70 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 



in Acosta's own day must have been the observations of 

 a man of his wide experience, furnished too with a 

 candid and inquiring mind. 



We must notice much more briefly the effects of the 

 discoveries in tropical Asia. Here peculiarities of 

 situation, climate, population and history rendered the 

 new acquisitions of geographical knowledge far less 

 important, at least for a time. In the days when 

 there was no Suez canal the East Indies were about 

 three times as distant from western Europe as Mexico 

 or Peru, which is one reason for the comparative 

 slowness of eastern exploration. In America vast tracts 

 of land enjoy a temperate climate, and bear plants 

 which thrive in Europe, but European settlers cannot 

 permanently establish themselves in the East Indies, 

 and tropical plants are unable to endure the cold 

 of our winters. The native races of America were 

 numerically weak, little advanced in the practical arts, 

 and unable to resist European arms ; the nations of 

 Eastern Asia on the other hand were populous and 

 capable of an effectual defence ; it proved to be a far 

 harder task to explore the East than to conquer the 

 West. Lastly, the East Indies had been long though 

 most imperfectly known, through conquering armies, 

 the reports of travellers, and especially through traders ; 

 in America (especially in South America and Mexico) 

 almost everything was new. 



Thus it happened that the discovery of a new world 

 across the Atlantic immediately created a thirst for 

 selfish acquisition, accompanied by a far weaker but 

 nevertheless invaluable impulse to learn all that could 

 be learned about the strange new lands. New settling 

 grounds were opened to the Spaniards, the Portuguese, 

 the French, and ultimately, with far greater results, to 



