Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Continental Part Of The
New World Is At Present In Some Sort Divided Between Three Nations Of
European Origin; One (And That The Most Powerful) Is Of Germanic Race:
The Two Others Belong By Their Language, Their Literature, And Their
Manners To Latin Europe.
Those parts of the old world which advance
farthest westward, the Spanish Peninsula and the British Islands, are
those
Of which the colonies are most extensive; but four thousand
leagues of coast, inhabited solely by the descendants of Spaniards and
Portuguese, attest the superiority which in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries the peninsular nations had acquired, by their
maritime expeditions, over the navigators of other countries. It may
be fairly asserted that their languages, which prevail from California
to the Rio de la Plata and along the back of the Cordilleras, as well
as in the forests of the Amazon, are monuments of national glory that
will survive every political revolution.
The inhabitants of Spanish and Portuguese America form together a
population twice as numerous as the inhabitants of English race. The
French, Dutch, and Danish possessions of the new continent are of
small extent; but, to complete the general view of the nations which
may influence the destiny of the other hemisphere, we ought not to
forget the colonists of Scandinavian origin who are endeavouring to
form settlements from the peninsula of Alashka as far as California;
and the free Africans of Hayti who have verified the prediction made
by the Milanese traveller Benzoni in 1545.
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