our opinion, are too numerous, striking, and peculiar, to be the effect of chance. We shall mention some of the most prominent.

1. The first and most obvious resemblance is in the singularly artificial frame of society in both countries. In China, as in Peru, the legislation is directive as well as punitive, and is distinguished by that minute and elaborate system of regulation, inspection, and control, which interferes with the most trifling actions of ordinary life, and reduces the mass of the people to the condition of automata, moved and guided in every thing by the rulers. China, says Mr Barrow, is a great school, in which the magistrates are the masters, and the people the scholars. It might be more correctly compared to a large monastic establishment, in which each person has his place and his duty assigned to him, and all his acts directed by superiors, whose wisdom and authority he is not permitted to question. The Chinese have the same immense multitude of civil officers which the Peruvians had, and the same chain of subordination from the emperor down to the petty constable. In China this system was undoubtedly the growth of many centuries; but it was too artificial to occur to the thoughts of a cazique, educated amongst a tribe of savages on the sides of the Andes. 2. In China, as in Peru, the emperor assumes the title of the "father [7:2:627]of his people;” and his government is modelled upon this figure of speech. He affects to be sprung from progenitors who descended from heaven, like the children of the sun; and he unites the character of supreme pontiff with that of temporal prince. There are vestiges, too, of the worship of the heavenly bodies in China.^[36. See account of the temples at Pekin dedicated to the heavens, the north star, the moon, the earth, &c., and of the festival kept at the summer solstice, like the grand solar festival in Peru. (Hist. G é n. des Voyages, tom. vi. p. 32-34.) ] 3. The Chinese emperor extends an ostentatious patronage to agriculture, by celebrating an annual festival in its honour; on which occasion he proceeds to the field in great pomp, and takes a part in the labour of cultivating the ground with his own hands. This singular custom existed in Peru, where the Incas went through an annual ceremony perfectly similar. How foreign was such an institution to the spirit of the American tribes! 4. In China agriculture is in a rude state, and exhibits proofs of intelligence and skill only in two things—the use of manures, and a laborious system of irrigation. Precisely the same circumstances characterized the agriculture of Peru. 5. The internal taxes of China, like those of Peru, are paid in kind (maize, rice, silk, cotton, &c.), and stored in public magazines or granaries. 6. The Chinese government maintained public roads, even in those provinces where neither carriages nor beasts of burden were used, of course for the use of pedestrians; and storehouses or places of refreshment were built upon them at proper distances.^[37. Histoire Générale des Voyages, tom. vi. p. 170. ] The Peruvians constructed roads on precisely the same plan, and for the same purposes; and this was done by no other people in America. 7. The Chinese do not inter the bodies of the dead, but lay them on the ground, and raise a tumulus or conical heap of earth over them. Such was also the practice in Peru. The only barbarously cruel rite practised in Peru, that of immolating the Inca’s domestics at the obsequies of their master, was brought into China by the Tartars.^[38. Ibid. p. 391. ] Its existence is an anomaly in each case; for the genius of both nations was peaceful and mild. 8. The architecture of the Chinese displays little taste, but is distinguished by two peculiarities—the power shown of cutting and moving immense masses of stone,^[39. See the account of the bridges formed of huge blocks of stone, without arching, in Prevost’s Hist. Gén. des Voyages, tom. vi. p. 179. ] and the uniformity of style which pervades their structures, of every size and description. “All the buildings,” says Mr Barrow, “from the meanest hut to the viceroy’s palace, are upon one plan.” Humboldt remarks the same adherence to a single model among the Peruvians; and the walls of Cusco show that they were acquainted with the method of moving stones of prodigious size. The Chinese were fond of covering their walls with carving; and examples of the same practice occur in Peru. If any of the Peruvian buildings had remained entire with their roofs on, it would perhaps have been found, that the type or primary architectural form employed in the two countries was not very dissimilar; and some allowance should be made for the circumstance, that Peru must have borrowed her models from China 700 or perhaps 1000 years ago. 9. The Peruvians made coarse pottery; and all the world knows that this is an art in which the Chinese excel. The Peruvians were the only American nation who had made any progress in the art of fusing and alloying metals, in which the Chinese have long been distinguished by their skill. 10. The Peruvians had dramas and dramatic spectacles. Where could a people so uninventive have caught the idea of such entertainments, if not from China, where they have been long familiar to the people? There were mimics and buffoons in Mexico but nothing, we believe, to which the term drama could be applied. II. But perhaps the most remarkable coincidence is found in an invention entirely confined to the two countries. We have described the suspension bridges made of ropes, employed by the Peruvians in crossing deep ravines. Now it is singular that bridges of the very same description, some of chains, and some of ropes, are found in the south of China, and nowhere else except in Thibet, which has interchanged arts and customs with China from time immemorial. This single fact we would consider as a proof of communication between the two countries. The Peruvians made their ropes of twisted osiers, and the Chinese had ropes also of this description.^[40. Prevost, Hist. Gén. des Voyages, tom. vi. p. 179, and tom. vii. p. 339. ] 12. From what people nearer than the Chinese could the Peruvians borrow the idea of rafts with a mast and sail? These rafts, supporting covered huts, may be considered as literal copies of some that are used in China; and the peculiar mechanism employed in lieu of a rudder is no doubt borrowed from the paddles attached to the Chinese boats, fore and aft.^[41. Ibid. tom. vi. p. 211, and tom. xiii. p. 583. ] 13. The Chinese in ancient times made use of quippus or knotted cords to facilitate calculation. Is it not probable that this invention had passed from them to the Peruvians, the Mexicans, the Kaluschi, and other American nations who employed it? It would be easy to trace similar analogies in many other customs, laws, and institutions of the two nations. Both had nunneries or religious societies of women, who lived under a vow of celibacy; both had a class of literary men (the Havaracs and Amantas, or poets and philosophers, in Peru), patronised by the government; both divided the year into twelve months, and placed the beginning of it in January (a coincidence the more remarkable, as the year of the Mexicans and other northern nations consisted of 18 months); both were strangers to the use of milk, cheese, and butter.^[42. Mr Barrow, in his article China (originally printed in the Supplement, and incorporated with this edition of the Encyclopaedia), is our authority for this fact, which is the more remarkable, as the Mongols, the neighbours and conquerors of the Chinese, had the use of all the three articles immemorially. ] These facts may suffice, for we have not room for lengthened inquiries; neither are we anxious to press our argument beyond its proper limits. Our position is, not that the Peruvians are descended from the Chinese, but simply that Peru had been inoculated with civilisation by persons who derived their ideas from China. If it is asked why these persons did not import from China the use of letters, the method of casting arches, and many other arts practised there, our answer is, that no individual, and still less any casual assemblage of individuals such as the purposes of trade or navigation might bring together, possesses a knowledge of every art and science which exists in his country. How many men are there in England at this day, who could not even carry the knowledge of the alphabet to another country? We must remember, too, that all the arts existing in China do not exist in every province of it, and have not always existed in those provinces where we now find them.^[43. The uniformity and unchangeableness of customs in China have evidently been much exaggerated. The empire is formed of an assemblage of small states, conquered one after another, each of which must have had its peculiar laws, manners, and superstitions; and common sense tells us, that to blend these into one perfectly homogeneous mass, must have required a much longer period than has elapsed since the empire attained its present magnitude. It would be easy, too, to find instances of the Chinese having changed their customs, both in matters of business and matters of domestic economy. ] As to the means of [7:2:628] communication, it is evident that the trade-wind renders Peru almost unapproachable from Eastern Asia, between the parallels of 30⁰ north and 30⁰ south latitude. But beyond these limits the west winds prevail, and hence China, in point of facility of access, is nearer to Peru than the Society or Marquesas Islands. The Chinese have long exposed themselves to the casualties of a maritime life, in vessels of large size, provisioned for many months; and at this day they perform voyages of 3000 or 4000 miles, to Ceylon and Polynesia.

The Quichua language, or that of Peru, was spread, by the care of the Incas, over all the countries which they conquered, so far at least as to be understood, if not spoken, by the great variety of tribes subject to their Sway. It is understood at present as far as Santiago del Estero, 1200 miles of direct distance south-east from Cusco. This single fact proves both the long duration of their power, and the efficiency of their internal administration. It is said to be the most rich, polished, and harmonious of the South American languages, abounding in vowel sounds, but wanting those corresponding to the Spanish consonants b, d, f, g, 1, x, v. Like all the other American tongues, it wants terms for abstract and universal ideas, such as time, space, being, substance, matter, body, and even such as virtue, justice, liberty, gratitude. There are five dialects of the Quichua, which are spoken in Peru proper, and in Quito, New Granada, and a considerable part of La Plata, and not only by the Aborigines, but by many Spaniards of the higher classes. The Peruvians had no alphabetic writing. They possessed a very rude species of hieroglyphics, of which little use was made, and the quippus or knotted cords of various colours; but whether these last were employed to record events, or were merely instruments of calculation, is a question which we must confess our inability to solve. The history of Peru, as it has reached us, seems to have been preserved entirely by tradition, aided perhaps by popular songs.

The Peruvians, according to Mr Stevenson, are of a copper colour, with a small forehead, the hair growing on each side from the extremities of the eye-brows; they have small black eyes, a small nose, a moderately sized mouth, with beautiful teeth; beardless chin (except in old age), and a round face. Their hair is black, coarse, and sleek, the body well proportioned, the feet small, the stature rather diminutive. Their intellectual qualities, according to Μ. Ulloa, are of the lowest order. The most prominent trait in their character is an imperturbable and incurable apathy. Though half-naked, they are as contented as the Spaniard in his most splendid raiment. Gold and silver have so little influence over them, that the greatest recompense will not induce them to perform the slightest service voluntarily. Neither power nor dignity moves them; and they receive with the same indifference the office of alcalde and that of executioner. They are habitually slow in their motions, and extremely indolent. When employed at any piece of labour, if the master withdraw his eye for a moment, they cease to work. They are timid, shy, secretive, and always grave, even in the dances, which are their favourite pastime. The love of intoxicating liquors is deeply rooted in their nature. They prepare a fermented beverage called chicha, from maize, by a process known to them before the conquest, and at. their festivals drink till their senses fail them, day after day. This bestial habit, however, is common to all the American nations, and is confined to the men, for the women are in general strictly sober. The Peruvians are a gentle and mild people; they are fond of their dogs, and breed up hogs, geese, and chickens, for which they have so tender a regard, that they will often neither kill nor sell them. Their huts, says Mr Stevenson, consist of stones laid upon one another without any cement or mortar, thatched over with long grass or straw, affording no defence either from the wind or the rain. One small room contains the whole family; their bed a sheep-skin or two; their furniture one or two earthen pots. The principal food of the Peruvians is maize; but they raise also potatoes, wheat, beans, camates, yucas, pumpkins, and other vegetables. Christianity, imposed upon them in dogmas, by priests who take no pains to enlighten them, has scarcely gained admission to their understandings, and has no hold on their affections. They attend divine service from the dread of chastisement, and give an outward assent to whatever they are taught, but without any real religious impression being made upon their minds. They meet death with the same stupid indifference as the ordinary accidents of life, and rather decline than seek the assistance of a priest in their last hours. It ought not to be forgotten, however, that the intellectual torpor which the Peruvians display may be attributed in part to the deadening and debasing effects of three centuries of brutal oppression. They still cherish in secret a strong veneration for their ancient faith and their native government, which displays itself even in the large towns. The story of Manco Capac (whom, since numbers of our countrymen appeared in Peru, they affect to call an Englishman) and Mama Ocello, the wealth, power, and beneficence of the Incas, are still fresh in their memories, and are handed down from father to son with a degree of fond admiration which three centuries of humiliation and misfortune seem only to have rendered more intense. The barbarous murder of the Inca Atahualpa by Pizarro is annually represented in the form of a tragedy. “In this performance,” says Mr Stevenson, “the grief of the Indians is so natural, though excessive, their songs so plaintive, and the whole is such a scene of distress, that I never witnessed it without mingling my tears with theirs. The Spanish authorities have endeavoured to prevent this exhibition, but without effect. The Indians in the territory of Quito wear black clothes, and affirm that it is mourning for their Incas, of whom they never speak but in a doleful tone.”

The oppression of the mita, or forced labour in the mines, with the introduction of the small-pox and the use of spiritous liquors, has destroyed prodigious multitudes of the Indians since the conquest. What their number was before that event it is impossible to tell; but, judging from the extent of the Inca’s dominions, he probably had not less than three or four millions of subjects. A pretended Spanish account, assigning a population of eight millions to Peru shortly after the conquest, is known to be fictitious. According to General Miller, there were 998,000 Indians in Peru about 1826; but he does not include those in Quito or Bolivia.^[44. In this account of the Peruvians we have chiefly followed Garcilasso, Acosta, Frezier, and Ulloa, of whose statements a copious digest is given by Prevost, in the 13th volume of his Histoire Générale des Voyages. We have also taken some facts from Humboldt’s Researches, Balbi’s Ethnographical Atlas, and W. B. Stevenson’s Narrative of Twenty Years' Residence in South America, a useful work, but in which the author has shown rather too great an anxiety to exalt the character of the Indians. ]

In Chili there were several tribes who possessed nearly[7:2:629] all the arts known to the Peruvians, but were distinguished from them by a finer physical constitution, and an unconquerable spirit. When the Spaniards arrived, Chili, according to Molina, was inhabited by fifteen tribes independent of each other, who were spread over the country on both sides of the Andes, from latitude 30⁰ to the Straits of Magellan. They all spoke dialects of one language, which is described as rich, harmonious, abounding in compound words, and having, like the other American tongues, very complicated grammatical forms. It has no affinity to the Quichua or Peruvian. The inhabitants of the plains are a stout people, of middle stature; those of the mountains are tall; and one tribe, the Tehuels or Patagonians, surpass in size every other nation in the world. All the tribes inhabiting the plains, except those of the extreme south, now make use of horses. The complexion of the Chilian tribes is, like that of the other American nations, a reddish brown; but one tribe is said to be of a clear red and white. They do not paint their bodies. The Chilians lived partly by hunting, but chiefly by agriculture, before they had any intercourse with Europeans. They cultivated maize, magu, guegen, tuca, quinoa, the potato, pumpkins, and some species of pulse; and to these they added, as food, the flesh of a small rabbit, and of the Chilihueque or Araucanian camel, of whose wool they are said to have manufactured cloth. Like the Peruvians, they understood the use of manure, practised irrigation with considerable skill, and turned up the ground with a wooden spade or mattock. They boiled their grain in earthen pots, or brayed it into meal after roasting it in hot sand; of the meal they made puddings or bread, which they knew how to leaven, and various species of fermented drink. They had gold, silver, copper, tin, and lead, procured probably by washing; but they had few or no edge-tools of metal, as those found are almost always of basalt. They made baskets and mats, extracted salt from sea-water, and were able to give various dyes to their cloths. They used quippus or knotted cords for calculation, and, according to Mr Stevenson, for the transmission of intelligence and for recording events. They lived in villages formed of houses standing at a distance from one another, under hereditary chiefs, but whose power was limited. It is remarkable that the Chinese mode of catching wild ducks on the rivers, by covering the fisher’s head with a gourd, was practised in Chili.

The Araucanians, the most intelligent, improved, and warlike of the Chilian tribes, occupy about 200 miles of the sea-coast, between the 37th and 39th parallels. They are of ordinary stature, but vigorously formed; bold, hardy, hospitable, faithful to their engagements, generous to a fallen enemy, ardent, intrepid, and enthusiastic lovers of liberty. Their vices are drunkenness, and a contempt of other nations, springing from pride. Their government, in the regularity of its form, and its sub-division of authority, has an outward resemblance to the Peruvian; but the spirit of the two systems differs as widely as the genius of the two nations. Araucania contains four tetrarchies, under four toquis or princes, who are independent of one another, but confederated for their joint security against foreign enemies. Each tetrarchy is divided into five provinces, ruled by five chiefs called Apo- Ulmen ; and each province into nine districts, governed by as many Ulmen, who are subject to the Apo-Ulmen, as the latter are to the toquis. These various chiefs (who all bear the title of ulmen, as our nobility of all orders are barons) compose the aristocracy of the country. They hold their dignities by hereditary descent in the male line, and in the order of primogeniture. The supreme power of each tetrarchy resides in a diet or great council of the ulmen, who assemble annually in a large plain, like the Poles and Germans in old times; but as the people are all armed, and have a high love of liberty, no resolution of the diet is of any avail if it has not their hearty concurrence. The chiefs, indeed, are little more than leaders in war; for the right of private revenge, which is fully admitted, limits their authority in judicial matters; and they receive no taxes. Their laws are merely primordial usages. The Araucanians can raise altogether 6000 or 7000 men, besides a body of reserve. When war is declared by the great council, messengers bearing “arrows dipt in blood” are sent to all parts of the country, to summon the men to arms. Unlike many barbarous nations, which are immovably attached to their ancient customs, the Araucanians were not slow in copying the military arts and tactics of the Spaniards. Their troops now consist of infantry and cavalry; the former armed with pikes or clubs, the latter with swords and lances. The infantry are formed into regiments of ten companies, each company containing a hundred men. When they take the field, they carry parched meal with them for provisions; they station sentinels, send out scouts, and have advanced guards preceding their main body. When necessary for their security, they dig ditches, and plant stakes along their sides, and throw up mounds of earth. They advance to battle in lines well formed, and fight with intrepidity. Their history affords a brilliant example of what a brave nation, animated by an enthusiastic love of liberty, can accomplish under the greatest disadvantages. After resisting the best troops and the best generals of Spain for two hundred years, they at last compelled their proud enemies to acknowledge their independence. The Araucanians were indebted for their success to a deliberate species of courage, to which even the bravest of the North American tribes are strangers; and they combined with it a degree of sagacity and intelligence, which led them to adapt their mode of fighting to the new circumstances in which they were placed. Experience having taught them the inefficiency of their old missiles when opposed to musket balls, they soon laid aside their bows, and armed themselves with spears, swords, or other weapons fitted for close combat. Their practice was to advance rapidly within such a distance of the Spaniards as would not leave them time to reload after firing. Here they received without shrinking a volley, which was certain to destroy a number of them, and then rushing forward in a close column, fought their enemies hand to hand. In this way they gained many victories, and impressed the Spaniards with such a respect for their courage, that an individual of this nation made their achievements the subject of an epic poem. Combining the moral, intellectual, and physical qualities of the Araucanians, they were certainly the finest native race in the new world. They had nearly all the germs of civilisation which belonged to the Mexicans and Peruvians; without the ferocity of the former, the apathy of the latter, or the slavish habits common to both; and without having their minds stupified by that grovelling superstition which the rulers of these two nations seem to have considered as the only secure foundation of their authority. In true courage, in manliness and energy [7:2:630]of character, they take precedence of all the American nations.

