In Chili, the Chilese had advanced with rapid strides towards that degree of intellectual attainment which was manifested in their Peruvian neighbours, they were an independent people, forming a sort of Federal Republic acknowledging a supreme chief, but this Republic did not include the tribes who wandered over the vast steppes of Patagonia, it was confined, as in Peru, to the country between the Andes and the sea.
In New Granada, the Puruays and the Muyscas were also advancing with a gradual, though certain step, towards the refinement of the People of the Sun, but they were also, until a very short period before the conquest, independent governments, acknowledging kings, and resembling Monarchical States in their dispensation of the laws, and in the form of their political constitutions; these races were however unmixed; and, in fact unknown to the people on the Savannahs of the Maranon and the Orinoco; and also occupied the country stretching between the Cordillera of the Andes and the great Pacific Ocean.
In Mexico, empire likewise verged towards the west; the different states and governments lay mostly to the west of the capital, which was itself to the west of the highest summits of the Northern Andes.
No towns or kingdoms of any importance were discovered on the shore of the gulf of Mexico by Cortez or his followers, and it was not till after a painful march of many days from the coast, that he saw the symptoms of that extraordinary degree of civilization at which the Mexicans had arrived.
In our days, the Spanish empire in Peru is confined to the country intercepted between the Andes and the Ocean of the South. To the east of the great Cordillera the tribes still wander over the vast Savannahs of the Maranon in the same state of untutored nature.
In Chili, the European sway is also confined to the same region over which the ancient Chilese toquis reigned, and the Patagonians of Terra Magellanica are yet in a barbarous condition; but in Chili itself, is offered the singular spectacle of a remnant of the aboriginal race, who have preserved the manners, the customs, the dress, the language, and the independence of their forefathers; these people having, hitherto, resisted every attempt which the Colonists have made to subdue them, and form with the surrounding tribes the same kind of Republican Government which existed before the white and bearded strangers appeared amongst them.
In New Granada, the Spaniards occupy nearly the same positions which the tribes of old held, and what is still more singular, the two capitals of the Spanish colonies in that kingdom are precisely in the same situations which the Puruays and the Muyscas had chosen as the seats of their Conchocandos and Xaques, or Kings.
In Mexico, the Empire of the Whites is precisely within the same bounds as those in which it was discovered by Cortez and his followers; and the capital is seated on the same spot on which the ancient Tenochtitlan stood.
The Spanish acquisitions in the eastern parts of America, though we have held them up as forming an exception to the general rule, cannot certainly be said to stand out as very forcible arguments against it; for the colonies in Florida have never flourished, and Caraccas has only a trifling population considering its great extent, whilst the whole of the vast country of Guiana is nearly untenanted by Europeans.