Читать книгу Spanish America (Vol.1&2) - Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle - Страница 6

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In this enlightened age, Geography has assumed a form so new and interesting, that it has become the study, as well as, the amusement of all ranks of society; the philosopher peruses with admiring attention, the details of the localities of distant climes; and the mere reader instructs as well as amuses himself in turning over the pages of a geographical performance.

This science, which till very lately, bore so low a rank in the scale of intellectual attainment, has arisen by the exertions of men of genius, and the increasing commerce of the Atlantic states of Europe to a proud elevation, amid the numerous objects of scientific research; in fact, it blends itself so minutely with almost all of them, that in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of it, it is necessary to study the whole circle of the arts and sciences.

Philosophy enables the geographic traveller to account for the ever varying appearances of nature which meet his wondering sight.

Mathematical knowledge gives him the means of calculating with accuracy the positions and forms of the places which arrest his attention in his progress; and, with his apparatus of Astronomical instruments, whether he be in distant Inde, on the snow-capped summits of the Cordillera of the Andes, or in the frozen regions of the north, he is still able to fix the exact route which he intends to follow.

Painting, or rather its twin sister, Drawing, is also an acquirement absolutely necessary for the man of research in this science, as by its assistance, he can point out to his brethren, the surprising features of those distant regions, which it is their lot to hear of, but never to see; and by this delightful art, which may well be ranked among the first of gifts to man, he can bring home to the imagination the forms of things unknown.

Poetry is not without its share in assisting to give just notions of geographic details, as by its fascinating aid, the ideas which we form of distant objects are heightened and impressed on our memories; and without the fellowship of History, Geography would prove the most uninteresting of studies.

But there are other branches of philosophy, which have of late given a form and stability to the pursuit of knowledge in this science, and by whose powerful co-operation the march of geographical acquisition is daily spreading over a wider and more noble field.

Chemistry has within the last century, assumed a character so widely different from its ancient bounds, that the world is as it were a new region. We have become acquainted with phenomena, which were not before imagined to exist, and we can trace the causes, and consequently the effects of many of the operations of nature, which had hitherto baffled all the efforts of man.

Geology, Mineralogy, and Oryctology, have also, as a consequence of the advanced state of chemical knowledge, become so universally studied, that no modern writer of travels ought to be unacquainted with, at least, their leading principles, and to render his labours very acceptable to the public, he should possess an accurate and extended knowledge of these branches of science.

Zoography has a close connection with the details of Modern Geography, as without a description of the properties and forms of the various races of animals, which all-bounteous Providence has placed on the Earth, for the sustenance or the use of man, a mere outline of the features of kingdoms and states would be, though not useless, yet uninteresting.

Botany also takes an active part in the formation of works of this nature, and perhaps, no other science has a more pleasing share in such undertakings, for every day, and almost every hour, discloses to the phytologist some new and singular variety of Natureʼs performance.

It is not our intention to enter into a disquisition on the Origin and Progress of Geography; this has been so ably performed in several very recent works, that it would be useless to attempt it, nor in fact could any thing more be said, to the purpose, on the subject than what has been already advanced; but instead of considering the different periods in which the science became more clearly illustrated, from the early ages; we shall content ourselves with looking only to its actual state, and to its connections with the subject of the present work.

Notwithstanding all the assistances which Geography derives from the maturity to which the sciences have arrived, yet it is still miserably deficient with respect to descriptions of some of the countries immediately surrounding us; the vast extent of European and Asiatic Russia, is also imperfectly known, Africa is yet unexplored, Tartary and the Chinese empire, have a veil of darkness drawn over them; New Holland is untraversed, and by far the greater portion of America remains to be visited by the European traveller.

To other nations it is a matter of little consequence, excepting as a source of curiosity, whether Englishmen have a thorough knowledge of the various little groups that surround their isle: but to a Briton there is no corner of his land, with which he does not wish to have a minute acquaintance.

Although we possess such an accurate knowledge of England, yet there are many parts of Scotland, and almost the whole of the western coast of Ireland, to which we are as much strangers as though they were situated beyond the Desert of Zahara.

Of Shetland scarcely any thing more than the mere outline of its coast is known to the British geographer, although it offers some of the most singular scenes, both natural and artificial, that can be found in the Northern Ocean.

These scenes consist, in the natural part, of the most fantastic and exuberant workings of Natureʼs ever varying pencil. Here she has grouped assemblages of the most extraordinarily formed islets, twisted and split in every direction; some reaching above the regions of the clouds, and showing, in their pointed or overhanging heads, the most dreadful precipices that can be imagined; such is the island of Foula, between the Orkneys and Shetland. In another place, a large island, which rises gradually on all sides from the sea to a great height, in the form of a parabolic conoid, has its body severed from the apex to the base, as regularly as if it had been the work of art; such is the islet Eglesha, on the west coast of Shetland. A third form is that of an immense islet rising perpendicularly on every side from the subjacent ocean to a great elevation, having its whole body perforated with an arch, of such dimensions that a large vessel could sail under it without lowering her topgallant sails. In short it would require a volume to detail the astonishing operations of nature in these islands.

The artificial scenery of Shetland consists in the numerous remains of ancient fortresses, hollow towers, castles, &c.

Some of these scenes have been drawn by the author of this work; others which he had not an opportunity of visiting, he was furnished with sketches of, by a gentleman resident in Unst, and the whole he has consigned to the author of a work on Shetland, who intends publishing them.

But to recur to the primary object of this publication; although the recent travels of Humboldt, Depons, Helms, &c., have considerably enlarged the circle of our knowledge of Spanish American Geography, yet there still remains a wide field for inquiry in those regions.

