CHAPTER XXVI. 



EXPLANATIONS, 



I found the whole extent of South America, taking for the 

 limit the eastern extremity of the Province of Panama, to be 

 571,290 square leagues ; of which the Spanish part, that is 

 Columbia (without the isthmus of Panama and the province 

 of Veragua), Peru, Chili, and Buenos Ayres (without the 

 Magellanic lands), comprise 271,774 square leagues j the 

 Portuguese possessions, 256,990 square leagues j the English, 

 Dutch, and French Guyana, 11,320 square leagues j and 

 the lands of Patagonia, south of Rio Negro, 31,20(5 square 

 leagues. The following numbers, indicating great extents 

 of surface, may serve as terms of comparison *. Europe, 

 304,700 square leagues j Russian empire in Europe and 

 Asia, 603,160 square leagues 3 European part of the Rus- 

 sian empire, 138,116 square leagues ; United States of 

 America, 174,310 square leagues. The whole of these es- 

 timates are made in square leagues of twenty to an equa- 

 torial degree, or 2853 toises. I have adopted this measure 

 in the Personal Narrative of my voyage, because nautical 

 leagues, of three miles each, would be more easily adopted 

 uniformly, as a geographical measure, among the commer- 

 cial nations of Spanish America, than the leguas legates and 

 leguas communes of Spain, which are twenty-six and a half, 

 and nineteen to a degree. In the Political Essay, on the 



* See note B, at the end of the 9th Book. 



