Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1811 edition. Excerpt: ... 'BOOK II. GENERAL POPULATION OF NEW SPAIN. DIVISION OF THE INHABITANTS INTO CASTS. CHAPTER IV. General enumeration in 1793. Progress of the population in the ten following years. Proportion of births to burials. The physical view which we have been rapidly sketching proves, that in Mexico, as elsewhere, na ture has very unequally distributed her benefits. But men, unable to appreciate the wisdom of this distribution, neglect the riches which are within their reach. Collected together on a small extent of territory, in the centre of the kingdom, on the very ridge of the Cordillera, they have allowed the regions of the greatest fertility, and the nearest to the coast, to remain waste and uninhabited. The population of the United States is concentrated in the Atlantic division, that is to say, the long and narrow district between the sea and the Alleghany mountains. In the capitania general of Caraccas, the only inhabited and well cultivated districts are those of the maritime regions: in Mexico improvenorthern parts of Asia, in their progress towards the south never quitted the ridge of the Cordillera, preferring these cold regions to the excessive heat of the cOast. That part of Anahuac which composed the kingdom of Montezuma on the arrival of Cortez did not equal in surface the eighth part of the present kingdom of New Spain. The kings of Acolhuacan, Tlacopan, and Michuacan, were independent princes. The great cities of the Aztecs, and the best cultivated territories were in the environs of the capital of Mexico, particularly in the fine valley of Tenochlitlan. This alone was a sufficient reason to induce the Spaniards to establish there the centre of their new empire; but they loved also to inhabit plains whose climate resembled that of...