Dismal Swamp, he would have perished for want of food, as did those who settled the fertile island of Roanoke.

4. Crossing the Rio Grande, into Mexico, the reader will find further illustration of the universality of this law. At his left, near the mouth of the river, but at some distance from its bank, he will see the city of Matamoras, of recent date. Starting from that point, he may follow the river through vast bodies of the richest lands in a state of nature with here and there a scattered settlement occupying the higher ones-to the mouth of San Juan, following which to its source, he will find himself in a somewhat populous country, having Monterey for its capital. Standing here, and looking towards the north, he sees cultivation advancing among the high lands of Chihuahua, but keeping, invariably, away from the river banks. The city of that name is distant twenty miles even from the tributary of the great river, and more than a hundred from the mouth of the little stream. Passing west from Monterey, through Saltillo, and thence south, his road will lie over sandy plains whose existence is evidence of the general character of the region. Arriving in Potosi, he finds himself in a country without

* There is, probably not in the world, a richer body of land than that of Lower Virginia and North Carolina, of which the Dismal Swamp forms a part, but, for that reason, it cannot, at present, be cultivated. It is thus described in a recent article of the New York Tribune:

"Between Norfolk and the sea on the east is the County of Princess Ann, without a single elevation which can be called a hill, but full of swamps and lagoons. Norfolk County lies to the south of the town, and embraces the Dismal Swamp, which extends into North Carolina; and beyond that, some forty or fifty miles, lies the county around Elizabeth City, on the Albemarle Sound, all low, and cut up with creeks, lagoons, and salt-water marshes. West of Norfolk County is that of Nansemond, so low and level, that steamboats run up the Nansemond River, and, by slight cuts through the land, might run all through the county. Northwest of this, Isle of Wight County extends from James River to Black River, a branch of the Chowan; and that, as well as Southampton County, the next west, is composed of the same flat, sandy land and swamps, and sluggish streams. Sometimes the surface is sandy, and just below is a bed of fetid mud, affording well-water that it is not well to drink. This whole county is full of marl. Across the bay north of Norfolk, Elizabeth City County overlies the point of the peninsula formed by the waters of the bay, Hampton Roads and Back Bay, and is almost as level as the water. Ascending the James River, which is in places several miles wide, the water is very shoal on the shores, which are occasionally a little elevated. The timber is mostly pine and oak on the upland, with maple, ash, elm, cypress, and other swamp woods on the lowlands, with a dense growth of swamp bushes."

rivers, and almost without the possibility of irrigation, and where any failure of the periodical rains is followed by famine and death; yet, if he cast his eyes downwards towards the coast, he sees a magnificent country, watered by numerous rivers, and in which the cotton and the indigo plant grow spontaneously-a country in which the maize grows with a luxuriance elsewhere unknown—one that might supply the world with sugar, and in which the only danger to be apprehended from the character of the soil is, that the crops might be smothered by reason of the rapid growth of plants springing up in the rich earth, without aid, or even permission, from the man who might undertake to cultivate it; but there he sees no population. The land is uncleared and undrained, and likely so to remain, because those who should undertake the work, with the present means of the country, would starve, if they did not perish by the fevers that there, as everywhere, prevail among the richest soils until they have been subjected to cultivation.*

Passing on, he sees Zacatecas, high and dry like Potosi, yet cultivated. Keeping the ridge, he has on his left Tlascala, once the seat of a great and wealthy people, far removed from any stream whatsoever, and occupying the high lands from which descend little streams seeking the waters of both the Atlantic and the Pacific. On his right is the valley of Mexico, a land capable of yielding the largest returns to labor-one that in the time of Cortes, produced food in abundance for forty cities. Population and wealth having, however, declined, the remaining people have retired to the high lands bordering the valley, to cultivate the poorer soils from which the single city that still remains draws its supplies of food; as a

* "The narrow plain along the sea-coast"-such are the words of Murray's Encylopædia of Geography, in describing Mexico-" is a tract in which the richest tropical productions spring up with a luxuriauce scarcely to be paralleled. Yet, while the climate is thus prolific of vegetation, in the finest and most gigantic forms, it is almost fatal to animal life: two consequences which, according to Humboldt, are in this climate almost inseparable. The Spaniards, terrified by this pestilential air, have made this plain only a passage to the higher districts, where even the native Indians chose rather to support themselves by laborious cultivation, than to descend into the plains, where every luxury of life is poured forth in ample and spontaneous profusion.'

Throughout Mexico and Peru, the traces of a great degree of civilization are confined to the elevated plateaux. We have seen, on the Andes, the ruins of palaces and baths, at heights between 1600 and 1800 toises (10,230 and 11,510 English feet.")-Humboldt.

consequence of which corn is higher in price than in either London or Paris, while wages are very low. Fertile land is here superabundant, but the people fly from it; whereas, according to Mr. Ricardo, it is that which would be first appropriated.

Passing southward, Tabasco is seen almost unoccupied, although possessing highly fertile lands. Arriving in Yucatan, a land in which water is a luxury, we meet a large and prosperous population, near neighbors to the better soils of Honduras that, when population and wealth shall have sufficiently increased, will yield returns to labor as large, if not larger, than any hitherto known-yet now they are a wilderness, affording subsistence but to a few miserable logwood and mahogany cutters.

Standing here, and looking northward, towards the Caribbean sea, we see the little dry and rocky islands of Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and others, cultivated throughout-while Trinidad, with the richest of soils, remains almost in a state of nature, and Porto Rico, a land excelled by none in fertility, is but now beginning to be subjected to cultivation.

