NATURE 



6-5 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1913. 



SOUTH AMERICAN' IMPRESSIONS. 

 S<?uth America: Observations and Impressions. 

 By James Bryce. Pp. xxiv + 611 + maps. 

 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 191::.) 

 Price 85. 6d. net. 



HB.M. 'S Ambassador to the United Stales 

 , of America naturally enjoyed inestimable 

 advantages wherever he went, although strictly as 

 a private gentleman, on his well-earned holiday 

 trip of four months, during which he visited 

 Panama, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, the 

 Straits of Magellan, Uruguay and Brazil. 



It is difficult to find in his book a subject of 

 general interest which has not been but slightly 

 touched, except the prospects for the development 

 of industry and commerce, important topics fully 

 written upon by others ; the reader is therefore 

 spared the usual statistical tables drawn up to 

 prove what the particular writer wants to prove. 

 The bulk of this most pleasantly written book is 

 descriptive of the manifold impressions made upon 

 the author by the seven republics. " It is nature 

 tTiat chiefly engages the traveller's mind in Peru 

 and Bolivia, as it is economic development which 

 interests him in Argentina and Uruguay. In Chile 

 and Brazil he must be always thinking of both." 

 Many books have been written on South American 

 scenery since Humboldt gave us his " Aspects of 

 Nature," but they mostly lose themselves in the 

 detailed sojourn of a tropical forest, on the endless 

 plains, the perils of the giant mountains, whilst 

 few, if any, have managed to give, in a few terse 

 sentences, the chief characteristics, natural and 

 human, of the various countries. Our author has 

 this gift, enhanced, no doubt, by his own exten- 

 sive travels in many distant parts of the world, 

 but at heart he is a loving observer of nature, who 

 therefore dedicates his impressions to his friends 

 of the English Alpine Club, and who also knows 

 that it is the environment, in its wider sense, which 

 makes not only the people, but also their States 

 and their destinies. 



Perhaps this is the most valuable practically 

 and philosophically interesting contribution to the 

 study of the social aspects of the South American 

 continent. Its man}' republics, great and small, 

 prosperous and others still somewhat lagging 

 behind, as our author would put it with his inten- 

 tional optimism — all have something in common 

 found nowhere else in the world : a Latin stock, 

 essentially Spanish or Portuguese, with an often 

 considerable infusion of native blood, with French, 

 not .\nglo-German, culture. Yet there are already 

 NO. 2258, VOL. 90] 



marked differences between almost any two of the 

 various republics, some of which have become, 

 others of which are beginning to develop into, true 

 nations with decided national characteristics. Here 

 it is the experienced statesman who reveals to 

 us the causes at work, historical, geographical, 

 sometimes accidental administrative contin- 

 gencies, with their far-reaching results. The 

 division of the continent between the Spaniards 

 and Portuguese was due to an accident, the famous 

 papal bull having fixed upon a meridian as the 

 demarcation of future conquests vi'hich subse- 

 quently happened to run through a continent the 

 existence of which was not even suspected. The 

 Spaniards, entering through the back door, by 

 Peru, occupied the north and west, and having 

 extended across the Andes until they arrived at 

 the Atlantic, had to subdivide their unwieldy terri- 

 tory into the viceroyalties of Peru and Buenos 

 Aires. Brazil, the huge share of the Portuguese, 

 was thus hemmed in towards the south and west, 

 at least theoretically, since there are even now 

 wide tracts of land almost unknown and claimed 

 by tvyo, or even three, of the adjacent republics. 



There is the important problem of the relation 

 between the white population and the aborigines, 

 in Brazil also the negroes — relations altogether 

 different from those prevailing in North .Americn, 

 because in Mexico, Central and South America 

 there is no colour question. The intermixture 

 between white and brown, continued since the 

 conquest, is producing' phenomena of the greatest 

 physiological and ethnological interest. Here the 

 mestizo deems himself a white, tries to live and 

 think as a white, and is practically recognised as 

 such b}' others. In the Argentine, Uruguay and 

 South Brazil, where the natives have vanished long 

 ago, the pure whites are, of course, increasing; 

 in Peru and Bolivia, with the natives in the over- 

 whelming majority, the process of mixture is so 

 slow that it may take centuries before they form 

 one race and leave no pure Indians remaining. 

 It is an assumption that this aboriginal blood is 

 not beneficial to the developing nations ; the 

 Chilean peasant to-day, who is at least half Indian, 

 is not inferior to the Argentine peasant, who is 

 almost pure white. The mestizos and whites are, 

 for political and social purposes, practically one 

 and that the ruling class, the Indians being passive 

 and, in a political sense, outside the nation. Blood 

 is, however, only one factor in the making of 

 men. Environment and the influence of the reign- 

 ing intellectual type count for more. 



South America is the chief resource to which the 

 overpeopled countries may look for their emigra- 

 tion, and to which the world at large may look 



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