With the collapse of the Spanish power these lands slipped from the control of Spain, and broke up into states which still retain a Spanish impress. In the West Indies, devoid of gold and unessential to the con trol of lands where gold had been stored, the Spaniards made no attempt to hold more than a few islands, allow ing other sea-powers to claim, colonize and organize the rest. The plateaus, peopled still by the descendants of those whom the Spanish found and still difficult of access, still tend to remain in units curiously corre sponding to the conditions before the Spaniards came.
Out of touch with modern conditions, with small popula tions even if they have large areas, there are revolutions which reflect the tendency to break up into smaller units still. Mexico, the plateau between the desert on the north and the forest on the south, together with the dry lowland of Yucatan, is open to the sea on two sides, and is the most Spanish of the Spanish colonies. In Peru, Which comprises both the highland round the original Inca seat of power, and the irrigated desert to the west, half the population are still Inca Indians. In Bolivia, brought under the rule of the Incas on their southward advance, and possessing no coast plain, three quarters of the population are of pure Indian blood. Ecuador, brought under the sway of the Incas on their northern advance, only within half a century of the Discovery, has a majority of its inhabitants still Indian. Colombia, never under Inca rule, but having a civilization of the same type, and more open to the Spanish sea-power in the Caribbean by the and Cauca valleys, is more Spanish than the other South American states. Mexico, the town on the lake, strong as a defence for Aztec pueblos, and Cuzco, a strategic centre for Inca conquest, still remain centres of modern states ; though Lima, set by the Spanish conqueror in the dry western desert once dominated by Peru, is now by a curious but quite natural reversal the centre from which Peru is governed. Vera Cruz and Callao, ports for lands across the ocean of which the ancient inhabitants never dreamed, owe their position to the needs of the conquering Spaniards.
The small forested states of Central America, really uncolonized, barely organized, and with little real unity, would be of less account than the states on the plateau, were it not for the fact that they are more in touch with the waters of two oceans, and that across them must pass men more able than natives or half-castes to control energy by the most economic modern methods.
But in the far south, where originally Spanish attempts at control were as half-hearted as in Central America, are growing the most important states which owe their existence to Spanish initiative. Chile and'Argentina, essentially the lowlands on either side of the lofty, cold and-uninhabited barrier, have areas not unlike those to be found in Western Europe. Here, in regions having a climate to which they are accustomed, men of European stocks, with all the historical advantages which that implies, are colonizing lands where no great advance was possible under primitive conditions. Organized from Buenos Ayres and Santiago, 'under a rule which retains more than a suggestion of its Spanish origin, lands to north and south are gradually being occupied and utilized for the supply of more energy to the modern world. More easy of access, occupied by men capable of controlling energy more economically, supplying more energy in usable forms, Chile and Argentina, to which may be added Uruguay, should have more importance now than have the Andean states to the north.
Nor must it be forgotten that the Portuguese on their way to the Indies discovered a portion of South America and by the Pope's decree shared with the Spaniards such rights as the Pope could give. They placed here and there on the coastlands of Brazil and on the shores of the great Amazon a few stations, and staked out claims to a large area long thought to be of so little value that their claims were not disputed. Thus the foundations were laid of a modern state, in which, indeed, there are vast possibilities, though its im portant part is still the steep south-eastern coastlands open to the sea and comparatively cool.
Again we see how the course of history and the production of the modern conditions, the basis for future history, have been controlled by the geography which, on the one hand has stimulated action, and on the other has determined how and where the most effective . action shall take place.