OF THE AMEBICAN STATES. 



129 



From the statistical researches which have been made 

 m several countries of Europe, important results have 

 been obtained by a comparison of the relative popula- 

 tion of maritime and inland provinces. In Spain these 

 relations are to one another as nine to five ; in the 

 United Provinces of Venezuela, and, above all, in the an- 

 cient Capitania- General of Caracas, they are as thirty-five 

 to one. How powerful soever may be the influence of com- 

 jnerce on the prosperity of states, and the intellectual 

 development of nations, it would be wrong to attribute in 

 America, as we do in Europe, to that cause alone the 

 differences just mentioned. In Spain and Italy, if we ex- 

 cept the fertile plains of Lombardy, the inland districts are 

 arid, and abounding in mountains or high table-lands: the 

 meteorological circumstances, on which the fertility of tho 

 soil depends, are not the same in the lands bordering on the 

 MS they are in the central provinces. Colonization in 

 America has generally begun on the coast, and advanced 

 slowly towards the interior ; such is its progress in Brazil 

 ami in Venezuela. It is only where the coast is unhealthy, 

 as in Mexico and New Grenada, or sandy and exempt from 

 rain as in Peru, that the population is concentrated on the 



TOL. in. K 



