190 



Durango) from 9 to 15 inhabitants to the square 

 league, while in others, on the central table- 

 land, there are more than 500. The relative 

 population of the country situated between the 

 eastern bank of the Mississipi and the Atlantic 

 states is scarcely 47, while that of Connecti- 

 cut, Rhode Island, and Massachusets is more 

 than 800. On the west of the Mississipi, as 

 well as in the interior of Spanish Guyana, there 

 are not 2 inhabitants to the square league on 

 much larger extents of territory than Switzer- 

 land or Belgium. The state of these countries 

 is like that of the Russian empire, where the re- 

 lative population of some Asiatic governments 

 (Irkutzk and Tobolsk), is to that of the best 

 cultivated European districts, as 1 to 300. 



The prodigious difference which exists in 

 countries newly cultivated, between the extent 

 of territory and the number of inhabitants, 

 renders it necessary to enter into these partial 

 estimates. When we learn that New Spain 

 and the United States, taking their entire ex- 

 tent at 75,000 and 174,000 square marine 

 leagues, give respectively, 90 and 58 souls to 

 each league, the idea we form of that distribu- 

 tion of the population, on which the political 

 force of nations depends, is as little correct as 

 that we should obtain of the climate of a 

 country, that is, of the distribution of the heat 

 in the different seasons, by the knowledge 



