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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But It
Must Be Remembered That The Position Of The Three Zones, That Of
The Forests, The Pastures, And The Cultivated Land, Is Not
Everywhere The Same, And That It Is Nowhere So Regular As In
Venezuela.
It is not always from the coast to the interior, that
population, commercial industry, and intellectual improvement,
diminish.
In Mexico, Peru, and Quito, the table-lands and central
mountains possess the greatest number of cultivators, the most
numerous towns situated near to each other, and the most ancient
institutions. We even find, that, in the kingdom of Buenos Ayres,
the region of pasturage, known by the name of the Pampas, lies
between the isolated part of Buenos Ayres and the great mass of
Indian cultivators, who inhabit the Cordilleras of Charcas, La Paz,
and Potosi. This circumstance gives birth to a diversity of
interests, in the same country, between the people of the interior
and those who inhabit the coasts.
To form an accurate idea of those vast provinces which have been
governed for ages, almost like separate states, by viceroys and
captains-general, we must fix our attention at once on several
points. We must distinguish the parts of Spanish America opposite
to Asia from those on the shores of the Atlantic; we must ascertain
where the greater portion of the population is placed; whether near
the coast, or concentrated in the interior, on the cold and
temperate table-lands of the Cordilleras. We must verify the
numerical proportions between the natives and other castes; search
into the origin of the European families, and examine to what race,
in each part of the colonies, belongs the greater number of whites.
The Andalusian-Canarians of Venezuela, the Mountaineers* (*
Montaneses.
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