South America

“ Considered as a field for emigration, South America may be divided into three sections. There are, first, the tropical and forest-covered regions of Colombia, Venezuela, Guiana, and eastern Brazil; secondly, the temperate and grassy or wooded regions of Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil outside the tropics; and lastly, the great central plain of the Amazon and its tributaries which the Brazilians call the Selvas (woods) . I exclude altogether the mountainous parts of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, because they are already as well inhabited as they deserve to be. ”

“ The Latin race conquered Central America and South America, a perfect Eden of natural loveliness, one hundred years prior to the settlement of the Anglo-Saxon; yet to-day they constitute but a thin layer over a scarcely populated country. Their leaders were men of unbounded ambition, rapacious, of great endurance, but cruel and unscrupulous. They sought adventure, expecting it would bring them gold and silver. For that end they plundered, despoiled and enslaved the Indians. ”

“ The traveller in South America who confines himself, as many do, to the larger cities, finds them so like those of Europe and North America in their possession of the appliances of modern civilization, in their electric street cars and handsome parks, in their ably written press, in the volume of business they transact—I might add in the aspect of the legislatures and in the administrative machinery of their government—that he is apt to fancy a like resemblance in the countries as a whole. But the small towns and rural districts are very far behind, though least so in Chile and Argentina. ”

“ The recent meeting of the Pan-American Congress has called attention to South America, a part of our continent under republican forms of government and rich in products which we lack, while it relies mainly on other foreign countries for goods which we manufacture. North America and South America should be more closely united, for the one is the complement of the other.
The prominent features of South America are its long ranges of mountains—next to the Himalayas the highest in the world,—its great valley, and its immense plateau extending from the Straits of Magellan to the Caribbean sea. ”

“ South America lies not merely to south, but also in the main to east of North America; the two lands are in echelon, as soldiers would say, and thus the broad ocean encircles South America, except for a minute proportion of its outline. ”

“ We can toss a stone into Chili with one hand and into the Argentine Republic with the other. We are more than two miles in the air, and as we look away to the westward we can see the dark mass of the Pacific Ocean forming the curving rim of the horizon.
"We are at the crest of the Andes, and the South American continent is at our feet." ”

“ The History of South America may contain much of general interest; it possesses, moreover, a special interest for merchants, settlers, sailors, and travellers, who may have passed, or may be likely to pass, a portion of their lives on the continent in question; nor should some knowledge of an important portion of the globe be excluded from the sphere of inquiry of any educated person. ”

“ The Camp TO a European the farms of South America offer such contrasts to those he is familiar with in his own country that he finds it difficult to become accustomed to the immense areas of treeless plains that constitute the estancias of the New World. Everything is on a large scale there. A vast territory, now gently rolling like a heaving sea, now flat as an unruffled lake, with few objects to break the eternal straightness of the distant horizon. ”

“ The Montevidean is conscious that his sturdy, vigorous, and even bellicose race has built up a nation unique in South America in its promise of material prosperity; that his country is among the richest in the quality and varied productiveness of its soil of any on the continent, and that his city, housing a third of the country’s population, is the pivot of the nation’s astonishing commercial activity and one of the most healthful and delightful residence cities in the world. ”

“ Thus by right of conquest and gift South America with its seven and a half million miles of territory and its millions of Indian inhabitants was divided between Spain and Portugal. The eastern northern half, now called Brazil, became the possession of the Portuguese crown and the rest of the continent went to the crown of Spain. South America is 4,600 miles from north to south, and its greatest breadth from east to west is 3,500 miles. It is a country of plains and mountains and rivers. The Andean range of mountains is 4,400 miles long. ”

“ In the southern-most part of the New World, the tapering portion of the South American continent, lies a vast region of which comparatively little is heard or known, yet one which in the future must take its place in the economic development of the globe. This is the Territory extending throughout the lower portion of Argentina, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. ”

“ The great Anglo-Saxon Republic of North America, tempered by the same Latin idealism imported in the eighteenth century from France by Jefferson, is making of a continent a modern nation whose influence will count more and more in the affairs of the globe. May it not be that South America, whose evolution is the result of lessons taught to some extent by the Northern races, will give us a new development of Latin civilisation corresponding to that which has so powerfully contributed to the making of Europe as we know it? ”

“ In South America a North American or Englishman is popularly called a "Gringo," as in North America a person speaking Italian or Spanish or Portuguese is vulgarly called a "Dago." Neither term has any eulogistic flavour.
Thus we return to the question whence we started, and ask again whether there is any sort of unity or community in the two Americas. Are the peoples of these continents a group by themselves, nearer to one another than they are to other peoples, possessing a common character, common ties of interest and feeling? ”

“ Lord Cochrane to the inhabitants of Lima, and other towns of Peru:
Compatriots! I flatter myself, that ere long I shall address you more cordially with this epithet. The repeated echoes of liberty in South America have been heard with pleasure in every part of enlightened Europe, and more particularly in Great Britain; I, not being able to resist the desire of joining in the defence of a cause that was interesting to all mankind, the felicity of half the new world to thousands of generations, have determined to take an active part in it. ”

“ South of this island and that of Española (Spagnola) is the discovered part of South America, then denominated the Land of the Holy Cross or the New World (Terra Sancti Crucis sive Mundus Novus) . The inscription on the represented territory embraces the following information: “At different places this region is inhabited, and it is supposed by many to be another world. Women and men appear either entirely naked or clad with interwoven leaves and the feathers of birds of various colors. They live together in common without any religion or king. They are continually at war among themselves. ”

