149 



more than a hundred leagues amid forests and deserts'. 

 Ought the territory to be considered as Peruvian or Colum- 

 bian, lying between these solitary villages, these crosses 

 erected by the monks of Saint Francis, and surrounded by 

 a few Indian huts ? The hordes that wander on the border 

 of the missions of the Upper Oroonoko, the Carony, the 

 Temi, the Japura, the Mamore, a tributary stream of the 

 Rio de la Madeira, and the Apurimac, a tributary stream 

 of the Ucayale, scarcely know the existence of white men. 

 They are ignorant that the countries, which they have pos- 

 sessed for years, are included, according to the political doc- 

 trines of closed territory {terriioire ferine 1 ), within the limits 

 of the states of Venezuela, New Grenada, and Peru. 



In the present state of things, there is a contiguity of cul- 

 tivated lands, or rather a contiguity of Christian settlements 

 only, on a very small number of points. Brazil touches 

 Venezuela only by the band of the missions of the Rio 

 Negro, Cassiquiare, and Oroonoko 5 and Peru only by the 

 missions of the Upper Oroonoko, and those of the province 

 of Maynas, between Loreto and Tabatinga. The different 

 states in the New World are connected only by narrow slips 

 of cleared lands. Between the Rio Branco and the Rio 

 Carony, the Javary and the Guallaga, the Mamore' and the 

 mountains of Cusco, lands inhabited by savages, and which 

 have never been traversed by whites, separate, like arms of 

 inland seas, the civilized parts of Venezuela, Brazil, and 

 Peru. (Compare above, Chap, xii, Vol. iii, p. 431—427.) 

 European civilization is spread as in divergent rays from the 

 coast, or the high mountains near the coast, toward the 

 centre of South America ; and the influence of governments 

 diminish in proportion to the distance from the shore. Mis- 

 sions entirely dependent on monastic power, inhabited only 

 by the race of copper -coloured natives, form a vast zone 

 around regions more anciently cleared 5 and these Christian 

 settlements are placed on the borders of savannahs and 



