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Excerpt from The Spanish-American Republics
The reader will find in the following pages a plain narrative of observation and travel in the more accessible parts of the five important republics of Spanish South America, Chili, Peru, the Argentine, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The writer neither encountered nor sought adventures; his object was not to explore unknown territory, but rather to examine the actual state of the town and country populations in the year 1890; to study the commercial and social life of the capitals and ports; to see how people live and labor in the rural districts; to give an account of the various special industries; to describe the real aspect of the countries in question; to note the characteristic features of the inhabitants; and, in short, to make a modern report of the progress of civilization south of the equator.
Throughout the book more attention is paid to humanity than to nature; nevertheless, nature has not been neglected, and many pages have been devoted to the grandiose, terrible, or charming phases of the landscape of the Andes, Smyth's Channel, the Strait of Magellan, and the great rivers like the Parana and Paraguay. Very little has been said about Indians, and not a single story will be found of scalping incidents, or hair-breadth escapes from the hands of savages. The reason is that unless the traveller goes far away from the domains of civilization and colonization, he will not see many wild Indians still living in a primitive state; while, on the other hand, the innumerable Indians and half-breeds who form the mass of the native population in the interior of the republics are peaceful, indolent people, who profess the Roman Catholic faith, wear Manchester goods, and differ from thousands and thousands of Europeans chiefly in the color of their skin and in the Mongolian cast of their features.
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