Compendium of the Natural and Civil History of Chile

XVII

liberty as if he might have written about the moon and the Selenites original: Selenitas; refers to the hypothetical inhabitants of the moon, named after the Greek moon goddess Selene.: but unfortunately for him, America is not as distant from us as the moon, and thus many European scholars who have been in those regions, and who have seen what they are like with their own eyes, affirm the opposite of what Paw affirms; and there are others as well who, being well instructed in the history of the various provinces of that continent, despise such arbitrary speculations: nor are there lacking scholars who, guided solely by the love of truth, have undertaken to demonstrate in their writings the insufficiency of Paw’s arguments, among which the Count Gian Rinaldo Carli original: Juan Reynaldos Carli (1720–1795); an Italian economist and antiquarian who became a prominent defender of American civilizations against the "degeneracy" theories of Pauw. deserves particular attention, well known to men of letters for various printed works, and most recently for his most esteemed American Letters (1), in which he has sa—

(1) It is to be believed that the first volume of the American Letters will be published very soon, to which the other two will follow, because this precious work consists of three parts. The learned men who as—