421 



nies. -These dismemberments occur only when 

 in spite of the natural limits, places have been 

 arbitrarily connected together, and thus find 

 themselves shackled in their communications. 

 In every part of America where civilization 

 did not exist to a certain degree before the 

 Conquest (as it did in Mexico, Guatimala, 

 Quito, and Peru), it has advanced from the 

 coasts towards the interior, following sometimes 

 the valley of a great river, sometimes a chain 

 of mountain that afforded a temperate cli- 

 mate. Concentred at once in different points, 

 it has spread itself as by diverging rays. The 

 union into provinces and kingdoms was effected 

 at the first immediate contact between civilized 

 parts, or those at least subject to a permanent 

 and regular sway. Lands deserted, or inha- 

 bited bysavage nations, now surround the coun- 

 tries, which European cvilization has subdued. 

 They divide it's conquests like arms of the sea 

 difficult to pass, and neighbouring states are of- 

 ten connected with each other only by strips 

 of cultivated land. It is less difficult to acquire 

 a knowledge of the configuration of coasts 

 bathed by the ocean, than of the sinuosities of 

 that interior shore, on which barbarism and 

 civilization, impenetrable forests and cultivated 

 land, touch and bound each other. It is from 

 not having reflected on the early state of society 

 in the New World, that geographers so often 



