THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: STONE STELÆ AT QUIRIGUA, CENTRAL AMERICA.
Vol. I. To face p. 32.
Between these great extremes of area mentioned above we have such countries as Argentina, with over a million square miles, and Mexico, Bolivia and Peru, with from nearly to over seven hundred thousand square miles, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile, with from over four to under three hundred thousand, Ecuador and Uruguay with half and a third those areas, and the remaining nine States of from about seventy thousand square miles down to about a tenth thereof.
The total area thus covered of this very diversified part of the earth's surface is about eight and a quarter million square miles, with a total population in the neighbourhood of eighty million souls.
It is of interest further to recollect that Brazil is larger than the United States or Canada, or larger than Europe without Russia. Even the little but progressive country of Uruguay, crowded by Brazil and Argentina into a corner of the Atlantic coast, is much larger than England.[1]
It is to be recollected that the areas given to these countries themselves in some cases include territory claimed by their immediate neighbours, for there are unsettled boundaries and frontiers, especially in the Amazon Valley. They must be regarded as only approximate.
The same remark holds good with regard to the population of these States. Exact enumeration is impossible, for the reasons both that the inhabitants are often enormously scattered over vast territories and that they often refuse to be numbered, or escape the census, fearing that they are to be taxed, or pressed into military service against their will, which latter condition has been a curse of Spanish America all through its history.
Much of our earlier knowledge of Northern South America and Mexico was due to Humboldt, the famous German savant and traveller. He was born in Berlin in 1769, but it would appear that Berlin was certainly not his "spiritual home." Paris was the only centre congenial to him, and he settled there in 1808, after his travels, in order to be able to secure the needful scientific co-operation for the publication of the results of his work. "The French capital he had long regarded as his true home. There he found not only scientific sympathy, but the social stimulus which his vigorous and healthy mind eagerly craved. He was equally in his element as the lion of the salons and as the savant of the institute and the observatory. The provincialism of his native city was odious to him. He never ceased to rail against the bigotry without religion, aestheticism without culture, and philosophy without common sense, which he found dominant on the banks of the Spree. He sought relief from this 'nebulous atmosphere' in Paris."[2]
It was by an accident that Humboldt directed his steps to Spanish America, for he had hoped, with Bonpland, to join Bonaparte in Egypt, but in Madrid he determined to make Spanish America the scene of his explorations. He explored the Orinoco, crossed the frozen Cordillera to Quito, investigated the mighty avenue of the Ecuadorian volcanoes—the farm he occupied still exists at their foot—and did much else in South America and in Mexico, geological, archæological, and botanical.