The Araucanians believe in a supreme being, and in many subordinate spirits, good and bad. They believe also in omens and divination, but they have neither temples nor idols, nor religious rites; and discover upon the whole so little aptitude for the reception of religious ideas, that the Catholic missionaries who are settled among them have had very little success in imbuing their minds with a knowledge of Christianity. They believe in a future state, and have a confused tradition respecting a deluge, from which some persons were saved on a high mountain. They divide the year into twelve months of 30 days, which have significant names, and add five days by intercalation. They esteem poetry and eloquence, but can scarcely be induced to learn reading or writing. Chess, a game of Chinese origin, is said to have been known among them from time immemorial;^[45. Molina’s History of Chili, vol. ii. p. 125. ] and it may be further observed, that the numbers 5 and 9, employed in their geographical and civil divisions, are favourite numbers in China.

The other Chilian tribes are all much behind the Araucanians in civilisation; but some, as the Puelches and the Tehuels, surpass them in strength and stature. Part of them live on horse flesh, part by keeping sheep and cattle, and part by hunting. Some of these tribes paint their faces.^[46. Ibid. vol. ii. book i. and ii. Stevenson’s South America, vol. i. chap. iii. ] With regard to the height of the Patagonians, Μ. Lesson, an eminent French naturalist, has collected the authorities on the subject, in a note published by Balbi in his Ethnographical Atlas; and they appear to us to remove every rational doubt as to the fact of a race of men existing there, whose average stature is about six feet, and among whom men seven feet high are perhaps as common as men of six feet two or three inches in England. We cannot help regarding the scepticism in which many writers have indulged upon this question, as unphilosophical. The diversities of size in the human race are innumerable, and stature, like other physical qualities, is hereditary. We form in our minds, indeed, an idea of a standard size for man; but this is merely the mean of all the varieties which come under our notice; and till we know all these, our estimate cannot have any exactness. There are scarcely two nations perhaps whose average height is the same, and who can pretend to such a knowledge of the causes producing these varieties as to fix their precise limits? That individuals seven feet high, free of weakness or defect, have existed among ourselves, is a proof that there is nothing in such stature inconsistent with the physical laws on which human life depends. And since nobody denies that the dwarfish size which we witness occasionally in our own country, as a deviation from the common type, becomes generic and universal among the Laplanders and Esquimaux, why should the natural causes which produce tall men at intervals among ourselves not be rendered equally fixed and permanent in other cases? But the chief source of the incredulity of many persons is obvious. Only one of the fifteen tribes who inhabit the south extremity of the American continent is distinguished by the very tall stature which is ascribed to the Patagonians; and as these tribes probably migrate from place to place, from the coast, for instance, to the interior, and vice versa, a navigator touching at a bay where some of his precursors profess to have met with the giants, may find no inhabitants at all, or only men of ordinary size, and in either case may attribute to false reports what is really the consequence of a change of habitation.

Of the numerous nations which inhabited Brazil, there is only one to whom we can afford any special notice in this article. The Guaranis had at one time formed a numerous people, which seems to have been spread over a larger surface than any other now existing in America. Tribes, or remnants of tribes, whose relationship to the Guaranis is attested by the strong evidence of their language, are found diffused over the wide space between the Orinoco and the embouchure of the Plata, over more than the half of South America. They are met with among the Andes of Peru, in the province of Chiquitos, in Mattogrosso, in Paraguay, in Minas Geraes; and the Omaguas, in the province of Quito, who, from their nautical habits, and the influence they obtained on the upper part of the Amazon, have been called the Phoenicians of the new world, are believed to be of the same race. They constituted the bulk of the native population of Brazil when the Portuguese gained possession of it, but were divided into many distinct tribes, quite independent of one another, and living, not in contiguity, but mixed with other nations. They are of low stature, two inches shorter than the Spaniards, according to Azara, of a square form, fleshy, and ugly. Their colour has a strong shade of the copper red, while that of the other Brazilian tribes inclines generally to the tawny or black. Their character, like their physical form, resembles that of the Peruvians. They are patient, torpid, silent, downcast in their mien, mild, and passionless. Nearly all the Indians whom the Portuguese have civilized or converted belong to this race. It is difficult to account for their dissemination through the southern continent, amidst nations much more brave and powerful than themselves. May we suppose that, like the subjects of the Incas, they had been at one time the dominant tribe of an extensive empire, which derived its force from union and civilisation? But if such a state did exist, its date cannot be very ancient; for the identity or close resemblance of the dialects spoken by the scattered portions of the Guaranis, shows that their dispersion from a common point did not happen at a very remote period.^[47. Dr Prichard’s Researches, vol. ii. p. 487. ] Yet no memorial of its existence survives, either in traditions or monuments. The supposition, therefore, that the Guarani tribes are the remnants of a once powerful and united people, is scarcely admissible; and Azara thinks it more probable that they have crept gradually from north to south. Their dispersion is the more remarkable, as they are not a wandering but an agricultural people. They live in the woods, or in small open spaces in the forests; cultivate maize, beans, gourds, yams, mandioc; and eat also wild honey, and the flesh of monkeys and various small quadrupeds.

The Indians whom the Jesuits civilized and collected into communities in the celebrated settlements of Paraguay belonged chiefly to the nation of the Guaranis. These missionaries are said to have borrowed the plan of the theocracy which they established here from that which the Incas had introduced into Peru. There is no doubt that the spirit of their system was the same; and, considering that they were precluded from any other means of extending and supporting their authority than persuasion, their success was remarkable. The settlements were commenced about 1610, and were gradually extended over the country watered by the Parana and Uruguay, between the 27th and 30th degrees of south [7:2:631] latitude, till the order of the Jesuits was suppressed in 1767. The plan of the government may be called parochial, for it was administered entirely by the parochial clergy. The Indians were collected into villages. Each village had its church, and its curate, who was assisted by one, two, or more priests, according to the number of Indians under his charge. The curate and assistant priests were nominated, not by the Spanish authorities, but by the father superior, also a Jesuit, who exercised a vigilant superintendence over the whole. Indians were appointed in each village with the titles of regidors and alcaldes; but they were merely instruments in the hands of the curate and his assistants, in whom all power was lodged. The curate gave his whole attention to religious offices, saying mass in the church, and visiting the sick; while the assistant priests managed all secular matters, directing the labour of the Indians who cultivated the ground, and training others to the crafts of the weaver, mason, carpenter, goldsmith, painter, and sculptor; for the fine arts were by no means neglected. Private property did not exist The produce of the labour of the community was stored in magazines, from which each family was supplied according to its wants, special provision being made for aged persons, widows, and orphans. The surplus was sold by agents at Buenos Ayres, and the proceeds employed in paying the taxes to the king, in procuring ornaments for the churches, and various articles which the colonists could not manufacture for themselves. The religious instruction was of the most simple kind; but the service of the church was conducted with a well-trained choir, a pompous ceremonial, and every accessory calculated to strike the senses. The punishments were mild, and they were always accompanied with such admonitions as a parent would address to a child whom he was chastising. Crimes, in truth, were rare. The Indians, who regarded their spiritual chiefs with the veneration due to beneficent beings of a superior order, scarcely felt humbled in confessing their misdeeds; and offenders may have solicited correction, as Raynal says, for the quieting of their consciences. The incursions of the Portuguese compelled the Jesuits to take means for repelling force by force. All the male Indians of the proper age were accordingly armed with muskets, and disciplined as a militia. In 1732, according to Dobrizhoffer, the thirty villages or parishes under the care of the missionaries contained a population of 141,000 souls. The Jesuits had another establishment of the same kind among the Chiriguas, a branch of the Guaranis, in the province of Chiquitos, containing 30,000 or 40,000 Indians; a third, of smaller size, in the province of Moxos; a fourth in California; and probably others. After the suppression of the order, all these were committed to the care of friars of other descriptions; and we believe they have universally fallen into a state of decay. The social system established in Paraguay was the most effectual ever contrived for reclaiming the Indians from their savage mode of life; but even its success shows how hopeless the attempt is to raise the American tribes to the rank of thoroughly civilized nations. The Jesuits were able to introduce settled habits and a slight knowledge of religion and the arts among the Indians only by means of the personal ascendency they acquired over them. It was a few superior minds gaining the respect and confidence of a horde of savages, then employing the influence they acquired to lead them as children; giving them such portions of instruction as taught them to trust implicitly in their guides, working alternately on their fears, their pride, their kind affections, but never fully unveiling to them the springs of the machinery by which they were governed. The incurable indolence of the savages rendered it necessary to prescribe the labour as task-work, and to carry it on under the constant inspection of the missionaries. The plan of cultivating the ground in common, and of storing the produce in magazines, out of which the wants of each family were supplied, was resorted to as a check upon their improvident habits. In short, the eye and the hand of the missionaries were everywhere; and the social system was held together entirely by their knowledge and address. When these were withdrawn, the fabric soon fell into ruins, and the Indians relapsed into their idolatry and savage habits, just as boys drop their tasks the moment they are liberated from school.

We have dwelt a little upon this topic, because we think the experiment made by the Jesuits in Paraguay and Chiquitos is almost an instantia crucis with regard to the capacity of the American tribes for receiving Christianity and civilisation. From the moment that the Europeans landed in the new world, benevolence has been at work to instruct some portions of these tribes in religion and the arts; and flattering accounts have been published from time to time of the success of those humane persons who dedicated their lives to the task. But, after three centuries of incessant exertion, what is the result? Is there one tribe that exhibits the steady industry, the provident habits, the spirit of improvement, and the rational views of religion, which are to be found in any parish of England? We cannot find that there is. Many tribes, living near the whites, have adopted their habits and ideas to a certain extent, but merely under the influence of imitation. While missionaries and teachers are among them, every thing wears a favourable aspect; but their civilisation is never self-sustained. It is created by the agency of men of higher natural endowments; and when this is removed it moulders away, because it has no foundation in their character. Many parties of Indians, remnants of tribes once powerful, have lived peaceably on reserves of land, inclosed amidst the population of the United States, for more than a century. No situation can be imagined better fitted to promote their improvement; but in no one instance, so far as we know, have they melted into the mass of the white population, or risen to any thing near their level in knowledge and the useful arts. They live in huts in no material degree better than the wigwams of their wandering brethren. They are generally honest, but drunken, indolent, and ignorant, though teachers and missionaries are employed by the government to instruct them. Basket-making is almost the only trade they ply, and in their habits and character they may be aptly compared to the gypsies of Europe, who exist in the midst of civilisation, without partaking of its spirit or its benefits. It should be observed that there is not the same reluctance in the whites to mingle their blood with the red men, as with the blacks.^[48. See, on the habits and character of the Indians, Cooper’s Notions of the Americans. vol. ii. letter 17. ] Much has been recently said of the progress made by the Cherokees; but we suspect that what is witnessed there is but a flimsy veil of improvement, spread over habits which are essentially savage. We are convinced, in short, that the Indian is truly the man of the woods; and that, like the wild animals he lives upon, he is destined to disappear before the advancing tide of civilisation, which falls upon him like a blight, because it supplies new food to nourish his vices, while it demands intellectual and moral faculties in which he is deficient, and renders useless [7:2:632]those qualities which predominate in his character. We would not discourage the attempt to meliorate the lot of the Indians; but this will succeed best when it is grounded on a true knowledge of their natural capacities. Some of them are much more susceptible of moral and religious improvement than others; but, to instruct and reclaim them effectually, our belief is, that the system of the Jesuits is the only one that holds out a chance of success. They must not merely be taught and preached to, but they must be retained in a state of pupilage, trained to their duties, controlled and directed in all their proceedings by intellects superior to their own; and there are many tribes too ferocious and intractable for even this method of tuition. We do not maintain that the character of the Indian nations is indelible; but to effect any considerable change in it, the lapse of a longer period would be required than the existence of these tribes is likely to extend to. Neither do we think that there is any thing in the extinction of these people by natural means which humanity should mourn over. In every state of life man has but a brief span of existence allotted to him. Successive generations fall like the leaves of the forest; and it should be remembered that the extinction of a race of men by natural causes, means merely its non-renewal, or the suspension of those circumstances which enabled it to continue its existence.

To complete our general view of the aboriginal races, a few particulars remain to be mentioned. Many of the tribes who inhabit the Pampas of South America make use of horses. Dobrizhoffer enumerates eight equestrian tribes in the province of Chaco, on the west side of the river Paraguay, who are generally distinguished by tall and vigorous forms, and a bold and active character. The Abipones and Mbayas are the most celebrated of these. The woods of Brazil are too dense for equestrians; but horses are used by a few hordes in the great plain of the Mississippi and in the north of Mexico The American tribes in general either kill their prisoners or adopt them; but a few retain them as slaves, and compel them to work. The Guaycurus of Brazil are an example. The food of different tribes is extremely various. Maize, beans, pumpkins, and mandioc, are raised in small quantities by some; natural fruits, berries, bulbous roots, and bananas, are gathered by others. Those who dwell on the sides of rivers live greatly on fish; in the plains, buffaloes, horses, and sheep, are killed. In the forests of Brazil, monkeys, pigs, armadillos, pacas, agoutis, and tapirs, are the favourite food; but birds, turtles, deer, and the coati, are also taken; and in an emergency the Indians do not scruple to feed on serpents, toads, and lizards, the larvae of insects, and other disgusting substances.^[49. Spix’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 260. ] Salt is used where it can be easily obtained, and some season their food with capsicum. Some roast their meat, others boil it; and not only several savage tribes, but even the civilized Peruvians, ate their flesh raw. The Ottomaques, a tribe near the Orinoco, eat a species of unctuous clay; and this strange diet, which no doubt owed its introduction to the stern monitor, famine, is probably not extremely rare; for Drs Spix and Martius noticed a similar practice in Brazil, and Captain Franklin found the same food in use among an Indian tribe near the Frozen Ocean. The clay is stated by this traveller to have a milky and not disagreeable taste.^[50. Franklin’s Second Journey, p. 24. ] A great proportion of the tribes in Brazil and the basin of the Orinoco, and some in all parts of America, indulge in the horrid banquet of human flesh. Shame, in our sense of the term, is nearly a stranger to the breasts of these savages. In the warm regions of Brazil, men and women go entirely naked, except in the neighbourhood of the Portuguese settlements, where some wear a band of cloth round the loins.^[51. Spix’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 220. ] In such situations, where the want of shelter is little felt, their dwellings are often nothing more than a sort of arbour formed by interlacing the open space between two or three trees with twigs, and covering it with leaves so as to form a screen on the windward side, while it is left entirely open on the other. The manufacture of bows and arrows, war-clubs, baskets, mats (which, swung from a tree, serve them both as seats and hammocks), and in some cases a coarse pottery, comprises the sum of their practical skill in the arts. It has long been the practice of bands of Portuguese, consisting chiefly of outlaws and vagabonds, to make marauding expeditions among the Indians living near the great rivers, and to carry them off and sell them clandestinely for slaves. This infamous trade is carried on in despite of the orders of the government, which has issued many decrees for the protection of the Indians, and, besides employing missionaries to convert them, enjoined the governors of provinces to furnish them with hoes and other agricultural implements. Wherever the negroes are introduced in great numbers, as in the Capitanias of Santa Paulo and Rio Janeiro, and in the whole of the West India islands, the red men rapidly disappear, the former being more intelligent, more tractable in their habits, and more active and industrious. The negroes are indeed a superior race to the Indians; and the existence of one or two hundred blacks, as slaves, among some thousands of the Cherokees, does not detract from the accuracy of this opinion. Missions for the conversion of the Indians have been supported for more than two centuries by the governments of Spain and Portugal. They are thinly spread over those parts of Mexico La Plata, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia, which are still occupied by the savages; but there are extensive districts in all these provinces in which they have never been established, owing to the fierce character of the tribes, or the remote and inaccessible nature of the country. A mission consists in general of one or two friars or priests, who settle among the savages, learn their language, and, besides teaching them the elements of Christianity, always endeavour to instruct them in the more simple and useful arts, and to train them to settled habits. We have seen many scattered natives of these establishments, but we have not met with any work that gives a distinct account of them collectively to a recent period. We believe, however, that many of them have been abandoned, owing to the failure of the funds with which they were supported; and that the success of the others has been extremely trifling. The late revolutions in these countries, by liberating the Indians from their ancient state of tutelage under the whites, has in many cases broken up the little settlements which the missionaries had formed. This has been the result even in Brazil, where the political changes have been least felt.^[52. Ibid. vol. i. p. 302, vol. ii. p. 261. ]

The problem as to the source whence America derived its population presents no difficulty now, when the contiguity of the old and the new continent at Behring’s Straits is known. The breadth of the sea here (latitude 66°) is only forty-five English miles; the transit across is facilitated by two islands placed almost exactly midway between Asia and America; and in severe winters a firm body of ice joins the two continents. The climate, though rigorous, does not prevent the country on each side from [7:2:633]being inhabited. The Aleutian Isles, besides, at the latitude of 53⁰, which run in a line like the piers of an immense bridge, from one continent to the other, present such easy means of communication, that few savage tribes a little familiar with sea-life could be long in Kamtschatka without threading their way across the Pacific to the peninsula of Alyaska. Indeed, if a doubt could exist, we have positive proof that America received part of its population from the north-east extremity of Asia; for the Esquimaux, living on the east side of Behring’s Straits, speak a language which is radically the same with that of the Tchutkis on the opposite shores. Two other questions however present themselves. Did all the tribes which inhabit America pass into it through this one channel? And from what nation or nations of the old world are these tribes descended? Now, it appears to us probable, that inhabitants may have been conveyed to America by other routes besides that of Behring’s Straits and the Aleutian Isles. We may form some idea of the chances of human beings from other climes being cast on the shores of America, from the countless accidents which must have scattered inhabitants over the thousands of islands on the Pacific Ocean. Take the case, for instance, of Easter Island, which is within the zone of variable winds for half of the year, and is 1500 miles from the nearest known land whence it could receive inhabitants. This island is a mere speck in the ocean, 10 miles in diameter; and supposing that it could be seen by an Indian in his canoe from a distance of 25 miles on each side, a space of 60 miles in the circumference of a circle of 1500 miles radius would thus represent the probability of a canoe carried away by a storm coming within sight of it. If then we suppose the wind to blow from any westerly point between north and south, we shall find that the probability of a drifted canoe reaching the island is only as 1 to 75. If we add the chances of the isle being passed in the night-time, when it could not be seen, the probability will be only as 1 to 150. But, further, to plant a breeding population on the isle, the canoe must have carried women in it; and as the savages have not women with them in their canoes perhaps more than once in three or four of their voyages, the probability is thus diminished to 1 in 500. In other words, the peopling of an island in such a situation as Easter Island may be considered as representing the result of 500 accidents, in which canoes were drifted to sea and wrecked. This single example may give us an idea of the myriads of casualties which must have been instrumental in dispersing the human species over the isles of Polynesia,—casualties so numerous and so various, that they may be compared to the chance sowing of the volatile seeds of plants by the winds. If we neglect distance, it will be seen at once that the probability of a canoe reaching any land in such circumstances, is in proportion to the angle the land subtends on the horizon. In the extra-tropical regions the prevailing winds are from north-west to south-west. The part of South America accessible with such winds from Gambier’s Islands subtends an angle of about 40⁰, or ten times as great as the angle subtended by a space of 25 miles on each side of Easter Island from the same station. If we throw distance out of view, therefore, the chances of a boat drifted with any wind between north-west and south-west reaching the coast of Peru or Chili, would be ten times as great as of its reaching Easter Island. But from this latter well peopled island the accessible coast of Peru subtends an angle of 60°, and the chances are so much higher in proportion. Easter Island is about 2800, and Gambier’s Island 3600 miles from the American coast; and the question is, whether, of many hundred canoes drifted off in this direction in the lapse of ages, it is improbable that one or two carrying persons of both sexes might reach America. We may allow an unrigged boat to make 100 miles a day with a strong wind. From 28 to 36 days, then, would suffice for the voyage; and though savages often go to sea with little provisions, we must remember that they have a horrid resource in their cannibal habits. There are besides, we think, well-attested cases of the South Sea Islanders surviving a storm which has kept them a month at sea. Many of these islanders have boats capable of carrying 20 or 30 persons; and their ferocious wars are continually creating emergencies which compel crowds of males and females to take suddenly to the water to save their lives.

