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viii affairs, that I generally find the vast territories now distributed amongst the New States, classed as provinces, or counties, belonging to one kingdom, and not as empires occupying half a world. I have been asked repeatedly, since my return to England, whether Captain Head's description of the Pampas is correct, although Mexico is nineteen degrees North, and Buenos Ayres thirty-four degrees South of the line; while men well read, and well informed upon every other subject, have expressed surprise that, after a residence of three years in the Capital of New Spain, I should not be intimately acquainted with the state of parties in Lima and Santiago, Bolivia and Bogota.

Under these circumstances, I have conceived that it ought to be my object to combine as much information as possible in my present work, and thus to render it independent of those which have preceded it, by entering into details, a knowledge of which could not have been derived from other sources, without a perpetual and harassing reference to authorities, many of which are not within the reach of the public in general.

For instance, in addition to the Essai Politique of Baron Humboldt, to which I have expressed