151 



the preceding table, and that calculated by Mr. Oltmanns 

 in 1806, results only from the exclusion of the countries not 

 submitted to the governance of the whites. The ancient es- 

 timates are all necessarily less than the new, which present 

 the total area. In reducing; common leagues to nautical 

 leagues, I reckoned in the Essai politique sur la Nouvelle- 

 Espagne (Tom, ii, p. 851) 299,810 square leagues (twenty 

 to a degree) for the whole of Spanish America ; 30,628 for 

 Venezuela, or the ancient capitania general of Caraccas ; 

 41,291 square leagues for New Grenada; 19,449 for in- 

 habited Peru (according to the frontiers indicated in the 

 Map of Intendancies, published at Lima in 1792, by Don 

 Andrew Baleato) ; 14,447 square leagues for Chili ; and 

 91,528, for the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata, or the 

 ancient viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres. What 1 have just 

 stated on the calculations of the surfaces of Spanish Ame- 

 rica, and the causes from which these calculations vary, 

 may be equally applied to the territory of the United States, 

 which on the west has been terminated at different periods 

 by the Mississipi, the stony Mountains, and the coast of the 

 Pacific Ocean. The territory of Missouri, and that of Ar- 

 kansas, have been long in some sort without frontiers toward 

 the west ; they resemble in this point of view the province 

 of the Chiquitos of South America. In the following tables 

 I have adopted a different method of calculation from that 

 which I had hitherto observed ; 1 have estimated the extent 

 of land, which the increasing 'population of each state will 

 fill in the lapse of ages. The lines of division {Uneas divi- 

 sorias) adopted are such as they are found according to re- 

 ceived traditions, and the rights acquired by long and 

 peaceable possession, on the manuscript Spanish and Por- 

 tuguese maps in my collection. Where the maps of the 

 two nations differed considerably, these differences have been 

 attended to, and the medium taken as the results. The num- 

 bers on which I have fixed in the preceding table conse- 

 quently indicate the maximum of surface furnished to the 



