orders from the Court of Spain, to have those excellent notions of political economy delivered to the editors of the Peruvian Mercury, which they have published. It was in Mexico, and not at Madrid, that Humboldt heard Count de Revillagigedo, the viceroy, blamed for having informed all New Spain, that the capital of a country which has six millions of inhabitants, contained, in 1790, only two thousand three hundred Europeans, while it was computed that there were in it more than fifty thousand Hispano-Americans. The persons who uttered these complaints, considered the fine establishment of posts, by which a letter travels from Buenos Ayres to New California, as one of the most dangerous conceptions of Count Florida Blanca. They counselled (happily without success) the rooting up of the vines of New Mexico and Chili, in order to favour the commerce of the mother-country.

If we compare the Seven Provinces of Caracas to the kingdom of Mexico and the island of Cuba, we shall succeed in finding the approximate number of white Creoles, and even of Europeans. The first, or Hispano-Americans, form in Mexico nearly one-fifth; and in the island of Cuba, according to the very accurate enumeration of 1801, a third of the whole population. When we reflect that the kingdom of Mexico is inhabited by two millions and a half of natives of the copper-coloured

४

racas.

race,-when we consider the state of the coasts that are bathed by the Pacific Ocean, and the small number of whites in the Intendencies of Puebla and Oaxaca, comparatively with the natives, we cannot doubt, that the province of Venezuela at least, if not the whole of Caracas, has a greater proportion than that of one to five. The island of Cuba,* in which the whites are even more numerous than in Chili, may furnish us with a limiting number, that is to say, the maximum that can be supposed in CaI believe we must stop at two hundred, or two hundred and ten thousand HispanoAmericans, in a total population of nine hundred thousand souls. The number of Europeans included in the white race, does not exceed twelve or fifteen thousand. It certainly is not greater at Mexico than sixty thousand; and several statements show, that if we esti mate the whole of the former Spanish colonies at fourteen or fifteen millions of inhabitants, there are in this number at most three millions of Creole whites, and two hundred thousand Europeans.

The Indian population in the provinces of Caracas is thus inconsiderable. It is moreover

We do not mention the kingdom of Buenos Ayres, where, among a million of inhabitants, the whites are extremely numerous in the ports toward the coast; while the table-lands, or provinces of the Sierra, are almost entirely peopled with natives.

recently civilized, and all the towns have been founded by the Spanish conquerors. Those could not follow, as in Mexico and Peru, the traces of the ancient civilization of the natives. Caracas, Maracaibo, Cumana, and Coro, have nothing Indian but the name.

SECTION II.

THEIR GENERAL CIVILIZATION.

IN China and Japan, observes Humboldt, those inventions are considered as recent, which have not been known above two thousand years in the European colonies, an event appears extremely old, if it dates back three centuries, or about the period of the discovery of America.

The absence of memorials, which characterizes new nations, both in the United States and in the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, is well worthy of attention. The void has not only something painful to the traveller, who finds himself deprived of the most delightful enjoyments of the imagination; it has also an influence on the greater or less powerful ties, that bind the colonist to the soil on which he dwells, to the form of the rocks surrounding his hut, and to the trees which have shaded his cradle.

Among the ancients, the Phoenicians and the Greeks, for instance, traditions and national remembrances passed from the mother-country to the colonies; where, perpetuated from generation to generation, they never cease to have a favourable influence on the opinions, the manners, and the policy of the colonists. The climates of these first establishments beyond the seas, differed but little from those of the mother-country. The Greeks of Asia Minor and Sicily were not strangers to the inhabitants of Argos, Athens, and Corinth, from whom they boasted their descent. A great analogy of manners contributed to cement the union, which was founded on religious and political interests. The colonists frequently offered the first fruits of their harvests in the temples of the metropolis; and when by some sinister accident the sacred fire was extinguished on the altars of Hestia, messengers were sent from the farther part of Ionia, to rekindle the flame at the Prytaneion of Greece. Everywhere, in Cyrene, as well as on the banks of the Mæotis, the inhabitants carefully preserved the traditions of the mother-country. Other remembrances, equally fitted to affect the imagination, were attached to the colonies themselves. They had their sacred groves, their tutelary divinities, their local mythology, and, what gave life and durability to the fictions of the first ages, they had poets, who extended their glory as far as the metropolis itself.

These advantages, and many others, are wanting in modern colonies. The greater part are settled in a zone, where the climate, the productions, the aspect of the sky, and the scenery of the landscape, differ altogether from those of Europe. The colonist vainly bestows on mountains, rivers, and valleys, those names which call to his remembrance the sites of the mother-country: these names soon lose their attraction, and have no meaning with the generations that succeed. Under the influence of an exotic nature, habits are generated that are adapted to new wants; national remembrances are insensibly effaced; and those that remain, like phantoms of the imagination, have neither "a local habitation, nor a name." The glory of Don Pelagio, and of the Cid Campeador, has penetrated even to the mountains and forests of America: the people sometimes pronounce these illustrious names; but they form no other notions of their existence, than that of heroes belonging to some vague period of fabulous times.

This foreign firmament, this contrast of climate, this physical conformation of the country, have a more decided effect on the state of society in the colonies, than the absolute distance of the mother-country. Such is the improved state of modern navigation, that the mouths of the Orinoco and of the Rio de la Plata seem more contiguous to Spain, than in