We have referred to Easter Island merely as an example, to illustrate causes which have been in operation in all parts of the maritime world. Setting aside Behring’s Straits and Greenland, there are four points from which, according to the principles we have explained, there is a possibility that inhabitants might be transported to America. These are, first, Gambier’s Isles and Easter Island, of which we have already spoken. Secondly, Southern Africa: from Congo, Benguela, and the Cape, to the coast of Brazil, the distance is from 3700 to 4100 miles; and a boat abandoned to itself, favoured at once by the tropical current, which sets north-westward, and by the trade-wind, might perform the voyage in 30 or 40 days. Thirdly, the north-west coast of Africa, and the Canary and Cape Verd Islands. From the latter (which were inhabited when discovered by the Portuguese) the distance to Brazil is only about 2000 miles, and the motion of a boat would be aided both by the trade-wind and the returning great current of the North Atlantic. The voyage might occupy from 20 to 30 days. The possibility of men being carried to America is shown by the stern of a vessel, such as the American nations could not build, which Columbus found on one of the Caribbean Islands on his second voyage.^[53. Washington Irving’s abridged Life of Columbus, p. 130. Vater has discussed this subject in his Untersuchungen über Amerikas Bevolkerung aus dem alten Continent : Leipsic, 1810. We have not been able to procure a sight of the work; but we find, from the introduction to the section on the American languages in the Mithridates, that he speaks in decided terms of the possibility, or rather the probability, of the western coasts of Europe and Africa contributing, as well as the east coast of Asia, to people the new continent. ] It is true that both Madeira and the Azores, though nearer the old world, were uninhabited when discovered in the 15th century; but we must remember that these isles are but specks in the wide ocean, compared with America; and, further, that the mariners accidentally cast upon them might have no females with them, and would find none there. The Azores had been the residence of some luckless shipwrecked Europeans, as the figures found carved on the rocks proved. The fourth channel through which inhabitants might reach America is the Sandwich Islands. The distance is 3000 miles; and when the sun is at the southern tropic, it is probable that the western winds may blow for a time in their vicinity.

In a comprehensive view of all the causes which, in the lapse of ages, have contributed to spread the human race over the new world, the conjectures we have hazarded are not without value. There are, for instance, two parts of the new continent in which nations almost black are found, namely, California and Paraguay. In the latter [7:2:634]the Charmas, Minuanes, Bohanes, and Yaros, are of this complexion,^[54. Prichard’s Researches, vol. ii. p. 495. ] and seated amidst tribes of a much lighter hue. Is it unreasonable to suppose, that a few persons belonging to a South African tribe had been cast ashore at an early period on the north banks of the Plata, the district to which the natural motion of the winds and waves would most readily waft them, and had grown up into a tribe before they mixed with any other race? The Californians may be descended from the Papuas or black race inhabiting New Guinea, and who are supposed to constitute the swarthy people of the Sandwich Isles.^[55. Ibid. p. 424. ] At any rate it is remarkable that the only race of a very dark complexion in North America should be found exactly at the part of the coast nearest to these isles, and to which the agency of the extra-tropical wind would conduct any object left to its guidance. We admit, however, that they might come from the Kurile Isles, where the same black race is found. By the mixture of persons belonging to tribes of this hue with others of the copper colour, the varieties of complexion found among the American nations may be accounted for. It affords a slight corroboration of this idea, that among the scanty affinities traced between the languages of the old and new world, there are some few which connect certain American dialects with that of Congo. The superior intelligence, great stature, light complexion, and personal beauty of some of the Chilian tribes, on the other hand, favour the supposition that they are of the same race with the tall, fair, handsome people of the Society and Marquesas Isles, who have displayed so great an aptitude for civilisation.^[56. Ibid. vol. i. p. 418, 422; vol. ii. 471, 473. ] That individuals of European birth also had been carried to America by the accidents of maritime life, is rendered probable by physical causes; and it is singular that traditions, describing the arrival of a white or bearded man from an unknown country, and his teaching them to build houses and cultivate the ground, are preserved in three other parts of America besides Peru. ∙ Such is the Quetzalcoatl of the Mexicans, the Bochica of the Muyseas in New Grenada, the Camararu of the Brazilians, who were all said to come from the east.^[57. Humboldt’s Researches, vol. i. p. 29-74. Stevenson’s Narrative, vol. i. p. 396. ] Manco Capac alone, the Peruvian legislator, made his appearance on the west coast of the continent. The story of a sword with a legible Greek inscription being found under the soil at Monte Video in 1826, is, we fear, a fiction. (Bulletin Historique, Août 1828.)

Attempts to trace the descent of the American tribes from any particular people of the old world have not succeeded. We except the Esquimaux, who are distinct from all the other nations of the new continent, and clearly of the same race with the Tchutkis of north-eastern Asia. Many analogies, however, in the physical character of the people, their rites, monuments, and superstitions, establish a connection between the Mexicans and some Asiatic nations. A general resemblance has been observed between the American nations and some tribes of Mongols and Mantchous, in the form of the scull, the brown colour of the skin, the thinness of the beard, and the oblique position of the eye. Humboldt has shown that the Mexican calendar is identical in its principles, which are very artificial and complicated, with that which was in use among the Chinese, Japanese, Thibetians, Hindoos, and Tartars; and he has rendered it probable that the names of their days are borrowed from an extinct zodiac of 27 or 28 houses anciently familiar to the same nations. The cosmogony of the Mexicans has too many analogies with that of the Jews to admit of the coincidence being accidental. Their traditions speak of the serpent woman or the mother of mankind falling from a state of innocence, of a great inundation from which a single family escaped, of a pyramid raised by the pride of man, and destroyed by the anger of the gods; they practised the ceremony of ablution upon children at their birth; they had the rite of confession for penitents; and religious societies like those of monks existed among them. Now, we know that the Nestorians about the seventh century carried the rites and doctrines of Christianity into China and Tartary, where they were found by Carpini, Rubruquis, and Marco Polo, in the thirteenth, mixed with many strange corruptions. There is little doubt that the traditions and customs alluded to reached Mexicothrough this channel. Further, a species of picture-writing like the Mexican was practised in China about the year 1325. Vestiges of the same art are found among the Kaluschi or Yucuatl, tribes inhabiting the north-west coast between the latitudes of 50⁰ and 60⁰, and whose languages bear a resemblance to that of the Mexicans. Finally, the records of this people speak distinctly of their ancestors migrating from a distant country in the north-west; and the traditions of the Muskogees, Chickasas, Mohicans, Iroquois, and the tribes of Cinaloa, point to the same region as their original seat.^[58. Humboldt’s Researches, vol. i. p. 276, &c. Prichard’s Researches, vol. i.*p. 167-169, vol. ii. p. 378. Travels of Ibn Batuta, Travels of Marco Polo and Itubruquis, in tom. vii, Hist. Gen. des Voyages. Mithridates, Einleit. Amer. Sprach. p. 357. ] The facts, taken collectively, leave no doubt that more than one of the American nations were somehow connected with the people of eastern Asia; but they scarcely authorize the conclusion, that ’ the one were a colony directly sent off from the other. The Chinese, Mongols, Tartars, and Mantchous, have cultivated the cerealia, employed horses, and tamed cattle, from very remote times. It was scarcely possible that such necessary arts should be entirely lost by a colony sprung from any of these people; yet the Mexicans were unacquainted with wheat, oats, and barley; they had no horses (which a migrating Tartar tribe might probably have carried across Behring’s Straits); and they had never attempted to tame the native ox of America, nor to use the milk of its female. There is perhaps only one hypothesis by which these diverging facts can be reconciled. Tribes belonging to the races of eastern Asia had separated from them while they were still living in the state of hunters, and, crossing Behring’s Straits, had spread themselves by degrees over America. Among some of these tribes, dwelling probably north of Columbia River, a few emigrants from China, Japan, or Chinese Tartary, at a comparatively late period, had been thrown by some of the accidents to which a seafaring life is liable, and bringing with them picture-writing, the art of building and weaving, a few mystical rites and traditions, and the calendar which was in use in their native country, had established their influence among the savages by address or force, and sown the seeds of civilisation. After social life had made a few advances, the increasing numbers and power of the people would enable them to send off several swarms in succession to the eastward, and dispossess the earlier and rudcr inhabitants of Anahuac and the plains of the Mississippi. The Toltecks were perhaps the first of these colonists; the Hurons, Iroquois, Chichi-mecks, [7:2:635]and Aztecks (all of whom had hieroglyphics), must have been separated from the parent stock at a later period, probably two or three centuries after the Nestorians had spread some knowledge of the Christian rites and the Hebrew cosmogony among the people of eastern Asia. To all appearance there was no race in America anterior to the Toltecks who possessed any germs of civilisation; for the military works in Ohio can scarcely be referred to a period farther back than 800 or 1000 years from the present day. But for 2000 or 3000 years anterior to this the new continent had been overrun by tribes of hunters. This, we think, is clear; for while the analogies of physical character observed in the American nations, and in the structure of their dialects, show, on the one hand, that nine tenths of them had sprung from one tribe, or a few tribes of one stock; the existence of 500 of these varieties of speech proves, on the other hand, that a very long period must have elapsed to admit of the subdivision of one, two, or even half-a-dozen of mother tongues into such a prodigious number of dialects. That the original seat of Tolteck and Azteck civilisation was not in Asia, but in the north-west parts of America, results, we think, from the non-existence of the cerealia and of tame cattle in the new world; and that the glimmering of knowledge which these people possessed had been kindled by the arrival of a few chance emigrants, perhaps at different periods, from China, Japan, or Chinese Tartary, seems equally certain, from the resemblances formerly noticed in the calendars, the superstitions, and the cosmogonical traditions of the Asiatic and American races.

The discovery of a continent so large that it may be said to have doubled the habitable world, is an event so much the more grand and interesting, that nothing parallel to it can ever occur again in the history of mankind. America had of course been known to the barbarous tribes of eastern Asia for thousands of years; but it is singular that it should have been visited by one of the most enterprising nations of Europe five centuries before the time of Columbus, without awakening the attention of either statesmen or philosophers. Iceland was discovered about 860, and colonized by the Norwegians in 874. About 50, or, according to other accounts, 100 years later, the same people planted colonies in Greenland. Into the disputes respecting the situation of these colonies we have not room to enter. Sir Charles Gieseke, a good authority, states that their ruins exist near the southern point of the peninsula. It is obvious that the same adventurous spirit which enabled these northern mariners to discover the southern extremity of the country, would not permit them to stop short without visiting what is now known to be the most habitable part of it—the western coast; and the fact has been established by an inscription in Punic characters, found on a stone four miles beyond Uperna-vik, at the 73d parallel, intimating that “Erling, the son of Sigvat, and Enride Oddsoen, had cleared that place and raised a hillock on the Friday after Rogation day.” The marking of the date is indistinct, but it is supposed by Professor Rask, the translator, to be either 1135 or 1170; and the Runic characters show at any rate that it was anterior to the Reformation, when this mode of writing was prohibited.^[59. Ferussac, Bulletin des Sciences Historiques, Juillet 1828. ] Whoever looks at the map of Greenland, and reflects on the fact that the Norwegians must have been ascending through Davis’ Straits as high as the latitude mentioned, annually, perhaps for two or three centuries, will admit that, with half the spirit of enterprise which had carried them so far, the discovery of some portion of the west coast of these straits was almost unavoidable. Now, the position and direction of this coast once known, it required no great effort to trace it southward to Labrador and Newfoundland. We mention these particulars, because Mr Murray, one of the few who now deny the discovery of America by the Norwegians, grounds his disbelief chiefly on the hypothesis that the colonies and the navigation of this people at the period alluded to were confined to the east coast of Greenland.

In 1001 an Icelander sailing to Greenland, was driven away by a tempest far to the south-west, where he saw a level country covered with wood. The wind abating, he turned his course homeward, and on his arrival, gave such a flattering account of the country he had seen, as induced Lief, the son of the founder of the Greenland colony, to undertake a voyage thither. Lief and Biorn, who sailed together, first reached a rocky island, to which they gave the name of Helleland; then a low country, thickly wooded, which they called Mark-land; and some days afterwards they found trees loaded with fruits on the banks of a river. They spent the winter in the country; and one of them, who was a German, having found wild vines growing, they called it Vinland. They had some intercourse, and traded for furs, with a people who came in leathern boats, and were called Skr aeli ngs, from their dwarfish size. A colony was planted and remained for many years in the country, the situation of which is indicated by a fact casually mentioned, that the sun remained eight hours above the horizon at the shortest day. It should of course have been under the 49th parallel; and this is the actual latitude of Newfoundland, the country which every collateral circumstance would lead us to fix upon as the seat of the colony. The Skraelings were of course the Esquimaux. Vines most probably grow in Newfoundland, since they are found on St John’s River, under the same latitude, on the neighbouring continent.^[60. Haliburton’s Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia. Halifax, 1829. ] Only a few unimportant particulars respecting the settlement are preserved; but it was probably abandoned or destroyed, like the Greenland colonies, of which it was an offset. The account, though meagre, is distinct and consistent. Its authenticity can scarcely be disputed; and it is almost equally obvious that the country it refers to under the name of Vinland is Newfoundland. A conclusion resting on such strong grounds scarcely requires to be supported by the high authority of Humboldt and Malte-Brun. That the colony disappeared, and that the discoveries made were not prosecuted farther, are not circumstances which will shake the credit of the narrative in the minds of those who know the numerous reverses which befell the early colonies in New England and other parts of America. The extreme rigour of the winter, the perpetual fogs which obscure the sky, and the sterile aspect of the land, might mislead these ignorant Norsemen, and the people to whom their proceedings were reported, to confound the island and adjacent parts of the continent with those inhospitable polar regions which defy the industry of the cultivator. Helleland, Markland, and Vinland, were no doubt regarded as countries either connected with or similar to Greenland, the flattering descriptions of which, [7:2:636]given by the first discoverers, were sadly belied by later experience.^[61. Μ. Rafn, a Dane, who has been engaged in researches respecting these early voyages, announces that he has ascertained, from original documents, various facts previously unknown; among others, that America (first discovered in 985) was repeatedly visited by the Norwegians in the llth, 12th, and 13th centuries; that the embouchure of the St Lawrence, and in particular the bay of Gaspe, was their principal station; that they had penetrated along the coast as far south as Carolina; and that they introduced a knowledge of Christianity among the natives. The announcement is contained in a letter addressed to a person in Washington, and published in Nile’s Register (Baltimore), in November 1828. Μ. Rafn is preparing a work on the subject. ] The interest excited by the obscure accounts of these countries was probably such as the announcement of a new island eastward of Spitzbergen would produce at the present day. No reasonable doubt can exist, however, that the north-eastern portions of America (considering Greenland as a distinct country) were familiarly known to the Norwegians in the 11th century.

The obscure allusions of Aristotle, Plato, and Seneca, to a country hid in the Western Ocean, must have derived fresh importance from the discovery of the Canary Isles, Madeira, and the Azores, in the early part of the 15th century. The love of maritime adventure was excited by these events; and among the active spirits who were attracted to nautical life by the career of distinction which was then opened up, was Christopher Columbus. Our limits do not permit us to enter into details respecting this great man, an outline of whose life will be found under the proper head. Having received a learned education, the study of the geographical systems then in vogue impressed him with a strong conviction that a voyage to India, by a course directly westward, was quite practicable, with the degree of nautical science which his contemporaries possessed. From the old and imperfect maps of Ptolemy, he was led to believe that the parts of the globe known to the ancients embraced 15 hours, or 225 degrees, of longitude, which exceeds the truth by more than one third. The discovery of the Azores on the west side had lengthened the space by one hour; and the accounts gleaned by Marco Polo in Asia, induced him to think that the isles connected with this continent stretched out so far to the eastward that their distance from Europe could not be great. Columbus was, however, without the fortune necessary to fit out ships; and when he attempted to interest some of the princes of those times in his project, he encountered neglects and difficulties which would have exhausted the patience of any mind less ardent than his own. At length, after many delays and discouragements, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain supplied him with three small vessels, two of them only half-decked; and in this little armament, accompanied by 120 men, he set sail from the port of Palos on the 3d of August 1492. He proceeded first to the Canary Isles, where he was detained three weeks in repairing one of his vessels. On leaving these isles he entered on an unknown sea, where all was chaos and mystery. The trade-wind, however, bore him steadily along, and the labour of the ships proceeded cheerfully, till the increasing length of the voyage, the failure of prognostics which had from time to time kept alive the hopes of the crew, and various circumstances interpreted by their superstition as evil omens, produced a mutinous spirit, which all the address and authority of Columbus would not have been able to quell, had the discovery of land happened one day later than it did. It was on the 8th of October that the western world revealed itself to the wondering eyes of Columbus and his companions. What a triumph for this extraordinary man, who had treasured in his breast for twenty years, amidst neglect, discouragement, and ridicule, the grand truth, which his own incomparable skill, wisdom, and firmness, had now demonstrated in the eyes of an incredulous world! The spot which he first touched was San Salvador, one of the Bahama Islands, 3650 English miles from Teneriffe. After spending nearly three months in visiting Cuba, Hispaniola, and other isles, he returned to Spain. He made three other voyages, and in the second coasted along a part of South America, which he rightly judged to be a continent, from the volume of water poured into the sea by the Orinoco; but he died ignorant of the real extent and grandeur of his discoveries, still believing that the countries he had made known to Europe belonged to that part of Eastern Asia which the ancients called India. Hence the name of West Indies, which the tropical islands and part of the continent have ever since received. This distinguished man, who had opened up sources of countless wealth to his sovereign, languished out the last two years of his life in neglect and poverty, and died in 1506, leaving scarcely aught behind him but a name, which will survive that of a thousand heroes and conquerors, and will ever be equally dear to the lovers of virtue and honour, and to the admirers of genius.

