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population ; the remaining four-fifths being composed of Indians, and of Castas, or the race of mixed blood. Yet almost all property is centered in the whites; and though the Indians are governed in their villages by magistrates of their own nation, the artifice of petty aristocracies appears to be as prevalent and as adverse to public improvement among them as in Europe. The Castas, or people of colour, being chiefly descended from slaves, are kept in a state of degradation, which fosters in them a constant irritation against the whites. They are subject, likewise, to a capitation-tax; an impost which is more obnoxious as a badge of slavery than as a pecuniary burden. The rapacity of the white magistrates, (justicias territoriales,) who maintained a monopoly of trade in their respective districts has been destructive of personal comfort to many individuals, and has produced the mischief of bad example to all. Until these evils are removed, it is in vain to expect any progress in moral improvement among the inhabitants of New Spain. The late viceroys have been men of good character, but fettered in their measures by the government of the mothercountry; which, like our India-Company, wished to rule in detail provinces at the distance of half the globe. An administration so imperfectly instructed naturally lends a willing ear to those interested persons who allege that, were greater liberty granted to the Indians, the whites would have every thing to fear from their vindictive spirit. Of the whites in New Spain, nine-tenths are Creoles, and scarcely a tenth part are native Europeans.

With regard to intellectual cultivation, the cities which occupy the foremost rank are the Havannah, Mexico, Lima, Santa Fé, Quito, Popayan, and Caraccas. The Havannah, having long been a seat of commerce, bears the nearest resemblance to European cities in the refinements of luxury. The interests of the cultivator and the merchant are likewise well understood there but the sciences prosper more slowly than in the great cities on the American continent. Of these, Mexico occupies the first place; and chemistry, astronomy, painting, sculpture, botany, as well as natural history in general, are cultivated with a degree of success which we should by no means expect at such a distance from Europe. Fine buildings are to be seen in abundance in Mexico, and even in provincial cities like Guanaxuato and Queretaro : but classical studies are here, as in the United States, in inferior estimation. The extension of royal patronage, and the great improvements in scientific study, have taken place chiefly within the last half century. No government, says Baron Humboldt, has been more liberal in its efforts to advance the knowlege of the vegetable kingdom than the Spanish.

Spanish. Botanical gardens have been established at Manilla and at the Canary islands; and three botanical expeditions have been sent out in Peru, New Granada, and New Spain.

On comparing the cities of Mexico and Lima, we find much more splendor and wealth in the former, but a greater share of personal comfort in the latter. Mexico is the abode of inequality; the elegance of the architecture, furniture, and equipages of the rich, forming a remarkable contrast with the nakedness and vulgarity of the lower orders. Like the Lazaroni of Naples, the Guachinangos of Mexico, lazy and careless but at the same time abstemious, earn the subsistence of the week by the labour of one or two days, and are contented to pass their lives in listless poverty; sleeping at night under the canopy of heaven, and stretching themselves out to the sun by day with no other than a flannel covering. In no class is the inequality of Mexican fortunes more conspicuous than in the clergy, of whom many suffer extreme poverty, while others possess the incomes of princes. The collective revenues of the eight Mexican bishops exceed one hundred thousand pounds sterling; while numbers of the inferior clergymen are confined to twenty and twenty-five pounds a year. The rumours long current in Europe, respecting the immensity of Mexican wealth, have given rise to very exaggerated ideas of the quantity of gold and silver employed in their plate and furniture: but the truth is that the proportion invested in that manner is scarcely greater than in Portugal and Old Spain, and does not much exceed the domestic appropriations of our own country. The difference, such as it is, is owing less to superior wealth than to the scarcity of porcelain in New Spain, and the difficulty of conveying it through bad and mountainous roads.

We shall close our observations on the state of society in New Spain by extracting M. de Humboldt's remarks on the different casts, and on the political evils arising from these divisions :

These casts constitute a mass almost as considerable as the Mexi can Indians. We may estimate the total of the individuals of mixed blood at nearly 2,400,000. From a refinement of vanity, the inhabitants of the colonies have enriched their language with terms for the finest shades of the colours which result from the degeneration of the primitive colour.'

The son of a white (Creole or European), and a native of copper-colour, is called Mestizo. His colour is almost a pure white; and his skin is of a particular transparency. The small beard and small hands and feet, and a certain obliquity of the eyes, are more frequent indications of the mixture of Indian blood than the nature of the hair. If a Mestiza marry a white man, the second generation differs hardly in any thing from the European race, As very few

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negros have been introduced into New Spain, the Mestizos probably compose of the whole casts. They are generally accounted of a much more mild character than the mulattoes, descended from whites and negresses, who are distinguished for the violence of their passions and a singular volubility of tongue. The descendants of negros and Indian women bear at Mexico, Lima, and even at the Havannah, the strange name of Chino, Chinese. On the coast of Caraccas, and, as appears from the laws, even in New Spain, they are called zambos, From the mixture of a white man with a mulatto comes the cast of quarterons. When a female quarteron marries a European or creole, her son bears the name of quinteron. A new alliance with a white banishes to such a degree the remains of colour, that the children of a white and female quinteron are white also. The casts of Indian or African blood preserve the odour peculiar to the cutaneous tran spiration of those two primitive races.'-In Spain it is almost a title of nobility to descend neither from Jews nor Moors. In America, the greater or less degree of whiteness of skin decides the rank which man occupies in society. A white who rides barefooted on horse. back thinks he belongs to the nobility of the country. When a common man disputes with one of the titled lords of the country, he is frequently heard to say, "Do you think me not so white as your self?" It becomes, consequently, a very interesting business for the public vanity to estimate accurately the fractions of European blood which belong to the different casts. According to the principles sanctioned by usage, we have adopted the following proportions:

