HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



147 



world. Its lands, either overloaded with mountains, or 

 covered with woods, prefent nothing to the eye but a 

 vaft and barren defert ; its climate is extremely unfa- 

 vourable to the greater part of quadrupeds, and moll of 

 all pernicious to men, who are degenerated, debilitated, 

 and vitiated in a furprifing manner in all the parts of 

 their organization (n). 



The hiftoriographer Herrera, although in many re- 

 fpe&s judicious and moderate, when he makes a compa- 

 rifon of the climate and foil of Europe with America, 

 fliews himfelf eminently ignorant even of the firft ele- 

 ments of geography, and utters fuch abfurdities as would 

 not be tolerated in a child. " Our hemifphere, he fays, 

 is better than the new one with refpecl to dime. Our pole 

 is more embellifhed with stars , becaufe it has the north to 

 3 \ degrees ', with many refplendent stars. By which he 

 fuppofes, firft, that the fouthern hemifphere is new, 

 though fo many centuries are part: fince it has been 

 known in Afia and Africa. Secondly, that all America 

 belongs to the fouthern hemifphere, and that North 

 America is not connected with the fame pole and ftars of 

 the Europeans. We have, he adds, another pre-eminence 

 which is 9 that the fun is feven days longer towards the tro- 

 pic of Cancer than towards that of Capricorn ; as if the 

 excefs of the fun's flay in the northern hemifphere was 

 not the fame in the new as in the old continent. It ap- 

 pears that our good hiftoriographer was perfuaded, that 

 the greater love which that luminary bears to beautiful 

 Europe was the caufe of his longer ftay in the northern 

 hemifphere. A thought truly gallant, and fit for a 

 French poem, and from whence it comes, proceeds our 



chronicler, 



(») Rechercjies Philofopbiques, parte i. 



