82 



COMMERCE, 



vinces of Paraguay, Tucuman, and Buenos- Ayres, by another 

 desert having an extent of four hundred leagues. 



Its lands, like all those of the new world, do not present, 

 at the epoch of its discovery, to the view of the attentive and 

 impartial observer, any thing beside a steril, arid, and ungrateful 

 soil, which constantly baffled the expe6lations of those who 

 cultivated it with the greatest diligence*. The earliest Euro- 

 peans who endeavoured to form an establishment in Peru, were, 

 without exception, tormented by hunger and necessity, and 

 reduced to the sad condition of toiling for the benefit of those 

 by whom they were to be succeeded. This failure was inevi- 

 table in an immense uncultivated territory, left to its own fe- 

 cundity, and abounding alone in that multiplicity of wild 

 plants and productions, which vegetation drew from a soil 

 never corredted by industry. 



The native Americans being ignorant of the use of imple- 

 ments of iron, and possessing neither the ox, the horse, nor 

 the ass, it was impossible that the efFedls of agriculture should 

 be generally extended over a soil covered with forests, and 

 with pools and lakes, the stagnant waters of which exhaled 

 in the atmosphere the principles of putrefa6tion. 



The most ancient and best founded observations -f afford us 

 the information, that in the centre even of the torrid zone, 

 the earth was so cold at the depth of six or seven inches, that 



* This dissertation appears to be the produdlion of a Spaniard residing in Peru, for 

 whose prejudices, supposing the suspicion to be well founded, a certain allowance is 

 to be made. It contains, however, much valuable information. 



t See the Introdudlion to the Natural History of Brazil, byPison. 



the 