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I am inclined to believe, what many other travellers have observed before me, that the Americans are endowed by nature with a gentleness of manners rather approaching to effeminacy, as the energy of several European nations easily degenerates into harshness. The want of sociability so universal in the Spanish colonies, and the hatreds which divide the casts of greatest affinity, the effects of which shed a bitterness over the life of the colonists, are solely due to the political principles by which these regions have been governed since the sixteenth century. A government, aware of the true in terests of humanity, will be able to diffuse information and instruc tion, and by extinguishing gradually the monstrous inequality of rights and fortunes, will succeed in augmenting the physical pros perity of the colonists; but it will find immense difficulties to over, come before rendering the inhabitants sociable, and teaching them to consider themselves mutually in the light of fellow citizens.' The mixture of races of which the interests are diametrically opposite, became long since an inexhaustible source of hatred and disunion, In proportion as the descendants of the Europeans became more numerous than those sent over directly by the mother country, the white race divided into two parties, of which the ties of blood cannot heal the resentments, The colonial government from a mistaken

policy wished to take advantage of these dissensions. The greater the colony, the greater the suspicion of the administration. According to the ideas which unfortunately have been adopted for ages, these distant regions are considered as tributary to Europe. Authority is there distributed not in the manner which the public interest requires, but according as the dread of seeing a too rapid increase in the prosperity of the inhabitants seems to dictate. Seeking security in civil dissensions, in the balance of power, and in a complication of all the springs of the great political machine, the mother country foments incessantly the spirit of party and hatred among the casts and constituted authorities. From this state of things arises a rancour which disturbs the enjoyments of social life.'

After a variety of striking though desultory observations on the moral condition of the inhabitants of New Spain, M. de Humboldt proceeds to the less interesting topic of statistics. He explains the division of this extensive empire into fifteen Intendancies; and, having enumerated (p. 284.) their respective extent and population, he recommends, as an indispensable step to the dissemination of improvement, a nearer approach to equality in these allotments of provincial jurisdiction. He exhorts the Spanish government to follow in this respect the example of the Constituent Assembly of France, whose departmental divisions were founded on simple and natural principles, and have remained unimpaired amid all the fluctuations of the Revolution. Of the different Intendancies or provinces of New Spain, that of Mexico, being by far the most important, receives the largest portion of the traveller's attention. We wish that we could add that his descriptions possess the merit of perspicuity but arrangement is no where the characteristic of this work; and the want of it is doubly felt in a subject, the dryness of which required all the aid that careful execution could confer. Many pages are bestowed on a delineation of the singular position of the city of Mexico, in low ground, and in the neighbourhood of lakes which still expose it to inundation. construction of the desague, or tunnel for carrying off these dangerous waters through a hill to the north, the partial overflowing of the city which began in 1629 and lasted nearly five years, and the various hydraulic operations which have been since contrived for protection against the recurrence of disaster, are all described at considerable length. The chief result of these disquisitions is that a new canal, extending along the whole valley of Mexico, from Chalco on the south to Huehuetoca on the north, would be of the highest utility both for safety and commercial accommodations. In this province, next to the city of Mexico, which contains about 140,000 inhabitants, is to be ranked the city of Queretaro, celebrated for the beauty of its buildings, and possessing a population of

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35,000.

35,000. To the account of the intendancy of Mexico, M. de Humboldt has joined a circumstantial report of the statistics of the other provinces. While we acknowlege the value of such information in regard to a country hitherto so little known, we are not inclined to detain our readers with an enumeration of local details, which appear less fitted for continued perusal than for occasional reference in the manner of a dictionary. A similar reason prevents our passing any comments on the description (Vol. ii. p. 357.) of the coast of the great ocean extending to Prince William's Sound; and though a larger portion of interest might be excited by a notice of the expeditions of different navigators, particularly that of Malespina in 1789, (p. 377.) our limits do not permit us to extend our observations en this part of the book.

The most entertaining division of the second volume is that which treats (p. 400.) of the vegetable productions of the Mexican territory. The author begins by correcting the current notion that the wealth of this country consists more in its mines than in its agriculture. While it must be admitted, on the one hand, that the labour of the mines has withdrawn from the cultivation of the ground a proportion of the capital which might otherwise have been invested in it, it is equally true, on the other, that the temptations of mining have tended to bring both men and money into the country, and to promote materially the consumption of the produce of the spil, Of the productions which minister to the food of man in the warm climates of America, the most useful is the Banana. It seems to be to the inhabitants of these regions what Rice is to the Indian and Corn to the European; and perhaps no other plant on the globe can produce, in so small a space of ground, so considerable a mass of nutritive substance. The banana begins to display its clusters eight or nine months after the sucker has been planted; and, in the tenth or eleventh month, the fruit is ripe for gathering. When the stalk is cut, a sprout succeeds to the mother-plant, and bears fruit three months later; so that the growth is perpetuated, without any other care than that of cutting those stalks of which the fruit has ripened, and of giving the earth once or twice in a year a slight dressing around the roots, A spot of 1000 square feet will contain thirty banana plants, producing in the space of a year nearly a thousand pounds weight of nutritious substance; a quantity far exceeding the growth of potatoes, and still more that of wheat. It has been computed that the acre, which in Europe maintains when under wheat only two individuals, may support between forty and fifty under the torrid zone by the culture of the banana. Accordingly, an European, arriving in that part of

the

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