We should extend this article to an unreasonable length were we to describe in detail the discoveries and settlements made by the several nations of Europe in America. We shall, therefore, confine ourselves to a very brief chronological notice of the more important events.

1495. The first place in which the Spaniards established their power was the large island of Hayti, or Hispaniola, which was inhabited by a numerous race of Indians, of a mild and gentle character, a third part of whom are said to have perished within two or three years after the Spaniards conquered them.

1497. John Cabot, in the service of Henry VII. of England, discovered Newfoundland, and coasted along the shores of North America to Florida.

1500. Cabral, a Portuguese, visited the coast of Brazil, and discovered the mouth of the Amazon. It was probably colonized before 1515, as the first cargo of wood was sent from it to Portugal in that year.

1508. Vincent Pinzon is said to have entered the Rio de la Plata. It was in the same year that the Spaniards, finding the aborigines too weak for the labour of the mines in Hayti, first imported negroes from Guinea, and thus laid the foundation of a traffic which continues to this day to disgrace the civilisation of Europe.

1511. Diego Columbus conquered the island of Cuba with 300 soldiers, of whom he did not lose one.

1513. Balboa crossed the isthmus of Darien with 290 men, and discovered the South Sea.

1519. Hernando Cortes sailed from Cuba with 11 ships and 550 men, and landed on the coast of Mexico which had been discovered in the previous year. The conquest of the empire was finished in 1521 by 950 Spaniards, assisted by a vast number of the Indians of Elascala.

1531. Peru invaded by Pizarro, and conquered in little more than one year, with a force of 1000 men.

1534. James Cartier, a Frenchman, discovers the Gulf of St Lawrence.

1535. Mendoza, a Spaniard, with 2000 followers, founds Buenos Ayres, and conquers all the country as far as [7:2:637]Potosi, at which silver mines were discovered nine years after.

1537. Cortes discovers California.

1541. Chili conquered; Santiago founded; Orellana sails down the Amazon to the Atlantic from the sources of the Rio Napo.

1578. New Albion on the north-west coast of America discovered by Sir Francis Drake.

1586. The Spaniards found St Thomas’s Island, in Guiana.

1587. Davis’ Straits and Cumberland Islands discovered by John Davis.

1604. De Monts, a Frenchman, founded the first settlement in Nova Scotia, then called Acadie.

1607. After many ineffectual attempts during more than twenty years, the first permanent settlement of the English in North America was made this year, on the banks of James’ River, in Virginia.

1608. Quebec founded by the French, who had had a small neglected colony in Canada since 1542.

1611. Newfoundland colonized by the English; a Dutch colony established at Hudson’s River. New York was founded in 1614.

1618. Baffins penetrates to the 78th degree of latitude, in the bay which bears his name.

1620. The first English colony established in New England at Plymouth. It was in this year that the first negroes were imported into Virginia. They were brought by a Dutch vessel.

1635. A French colony established in Guiana.

1655. Jamaica conquered by the English.

1664. The Dutch colonies on Hudson’s River capitulate to the English.

1666. The Buccaneers begin their depredations on the Spanish colonies.

1682. William Penn establishes a colony in Pennsylvania. La Salle takes possession of Louisiana, in the name of the French king.

1698. A colony of 1200 Scots planted at Darien, and ruined in the following year, in consequence of the miserable jealousy of the English.

1733. Georgia colonized by the English.

1760. Canada, and all the other French settlements in North America, conquered by the English.

We must pause at this point to give a very short account of the colonial system introduced by the principal European nations who occupied extensive tracts of the new world. The English settlements extended from the 31st to the 50th degree on the east coast, and were divided into 15 or 16 provinces. The colonists had carried the love of liberty characteristic of their countrymen with them; and after many struggles with their British rulers, all the provinces, with one or two exceptions, were permitted to enjoy a form of government extremely popular. The executive power was vested in a governor appointed by the king. He was assisted by a council, which sometimes conjoined the functions of a privy council and a house of peers. The people were represented by a house of assembly, consisting of persons chosen by the freeholders in the country parts, and the householders or corporations of towns. The governor could levy no money without the consent of the house of assembly: the British parliament, however, claimed, but scarcely ever exercised, the privilege of imposing taxes upon the colonists, without consulting them. Against this assumption of power the local legislatures always protested as an infringement of their rights. The vessels of foreign states were not permitted to trade with the colonies; but the colonists were allowed to trade in their own ships with one another, with the mother country, and, to a limited extent, with foreign states. Their taxes, which were always small, were all consumed in defraying internal expenses; and, compared with any other people in the new world, they enjoyed an unexampled degree of commercial and political liberty. It was the growing prosperity of the colonies, and the increasing debt of the mother country, which induced the British ministers, for the first time, in 1764, to attempt raising a revenue in America, for purposes not colonial. The experiment was made by imposing a stamp-duty on newspapers and commercial writings. The sum was trifling; but the Americans, long-sighted and jealous of their rights, saw in it the introduction of a principle which deprived them of all security for their property. The people declared themselves against it as one man, in local assemblies, and by petitions and publications of all kinds. The ministers became uneasy, and repealed the tax; but, as a salvo to the pride of the mother country, a declaratory act was passed, asserting her right “to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” The idea of raising a revenue in America was not renounced, but another mode was to be tried. Duties were laid on glass, colours, paper, and tea, and were met by an opposition in the colonies still more zealous and determined. The British ministers, irritated, but wavering in their purpose, dropped all the taxes but that on tea, and commenced at the same time a series of alarming innovations. They closed the port of Boston, changed the charter of the province, placed judges and juries on a footing to render them more subservient to the views of the government, and introduced a strong military force to overawe the people. On the other side, the colonists passed resolutions not to import or consume any British goods, and hastened to supply themselves with powder and arms. Blood was at length drawn in April 1775, at the village of Lexington; and in the following year the American congress published their celebrated declaration of independence. We shall not enter into the details of the war, which was closed in 1782. Suffice it to say, that, on the part of the Americans, it rested on high grounds; it was a war to vindicate a principle—for the practical grievance was admitted to be slight; and it was conducted with a regard to humanity, of which there are few examples in history.

The Spanish possessions in America, before the revolution, formed nine distinct governments, all constructed on the same plan, and independent of one another. Four of these, of the first rank, were vice-royalties, viz. Mexico Peru, La Plata, and New Granada; and five were captain-generalships, viz. Yucatan, Guatemala, Chili, Venezuela, and the island of Cuba. The government was vested in the viceroy or captain-general, who was held to represent the king, and to enjoy all his prerogatives within the colony. But in these countries, as in others where the supreme power is apparently unlimited, it was indirectly restrained by the influence of the courts of justice, corporations, and other public bodies. The royal audiencias or supreme courts, consisting of Spaniards nominated by the crown, had extensive judicial powers, and were independent of the viceroys. The cabildos or municipalities, and the fueros or corporations (similar to our guilds), also possessed considerable privileges, which derived security and importance from long prescription. Lastly, the clergy, who were numerous and rich, necessarily possessed great influence among a superstitious people. The vices inherent in the colonial system existed in their utmost rankness in the Spanish American dominions. There was tolerable security for all classes except the miserable Indians, who were regarded and [7:2:638]treated precisely as beasts of burden, out of whose toil and sufferings a provision as ample as possible was to be extracted, first to supply the wants of the royal treasury, and next to feed in idleness, and to satisfy the cupidity of a countless shoal of public officers and priests. Edicts were indeed issued for the protection of the Indians, and persons appointed to enforce them; but these were feeble correctives to the evils rooted in the system, and not unfrequently increased their weight. The Indians, after the conquest, were at first slaves; they paid a capitation tax to the crown, and their labour was entirely at the disposal of their lord. This system was modified from time to time; but all the changes introduced down to the revolution did not release them from their state of vassalage. They still continued subject, in a less or greater degree, to the performance of compulsory labour, under the orders of persons over whom they had no control. This was an enormous grievance; but, what was equally bad, being held incompetent in law to buy or sell, or enter into any pecuniary engagement beyond the value of a few shillings, without the agency of white men, the swarm of public functionaries had an unlimited power of interfering in their concerns, of vexing, harassing, and plundering them, under the forms of law. The memoir of Ulloa, long buried amidst the Spanish archives, with various other documents published since the revolution, depicts acts of extortion, perfidy, cruelty, and oppression practised upon the Indians which have rarely been paralleled. Men rose to affluence in offices without salaries; and the priests rivalled the laymen in the art of extracting money from those whom they ought to have protected. As the sole aim of the Spaniards in the colonies was to enrich themselves, so the government at home made all its acts and regulations subordinate to the grand object of raising a revenue. Spain retained in her hands the whole trade of the colonies, and guarded her monopoly with the most severe penalties. The price of all European commodities was enhanced three, four, or six fold, in America. The colonists were not allowed to manufacture or raise any article which the mother country could supply; they were compelled to root up their vines and olives; and for a long period one colony was not even permitted to send a ship to another. To support such a system it was necessary to keep the people in profound ignorance, and to cherish prejudices and superstition. The schools were extremely few, and permission to establish them was often refused, even in towns where the Spaniards and Creoles were numerous. The importation of books, except books of Catholic devotion, was rigorously prohibited. Even the more grave and dry sciences, such as botany, chemistry, and geometry, were objects of suspicion. And the more effectually to crush all mental activity, natives of America could rarely obtain leave to go abroad, to seek in foreign countries what was denied them in their own. On the other hand the priests, sharing in the spoil, filled the minds of the people with childish superstitions, as a means of confirming their own power; and employed the terrors of religion to teach them patience under oppression. To create a race of servants devoted to its purposes, the court bestowed all offices, from the highest to the lowest, on natives of the peninsula exclusively. The wisdom of the plan seems questionable; but that it was adhered to with wonderful pertinacity is certain. “It was the darling policy of Spain,” says Mr Ward, “to disseminate through her American dominions a class of men distinct from the people in feelings, habits, and interests, taught to consider themselves as a privileged caste, and to regard their own existence as intimately connected with that of the system of which they were the principal support.” With all those means and appliances, it is extraordinary that Spain should have been able to uphold, for three centuries, a system in which the interests of so many millions of human beings were so habitually and unrelentingly sacrificed. It was the course of events, much more than its own inherent weakness, which ultimately caused its subversion.^[62. Mexico by H. G. Ward, Esq. vol. i. chap. i. 2d edition. Memoirs of General Miller, vol. i. chap. i. 1828. ]

After the seizure of Ferdinand, and the elevation of Joseph Buonaparte to the throne of Spain, orders were dispatched to all the colonies with the view of securing their obedience to the new dynasty. The men in office were generally disposed to submit, but the treacherous conduct of the French excited a universal hatred of their cause among the people; and when the regency established in Spain presented the semblance of a patriot government, the loyalty of the Americans blazed forth, and poured large contributions of money into the hands of Ferdinand’s adherents. The weak and suspicious conduct of the regency, however, and its subserviency to the grasping spirit of the merchants of Cadiz, at length alienated the colonists, and roused them to take measures for their own security. But the diversity of views and interests among the colonists rendered the course to be adopted a matter of some delicacy. Ferdinand, being a prisoner, was, politically speaking, a nonentity. Napoleon’s brother was clearly an usurper, odious to, and rejected by, the mass of the Spanish people. The regency, shut up in Cadiz, without troops or revenue, was but a phantom; and the little power it had was so employed as to raise doubts whether its members were not secretly in league with the enemy. In these circumstances, when the only government to which the colonists owed allegiance had fallen into abeyance, the wisest course they could have pursued was to declare themselves independent. ∙ This would at once put a stop to the machinations of France, which they dreaded, and prevent the regency from compromising or sacrificing their interests by its weakness or treachery. The Spaniards, however, who occupied all public situations, were averse to a change which they foresaw must lead to the downfall of their power. This was perfectly understood by the other classes; and in the first movements which took place in the different colonies, nothing was said derogatory to the supremacy of Spain, though independence was clearly aimed at. By spontaneous efforts of the people “juntas of government” were formed, at Caraccas in April 1809, at La Paz in Upper Peru in July, at Quito in August, at Santa Fe and at Buenos Ayres in May 1810, and at Santiago in Chili in September the same year. In 1810, also, the first insurrection broke out in Mexico The colonists unluckily had been too long the slaves of superstition and tyranny to be fit for conducting so bold an experiment; and after a struggle, which was generally short, but almost everywhere bloody, the juntas were all put down except in Colombia and Buenos Ayres. But in the stir and tumult of the contest, old prejudices had received a shock, and the seeds of political change had struck their roots too deep in the soil to be eradicated. A desultory war was carried on for six years between Buenos Ayres and Upper Peru, with little advantage on either side. At length, in 1817, the former state, which had assumed the style of an independent republic four years before, sent an army across the Andes to Chili, under General San Martin, and [7:2:639]defeated the Spaniards at Chacabuco. A second victory, gained at Maipo in April 1818, led to the entire subversion of the Spanish power in this colony. The war was now transferred to Peru, where the Spaniards continued to lose ground, till the decisive battle of Ayacucho put an end to their power in December 1824. Rodil and Olaveta, with the obstinacy of their nation, held out for some months longer, when every chance of success was gone; but after the surrender of Callao in January 1826, the Spanish flag no longer waved on any spot in the land of the Incas.

In New Granada and Venezuela the struggle was more bloody, variable, and protracted than in any other part of South America. As this portion of the dominions of Spain was comparatively easy of access, and from its central position was in some measure the key to the whole, she made immense efforts for its preservation. No less than ten thousand troops were sent out to it within the course of one year. The patriots, on the other hand, possessed advantages here, in the greater intelligence of the population, and the easy intercourse with the West Indies. From 1809, when juntas were established in Caraccas and Quito, to the surrender of Porto Cabello in 1823, the vicissitudes of the war were numerous and extraordinary. The patriots were repeatedly on the eve of a complete triumph, and as often the state of their affairs seemed nearly hopeless. But the spirit of resistance never was entirely subdued. The cause was rooted in the hearts of the people, and was insensibly gaining ground even during its reverses. To attempt the faintest outline of the military operations would lead us beyond our proper limits. It is enough to state, that the decisive victory of Carabobo, gained by the patriots in 1819, gave them an ascendency which they never afterwards lost; but the Spaniards, according to their custom, continued to maintain the contest as long as they had a foot of land in the country, and were only finally expelled in 1823.

In Mexicothe revolutionary movement began at Dolores in 1810, and soon wore a very prosperous appearance; but the weakness or false pride of the Creoles, who were cajoled into the ranks of their oppressors the old Spaniards, armed against the patriots those who should have been their firmest supporters; and by one or two mischances, the force of the independent party was ruined in November 1815, when Morelos, their able leader, was taken prisoner and executed. For six years after this period many guerilla bands maintained themselves in the provinces, and greatly annoyed the Spaniards; but they did not act in concert, and no congress or junta professing to represent the Mexican people existed. Even during this interval the desire for independence was making great progress among the population; but the establishment of a constitutional government in Spain in 1820, and its extension to the colonies, gave a new aspect to the affairs of Mexico The viceroy Apodaca, while outwardly yielding obedience to the new system, was silently taking measures to effect its overthrow; but mistaking the character of the agent he employed, this person, the celebrated Iturbide, turned his own arms against him, proclaimed a constitution, under the name of “the three guarantees,” and put an end to the dominion of Spain in 1821, almost without bloodshed. Iturbide, who had nothing in view but his own aggrandizement, called a congress, which he soon dissolved, after getting himself proclaimed emperor. His usurpation kindled a spirit of resistance. He was exiled in 1823, made .a new attempt on the liberties of his country in 1824, was taken prisoner, and expiated his crimes by a military death within a few weeks after he landed.^[63. Ward’s Mexico .vol..i. ,p. 93-210. ]

Guatemala was the last portion of the American continent which threw off the Spanish yoke. In 1821 the persons in office assembled and formed a junta. Divisions arose, which were fomented by the intrusion of a Mexican army sent by Iturbide. This force, however, was beaten, and an elective assembly called, which declared the country independent, and established a constitution in July 1823. Spain now retains none of her possessions in the new world but Cuba and Porto Rico

It is impossible for any one to read the narrative of the wars produced by these revolutions, without having a conviction forced upon him, that the Spaniards rank far below all the Christian nations of Europe, not excepting the Russians, in those moral qualities which are the surest tests of civilisation, a respect for human life, and a strict regard to engagements, whether binding on the honour or the conscience. The executions in cold blood, the countless massacres, the treachery, perfidy, and contempt of the most solemn oaths and engagements, of which they were guilty, in every colony, and almost in every district, are, we believe, without a parallel in the modern civilized world, and strongly remind one of the barbarous and exterminating hostilities of the Jenghis Khans and Tamerlanes of Asia. The Indians were destroyed by thousands on the slightest provocation; and even the officers of European birth who fell into the hands of the Spaniards, were either shot or brutally treated, long after the period when any pretext existed for disregarding the rules of civilized war. More blood, we are satisfied, was shed by Morillo alone in one year, in the single state of Venezuela, than in the thirteen North American states during the seven years of their revolutionary struggle. The patriots, bred in the same school, were too often equally culpable. General Miller estimates the number of human beings destroyed by the sword in Spanish America between 1810 and 1825 at one million! This is probably an exaggeration; but it merits attention, as showing the opinion formed by an observer, who, though a partisan, is both candid and well informed.^[64. Memoirs of General Miller, 2 vols. 1828. Geographical, Statistical, Agricultural, &c. Account of Colombia, 2 vols. London, 1822. Miers' Travels in Chili and La Plata, 2 vols. 1826. ]

The government of Brazil was conducted by the Portuguese on a system extremely similar to that of the Spanish colonies. The monopoly which the mother country retained of the commerce of the colony was equally rigorous; the restrictions on its internal industry as severe; and the same means were employed to keep the people in a state of pupilage and ignorance. Down to 1806 a single printing press had never existed in Brazil. In 1807, when the emperor Napoleon had resolved to possess himself of Portugal, and if possible to get the royal family into his power, the king, seeing no other means of escaping from the clutches of his enemy, embarked with his suite in several ships, and sailed for Brazil, where he arrived in January 1808. He was received with joy by the colonists, who anticipated great benefits from his residence, of which they were not disappointed. One by one the fetters of colonial dependence fell off. Within a few months printing presses and newspapers were established, the ports were open to the trade of all [7:2:640]nations, and the people were invited and encouraged to prosecute all those branches of internal industry from which they had till now been interdicted. To crown and secure these advantages, Brazil was declared an independent kingdom in 1815, subject to the crown of Portugal, but entitled to its separate administration and its own laws. The revolutionary spirit pervading the Spanish colonies now found its way into Brazil, and produced an insurrection at Pernambuco in 1817. It was soon subdued, but received a new impulse from the constitutional systems suddenly introduced into Spain and Portugal in 1820. To quiet the popular feeling, it was announced that the Portuguese constitution would be extended to Brazil. Before this had been done, however, the old king had sailed for Europe, leaving his son Don Pedro to rule in his absence. The people now discovered, or believed, that the object of the king was to degrade Brazil again to the rank of a colony, and to restore the old system in all its rigour. Meetings were held and resolutions adopted, to maintain the independence of the country at all hazards; and the patriots, gaining confidence by degrees, called loudly for the establishment of a legislature, and besought Don Pedro to put himself at the head of the independent government. Ambition or policy induced Pedro to listen to the solicitation: in 1822 he was proclaimed emperor, and had his own title and the independence of Brazil acknowledged by his father three years afterwards. A representative system was at the same time introduced. An unlucky war now arose with Buenos Ayres, which weakened both countries; but it was at ength terminated in 1828, by the recognition of the disputed territory as an independent state, under the title of the Banda Oriental.