“ How much simpler and better it would have been if each continent had received a name of its own. South America might have been called after Columbus, as the first man who saw its terra firma, and North America might have received the name of Cabotia or Pinzonia or Ponceana, whichever navigator may be best entitled to be deemed its first and true discoverer. How much trouble would have been saved and how many mistakes avoided! Italian peasants would not have fancied that a cousin who had gone to Buenos Aires was the near neighbour of another who had gone to New York. ”

“ Then he drew out a map of South America and laid it on the table.
"I believe every single word he said to you was the truth," said he, earnestly, "and, mind you, I have something to go on when I speak like that. South America is a place I love, and I think, if you take it right through from Darien to Fuego, it's the grandest, richest, most wonderful bit of earth upon this planet. People don't know it yet, and don't realize what it may become. ”

“ Here, the moment of my arrival, I met with a very encouraging reception. You know, of course, that my most prominent object in South America is the promoting of education on the Lancasterian plan. On this footing it was that I experienced so hearty a reception in this place. Great and respected as your Society is, and ought to be, in the eyes of England and of Europe, it would yet be an imprudence to proclaim one’s self your agent here, with the sole or chief object of circulating the Bible. This is not speaking very favourably of the inhabitants of South America, you will say. ”

“ As after these ruins I saw no others in South America, for neither southern Bolivia nor Chile nor Argentina,152 nor Uruguay has any to shew, this seems the fittest place for such few thoughts on the ancient civilization of South America as are suggested to the traveller's mind by the remains of it which he sees and by what he reads in the books of historians and archæologists. A large part of the interest which Peru and Bolivia have for the modern world is the interest which this ancient civilization awakens. It is a unique chapter in the history of mankind. ”

“ The history of a continent such as South America, confined to the limits of a single volume of moderate size, must of necessity contain some elements of mere survey. Nevertheless, since in no other but a condensed form could the respective strides achieved by the various nations of this continent be satisfactorily judged and compared, the author is encouraged to hope that this small work may fill in one of the most obvious of the many gaps in the English versions of South American history. ”

“ The most interesting of all the questions which a journey in South America suggests are those which concern the growth of these young nations. What type of manhood will they develop? What place in the world will they ultimately hold? They need fear no attacks from the powers of the Northern Hemisphere, and they have abundant resources within. ”

“ In the study of South America one may observe certain points of resemblance with others of difference between that continent and North America. The outline of each, we perceive, is roughly triangular, broad at the north and tapering towards the south; but as the broad part of one is not far from the Arctic Circle while that of the other is near the equator, we find that the greater part of North America is in the temperate zone while most of South America is in the torrid; disparity in climate and productions follows. ”

“ Every nation has its strong and weak points, which must be judged according to the form they take and the times in which we are moving. I certainly did not go to the South Americans for a classification of the different States of Europe. Why should I have been expected to draw up a scale of civilisation for them? The Argentine, Uruguay, and Brazil are, each in their way, grand social structures, having their defects, like the countries of Europe. ”

“ So far as transportation and travel are concerned South America is often divided broadly into three sections: the East, the West, and the North Coasts, to which a fourth is sometimes added, the Amazon Basin. We may begin with the nearest, the countries on the North Coast, follow with those on the West, and coming up from the south conclude with Brazil. With the Republics of the North Coast we have the greatest percentage of trade, with those on the East the largest amount. ”

“ The circumstance that South America is a Roman Catholic continent, where the Latin races are dominant, would enormously favour the experiment. On the Zone, the Spanish labourer works in order to save and to depart, the milieu being foreign to him and unattractive. ”

“ Holland, France, and England all at one time meddled in South America, but all three, while each retaining a foothold in Guiana, have long ago drawn apart and left Latin America to itself. Politically its republics live in a little world of their own; they have their own alliances, their own wars and bitternesses, with which strangers do not intermeddle. ”

“ The sweeping charge that South America is a land of revolutions is made so often and so lightly that few people stop to consider the record of the vastly different countries comprising the area below Panama. ”

“ It then expanded to take in North America, then southern Asia and Australia, and then, last of all, the ancient nations of the Far East. South America, which has hitherto,586 except at rare intervals, stood outside, has now begun to affect the commercial and financial movements of the world. She may before long begin to affect its movements in other ways also, and however little we can predict the part that her peoples will play, it must henceforth be one of growing significance for the Old World as well as for the New. ”

“ Yet, on the whole, South America has its own distinct character, whether of savagery or of civilization, showing little certain evidence of recent influence from other parts of the globe. Au fond the cultural traits—implements, social organization, ideas—are of the types common to mankind at similar levels; but their special developments have a distinctly South American character, so that, whether we compare Inca with Aztec, or [Pg 254] Amazonian with Mississippian, we perceive without hesitancy the continental idiosyncracy of each. ”

“ What would be the course of a ship in sailing from the Galapago islands to the mouth of the Amazon river? [Pg 58]
South America is an exceedingly rich and fertile country, producing in abundance gold and silver, and the necessaries and luxuries of life.
The most prominent feature of this country is the range of mountains which extends through the western part from north to south. The region to the west from this range is an immense plateau, elevated twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea; owing to this elevation, this tract enjoys a cool and healthy climate. ”