States. Virgin forests have fallen before the restless axe of the hardy pioneer; hundreds of populous cities have risen as if by enchantment in districts haunted within the memory of men by the bear and the wild buffalo; a network of railways spreads from the Atlantic almost to the base of the Rocky Mountains; crops of waving corn bloom over wide prairies that a few years ago yielded only the tall grass and waving reed; the aboriginal tribes of the Red Indians have melted away before the impetuous tide of an ever-advancing civilization; and the exhaustless energies of our race have already raised in less than a century two mighty empires on the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, destined to a marvellous, a changeful, and doubtlessly a glorious history. And both these empires have sprung from the loins of England, are governed in the main by the same laws, hold the same religion, are animated by the same aspiring and unwearied genius, and "Speak the tongue That Shakspeare spoke; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held;" in everything, as we believe, "Are sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold."[88] Southward from the thirtieth parallel stretches the domain of the Latin races, already mingled with and being absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon, in Canada, California, and the Southern States of the Union. Vast as this region is, for it comprehends all Central America and all the Southern Continent, it is infinitely less prosperous, less powerful, less peopled, than what we may call Saxon America. Mexico is a byword and a reproach for savage anarchy and murderous license. Neither Chili, nor Peru, nor even Brazil approaches Canada in solid power and the auspicious promise of future greatness. The Latin race seems dwarfed and cowed by the neighbourhood of the energetic Anglo-Saxon, is swiftly retiring before it in North America, and in the course of centuries will probably be subjugated by it, even in the southern division of the great Continent. A considerable portion of South America, however, is uncultivated, unpeopled, and but imperfectly explored. There the Desert re-appears with-- "The pale, cold aspect of a wearied friend,"[89] under its most sharply defined forms and most impressive conditions. The supremacy of the whites over the indigenous tribes is almost nominal; and if the latter are gradually dying out, the catastrophe, in this instance, is due rather to their own lack of vigour, energy, and capacity, than to the pressure of civilization.