Having finished this brief notice of the series of revo- .utions which broke the fetters of America, we shall now give a very short sketch of the new political order of things which has arisen out of these changes, referring for a detailed account of the several states to the articles appropriated to them in the different volumes of the present ,vork.

America, with its isles, embraces at present (1830) twelve independent states, and various colonies belonging to six European powers. The states are, 1. Brazil; 2. Co-ombia; 3. Peru; 4. Bolivia or Upper Peru; 5. La Plata; 3. Chili; 7. Paraguay; 8. Banda Oriental; 9. Guatema-a; 10. Mexico 11. the United States; 12. Hayti. The colonies belong to Russia, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and Spain.

Brazil is the largest state in the new world, and enjoys the greatest combination of natural advantages. It is bounded on the south, west, and north, by La Plata, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Guiana. Embracing in area of 3,050,000 English miles, it is nearly as large as Europe, and is capable of supporting a much greater population. Its climate is probably cooler and more salubrious than that of any other extensive tropical country; and every part of its soil is rich and fruitful, as its magnificent forests and the exuberance and boundless variety of its vegetable productions attest. Its commercial advantages are admirable. No country in the new world has the same facilities for carrying on intercourse with Europe, and with all its neighbours. The Amazon, with its numerous branches, the Parana, the Tocantin, the St Francisco, and other streams, supply the most remote parts of the interior with easy means of communication with the sea. Brazil possesses iron, copper, and probably all the other metals; but her mines of gold and diamonds are remarkably rich. Her most valuable productions for exportation are, cotton, sugar, coffee, hides, tobacco, vanilla, dyewoods, aromatic plants, timber, &c. We have seen no detailed accounts of her commerce; but if her dealings with Britain be taken as an index of its extent, as we think it may, it is three times as great as that of all the Spanish colonies put together. According to a parliamentary paper printed in 1830 (No. 292), the imports into Britain from Brazil in 1829 were L.l,488,000 official value, and the exports to the same country no less than L.6,155,000. Now the British trade with the states of Spanish America, Mexico Guatemala, Colombia, La Plata, Chili, and Peru, was only— imports L. 534,000, exports L.3,286,000. Of the goods to the value of six millions sent to Brazil, the whole except L. 100,000 were British produce or manufactures. The cultivation of cotton, sugar, mandioc, maize, and other raw produce, is the staple branch of industry in Brazil; and manufactures, though no longer prohibited, cannot be said yet to exist. The Brazilians are lively, irritable, hospitable, but ignorant, superstitious, and rather inclined to indolence. Their recent acquisition of independence, however, has worked like a charm, and produced an extraordinary change in their industry, opinions, and modes of thinking. Lancas-terian and other schools are spreading in all directions; the press brings forth new publications; and 25 journals existed in 1828, in a country where the art of printing was unknown in 1807. According to the constitution introduced by Don Pedro, the legislature consists of a senate of 50 members, who hold their places for life, and a house of representatives of 100 elected by the people for three years; upon the acts of both of which bodies the emperor has a negative. The members of the lower house are chosen by elections of two stages. The householders of a parish meet and appoint one elector for every hundred of their number, and the electors thus chosen meet in districts and choose the deputies. The debates are conducted with open doors, and with much boldness and freedom, according to Mr Walsh. The budget for 1829 was as follows :—
[table]

Mr Walsh, in 1829, found 800 rees equal to a Spanish dollar; the above sum should therefore amount to L.3,700,000. The expenditure for the same year was estimated at 19,271,000,000 rees, or L.5,300,000.

The population of Brazil amounted to 3,671,558, according to returns published in 1818, and procured probably for the purpose of taxation. This was exclusive of the wandering Indians. In 1823 it was estimated at 4,000,000 by Humboldt. Judging by the trade of the country, and the consumption of British goods, we should think that it must have been greater then, and may now amount to more than five millions. Μ. Schoeffer, a German, carries it to 5,700,000; and Μ. Freyreiss, another [7:2:641]German who was long in the country, is persuaded that it cannot be under seven or eight millions, including the savage tribes.

In the first evaluation, the inhabitants are classed as follows :—
[table]

According to this statement, the blacks in Brazil must amount to 2,800,000 in a population of 5,000,000, and must outnumber the whites in the proportion of 7 to 3. This is a feature in the political and moral condition of Brazil which augurs ill for its future repose and prosperity. That the statement is near the truth we are inclined to believe. Mr Walsh thinks that two thirds of the population of Rio Janeiro, which amounts to 150,000, are black.^[66. Walsh’s Notices of Brazil, 1830, vol. i. p. 408. ] In the province of Minas Geraes, which had 514,000 inhabitants in 1821, the proportions, according to a work published by Baron Eschwege, were, whites 25 per cent, blacks 41 per cent., mulattoes 34 per cent., blacks and mulattoes together 75 per cent. Classed into free persons and slaves, it stands thus: whites 25 per cent., free mulattoes 30 per cent., free blacks 10 per cent., black slaves 31 per cent., mulatto slaves 4 per cent.; total free population 65 per cent., total slave population 35 per cent^[67. Bulletin. Géographique, Janvier 1829. ] In Maranham, Pernambuco, and other northern provinces, we know that the slaves are still more numerous. It is probable, therefore, that the black and coloured inhabitants of Brazil fall little short of three millions, which must be nearly equal to the number of persons of African blood in all the other parts of continental America. Brazil is divided into 19 provinces.

Colombia is bounded on the south by Peru, on the south-east and east by Brazil and Guiana, on the other sides by the sea, and embraces an area of 1,020,000 square English miles. The soil is fruitful, and the climate salubrious, except along the coast and in a few other low situations. The eastern part consists chiefly of the llanos or steppes of the Orinoco, which are very hot; the western, of the mountain ridges of the Andes, which support tracts of table-land where the blessings of a temperate climate are enjoyed, and the ccrealia of Europe can be successfully cultivated. The tropical vegetation extends to the height of 4000 feet; from 4000 to 9000 is the region where wheat, barley, and leguminous plants thrive. Above the level of 9000 feet the climate becomes severe; and at 15,700 feet vegetation ceases. The situation of Colombia is highly favourable for commerce. It has excellent ports on both seas; and being mistress of the isthmus of Panama, it has superior facilities for establishing a communication from the one to the other, and engrossing the commerce between the Atlantic and Pacific. The Orinoco, the Magdalena, and the Amazon, afford its inmost districts the advantages of water-carriage to the ocean. The Cassiquiari, an intermediate channel, by which the Orinoco anastomoses or connects with the Amazon (a remarkable hydrographical phenomenon), is within the limits of Colombia. Its greatest disadvantage, in a commercial point of view, arises from the obstruction caused by the immense wall of the Andes to the free communication of its eastern and western provinces.

Colombia contains much gold and silver; the former in alluvial deposits: it has mines of copper and mercury also, with platinum, iron, and coal. Its tropical productions are similar to those of Brazil, but it has as yet cultivated few articles for foreign markets, and its exports are inconsiderable. The civilized population of this country is chiefly located in the districts near the coast, and in the high valleys or table-land of the Andes. Its amount, as stated in the Gazette of Colombia of 30th September 1827, was,
[table]

This population is distributed through 37 provinces, which are subdivided into 326 districts. The cities amount to 95, the towns to 154, the villages to 1340. It is always of importance to know in what proportions the different races are blended; but on this subject we have data only for New Granada, and for Guiana, which has a very small civilized population. In New Granada, containing 1,228,000 inhabitants, we find the different races classed thus :—
[table]

The anomalous proportion between the blacks and mulattoes leads us to think that the terms have been interchanged. The negroes, we suspect, should be 32, and the mulattoes 5. In Guiana (a thinly inhabited province of the department of Maturin, distinct from the English, Dutch, and French Guianas), the whites are only 7 per cent., and the men of colour 8, while the Indians are 84.^[68. Ibid. Novembre 1828. ] Though slavery exists in Colombia, it is hastening to its extinction; for, by a law passed in 1821, the children of all slaves born after that year are free. The commerce of the republic is trifling at present; but when her internal distractions are settled it must increase greatly. The principal articles for exportation are, cocoa, coffee, cotton, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and hides. We have not been able to lay our hands on any recent and complete statement of the amount of imports and exports. The custom-house valuation of the imports into Caraccas in the first six months of 1828, was 969,000 dollars; the exports 627,000. But a better criterion is afforded by the official value of the goods sent from Britain to Colombia in 1829, which was L.557,000: those sent from other countries may probably be equal to twice this amount. Neither have we seen any recent account of the revenue, on which we can depend. The government is republican: the supreme power is lodged in a senate, composed of 32 members elected by the people for eight years, and a house of representatives elected for four years. The number of the latter, being fixed at one for each 30,000 inhabitants, should be about 80. They are chosen by the indirect mode, the parochial assemblies choosing ten electors for each representative, and these ten electing the member.
[7:2:642]

The president is elected for four years.^[69. Colonel Hall’s Present State of Colombia, 1824. ] But it is needless to go into detail; for while we are writing this, we learn that the constitution of 1821 has been abolished, and that a new one is framing. The republic of Colombia had a harder struggle than any of the other Spanish colonies for its independence; and since it expelled the Spaniards, it has been engaged in wars with its neighbours, and sadly shaken by internal dissensions. In December 1829 the province of Caraccas resolved to separate from the others, and erect itself into an independent state. The government, which sits at Bogota, determined to resist this dismemberment; and Bolivar, as president, has been authorized to employ force against the revolters. The issue is not yet known.

La Plata is, in point of natural advantages, the third state of importance in South America. It is bounded on the west by Chili and Peru; on the north by Bolivia, Paraguay, and the Banda Oriental; on the east and south by the sea. It embraces an area of 1,030,000 square miles, if we include in its territories Tucuman, Salta, Santiago del Estero, and Jujuy, which scarcely acknowledge its authority; and to this 250,000 should still be added for the Patagonian country east of the Andes, which it will no doubt claim in course of time, after the manner of the other civilized states in the new world. Nearly the whole territory of this republic consists of open plains destitute of timber, called pampas, extending from the Atlantic and the river Paraguay to the Andes. The eastern part of these plains exhibits a vigorous growth of herbage, intermixed with a forest of gigantic plants 9 or 10 feet high, which have been called thistles, but are now known to be artichokes: in the middle they are covered with grass; and the western division, which extends to the foot of the Andes, consists of barren sandy plains, thinly sprinkled with shrubs and thorny trees. The openness and dryness of the country, however, render it healthy; and by the Parana, the Paraguay, and their branches, it possesses a great extent of natural inland navigation. It has mines of gold, silver, copper, lead, and probably iron; but its mineral riches have been greatly diminished by the separation of Potosi, Cochabamba, La Paz, and other provinces, now forming part of Bolivia. The force of this republic lies almost entirely in the wealth, intelligence, and commercial spirit of its capital, Buenos Ayres, which contains 80,000 souls, and is the only city perhaps in the world which has been found impregnable to the assaults of hostile armies, without fortifications, or any other defences than the peculiar structure of its houses and the courage of its inhabitants. The viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres having few valuable mines, and depending chiefly on commerce and agriculture, had fewer attractions for the Spaniards than most of the other colonies, and is very thinly peopled. Its capital contains a large proportion of foreigners; and a small number of estancias, or grazing farms, are sparingly diffused over its boundless plains, the proprietors of which keep multitudes of horses and mules, flocks of sheep, and vast herds of cattle, the latter being chiefly valued for their skins. These people are a bold, frank, hardy, half-civilized race, who live isolated in the wilderness, and scarcely acknowledge any government. Owing to these circumstances, the smallness of the towns, and their distance from one another, there is little cohesion between the parts of this republic, which may be said, in fact, to consist of a head without a body, for its strength is concentrated in the capital. The republic is, or rather was, divided into 14 provinces; and, according to an imperfect census taken in 1815, contained 523,000 inhabitants, exclusive of Indians, and without reckoning the Banda Oriental. Mr Miers, excluding from the republic the provinces north of Cordova, and reducing the estimated numbers in the others to less than one half, makes the whole population amount only to 152,000. This is unquestionably below the truth. In what proportion the races are mixed we do not know; but including the Sierra, or hilly region in the west, which comprehends Upper Peru, Humboldt classes the population thus :—
[table]

Since the revolution, printing presses have been introduced, which issue many useful works; and several journals are established. Education has made great advances in the cities, especially in the capital, where it is rare to find a boy who cannot read and write. La Plata had never any nobility, and always much less inequality of fortune than Mexicoand Peru. Slavery, which prevailed only to a small extent in former times, is now verging to its extinction under a new law; and the Indians are not numerous, either in the capital or the provinces, except in those adjacent to Upper Peru. There is less bigotry too, and probably more intelligence and industry, in the capital of La Plata, than in any town of Spanish America. The trade and prosperity of the republic have been greatly retarded by its internal dissensions, and the tedious, indecisive war which it waged for some years with Brazil about the Banda Oriental. Mr Rodney estimated the exports in 1818 at 10,000,000 dollars, and the revenue at 3,000,000. The latter, in 1824, was officially announced to be 2,588,000, and in 1825, 2,633,000 dollars. The exports from Britain to Buenos Ayres in 1829 amounted to L.484,000, and the imports from it to L. 143,000. The government of these vast provinces has for a long time been in a state of extreme confusion. The two parties of Unitarians and Federales have alternately chased each other from power, and shed much blood. The former, who wished to unite all the provinces under one legislature, and were thence named Unitarians, comprise the men most distinguished for talent and intelligence, and the most zealous friends to education and general improvement. They introduced a plan of government founded on their own views, in 1826, consisting of a president and two chambers. Subsequently they were driven from power, and their system annihilated, by the Federales, who include in their ranks a great majority of the priests and the most ignorant classes, and those who were anciently the partisans of the Spanish power. Under these persons the ties that connected the several provinces have been severed. Each now governs itself, and has custom-houses on its frontiers; so that the intercourse between what are professedly parts of one community is as difficult as that between distinct kingdoms. The only remaining vestige of the federal bond is, that the other provinces leave to Buenos Ayres the arrangement of their relations with foreign powers.^[70. Rodney and Graham’s Reports to the North American Government, 1819; General Miller’s Memoirs,: vol. i.; and MS. furnished by a gentleman long resident in the country. ]

The Banda Oriental is a small district on the north side of the bay of the Plata, extending from the Atlantic to the river Uruguay. Its extent we have not seen correctly stated, but it may amount to 80,000 square miles: its population has been estimated at 175,000, but is probably much less. Monte Video, with 16,000 inhabitants, is the chief town, This province, after a long struggle [7:2:643] between Brazil and Buenos Ayres for its possession, was erected into an independent state in 1829.

