THE EAETH AND ITS INHABITANTS. 



MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENERAL SURVEY. 



HE insular and peninsular regions whicli are watered by the Gulf 

 of Mexico and Caribbean. Sea form with the Mexican triangle a 

 perfectlj^ distinct section of the New AVorld. Under the latitude 

 of the tropic of Cancer, which traverses the Mexican plateau and 

 touches the extremity of the peninsula of Lower California, the 

 continent has still a width of 550 miles, or about a tenth part of the distance 

 between the two oceans towards the middle of North America. 



But south of that line the mainland tapers and expands successively, while 

 developing coastlines parallel with the escarpments of the plateau. Between 

 Mexico proper and Chiapas occurs a first contraction at the isthmus of Tehuan- 

 tepec ; this is followed towards the south-east by other shrinkings and expansions, 

 terminating in the slender neck of land between the Gulfs of Panama and Darien, 

 which merges in the South American continent. 



The eastern chain of the American Archipelago, comprising the Bahamas and 

 Lesser Antilles, forms a cordon over 1,800 miles long, which sweeps round from 

 the north-west to the south-east in a serpentine curve roughly parallel with that 

 of Mexico and Central America. This vast outer rampart, of coralline formation 

 in the Bahamas, of volcanic origin in the Antilles, encloses the so-called " Medi- 

 terranean " of the New World, which, like the Mediterranean of the eastern 

 hemisphere, is divided into secondary basins, but which in other respects presents 

 little resemblance to that great inland sea. 

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