FVTTRE ADYANTAGES TO COMMERCE. 431 



Rio Negro, to carry off slaves and exercise pillage, com- 

 pelled some rude tribes to rouse themselves from theii 

 indolence, and form associations for their common defence 

 I/he little good, however, which these wars with the Caribs 

 (the Bedouins of the rivers of Guiana) produced, was 

 but slight compensation for the evils that followed in 

 their train, by rendering the tribes more ferocious, and 

 diminishing their population. We cannot doubt, that the 

 physical aspect of Greece, intersected by small chains of 

 mountains, and mediterranean gulfs, contributed, at the 

 dawn of civilization, to the intellectual development of the 

 Greeks. But the operation of this influence of climate, and 

 of the configuration of the soil, is felt in all its force only 

 among a race of men who, endowed with a happy organi- 

 zation of the mental faculties, are susceptible of exterior 

 impulse. In studying the history of our species, we see, at 

 certain distances, these foci of ancient civilization dispersed 

 over the globe like luminous points ; and we are struck 

 by the inequality of improvement in nations inhabiting 

 analogous climates, and whose native soil appears equally 

 favoured by the most precious gifts of nature. 



Since my departure from the banks of the Orinoco and 

 the Amazon, a new era has unfolded itself in the social 

 state of the nations of the West. The fury of civil disscu- 

 sions has been succeeded by the blessings of peace, and a 

 freer development of the arts of industry. The bifurcations 

 of the Orinoco, the isthmus of Tuamini, so easy to be made 

 passable by an artificial canal, will ere long fix the attention 

 of commercial Europe. The Cassiquiare, as broad as the 

 Rhine, and the course of which is one hundred and eighty 

 miles in length, will no longer form uselessly a navigable 

 canal between two basins of rivers which have a surface of one 

 hundred and ninety thousand square leagues. The grain of. 

 New Grenada will be carried to the banks of the Rio Negro ' 

 boats will descend from the sources of the Napo and the 

 Ucuyabe, from the Andes of Quito and of Upper Peru, to 

 the mouths of the Orinoco, a distance which equals that 

 from Timbuctoo to Marseilles. A country nine or ten 

 times larger than Spain, and enriched with the most varied 

 productions, is navigable in every direction by the medium 

 of the natural canal of the Cassiquiare, and the bifurcation 