The country which bears the name of Paraguay at present is not, strictly speaking, that in which the Jesuits had their celebrated missions, but a district lying between the rivers Parana and Paraguay, and extending from the 23d to the 28th degree of south latitude. The government of Buenos Ayres sent an army in 1810 to overturn the Spanish power in this district. The people rose in arms under two leaders, who had probably laid their own schemes already, and, after repelling the aggressors, quietly put an end to the Spanish dominion, and asserted their independence. One of the leaders, Dr Francia, soon assumed the whole power, and has proved one of the most singular despots recorded in history. He is sober, abstinent, and unostentatious, economical of the public money, and disinterested, but stern and capricious, employing the arm of absolute power to correct the vices and increase the industry of his subjects. He lives among the people with the simplicity and familiarity of a patriarch, and yet is a tyrant in spirit, and carries his tyranny into the most ordinary acts of private life. He seems to have borrowed his notions of social order from the Jesuits, but employs naked force to effect what they accomplished by persuasion. He directs one man how to build his house, another how to till his ground, a third how to fabricate the articles which he manufactures; he fixes the price of commodities, and enforces all his orders with the most summary and rigorous penalties. Idleness is punished as a crime. He keeps a small army to support his authority and guard his frontiers; and will neither permit any stranger to enter the country, nor any of his subjects to leave it. Being dissatisfied with the meanness and irregularity of his capital, the small town of Assumption, he compelled the inhabitants to pull down their houses, and rebuild them on a new plan. The church has not escaped his reforming zeal. He prohibited nocturnal processions as sources of profligacy, expelled the monks, abolished the Inquisition, and diminished the number of festivals. In fine, the writers to whom we are indebted for these details inform us, that after having played the despot to accomplish reforms, and trained his subjects to habits of industry and order, he has latterly relaxed his severity, and is now obeyed rather from respect and confidence than fear. He governs the country under the title of dictator. The number of his subjects is estimated by Balbi at 250,000; and of these, probably one third are whites, and two thirds Indians or Mestizoes.^[71. Extrait de l’Essai Historique sur la Révolution de Paraguay, par MM. de Rengger et Longchamps, en Bulletin Géographique, Juillet 1829. ]

Chili extends along the coast of the Pacific, from 25⁰ to 44⁰ of south latitude: its length is 1300 miles; its breadth varies from 30 to 120; and its surface, exclusive of Araucania and the district beyond the 44th parallel, is 66,960 square miles, according to Mr Miers. The country consists properly of the western slope or declivity of the Andes; for the branches of the mountains, running out in tortuous directions from the main trunk, reach to the seashore. It enjoys an excellent and healthful climate; severe cold is unknown in the inhabited parts, and the heat is seldom excessive. The useful soil bears a small proportion to the entire surface of the country, consisting merely of the bottom of the valleys. It has rich mines of gold, silver, and copper in the northern provinces; but very few of them can be worked, in consequence of the absolute sterility of the adjacent country. It is divided into 13 provinces; and of these, the two northern, occupying 450 miles of the coast, are nearly perfect deserts. The soil continues extremely dry, and yields nothing without irrigation, till we reach the latitude of 35⁰; and it is believed that not one fiftieth part of the country is fit for cultivation. But south of the river Maule the land is covered with fine timber, and bears crops of wheat and other grain, without the aid of any other moisture than what is supplied by the atmosphere. This is in truth the fine and fruitful part of Chili; and the project has already been discussed of selecting its chief town, Conception, for the seat of the government. Chili has no manufactures, and is unfavourably situated for commerce. It has no navigable rivers, while its mountainous surface is an obstacle to the formation of roads; and its communications with all other parts of the world are circuitous and difficult. A representative constitution, but of a strange character, was established in Chili in 1823. A “Supreme Director” was placed at the head of the executive, but who was to perform no important act without the advice and consent of a senate of nine members, who hold their seats for six years. The house of representatives, consisting of not more than 200 members, chosen for eight years, was to be assembled only upon extraordinary occasions; but 25 of its members, selected by ballot, and called together by an order of the executive, was to be sufficient to sanction any law or act which might be submitted to it by the executive. This constitution, and some others which succeeded it, remained mere empty forms. The people, ignorant and widely scattered, have continued passive spectators of political events, while different factions have alternately chaced one another from power, and indulged in proscriptions and confiscations. The revenue in 1824, according to Mr Miers, was 1,636,000 dollars, and the expenditure was announced by the minister to be 2,497,000. The exports from Britain to Chili in 1829 were L.l,182,000, and the imports L.58,000, official value. The population is usually estimated at 1,200,000, but is reduced by Mr Miers to 560,000, which is probably under the truth. With regard to its composition, our information is not precise. The author just named says, that the race of pure Indians, with their language, have disappeared from all the country between Araucania and Peru; but among the poorer settlers are men of all complexions, from the mixture of the above genus with the Spaniards. Mr Stevenson says that the population of the southern province of Conception consists of “a few Spaniards, some white Creoles, Mestizoes, a few slaves of different colours, and fewer Indians ;” and that the Mestizoes are scarcely to be distinguished from the whites. From these and other notices we would infer that the part of the population in which Indian blood is not distinctly perceptible is probably less than one half.^[72. Miers’ Travels in Chili and La Plata, 1826. Stevenson’s Narrative, 1825, vol. i. ]

Peru is a continuation of the country which forms Chili, consisting of the western declivities of the Andes, from the 4th to the 25th degree of south latitude, with the addition of a considerable tract on the east side of the mountains, between the 4th and the 15th parallels. There are few countries in the world which have a more singular physical character than the western part of Peru. It is a belt or zone of sands, 1700 miles in length, and from 7 to 50 in breadth, with inequalities of surface which might be called mountains, if they were not seen in connection with the stupendous back ground of the Andes. This long line of desert is intersected by rivers and streams which are seldom less than 20, or more than 80 miles [7:2:644]apart, and on the sides of which narrow strips of productive soil are created by means of irrigation. These isolated valleys form the whole habitable country. Some of the large rivers reach the sea; the smaller are either consumed in irrigating the patches of cultivated land, or absorbed by the encompassing desert, where it never rains, where neither beast nor bird lives, and a blade of vegetation never grew. No stranger can travel from one of these valleys to another without a guide, for the desert is traekless; and the only indications of a route are an occasional cluster of bones, the remains of beasts of burden that have perished. Even experienced guides, who regulate their course by the stars, the sun, or the direction of the wind, sometimes lose their path, and then they almost inevitably perish. Of a party of 300 soldiers thrown ashore by a shipwreck in 1823 on one of these desert spaces, nearly a hundred expired before they reached the nearest valley. Ignoranee and wonder have been busy with this singular region: legends are current, which tell that descendants of the ancient Peruvians have lived in some of these mysterious valleys, hid from the knowledge of their merciless invaders, since the days of the Incas.^[73. Memoirs of General Miller, chap. xix. ] We have no reason to believe that more than one acre in a hundred of maritime Peru will ever be available for the sustenance of mankind. The country has two advantages—its mines of the precious metals, and a temperate and delightful climate, in consequence of the absence of rain, and the fogs which intercept the solar heat. It can never be rich in the proper sense of the term, or make much progress in the improvements which depend upon a dense population. Like Chili, it has no navigable rivers—and nature has not only deprived it of the means of forming good roads, but placed it in a situation the most unfavourable for intercourse with the other parts of the civilized world. Even its metallic wealth has been greatly reduced by the separation of Bolivia. There are indeed few countries in the world whose natural advantages have been so much overrated as Peru; and it requires little sagacity to discover that its future career cannot correspond with its past celebrity. The districts east of the Andes, which have a hot climate, accompanied with a rich soil, will ultimately be the most valuable part of the country; but their secluded situation, and want of communication with other countries, must keep them long in a backward state. The government of Peru is republican and central, not federal; but the numerous alterations it has undergone render it hazardous to speak of its particular provisions; and indeed the struggles of faction have rendered it a dead letter. The revenue of Peru in 1826, according to an official statement, was 5,203,000 dollars, or L. 1,140,000; but most of these accounts, put forth by authority in the new American states, both respecting money and population, are prepared with the view of creating favourable impressions in Europe as to their resources, and should be received with suspicion. Peru is divided into eight departments, which comprehend a surface of 350,000 square miles; the capital, Lima, contains 70,000 inhabitants; and the entire population of the state is given as under by General Miller :—
[table]

Bolivia, or Upper Peru, lies eastward of Lower Peru, and is bounded on the south by the river Pilcomayo. It is of a triangular form, and comprehends a space of 1 480,000 square miles. The climate is pleasant and healthful, the soil is generally dry, and in the eastern parts, as well as the elevated table-land, its aridity produces barrenness. Nature, however, as a compensation for its other disadvantages, has bestowed upon it some of the richest mines in the world. This country was erected into an independent state only in 1825, and named Bolivia in honour of its liberator Bolivar. It consists of five departments, Charcas, Potosi, La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, which were originally subject to the viceroy of Peru, but, in the later times of the Spanish rule, were joined to the viccroyalty of Buenos Ayres. Chuquisaca, a small town about 50 miles eastward of Potosi, is the capital. Bolivia has a small strip of barren territory on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, between the 22d and 25th parallel; but it is, properly speaking, entirely an inland country, and more deficient in the means of communicating with foreign nations than any other state in America. This circumstance must greatly retard its improvement. It has a very complex political constitution, planned and introduced by its founder in 1826. The government is vested in a tribunate, a senate, a council of censors chosen for four years by electoral colleges, and a president nominated by these bodies for life. The electoral colleges consist of electors chosen by all the male adults in each province, in the proportion of one elector for every ten voters. The population of Bolivia, according to General Miller, is 1,200,000, of whom probably two thirds are Indians. Of the revenue or trade of the new state we have not seen any account.^[74. Ibid, and Appendix. ]

Guatemala or “Central America” occupies the narrow part of the continent, from the 83d to the 94th degree of west longitude, extending 800 miles in length, and covering a space of 130,000 square miles. The surface of the country is hilly, and in some parts mountainous; the climate warm and very moist. The mineral wealth of the country is not great; but this is compensated by the richness of its soil, and its excellent commercial position. It is a federal republic, consisting of five states, whose population, estimated at 1,600,000 by Humboldt, is, we suspect, a little overrated in the following statement received from the government by Mr Thomson, the British envoy :—
[table]

The capital is said to have 50,000 inhabitants, San Salvador 38,000, Chiquimala 37,000; and in the whole republic the different races are mixed in the following proportions, according to the two authorities we have mentioned :—
[table]

The constitution, which was established in 1823, is federal, and modelled on that of North America. Each of the five states has its own legislature; and the general [7:2:645]government is vested in a congress, consisting of a senate of 10 members, and a house of representatives of 31, elected directly by the people; while the executive power is confided to a president, chosen for a term of years. Slavery has had no existence in Central America since the revolution. In this state, as in Mexico there is much inequality of fortune: Mr Thompson enumerates seven persons in the capital, whose property exceeds 500,000 dollars each, and eleven others whose property exceeds 100,000. The revenue, which was about 360,000 under the Spanish regime, is now about 806,000. The imports are estimated at L.2,000,000 sterling, which is certainly an exaggeration. The articles shipped from Britain for the republic in 1829 amounted only to L.10,000 official value; but British goods probably reach the country indirectly through the West India islands. Its leading productions for exportation are, cochineal, indigo, cocoa, cotton, hides, and drugs.^[75. Thompson’s Narrative of an Official Visit io Guatemala. London. 829. ]

Mexicois the most populous and powerful of all the new states erected in America since the commencement of the present century. If we include merely the 19 confederated governments, the republic covers an extent of 605,000 square English miles; but if we add the country still occupied by independent tribes over which it extends a claim, the Mexican territory comprehends an area of 1,600,000 square miles. About three fourths of the surface consists either of mountains or table-land, raised from 5000 to 10,000 feet above the sea. Owing to this extraordinary elevation, even those parts of the country which lie within the torrid zone, the low ground on the coast excepted, enjoy a dry, cool, and salubrious atmosphere; but this advantage is counterbalanced by the insufficient supply of moisture, and the rapid evaporation resulting from the same cause, which render the soil generally rather arid, and in many parts absolutely barren; by the smallness of the rivers, and the almost entire absence of inland navigation; and by the obstacles which the steep and rugged ascents from the coast present to land carriage. The republic is besides almost destitute of ports on the Atlantic side. Mexicois rich beyond every other country in the world in the precious metals; and there are few regions upon which nature has lavished so great a variety of vegetable productions, or where plants fitted to the coldest and the hottest climates may be seen so nearly in juxtaposition. The low ground on the east coast is admirably calculated for raising sugar, with which the state of Vera Cruz alone could supply all Europe; and no country is more favourably situated for growing the other great articles of West India produce, coffee, cotton, cocoa, indigo, and tobacco. In drugs, gums, and balsams, it can scarcely rival Brazil, Colombia, and Guatemala. Those productions which belong chiefly to the belt of warm low land along the eastern and western coast, and are yet cultivated only to a small extent, together with the precious metals, which come from the interior, must be the great articles of exchange for Mexicowith foreign countries. The raising of bread stuffs, as they are termed by the Anglo-Americans, wheat, maize, and barley, with potatoes, the cassava root, beans, pumpkins, fruits, &c. for domestic consumption, will necessarily be the chief branch of industry on the table-lands. The mines have never employed above 30,000 labourers; and their superior productiveness depends chiefly on two circumstances—the great abundance of the ore, which is only of poor quality, and the comparative facility with which they can be worked, owing to their being generally situated in fertile districts, where provisions, wood, and all materials can be easily procured. Many of the Peruvian mines are rendered useless by the sterility of the surrounding country. Mexicohas her full share of the ignorance and superstition which belonged to Old Spain and all its foreign possessions; and these evils, long cherished by a rapacious, immoral, and intolerant clergy, are now the greatest obstacles to her improvement. That excessive inequality of fortune which corrupts both extremes of society was nowhere in the world more prevalent than in Mexico Individual proprietors possessed immense tracts of land and boundless wealth, while all the great towns swarmed with beggars,and thousands fell a sacrifice to famine from time to time. The Mexican constitution, which is federal, and almost a literal copy of that of the United States, was established in 1824. The republic consists of 19 states, each of which has its distinct government; while a congress representing the whole is intrusted with the management of those affairs which concern the collective body. The house of representatives is chosen for two years, by the inhabitants at large, in the proportion of one member for 80,000 voters. The senate is composed of 38 members, or two for each state, who are elected by the state legislatures, for four years, and renewed by halves. The president is elected for four years by the state legislatures. The clergy before the revolution consisted of about 10,000 persons, the one half secular and the other regular. They enjoyed large revenues, which were very unequally divided. The monks and friars are now much reduced; the secular clergy, in 1827, amounted to 3677 individuals, who are but poorly paid, in consequence of the funds belonging to the order being dilapidated in the course of the revolution. The Catholic church in Mexicohas not relaxed in its intolerance. The revenue of the country, which amounted to 20,000,000 of dollars in 1803, is estimated by Mr Ward at 14,000,000 of dollars for 1828, the two most productive items being the duties of customs, and the monopoly of tobacco, which has been recently revived. But the finances are in extreme disorder, in consequence of the frequent changes in the government and the unsettled state of the country. The exports were estimated by Humboldt in 1803 at 21,700,000 dollars, of which 17,000,000 was in gold and silver; and the imports at 14,000,000. In 1824 the former were valued at 4,500,000 dollars, and the latter at 12,000,000. The value of all foreign commodities, however, has been completely changed by the suppression of the old monopoly; and the amount of goods imported now is greater than before the revolution. The distinction of castes, which was maintained in the greatest rigour under the colonial system, has now disappeared, and power and office are open, not only legally, but practically, to men of all colours. The African blacks formed an extremely small proportion of the Mexican population at all times, and since the revolution slavery has ceased. The number of inhabitants, which Mr Ward thinks, might amount to 8,000,000 in 1827, is estimated at 6,800,000 by Humboldt in 1823, and classed as follows :—
[table]

Mr Ward states, however, that very few of the whites, so called, are free of a mixture of Indian blood; and now, when the odious distinctions founded on complexion are abolished, they readily acknowledge it.

We have described the Spanish American states as
[7:2:646]
[table]

they exist at the present moment; but the sudden revolutions continually taking place in their governments render it too obvious that, owing to the ignorance and corruption of the people, not one of them has a sufficient force of cohesion to hold its parts together. In all probability, the nine states which we have mentioned will soon be dismembered into twenty or thirty, unless it happen, as it probably may, that military leaders, erecting thrones to themselves by the sword, apply the compressing force of despotic power to hold together the heterogeneous materials. The Spanish population of the new world are evidently unfit at present to conduct a government on the broad principles of republican liberty exemplified in the United States. They are yet in their political nonage, and will probably pay dear, as other nations have done, for the knowledge and experience of which they stand in need. The Brazilians, with apparently less liberty, enjoy more of the real advantages of good government; but the country, from its great extent, is not likely to remain permanently united. The lapse of a few years may be expected to produce great changes in the political condition of all Spanish and Portuguese America.

We have said nothing respecting the produce of the gold and silver mines in the different parts of America, because our object was to bring the information on this subject into one short general statement. The following table, given by Humboldt, exhibits the average produce of all the gold and silver mines in the new world about 1803.

