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 medium of transmission and distribution through the provinces, and we are now about to see what is the result of this condition of things.

But above all the peculiarities of special portions of the country, there predominates one general, uniform, and constant character. Whether the soil is covered with the luxuriant and colossal vegetation of the tropics, or stunted, thorny, and unsightly shrubs bear witness to the scanty moisture which sustains them; or whether finally the pampa displays its open and monotonous level, the surface of the country is generally flat and unbroken—the mountain groups of San Luis and Cordova in the centre, and some projecting spurs of the Andes toward the north, being scarcely an interruption to this boundless continuity.

We have, in this fact, a new element calculated to consolidate the nation which is hereafter to occupy these great solitudes, for it is well known that mountains and other natural obstacles interposed between different districts, keep up the isolation and the primitive peculiarities of their inhabitants. North America is destined to be a federation, not so much because its first settlements were independent of each other, as on account of the length of its Atlantic coast, and the various routes to the interior afforded by the St. Lawrence in the north, the Mississippi in the south, and the immense system of canals in the centre. The Argentine Republic is "one and indivisible."

Many philosophers have also thought that plains prepare the way for despotism, just as mountains furnish strongholds for the struggles of liberty. The boundless plain which permits the unobstructed passage of large