FUTtTHE ADVANTAGES TO COMHEBCE. 431 
Eio Negro, to carry off slaves and exercise pillage, com- 
pelled some rude tribes to rouse themselves from their 
indolence, and form associations for their common defence • 
the little good, however, which these wars with the Caribs 
(the Bedouins of the rivers of Guiana) produced, was 
hut slight compensation for the evils that followed in 
their train, by rendering the tribes more ferocious, and 
diminishing then population. We cannot doubt, that the 
physical aspect of Greece, intersected by small chains- of 
mountains, and mediterranean gulfs, contributed, at the 
dawn of civilization, to the intellectual development of the 
Greeks. But the operation of this influence of climate, and 
of the configuration of the soil, is felt in all its force only 
among a race of men who, endowed with a happy organi- 
zation of the mental faculties, are susceptible of exterior 
impulse. In studying the history of our species, we see, at 
certain distances, these foci of aucicnt civilization dispersed 
over the globe like luminous points; and wo are struck 
by the inequality of improvement in nations inhabiting 
analogous climates, and whose native soil appears equally 
favoured by the most precious gifts of nature. 
Since my departure from the banks of the Orinoco and 
the Amazon, a new era has unfolded itself in the social 
state of the nations of the West. The fury of civil disscu- 
sions has been succeeded by the blessings of peace, and a 
freer development of the arts of industry. The bifurcations 
of the Orinoco, the isthmus of Tuamini, so easy to be made 
passable by an artificial canal, will ere long fix the attention 
of commercial Europe. The Cassiquiare, as broad as the 
Ehine, and the course of which is one hundred and eighty 
miles in length, will no longer form uselessly a navigable 
canal between two basins of rivers which have a surface of one 
hundred and ninety thousand squaro leagues. The grain of. 
New Grenada will be carried to the banks of the Eio Negro’ 
boats will descend from the sources of the Napo and the 
Ecnyabe, from the Andes of Quito and ot Upper Peru, to 
the mouths of the Orinoco, a distance which equals that 
from Timbuctoo to Marseilles. A country nine or ten 
times larger than Spain, and enriched with the most varied 
productions, is navigable in every direction by the medium 
of the natural canal of the Cassiquiare, and the bifurcation 