The Spanish mark, in which the quantity is expressed in the first two columns, is valued at 145∙82 dollars in gold, and at 9∙4 dollars in silver. Mr Ward concludes, from his researches, that in the 15 years ending with 1810, the produce of the Mexican mines exceeded Humboldt’s calculation by 1,000,000 of dollars. This branch of industry has been injured more deeply than any other during the late wars. The great exertions required to retain the mines free of water, the amount of capital necessary to keep them working, and the facility with which violent hands could be laid upon their produce, all rendered these establishments extremely liable to suffer from domestic convulsions. Mr Ward computes, that in the 15 years between 1810 and 1825, the annual produce of the Mexican mines did. not exceed 10,000,000 of dollars, or about two fifths of their average produce during the 15 years preceding. If we suppose that the reduction has been as great in the other Spanish colonies, the entire produce of the American mines will not exceed L.4,000,000. In Brazil the washings have probably experienced no interruption; but, accordińg to the Edinburgh Review, Humboldt’s estimate for the country is too high by a third. This author computes that the whole produce of the American mines, from 1492 to 1803, was 5,706,000,000 dollars, or L.l,255,000,000, of which only 4⅜ per cent was retained in America, and 5,445,000,000 dollars (L. 1,197,900,000), or 95∣ per cent., was remitted to Europe. If we add L. 110,000,000 for what has been remitted since 1803, the whole value of the precious metals sent from America to Europe will be L.l,307,900,000 sterling. There is no reason to dread any falling off in the mineral treasures of America for a long period of time. On the contrary, were the country tranquil, and the skill and capital which some years of good government will create, applied to the development of this branch of industry, there is no doubt that many rich veins yet unknown would be opened, and the annual produce increased far beyond its utmost amount while in the hands of the Spaniards. Owing to causes which can no longer operate, it is believed that the richest mines of Mexicohave never yet been opened, while a great number remain unknown; and this probably holds true to a still greater extent in the other new states.^[76. Ward’s Mexico τol. i. ’ p. -4δ2.- ] Many millions of British capital were invested in the American mines in 1825 and 1826. The money, if wisely expended, might have yielded fair returns; but the spirit of gambling and speculation predominant at the time was incompatible with all sober mercantile views, and every one of the companies has proved a source of loss to the shareholders, while some have been dissolved after sacrificing all the capital embarked. More information on this subject will be given in our articles on the different states.^[77. Ibid. Humboldt’s Political Essay on N^cu> Spain, vol. iñ. ]

The United States were colonized a century later than Spanish America; but their brilliant and rapid progress shows, in a striking light, how much more the prosperity of nations depends on moral than on physical advantages. The North Americans had no gold mines, and a territory of only indifferent fertility, covered with impenetrable woods; but they brought with them intelligence, industry, a love of freedom, habits of order, and a pure and severe morality. Armed with these gifts of the soul, they have converted the wilderness into a land teeming with life, and smiling with plenty; and they have built up a social system so pre-eminently calculated to promote the happiness and moral improvement of mankind, that it has truly become the “envy of nations.” The republic is bounded on the north by Canada, on the south-west by Mexico and on the other sides by the sea or the Indian lands. It now consists of twenty-four sovereign states, and of three territories, which will be converted into states as soon as each acquires a population of 60,000 souls. The extent of the country, if we include merely the settled districts marked off with defined boundaries as states or territories, is 1,009,000 square English miles; but if we add the Indian lands stretching west to the Pacific Ocean, over which it claims a right of pre-emption, it embraces an area of 2,300,000 square miles. The agriculture of the United States partakes to some extent of a tropical character. The sugar-cane is cultivated in Louisiana, Florida, and other states, as high as the latitude of 31∣°. Cotton is raised in all the southern states within the 37th parallel, and tobacco in those within the 41st. Wheat succeeds in the middle and northern states, and maize thrives in every part of the union. Agriculture is conducted with considerable skill; but the “high farming” practised in England would not pay in America, where money is of much value, and land of little. Scarcely any portion of the soil is rented in the United States: the farmers [7:2:647]are almost universally proprietors; and when their property is extensive, which rarely happens, it is soon broken 'into small occupancies, under the law of equal division. The Americans are making considerable progress in manufactures, particularly in those of cotton. The mechanical skill which has been developed in England, by centuries of progressive industry, is rapidly transplanted to the United States by crowds of emigrants; while the increasing use of machinery is depriving England of the superiority derived from her cheap labour. In the useful arts generally America is on a level with France and England; in the fine arts and the sciences she is much behind. The internal commerce of the United States is conducted with extraordinary spirit. The capital expended on roads, canals, harbours, bridges, and other public works, appears scarcely credible to those who reflect on the short term of the republic’s existence. Her foreign trade is nearly as great as that of France, and her amount of shipping is half as great as that of the British Isles. Her exports and imports in 1827 were,—
[table]

In Louisiana and South Carolina the slaves are rather more numerous than the whites, but they are less numerous in the other states. Slavery does not exist in the nine states of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio; and it is verging to its extinction in the four states of Delaware, Maryland, Indiana, and Illinois. The slaves multiply as fast as the whites, a proof that their treatment is incomparably more mild than in the West Indies, where their numbers constantly diminish.

The American government is a pure representative democracy, in which the people are recognised as the fountain of all power; and the sole object of all its mechanism is to give effect to their deliberate opinions. The federal and state governments are constituted on the same plan. The legislature consists in every case of two bodies, a house of representatives chosen for one or two years, and a senate for a period varying from two years to six; but both always by popular election, except in the case of the federal senate, which is chosen by the legislatures of the twenty-four states. The president holds his office for four years, but is generally re-elected for four years more. While the politicians of Europe, bred in the schools of monarchy and aristocracy, have been predicting anarchy and confusion as the result of these republican institutions, their solid excellence has been quietly developing itself, in the cheering spectacle which the United States present of perfect order, security, and contentment, combined with growing intelligence, prosperity, and unrivalled liberty. On an average of the three years ending 1828, the expenditure of the United States was,—
[table]

There is no national church in America, and yet religion is in a flourishing condition in all the populous parts of the country. The most numerous denominations are, the presbyterians, independents, baptists, and methodists.

The characteristic facts in the condition of America are, the non-existence of titles, of privileged classes, of corporations in our sense of the term, of a landed aristocracy, of mendicity except to a very limited extent, and of an endowed church; the cheapness and efficiency of its government, the universality of education, the omnipresence of its periodical press, the high feeling of self-respect which exists in the very humblest classes, and the boundless spirit of enterprise which pervades society from top to bottom. The higher classes are less polished than in England, the middle are perhaps less carefully instructed; but the American people, taken collectively, are better educated, and have more intelligence and manliness of character, than any other nation in the world. The master evils of the republic are three,—the complex, tedious, and expensive law of England, which has been borrowed wholesale; an insecure and ever fluctuating paper currency; and the negro slavery, which blackens and benumbs all the southern states.

The portion of the American continent claimed by the British is bounded on the south by the territories of the United States, on the north by the Polar Sea, on the west by the Russian territories, from which it is divided by the meridian of 141° west. It contains an area of 2,600,000 square miles, of which about one half may be habitable, and one seventh part tolerably fertile; but the districts which have been marked out into counties or townships, and in which settlements are begun, form a very small portion of this immense region. We have measured the surface of these districts with some care, on a map published in the third report of the parliamentary committee on emigration in 1827; and have put the result into the first column of the following table, which contains the population of each colony, with its imports and exports for 1825, as given in the report.
[table]
[7:2:648]

The entire population of these colonies was 873,000 in 1825, and as it increases at the rate of about 3∣ per cent, per annum, it must amount to 1,020,000 in 1830. Canada is generally fertile, and is rapidly improving. The Welland canal, to be opened in 1830, unites lakes Erie and Ontario; and by a projected canal at the falls below the latter, and the great Rideau canal, now executing, to connect the river Ottawa with Kingston, an unbroken line of water-carriage of 1100 miles in length will be secured. The long duration of the winter, and the closing of the river navigation for five months by ice, is the greatest disadvantage to which these colonies are exposed.

Russian America comprises the north-west angle of the continent, as far as the 141st meridian west from London, with a narrow strip of coast reaching as far south as 55⅜° of north latitude. It occupies a surface of about 500,000 square miles, of which the useful soil probably does not constitute a tenth part. The Russians have merely a number of posts or factories stationed along the coast for conducting the trade in furs, which gives these pòssessions their only value. New Archangel, in latitude 57∙3° and longitude 135∙20° west, is the head establishment. It is a fortress, with a small garrison and 40 pieces of cannon. Owing to the rigour of the climate, this portion of America can never support more than a very limited population.

Hayti, called formerly Hispaniola and St Domingo, was a colony belonging partly to France and partly to Spain, till 1791, when the blacks rose in arms, killed a number of the whites, and expelled the rest. The attempt of England in 1793, and of France in 1801, to conquer the island, both failed, and Hayti has at length been acknowledged as an independent state by all the great powers, including France. The island, which contains about 26,000 square miles, is remarkably fertile; but its climate, like that of the West Indies generally, is rather unhealthful. The population, which before the revolution was estimated at 600,000, now amounts, according to a late article in the Edinburgh Review, to 035,000. It is entirely composed of blacks and mulattoes, no white man being allowed to become a citizen, or hold property in land. Slavery is prohibited. The government is republican. The president holds his office for life, and, with the consent of the senate, nominates his successor. The chamber of representatives consists of 72 members, chosen by the males of adult age, for five years; the senate of 24 members, elected for nine years by the house of representatives. The black republic has a code of laws compiled for its own use, a national guard, regular courts of justice, many schools on the Lancasterian plan, and one or two superior seminaries, where logic, moral philosophy, Latin, and mathematics, are taught. The army consists of 33 regiments of infantry, and 5 of cavalry, constituting a force of 24,800 men in 1827. The island is divided into 66 communes, and 33 parishes or districts not yet populous enough to rank as communes; and each of these divisions has its Council of Notables, or municipality, composed of three, four, or six persons, nominated for five years. The blacks have disproved the assertions of those who maintained that they could not support any regular system of government. There is little doubt that life and property are as well protected in Hayti as in Spain or Naples. It has indeed been found necessary to enforce the cultivation of the fields in the black republic by penal enactments; and the provisions of what is called the “rural code” on this subject, have been triumphantly referred to by the abettors of compulsory labour in the country. We must remember, however, that the bad habits generated by ages of slavery cannot be eradicated in the lapse of one generation. The small amount of the exports and imports now, compared with what they were in the colonial period, proves nothing against the blacks. Formerly the population lived on imported corn, and employed their labour in raising sugar and coffee for foreign countries; but at present the Haytians subsist on the produce of their own fields, and have of course fewer articles for exportation. The revenue arises from a land-tax, customs, stamp-duties, and a patent tax or graduated duty on trades and professions, similar to that which exists in France.^[78. Extrait de l' Almanaclι National de la République de Hayti pour 1827, en Bulletin Géographique, Supplement de 1828. Barclay’s Practical View of Slavery in the West Indies, p. 480. ]

The multifarious nature of the subject prevents us from attempting any description of the West India colonies, insular and continental. The islands have been variously denominated, but the most convenient division seems to us the following :—1. The Great Antilles, comprehending Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, and Porto Rico 2. The Small Antilles, extending in a semicircle from Porto Ricoto the coast of Guiana; 3. The Bahama Isles, about 500 in number, but only a small number of which are inhabited.

The British colonies are 18 in number, viz. 15 insular, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbadoes, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Nevis, St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincents, Tobago, Tortola, Trinidad, Bahamas, Bermuda; and 3 continental, Demerara, Berbice, Honduras. According to a parliamentary paper, these 18 colonies contained 713,000 slaves in 1824. The number of whites was probably about 70,000; and, adding as many more for the free persons of colour, the whole population may be estimated at 850,000 souls.

The Spanish possessions consist of the two islands of Cuba and Porto Rico According to a statement which appeared in the English newspapers in 1829, the population of Cuba amounted to 259,000 whites, 154,000 free blacks, and 225,000 slaves; total 638,000. We have seen no account of the number of inhabitants in Porto Rico but Humboldt computed the collective population of the two Spanish islands at 800,000 in 1823.

The French colonies in the West Indies consist of French Guiana on the continent, containing 17,300 inhabitants, of whom 13,600 are negro slaves? Guadaloupe, with 109,700 inhabitants, including 90,300 negroes; and Martinique, with 97,300 inhabitants, including 77,000 negroes. Total population of the French colonies, 224,300.^[79. Manuel Géographique de la France. Paris, 1828. ]

The Dutch have Surinam on the continent, with the islands of Curaçoa, St Eustatius, and St Martin. The collective population of these possessions was estimated by Balbi, in 1828, at 114,000, of whom three fourths are slaves.

The Danes have the small islands of Santa Cruz, St Thomas, and St Martin, containing a population probably of 10,000, of whom five sixths are slaves. St Bartholomew, another of the lesser Antilles, belongs to Sweden.

Humboldt gave the following estimate of the entire population of America in 1823 :—
[table]

If we assume the annual ratio of increase to be 2 per [7:2:649]cent, per annum upon the whole, the entire population in 1830 will Be about 40,000,000. This comes pretty near the aggregate of our estimates for the particular states and colonies, which are as under :—
[table]

Balbi’s estimate, published in his table in 1828, is 38,894,000.

The black population of America forms three groups, the centres of which are in the southern parts of the United States, in the West India islands, and in the eastern parts of Brazil :—
[table]

The number of blacks in all the other parts of America probably does not amount to 100,000. Slavery brings two evils with it, which strike at the roots of national prosperity; it produces an aversion to labour in the free-population, and it renders person and property insecure. We may therefore safely predict, that the countries where the African race most abound will be the most unimproved and backward part of the American continent a century hence.

One of the most interesting questions connected with America relates to the increase and probable amount, at a future period, of its inhabitants. It was the astonishing progress of the United States that first clearly unfolded the principles on which the multiplication of human beings depends. We now know with certainty that a prosperous community, possessing abundance of unoccupied land, will double its numbers in 25 years, without any aid from emigration; and as the scale ascends in a geometrical ratio, a short time necessarily produces a wonderful change. It is to be observed, however, that the whites, possessing the advantages of superior industry, order, and forethought, naturally increase faster than the other classes. In the United States this part of the population increases at the rate of 3 per cent, per annum; and when the Spanish American republics have settled down into a tranquil state, there is no doubt that their white inhabitants will multiply at the same rate. The Mexican Indians, and probably the Peruvians, have been increasing also, but slowly, while nearly all the independent tribes are mouldering away. The black population does not maintain its numbers in the West Indies; it is rather increasing in Brazil; and in the United States it grows rapidly. Setting aside the West Indies, where the negroes do not increase, and attending to the continent merely, let us take the number of each class as it stands at present, and see what the result will be in a course of years, assuming the rate of increase to be 3 per cent, for the whites, 1⅜ per cent, for the negroes, and 1 per cent, for the civilized Indians. If the whole population is 40,000,000 at present, the continental whites will be about 16,000,000, the Indians about 9,500,000, the negroes 5,000,000, and the mixed race about 7,000,000.

In Spanish America, it may be assumed that the mixed race, consisting almost entirely of mestizoes, will merge into the white, and increase nearly in the same ratio. We shall therefore add 5-7ths of the former to the latter, which will raise the whites to 21,000,000.
[table]

As the difficulty of providing for the growing annual increment of inhabitants must increase with the magnitude of the population, let us assume that at the end of a century the rate of increase falls to 2 per cent. The period of doubling will then be 36 years.
[table]

Thus, in the short period of two centuries, the whites now in America would multiply by natural means to a mass of people three times as great as are at present on the whole surface of the globe. Let us see, however, what would be the numbers of the other classes, supposing the rate of increase to receive a similar check at the end of a century, and adding two millions of the mixed race to the Indians.
[table]

We have serious doubts, however, whether the civilized Indians will not follow the fate of the wandering tribes, and disappear before the superior energy of the European race, when increasing numbers bring the two classes more into competition for employment and the means of subsistence. Either this will happen, or the red race will be gradually blended with the white before it attains the magnitude which our calculations exhibit. Much more difficulty will be felt in disposing of the negroes, with whom, on account of the deeper dye of their skins, and the taint which slavery has communicated to their blood, the whites will always be much more averse to contract alliances. Their increase, it is probable, will receive a check long before it has reached the number of 160 millions. The superior humanity developed in a well-organized society may shelter the blacks to some extent from cruelty; but in the long run, when stern necessity presses, weakness and ignorance must yield to intelligence and vigour. Another question, however, remains, and that relates to the number of human beings whom the new world could support. We seek, of course, only approximate results; and, in this point of view, the question is not incapable of solution.

Paradoxical as the fact may appear, we are satisfied that the new continent, though less than half the size of the old, contains at least an equal quantity of useful soil, and much more than an equal amount of productive power. America is indebted for this advantage to its comparatively small breadth, which brings nearly all its interior within reach of the fertilizing exhalations of the ocean. In the old continent, owing to its great extent from east to west, the central parts, deprived of moisture, are [7:2:650]almost everywhere deserts; and a belt round the western, southern, and eastern shores, comprises nearly all that contributes to the support of man. How much fruitful land, for instance, is there in Continental Asia? If we draw a line from the Gulf of Cutch (near the Indus) to the head of the Yellow Sea, we cut off India and China, with the intervening Birman empire, and the southern valleys of Thibet; and this space, which comprises about 3,500,000 square miles, if we take surface and fertility together, embraces five sixths of the productive power of Asia, though it covers 17,000,000 of square miles! Arabia, Persia, Central Thibet, Western India, Chinese and Independent Tartary, are deserts, with scattered patches of useful soil not amounting to the twentieth part of their extent. Siberia, or northern Asia, is little better, owing to aridity and cold together. Anatolia, Armenia, the Punjab, and a narrow strip along the western shores of the Pacific Ocean, north as far as the 60th parallel, compose the only valuable agricultural territory beyond India and China. Europe, which is merely the western margin of Asia, is all fruitful in the south; but on the north its fruitfulness terminates at the 60th or 62d parallel. Africa has simply a border of useful soil round three fourths of its sea-coast, with some detached portions of tolerably good land in its interior. Of the 31,000,000 of square miles which these three continents occupy, we cannot find, after some calculation, that the productive soil constitutes so much as one third, and of that third a part is but poor.

Now, in estimating the useful soil in America, we reject, 1. all the region northward of the latitude of 53°, amounting to 2,600,000 square miles; 2. a belt of barren land about 300 miles broad by 1000 in length, or 300,000 square miles, lying on the east side of the rocky mountains; 3. a belt of arid land-of similar extent situated on the east side of the Andes, between 24° and 40° of south latitude; 4. the desert shore of Peru, equal to 100,000 square miles; 5. an extent of 100,000 square miles for the arid country of California and Sonora; and, 6. an extent of 500,000 square miles for the summits of the Andes and the south extremity of Patagonia. These make an aggregate of 3,900,000 square miles; and this, deducted from 13,900,000, leaves 10,000,000 square miles as the quantity of useful soil in the new world.

Now, what relation does the fruitfulness of the ground bear to the latitude of the place? The productive powers of the soil depend on two circumstances, heat and moisture; and these increase as we approach the equator. First, the warm regions of the globe yield larger returns of those plants which they have in common with the temperate zones; and, next, they have peculiar plants which afford a much greater portion of nourishment from the same extent of surface. Thus, maize, which produces 40 or 50 for one in France, produces 150 for one on an average in Mexico and Humboldt computes that an arpent (five sixths of an acre), which will scarcely support two men when sown in wheat, will support fifty when planted with bananas. From a consideration of these and other facts, we infer that the productive, or rather nutritive powers of the soil, will be pretty correctly indicated by combining the ratios of the heat and the moisture, expressing the former of these in degrees of the centigrade scale. Something, we know, depends on the distribution of the heat through the different seasons; but as we do not aim at minute accuracy, this may be overlooked.
[table]

Thus, if the description of food were a matter of indifference, the same extent of ground which supports four persons at the latitude of 60°, would support 15 at the latitude of 45°, and 100 at the equator. But the food preferred will not always be that which the land yields in greatest abundance: and another most important qualifying circumstance must be considered,—it is labour which renders the ground fruitful; and the power of the human frame to sustain labour is greatly diminished in hot climates. In the torrid zone, in low situations, we doubt if it is possible for men to work regularly in the fields for more than five hours a day, or half the daily period of labour in England. On these grounds, and to avoid all exaggeration, we shall consider the capacity of the land to support population as proportional to the third power of the cosine (or radius of gyration) for the latitude. It will therefore stand thus in round numbers :—
[table]

In England the density of population is about 230 persons per square mile; but England is in some measure the workshop of the world, and supports, by her foreign trade, a greater population than her soil can nourish. In France the density of population is about 160; in Germany it varies from 100 to 200. Assuming, on these grounds, that the number of persons whom a square mile can properly sustain, without generating the pressure of a redundant population, is 150 at the latitude of 50°, we have 26 as the sum which expresses the productiveness of this parallel. Then taking, for the sake of simplicity, 35 as the index of the productiveness of the useful soil beyond 30° in America, and 85 as that of the country within the parallel of 30° on each side of the equator, we have about 4,100,000 square miles, each capable of supporting 200 persons, and 5,700,000 square miles, each capable of supporting 490 persons. It follows, that if the natural resources of America were fully developed, it would afford sustenance to 3,600,000,000 of inhabitants, a number five times as great as the entire mass of human beings existing at present upon the globe! The novelty of this result may create perplexity and doubt on a first view; but we are satisfied that those who investigate the subject for themselves will be satisfied that our estimate is moderate. But, what is even more surprising,—there is every probability that this prodigious population will be in existence within three or at most four centuries. We are quite aware of the objections which may be raised to this conclusion, but they all seem to us to admit of an answer. In particular, we would observe, that the expense and difficulty of transporting men from situations where they are redundant, to others where vacant space exists, which is so much felt in the old world, will be incredibly facilitated by the employment of steam-navigation upon the innumerable rivers which are ramified over four fifths of the new continent.

