Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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In Europe, Our Wheat, Barley, And Rye Cover
Vast Spaces Of Ground; And In General The Arable Lands Touch Each
Other, Wherever The Inhabitants Live Upon Corn.
It is different
under the torrid zone, where man obtains food from plants which
yield more abundant and earlier harvests.
In those favoured climes,
the fertility of the soil is proportioned to the heat and humidity
of the atmosphere. An immense population finds abundant nourishment
within a narrow space, covered with plantains, cassava, yams, and
maize. The isolated situation of the huts dispersed through the
forest indicates to the traveller the fecundity of nature, where a
small spot of cultivated land suffices for the wants of several
families.
These considerations on the agriculture of the torrid zone
involuntarily remind us of the intimate connexion existing between
the extent of land cleared, and the progress of society. The
richness of the soil, and the vigour of organic life, by
multiplying the means of subsistence, retard the progress of
nations in the paths of civilization. Under so mild and uniform a
climate, the only urgent want of man is that of food. This want
only, excites him to labour; and we may easily conceive why, in the
midst of abundance, beneath the shade of the plantain and
bread-fruit tree, the intellectual faculties unfold themselves less
rapidly than under a rigorous sky, in the region of corn, where our
race is engaged in a perpetual struggle with the elements. In
Europe we estimate the number of the inhabitants of a country by
the extent of cultivation:
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