When M. de Humboldt shall publish the remaining parts of his Personal Narrative, we shall certainly, from what he has already said on the subject, be better acquainted with a very interesting portion of the Trans-atlantic colonies of Spain, the kingdom of New Granada, and the province of Guiana, as his route was through the latter in his exploratory voyage down the Apure to the Rio Negro, and along the Cassiquiari, down the vast stream of the Orinoco. The viceroyalty of New Granada was nearly traversed by that illustrious savan, as he passed through the cities of Bogota and Guayaquil to the capital of Peru.

Peru is, however, still imperfectly known on its eastern frontier; and the volcanoes, mountains and other striking features of that government remain yet to be explored and described.

Chili is also very little known; the immense barrier of the Andean chain, offers, with the difficulty of crossing the Pampas of La Plata, many almost insurmountable obstacles to the European traveller from Buenos Ayres, and the great length of the navigation round Tierra del Fuego affords a considerable drawback to the adventurer who should wish to arrive in the Chilian regions by a sea voyage.

The interior of the vast government of La Plata and the Savannah of the Amazons is nearly involved in as much obscurity as the central parts of Africa; inhabited by a tribe of fierce and untameable Indians, the European traveller cannot hope to make his way; and we must in all probability remain unacquainted with those countries, till the increasing stride of colonial population from the governments of Brazil on the one hand, and from those of Peru and La Plata on the other, clears the forest of its ancient tenants.

In North America, the kingdom of Guatimala, may be said to be unknown. A few ports on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts are faintly described; but of the interior, of the inhabitants, and of the country itself we are in total ignorance.

It is a curious circumstance to remark, in attentively observing the present system of government, of population, and of colonization in Spanish America, how nearly it resembles the same circumstances in the times when the sceptres of that country were swayed by their ancient and native kings.

With the exception of Caraccas and Buenos Ayres, every thing remains in nearly the same state, and Power has universally confined itself to the western region, seeming as if it wished to verify the assertion, that Empire constantly verges to the quarter of the setting sun.

In South America, the Peruvians of old, were undoubtedly the most civilized of the tribes who inhabited the country, but their empire extended only to the verge of the eastern declivity of the Andes, and was bounded in the strip of territory which stretches between those mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

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.

America certainly offers very singular facts towards the support of this mystical doctrine, in which, though we have no faith, yet there is considerable pleasure in tracing the analogy of events in the Continent, partially described in the ensuing pages; for not only has the circumstance of Spanish power extending solely towards the western shores of the New World, a strong shade of likelihood to bear out the colouring which has been thrown on the assertion by those who strenuously advocate it, yet there is probably a much stronger, and more recent event to give a deeper tone to the picture.

This event which comes more home to our knowledge, is the actual migration of the Colonists of North America, towards the shores of the Pacific, for according to details which are recently published, it is placed almost beyond a doubt that the Government of the United States of America is shifting its local habitation over the lengthened summits of the Alleghany mountains.

In Spanish America, a good and indeed an unanswerable reason may be given why the sway both of the aboriginal chieftains, and of their white successors has uniformly pointed towards the west; climate in that country is modified according to the situations of the States on the higher or lower regions of the immense chain of mountains which traverses its vast extent.

On the elevated plains of Peru, the atmosphere is not charged with that excessive heat which reigns in the low Savannahs of the Maranon, hence man is more capable of exertion, and his mental faculties become enlarged, in the same proportion as his physical powers; and we accordingly find the Spaniard or the Indian of the higher region of the Andes, a very different being from his compatriot on the plains of Guiana, or Vera Cruz.

It is an acknowledged maxim, that, in all countries in which the cold predominates over the heat, or in which they bear equal proportions to each other, civilization, knowledge, and freedom universally spread themselves; whilst on the contrary, in those climes where the heat is continual and excessive, or where cold constantly prevails, man is in a perpetual state of barbarism, subjection, and ignorance; the reasons are evident; unwilling to use any considerable exertion for fear of being parched or frozen to death, he suffers things to proceed always in the same train, and will allow his government or even his religion to follow the dictates of those who with the strong arm of power, or of intellectual attainment bend him to their will.

It is for the former reason that the modern Chilese, or Araucanians, resist the efforts of the Spanish colonists to subdue them; living in a country where the climate is always equable and mild, their bodily and mental faculties required only a strong motive to bring their full power into display and exertion, this motive was first given them by the Peruvian Emperor Yupanqui, who, marching with a powerful army into their territories, from the north, endeavoured to enslave them; the first action overthrew two or three of the weakest tribes who inhabited the warmest parts of the country, but it stimulated the rest, and they became from that moment the warlike nation they have ever since remained.

New Mexico offers the same picture, the Cumanches of that country, are yet an unconquered race, holding an eternal war against their Spanish neighbours, and though from the uncultivated state of their country, and the constant exertion they are obliged to make to secure their independence, they are not so far advanced in the arts of civilized life as the Araucanians, yet the Cumanches are a race far beyond their neighbours who are enslaved in the missions.

From the latter cause, the tribes of Guiana, of Amazonia, of La Plata, and of Patagonia, have hitherto remained in the state of barbarism in which they existed when first discovered, and will in all probability long continue the only tenants of their scorching plains and humid forests, unless gold, or some equally powerful motive induces the European to enlarge his settlements in their country.

This subject would lead us to a discussion which might occupy a volume; it will therefore be necessary to close it, at the same time hoping that it may be resumed and enlarged upon by some abler hand.

Woolwich,

July 15th, 1818.