The imagination is lost in contemplating a state of things which will make so great and rapid a change in the condition of the world. We almost fancy that it is a dream; and yet the result is based on principles quite as certain as those which govern the conduct of men in their ordinary pursuits. There are many elements of disorder now operating in Spanish America, but these are merely the dregs left by the old Spanish despotism; and the Anglo-American republic is a pole-star to guide the people in their course towards freedom and prosperity. Nearly all social improvements spring from the reciprocal influence of condensed numbers and diffused intelligence. What, then, will be the state of society in America two [7:2:651]centuries hence, when a thousand or two thousand millions of civilized men are crowded into a space comparatively so narrow, and when this immense mass of human beings speak only two languages! We take for granted that the Portuguese will merge into the Spanish; and it is dear to us that the Russian will never obtain a footing in the new world. Such a state of things may be said to undo the curse of Babel, and restore the great mass of mankind to their pristine facility of intercourse; for the languages spoken by the communities of Europe and Asia will be as unimportant then, in the general scale of the globe, as the dialects of Hungary, Finland, and Bohemia, are in Europe at this day. History shows that wealth, power, science, literature, all follow in the train of numbers, general intelligence, and freedom. The same causes which transferred the sceptre of civilisation from the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile to western Europe, must, in the course of no long period, carry it from the latter to the plains of the Mississippi and the Amazon. When we reflect on these changes, which are not more extraordinary than they are near and certain, the conviction is forced upon us, that society, after all its advances, is yet but in its infancy; that the habitable world, when its productive powers are regarded, may be said hitherto to have been an untenanted waste; and that we have at present only an imperfect glimpse of the state of things under which the true destiny of man, and the grand scheme of providence in this lower world, is to receive its full development. We are quite aware that some will smile at these speculations; but if any one suspects us of drawing on our fancy, we would just request him to examine thoroughly the condition and past progress of the North American republic. Let him look at its amazing strides in wealth, intelligence, and social improvement; at its indestructible liberty; and, above all, at the prodigious growth of its population; and let him answer the question to himself, “what power can stop the tide of civilisation which is pouring from this single source over an unoccupied world ?” Let him trace the laws on which this progress depends, and let him then apply them to unfold the future history of society in the new continent.

The project of joining the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by a canal carried across the narrow part of the American continent, has often excited the attention of statesmen and commercial men. This canal, if executed upon a scale sufficient to admit vessels of 300 or 400 tons, would have a powerful influence upon the fate of America. For all the purposes of commercial intercourse it would bring the east and west sides of the continent within one third part of their present distance from one another; and would be of even more advantage to the new world than the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape has been to the old. With regard to the practicability of the scheme, we want precise data; but some rays of light have been thrown upon it by Humboldt, whose mighty genius has so often extracted valuable results from very imperfect materials. There are five points which have been supposed to offer facilities for the execution of the plan.

1. The isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Mexico at 95° of west longitude. The breadth of the continent here is 140 English miles; but the ground is low; and two streams, the rivers del Passo and Chimalapa, flowing to the opposite seas, could be rendered navigable for small vessels so far into the interior, that, according to the report of two Spanish engineers, a canal of seven leagues would complete the navigation from the one sea to the other.

2. The lake of Nicaragua, at 85° west longitude," is connected with the Atlantic by the river San Juan, and is divided from the Pacific only by a narrow tract of ground, the precise nature of which was unknown, till Mr Thompson, British envoy to Guatemala, published the details of a rude survey carried across it by a Spanish engineer.^[80. Thompson’s Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala, Appendix. ] From this survey, it appears that the distance between the lake and the South Sea, along the line considered most suitable for a canal, is 32,687 Spanish yards, or 17 English miles. The summit level, or the highest part of the land which the canal would pass over, seems to be 150 feet above the lake, or 270 above the sea. The river San Juan, flowing from the lake to the Atlantic, is said by Mr Davis Robinson to be navigable for sloops through its whole length; and in the lake there is depth of water for vessels of any size. The execution of the canal across the isthmus of 17 miles, into the gulf of Papagayo, would apparently be attended with no serious difficulty. This is, in short, the spot where nature, by doing so much, seems to hold out to man the strongest inducements to complete her work. Judging from the best maps, the length of the inland navigation here would be,—
[table]

In 1824 three companies in England, Holland, and the United States, were on terms with the government of Guatemala for executing this canal; but the scheme fell to the ground, like a multitude of others created during the speculating mania of that period; and the unsettled state of all the new republics must for the present discourage any private association from advancing money upon the guarantee of their rulers.

3. The isthmus of Panama. Levels were carried across this isthmus in 1828 and 1829 by Mr Lloyd and Mr Falmarc, under orders from Bolivar; and an account of the result was read to the Royal Society of London in the winter of 1829. The line of the survey extended from Panama in a north-west direction, along the Rio Chagres to its mouth, and the highest point of the ground crossed was found to be 633⅓ English feet above the sea. The mean difference of level between the Atlantic and Pacific seas here was found to be very trifling, as Humboldt conjectured, the former being only 3ļ feet higher than the latter. It is obvious, that though a railway with inclined planes might be advantageous at this spot, a canal is out of the question.

4. The river Atrato, which flows northward into the gulf of Darien (long. 77. W.) affords two lines of communication with the Pacific. One of these is by the Naipi, which rises six leagues or 20 miles from the port of Cupica, on the Pacific Ocean (lat. 7. 15. N.) Humboldt was informed that the chain of hills almost disappears here, and that, either by a tract of low country or a pass, an easy communication exists between the shores of the South Sea and the Atrato, which is navigable for boats much farther south than the Naipi. .Captain Cochrane, however, learned from Major Alvarez (Travels in Colombia), that the Naipi is full of bars, and that the isthmus between the river and the coast is traversed by three ranges of hills. The length of the line of communication here would be at least 120 miles.
[7:2:652]

5. The second line of communication afforded by the Atrato conducts to the Pacific Ocean by the river San Juan, at 4° of north latitude. The upper branches of the two rivers approach within a distance of 10 or 12 miles of each other, at the 6th degree of north latitude. Being both navigable for boats, and the intervening space forming a quebrada or ravine, the priest of the neighbouring village of Novita induced his parishioners to dig a canal connecting the one stream with the other. Through this channel boats loaded with cocoa have occasionally passed from sea to sea since 1788. The length of the line of communication, however, would be about 350 miles. A line of boat navigation could probably be established at this place much more easily than at any other; but, to render a canal in Central America useful on a great scale, it must be what Humboldt calls “a canal of oceanic navigation.” It must admit ships large enough to carry on trade advantageously in the main ocean—ships of 300 or 400 tons, drawing 16 or 17 feet of water. From the imperfect accounts we possess of the different lines, our belief is, that the facilities for forming such a canal are much greater at Nicaragua than any where else.

The opinion entertained in the infancy of natural history, that all the larger animals had spread from one common centre, to the different countries where we find them, is, we believe, now abandoned by all scientific writers. It is found that every region of the globe, separated from others by well-marked boundaries, or by contrasted climates, has plants and animals peculiar to itself. The vast multitude of facts now ascertained respecting the distribution of animals can be explained on no hypothesis but one. We are forced to infer, that after the last catastrophe which destroyed the living beings inhabiting the earth, a great variety of new animal tribes were created; that each was placed on the spot to which its powers and functions were best adapted; and that from this as a centre, it was left to spread by such means of locomotion as nature had provided it with. Some birds, for instance, strong of wing, and some few quadrupeds of migratory habits, are diffused from the west coast of Europe to the east coast of Asia; while many others, which, from their mode of life or their small size, were ill fitted for travelling, are confined within a very narrow space. Where wild animals, resembling each other, exist in regions distant and entirely separated, it is found that they are not of the same species, but are corresponding species belonging to the same genus. The horse, the ox, the antelope, the elephant, and the rhinoceros of Asia, are distinct species from those of southern Africa, where the same genera exist. This hypothesis, as Dr Prichard remarks, does not contradict the testimony of the Scriptures; it merely assumes that there were animals created subsequent to the deluge in various parts of the earth, of which it was not necessary for the sacred historian to speak. Noah was shut up in the ark with the animals peculiar to the region in which the antediluvian race of mankind resided, and what is recorded respecting them is no doubt literally true; but it does not follow that other animals, suited to the new condition of the various parts of the globe, were not created, because Moses, who probably was not informed of the fact, has not mentioned it.^[81. Prichard’s Researches, vol. i. p. 82. ]

When this point is admitted, we are saved from the difficulty of explaining how animals which can only live in a warm climate should have wandered from Armenia through the frozen regions of northern Asia and America, and fixed themselves in the plains of the Amazon or the Plata, without being found anywhere in the intermediate space. No well-informed naturalist doubts now that most of the animal tribes of the new world were created in or near the spots where we find them, and never existed in Armenia, or any other part of the old continent. This conclusion is confirmed by the only fact which presents an apparent exception to it, namely, that the few species of quadrupeds common to the old and the new world belong to the arctic region, and to tribes which are capable of bearing such a degree of cold as exists at Behring’s Straits.

Buffon’s observation is substantially true, that America wants the larger and the more perfect classes of animals. There are no congeners there to the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the camelopard, the camel, and the horse. The species corresponding to the lion, the tiger, and the hyena of the old world, are much less distinguished by their strength and ferocity. On the other hand, most of those singular races which display the widest deviation from the usual laws of organization, are found in America, and some are peculiar to it; but nothing can be more wild than the inference drawn from these facts, that the inferior size or fierceness of the American animals arose from some peculiarity in the soil or climate.

The class Mammalia in North America, so far as it is known, includes 118 quadrupeds and 28 cetacea, which are arranged thus :—
[table]

Of these, 21 species (excluding those in the fossil state), are said to be common to the two continents, viz. of the mole 1 species, shrew 2, bear 1, glutton 1, otter 1, wolf 2, fox 2, weasel 2, seal 2, beaver 1, field mouse 1, campagnol 1, squirrel 1, deer 1, sheep 1.^[82. Fauna Americana, by Richard Harlan. Philadelphia, 1825. ] More careful inquiry, however, will probably demonstrate that some of these animals are merely congeners, and not strictly of the same species. No complete enumeration of the animals of South America, so far as we know, exists; and even the 146 tribes in the above table do not include some species which inhabit Mexico It were much to be wished that some learned naturalist would favour the world with a systematic view of the whole zoology of the new world. As we possess neither skill nor materials for the completion of such a task, we shall content ourselves here with copying the following table of American quadrupeds, compiled from the works of Acosta, Buffon, and other older naturalists, though it is very defective, and not correct in some of its denominations. In treating of the separate parts of the new continent, we hope to be able to do more justice to the subject of natural history.^[83. We refer those who wish for further information respecting the quadrupeds of America, to the Fauna Americana of Richard Harlan; to Acosta’s Historia Natural y Moral de las lndias; to Buffon’s chapters on the subject; to Warden’s Account of the United States, vol. i. chap. vi.; and to Azara’s valuable work on the Quadrupeds of Paraguay, of which a translation into French, in two volumes octavo, was published in Paris in 1801, by Moreau St Mery, and may easily be procured. We may expect great additions to the natural history of La Plata, Patagonia, and Peru, from the labours of a young Frenchman, Μ. Alcide d’Orbigny, who has been for many years traversing these countries, and studying their zoology. A notice of some of his discoveries is given in tłie Bulletin des Sciences Naturelles for Nov. 1829. ]
[7:2:653]

Quadrupeds of America.

Buffalo. Bison.

White bear.

Bear.

Caribou.

Elk. Elan. Orignal.

Red deer.

Fallow deer

Roe.

Wolf.

Tapir.

Puma.

Jaguar.

Cabiai.

Tamanoir.

Tamandua.

Cougar of North America.

Cougar of South America.

Ocelot.

Pecari.

Jaguaret.

Alco.

Lama.

Paco.

Paca.

Serval.

Glutton. Carcajou.

Wild cat.

Lynx.

Beaver.

Badger.

Red fox.

Grey fox.

Otter.

Monax or Marmotte.

Vison.

Hedgehog.

Martin.

Water rat.

Weasel.

Shrew mouse.

Sloth. Unau.

Saricoienne.

Kincajou.

Tatou Kabassou.

Urson. Urchin.

Raccoon. Raton.

Coati.

Coendou.

Sloth. Aï.

Sapajou Ouarini.

Sapajou Coaita.

Tatou Encubert.

Tatou Apar.

Tatou Cachica.

Little Coendou.

Opossum. Sarigue.

Tapeti.

Margay.

Crabier.

Agouti.

Sapajou Saï.

Tatou Cirquinçon.

Tatou Tatouate.

Mouffette Squash.

Mouffette Chiche.

Mouffette Conepate. Mouffette. Zorilla. Whabus. Hare. Rabbit. Aperea.

Akouchi.

Ondatra. Musk rat.

Pilori.

Flying squirrel.

Great grey squirrel.

Fox squirrel of Virginia.

Surikate.

Mink.

Sapajou. Sajou.

Indian pig. Cochon d’Inde.

Sapajou. Saïmiri.

Phalanger.

Coquallin.

Lesser grey squirrel.

Black squirrel.

Red squirrel.

Sagoin Saki.

Sagoin Pinch e.

Sagoin Tamarin.

Sagoin Ouistiti.

Sagoin Marikine.

Sagoin Mico

Cayopollin.

Fourmillier.

Marmose∙

Sarigue of Cayenne.

Tucan.

Red mole.

Ground squirrel.

America affords one fossil species remarkable for size, and common to it with the old continent, the mammoth or mastodon giganteum. The bones of this animal, in a very perfect state (and in the extreme north sometimes covered with flesh), have been found in great quantities all over North America and Siberia, and as far south and west as Spain. According to Cuvier, it was fifteen or eighteen feet high, and was covered with coarse red wool, and long stiff black hairs which formed a mane along its back. Its enormous tusks were implanted in alveolae longer than those of the elephant of the present day, but in other respects it was pretty similar to the Indian elephant. It lived on vegetable food, chiefly, it is supposed, on the leaves and tender branches of young trees. Remains of this species are found in abundance beneath the surface of dried marshes along the banks of the great rivers the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Hudson, &c. It has not been found in South America; but the bones of other species belonging to the same genus, and of smaller size, have been met with in the plains of La Plata.

It is remarked by Azara, that single species of wild animals are diffused over a much wider surface in the new world than in the old. The cougar, jaguar, and tapir, for instance, are found from the banks of the Plata to those of the Rio del Norte in Mexico This circumstance strengthens the conclusion, that America derived its human inhabitants from the old continent, and remained, of course for a much longer period, entirely in possession of the animal tribes; and further, that, in the former, civilisation (such as it was) arose only at a late period.^[84. Αzara , French translation.. Preface, p. 50. ]

The European animals which have been naturalized in America are the cow, horse, ass, hog, sheep, goat, dog; and these have multiplied to such a degree as to exceed the native quadrupeds greatly in numbers. The warm climate of the tropical parts of America has produced considerable changes in the habits and physical qualities of most of these species. The hog, which generally wanders in the woods, and lives on the wild fruits and roots found there, has lost in a great measure its domestic habits, and assumed the character of the wild boar. The black-cattle also, roaming at large in a country entirely uninclosed, are found to fall off unless they receive a certain quantity of salt in their food, which in some cases they procure from plants, in others from brackish water. By distributing salt to them ata certain regular hour, they are taught to assemble at the owner’s residence, and are thus kept from becoming wild. In Europe the constant practice of milking cows has enlarged the udder greatly beyond its natural size, and so changed the secretions, that the supply does not cease when the calf is removed. In Colombia, where circumstances are entirely different, nature shows a strong tendency to resume its original type. A cow gives milk there only while the calf is with her. It must be allowed to suck during the day, and the fluid is procured only by separating them during the night, and milking the cow in the morning before the calf visits her. The ass has undergone little alteration in America, and it has nowhere become wild. It is otherwise with the horse. Numbers of these animals in a wild state exist in Colombia, and many other parts of America, both South and North, where they wander over the plains and savannahs in troops. It is observed that the colour of animals living in this state returns to that bay chesnut which is considered as characteristic of the natural wild horse. It is worthy of notice, that the amble, the pace to which the domestic horse in Spanish America is exclusively trained, becomes in the course of some generations hereditary, and is assumed by the young ones without teaching. The sheep thrives and multiplies in the temperate parts of the new world, and shows no tendency to withdraw from the protection of man; but in the warm regions it undergoes a remarkable change. If the lamb is shorn at the usual time, its wool is of the same description as in Europe, and it will grow again in the same way; but if it is suffered to remain on the animal’s body after the proper season for cutting, it thickens, felts together, and detaches itself, and then is succeeded by a short close shining hair, very like that of the goat in the same climate. The goat in Colombia has [7:2:654]the size of its udder contracted, and undergoes a change similar to that which is experienced by the cow.^[85. Sur les Changemens survenus, &c. par Μ. Roulin, en Bulletin des Sciences Naturelles, Avril 1829. ]

We intended, before concluding, to give an account of the cultivated vegetables of America, and of their distribution, according to the latitude or elevation of each country. On examination, however, we have found the materials within our reach too imperfect, and the subject too complicated and difficult, to be treated in a useful and satisfactory manner within the space which could be afforded to it in this article. We shall endeavour to supply the deficiency as far as practicable in our descriptions of the several states. (p.)