233 



five years, every time that we took up our abode 

 in a place where it was understood, that we 

 were in possession of microscopes, telescopes, 

 and electrical apparatus. They were in general 

 so much the more fatiguing, as the person who 

 visited us had confused notions of astronomv 

 and physics ; two sciences, which in the Spanish 

 colonies are designated under the singular name 

 of the new philosophy, nueva Jilosophia. The 

 half-scientific looked on us with a sort of dis- 

 dain, when they learnt that we had not brought 

 in our collection of books the Spectacle de la 

 Nature by Abbe Pluche, the Cours de Physique 

 of Sigaud la Fond, or the Dictionary of Valmont 

 de Bomare. These three works, and the Traite 

 d'Economie politique of Baron Bielfeld, are the 

 foreign works most known and esteemed in Spa- 

 nish America, from Caraccas and Chili to Guati- 

 mala and the north of Mexico. No one is 

 thought learned, who cannot quote their trans- 

 lations ; and it is only in the great capitals, at 

 Lima, at Santa Fe de Bogota, and at Mexico, 

 that the names of Haller, Cavendish, and La- 

 voisier, begin to take the place of those, that 

 have enjoyed popular celebrity for these fifty 

 years past. 



The curiosity excited respecting the pheno- 

 mena of the heavens, and various objects of the 

 natural sciences, takes a very different character 

 among anciently civilized nations, and among 



