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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The Inhabitants Of The Mountains Of Santander Are
Called By This Name In Spain.) And The Biscayans Of Mexico, The
Catalonians Of Buenos Ayres, Differ Essentially In Their Aptitude
For Agriculture, For The Mechanical Arts, For Commerce, And For All
Objects Connected With Intellectual Development.
Each of those
races has preserved, in the New as in the Old World, the shades
that constitute its national physiognomy; its asperity or mildness
of character; its freedom from sordid feelings, or its excessive
love of gain; its social hospitality, or its taste for solitude.
In
the countries where the population is for the most part composed of
Indians and mixed races, the difference between the Europeans and
their descendants cannot indeed be so strongly marked, as that
which existed anciently in the colonies of Ionian and Doric origin.
The Spaniards transplanted to the torrid zone, estranged from the
habits of their mother-country, must have felt more sensible
changes than the Greeks settled on the coasts of Asia Minor, and of
Italy, where the climates differ so little from those of Athens and
Corinth. It cannot be denied that the character of the Spanish
Americans has been variously modified by the physical nature of the
country; the isolated sites of the capitals on the table-lands or
in the vicinity of the coasts; the agricultural life; the labour of
the mines, and the habit of commercial speculation: but in the
inhabitants of Caracas, Santa Fe, Quito, and Buenos Ayres, we
recognize everywhere something which belongs to the race and the
filiation of the people.
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