Turning next southward, we mark the line of the Panama railroad, pierced through thick jungles which reproduced themselves almost as rapidly as they were cleared. Left to itself it would be overgrown again in a single year, the destruction of dead material being there in the direct ratio of the growth of that which is living. On the side of Costa Rica and Nicaragua are seen lands of incomparable fertility totally unoccupied, while Indian villages may everywhere be seen midway up the mountains, on lands that drain themselves.*

Looking further south, and marking the position of Santa Fe

"The whole of the immense territory of Costa Rica, with the exception of the upper valleys I have mentioned, is an impervious forest, known only to the beasts of prey which rove through its sunless depths, and to a few independent Indian tribes; but this forest covers riches which will be found, when the natural resources of the country shall have been developed by a large immigration of a stronger race of men, to be inexhaustible. The soil is of a marvellous fertility, and within its bosom contains some of the richest mines. But the immigrants must remember that if this fertility is an earnest of the wealth they may attain, it is also one of the great obstacles against which they will have to contend, for it is produced by the extreme dampness of the air and by the continuous rains which last seven months in the settled parts of the country, and may be said to last the whole of the year in the districts they would have to redeem from the wilderness."-Correspondence of the New York Tribune.

de Bogota, and the city of Quito, centres of population, where men cluster together on the high and dry lands while the valley of Oroonoko* remains unoccupied, the reader will see exhibited on a great scale the same fact which, on a small one, has been shown to exist on the banks of rivers of Pennsylvania. That done, taking his station on the peaks of Chimborazo and looking around, he will see the only civilized people of the days of Pizarro, occupying high and dry Peru, drained by little streams whose rapid course forbade the possibility that marshes should be formed in which vegetable matter might decay; to give richness to the soil for the production of timber before the period of cultivation, or of food afterwards. Being poor it was easily cleared. Requiring no artificial drainage, it was early occupied. †

Turning now towards the East he sees before him Brazil, a land watered by the greatest rivers of the world, to this day a wilderness; yet capable of yielding in the greatest abundance sugar, coffee, tobacco, and all other of the productions of the tropics. Its fields are covered with numberless herds of cattle; and the most precious metals are found near the surface of the earth, but being "destitute of those elevated table lands which cover so much of Spanish America, it affords no eligible situation for European colonists." "The largest rivers" says another writer, “are those which bear least upon their bosoms;"§ and for the reason that such rivers constitute the drains of the great basins of the world, the soil of which is only to be subjected to cultivation when

"Floods of forty feet rise and upwards are frequent at this season in the great rivers of South America; the llanos of the Orinoco are changed into an inland sea. The Amazon inundates the plains through which it flows, to a vast distance. The Paraguay forms lagoons, which like those of Xarayes, are more than three hundred miles in length, and ooze away during the dry season."-Guyot's Earth and Man, p. 136.

† "On the other side of the Andes all is changed. Neither the tradewind nor its vapors arrive at the western coasts. Scarcely do the table lands of Peru and Bolivia receive from the latter benefits, by the storms which burst out at the limits of the two atmospheres. The coast of the Pacific Ocean, from Punta Parina and Amatope to far beyond the tropic, from the Equator to Chili, is scarcely ever refreshed by the rains of the Drought and desert are their portion, and on the border of the seas, in sight of the waves, they are reduced to envy the neighboring countries of the centre of the Continent, the gifts which the ocean refuses to themselves, while lavishing them on others."—Ibid, p. 151.. + Mc Culloch's Gazetteer.

ocean.

*

*

§ Gan Eden. A picture of Cuba, p. 234.

population and wealth, and the consequent power of association, shall have greatly grown. With that growth will come the development of individuality, and then men will become free; but the strong man is everywhere seen endeavoring to cultivate the rich lands in advance of both population and wealth-and therefore seizing upon the poor African, and compelling him to work for low wages, and under conditions destructive to human life. The most useful rivers of Brazil, those which bear most upon their bosoms, are not the Amazon, the Topayos, the Xingu, or the Negro, "flowing through regions which will one day" says Murray, "be the finest in the world ;" but "those between the coast chain and the sea, none of which can attain any long course”— and thus it is that we find on a comparison of the several parts of this country, the same great fact that is exhibited on so extensive a scale by the Eastern and Western sections of the continent. The short steep slope of Peru furnished the earliest civilization of that portion of the earth, and if we look now to the similar slope of Chili we see a people rapidly advancing in population and wealth-while the great valley of the La Plata, a land capable of yielding the largest return to labor, remains to this hour steeped in barbarism. Here, as everywhere, we have evidence that cultivation begins on the poorer soils.

§ 5. Crossing the ocean and landing in the south of England, the traveller finds himself in a country in which the streams are short and the valleys limited; and, as a consequence, well fitted for early cultivation. There it was that Cæsar found the only people of the island who had made any progress in the art of tillage-the habits of life among the natives becoming more rude and barbarous as they receded from the coast. The distant tribes, as he tells us, never sowed their land, but followed the chase or tended their flocks, living upon the spoils of the one or the milk of the other, and having skins for their only raiment.-Turning next his steps toward Cornwall, he finds a land noted for its barrenness, exhibiting everywhere marks of cultivation "of great and unknown antiquity”—and on the outer edge of this barren land, in a part of

* Encyclopædia of Geography. Article Brazil.