STATE or VENEZUELA. 
121 
Wense resources vliicli the people of both North and South 
America might derive from their own position and their rela- 
tions with commercial Europe and Asia, one of those great 
Revolutions which from time to time agitate the human I'ace, 
changed the state of society in the vast regions through 
^hich I travelled. The continental part ot the New World 
'8 at present in some sort divided between three nations of 
p ^®Pean origin; one (and that the most powerful) is of 
'Rerinanic race : the two others belong by their language, 
their literature, and their manners to Latin Europe. Those 
of the old world which advance farthest westward, the 
'Spanish Peninsula and the British Islands, are tliose of 
J'hich the colonies are mo.st extensive; but four thousand 
^agues of coast, inhabited solely by tlm descendants of 
fpaniards and Portuguese, attest tlie superiority which in 
|he fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the peninsular nations 
had acquired, by their maritime expeditions, over the navi- 
pators of other countries. It may be fairly asserted that 
hmr languages, which prevail from California to the Eio do 
R Plata, and along the back of the Cordilleras, as well as in 
ae forests of the Amazon, are monuments of national glory 
nat will survive every political revolution. 
Ibe inhabitants of’ Spanish and Portuguese America form 
'^o®ther a population twice as numerous as the inhabitants 
m English race. The French, Dutch, and Danish posses- 
• of the new' continent arc of small extent ; but, to com- 
P ote the general view of the nations which may influence 
*6 destiny of the other hemisphere, wo ought not to forget 
.00 colonists of Scandinavian origin, who are endeavour- 
to form settlements from the peninsula of A.lashka as far 
v! .^olifornia ; and the free Africans of Hayti, who have 
eiafied the prediction made by the Milanese traveller Benzoni 
0 1545. The situation of these Africans in an island more 
j op three times the size ot Sicily, in the middle of the West 
j.mian Mediterranean, augments their political importance, 
j' friend of humanity prays for the development of the 
j ^‘bzation which is advancing in so calm and unexpected a 
,Aiaer. As yet Eussian America is less like an agricultural 
CO ^ban the factories established by Europeans on the 
Africa, to the great misfortune ot the natives; they 
otain only military posts, stations of fishermen, anil 
