STATE OP SOCIETY. 
413 
shared with me, of having successively visited Caracas, the 
Havannah, Santa Fe de Bogota, Quito, Lima, and Mexico, 
and of having been connected in these six capitals of Spanish 
America with men of all ranks, I will not venture to decide 
on the various degrees of civilization, which society has 
attained in the several colonies. It is easier to indicate 
the different shades of national improvement, and the point 
towards which intellectual development tends, than to com- 
Dare and class things which cannot all be considered under 
one point of view. It appeared to me, that a strong 
tendency to the study of science prevailed at Mexico and 
Santa Fe de Bogota; more taste tor literature, and what- 
ever can charm an ardent and lively imagination, at Quito 
and Lima ; more accurate notions of the political relations 
of countries, and more enlarged views on the state of colo- 
nies and their mother-countries, at the Havannah and 
Caracas. The numerous communications with commercial 
Europe, with the Caribbean Sea (which we have described 
as a Mediterranean with many outlets), have exercised a 
powerful influence on the progress of society in the five 
provinces of Venezuela and in the island of Cuba. In 
no other part of Spanish America has civilization assumed 
a more European character. The great number of Indian 
cultivators who inhabit Mexico and the interior of New 
Grenada, impart a peculiar, I may almost say, an exotic 
aspect, on those vast countries. Notwithstanding the 
increase of the black population, we seem to be nearer to 
Cadiz and the United States, at Caracas and the Havannah, 
than in any other part of the New World. 
When, in the reign of Charles V, social distinctions and 
their consequent rivalries were introduced from the mother- 
country to the colonies, there arose in Cumana and in other 
commercial towns of Terra Firma, exaggerated pretensions 
to nobility on the part of some of the most illustrious 
families of Caracas, distinguished by the designation of los 
Mantuanos. The progress of knowledge, and the consequent 
change in manners, have, however, gradually and pretty 
generally neutralized whatever is offensive in those distinctions 
among the whites. In all the Spanish colonies there exist 
two kinds of nobility. One is composed of creoles, whose 
ancestors onlv from a very recent period filled great stations 
