CONCLUSION.
In conclusion I will quote from two writers on tropical America. Buckle says:
"Amidst the pomp and splendor of nature, no place is left for man; he is reduced to insignificance by the majesty with which he is surrounded. The forces that oppose are so formidable that he has never been able to make head against them.
"The energies of nature have hampered his spirit; nowhere else is the contrast so painful between the grandeur of the external world and the littleness of the internal, and the mind, cowed by this unequal struggle, has been unable to advance.
"Here, where physical resources are the most powerful, where vegetation and animals are most abundant, where the soil is watered by the noblest rivers and the coast studded by the finest harbors, the profusion of nature has hindered social progress and opposed that accumulation of wealth without which progress is impossible."
Mr. Bates, the naturalist, after a residence of many years on the Amazon, closes his book as follows:
"The superiority of the bleak north to tropical regions is only in its social aspects, for I hold to the opinion that although humanity can reach an advanced state of culture only by battling with the inclemency of nature in high latitudes, it is under the equator alone that the perfect race of the future will attain to complete fruition of man's beautiful heritage, the earth."
Washington, January, 1891.
