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between the lake of Nicaragua and lake On 

 tario. I admit, that the United States will 

 contain above eighty millions of inhabitants a 

 hundred years hence, allowing a progressive 

 change in the period of doubling from twenty- 

 five to thirty-five and forty years ; but, notwith- 

 standing the elements of prosperity to be found in 

 equinoxial America, notwithstanding the wisdom, 

 which I am willing to attribute simultaneously 

 to the new republican governments formed on 

 the south and on the north of the equator, 1 

 doubt whether the increase of the population in 

 Venezuela, Spanish Guyana, New Grenada, and 

 Mexico, can be in general so rapid as in the 

 United States. The latter, situate entirely in 

 the temperate zone, destitute of high chains of 

 mountains, offer an immense extent of country of 

 easy cultivation. The hordes of Indian hunters 

 recede before the planters, whom they abhor, 

 and the methodist missionaries, who oppose their 

 taste for indolence and a vagabond life. The 

 more fertile land of Spanish America produces 

 indeed on the same surface a greater bulk of 

 nutritive substances. No doubt on the table 

 lands of the equinoxial region wheat yields an- 

 nually from twenty to twenty-four for one ; but 

 Cordilleras furrowed by almost inaccessible cre- 

 vices, bare and arid steppes, forests that resist 

 both the axe and fire, and an atmosphere full of 

 venomous insects, will long oppose powerful 



