122 EARLY COLONISTS. 



Siberian hunters. It is a curious phenomenon to find the 

 rites of the Greek Church established in one part of America, 

 and to see two nations which inhabit the eastern and 

 western extremities of Europe (the Russians and the 

 Spaniards) thus bordering on each other on a continent on 

 which they arrived by opposite routes ; but the almost 

 savage state of the unpeopled coasts of Ochotsk and Karats- 

 ehatka, the want of resources furnished by the ports of Asia, 

 and the barbarous system hitherto adopted in the Scandi- 

 navian colonies of the JSTew World, are circumstances which 

 will hold them long in infancy. Hence it follows, that if 

 in the researches of political economy we are accustomed 

 to survey masses only, we cannot but admit that the 

 American continent is divided, properly speaking, between 

 three great nations of English, Spanish, and Portuguese 

 race. The first of these three nations, the Anglo-Americans, 

 is, next to the English of Europe, that whose flag waves over 

 the greatest extent of sea. Without any distant colonies, 

 its commerce has acquired a growth attained in the old 

 world by that nation alone which communicated to North 

 America its language, its literature, its love of labour, its 

 predilection for liberty, and a portion of its civil institu- 

 tions. 



The English and Portuguese colonists have peopled only 

 the coasts which lie opposite to Europe ; the Castilians, on 

 the contrary, in the earliest period of the conquest, crossed 

 the chain of the Andes, and made settlements in the most 

 western regions. There only, at Mexico, Cundinamarca, 

 Quito, and Peru, they found traces of ancient civilization, 

 agricultural nations, and flourishing empires. This circum- 

 stance, together with the increase of the native mountain 

 population, the almost exclusive possession of great metallic 

 wealth, and the commercial relations established from the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century with the Indian archipe- 

 lago, have given a peculiar character to the Spanish posses- 

 sions in equinoctial America. In the East Indies, the 

 people who fell into the hands of the English and Portuguese 

 settlers were wandering tribes, or hunters. Far from form- 

 ing a portion of the agricultural and laborious population, as 

 on the table land of Anahuac, at Gruatimala, and in Upper 

 Peru, they generally withdrew at the approach of the whites. 



