Excerpt from The South Americans The general advance of the Continent, rapid in itself, has SO far followed to a large extent the line of least resistance. Although this line has passed through such wealthy territories, this Circumstance, it must be admitted, was more by good luck than by good management. Both colonists and capitalists have, naturally enough, dealt first of all with that which came most easily to their hand. It is true that, notwithstanding this, numerous engineering feats and other industrial triumphs Of the kind may be pointed to. The harnessing by the iron rail Of the Andes at SO rapidly growing a number of points counts among the many achievements Of which any Continent might be proud. Nevertheless, the main tides of progress have so far been most evident in the plains and along the great river systems Of South America. The turn Of the mountains to be dealt with in something approaching a comprehensive fashion is now at hand, and in the Opinion Of various experts the. Wealth that has already been extracted from the soil of the Continent represents but an insignificant proportion of that which lies undiscovered within its remoter fastnesses. The romance of industry has probably nothing to Show comparable with that worked out in the Americas. SO far as the original enterprise on the part of white men was concerned, the field was virgin, and the aboriginals as new, and almost as strange, as beings from another planet. But for the efforts of the Incas and the Aztecs, all that has been produced in both the Americas has been the work of the races Of Europe and of their progeny, the present-day Americans. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.