Title: Aspects of Nature (Vol. 1 of 2): in Different Lands and Different Climates; with Scientific Elucidations
Author: Humboldt, Alexander von
Language: English
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ASPECTS OF NATURE.



Wilson and Ogilvy, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London.



  ASPECTS OF NATURE,
  IN
  DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES;

  WITH
  Scientific Elucidations.

  BY
  ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

  TRANSLATED BY MRS. SABINE.

  IN TWO VOLUMES.

  VOL. I.


  LONDON:

  PRINTED FOR
  LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
  PATERNOSTER ROW; AND
  JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
  1849.



AUTHOR’S PREFACE

TO THE

FIRST EDITION.


It is not without diffidence that I present to the public a series of
papers which took their origin in the presence of natural scenes of
grandeur or of beauty,--on the Ocean, in the forests of the Orinoco,
in the Steppes of Venezuela, and in the mountain wildernesses of Peru
and Mexico. Detached fragments were written down on the spot and at the
moment, and were afterwards moulded into a whole. The view of Nature
on an enlarged scale, the display of the concurrent action of various
forces or powers, and the renewal of the enjoyment which the immediate
prospect of tropical scenery affords to sensitive minds, are the
objects which I have proposed to myself. According to the design of my
work, whilst each of the treatises of which it consists should form a
whole complete in itself, one common tendency should pervade them all.
Such an artistic and literary treatment of subjects of natural history
is liable to difficulties of composition, notwithstanding the aid which
it derives from the power and flexibility of our noble language. The
unbounded riches of Nature occasion an accumulation of separate images;
and accumulation disturbs the repose and the unity of impression
which should belong to the picture. Moreover, when addressing the
feelings and imagination, a firm hand is needed to guard the style from
degenerating into an undesirable species of poetic prose. But I need
not here describe more fully dangers which I fear the following pages
will shew I have not always succeeded in avoiding.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding faults which I can more easily perceive
than amend, I venture to hope that these descriptions of the varied
Aspects which Nature assumes in distant lands, may impart to the reader
a portion of that enjoyment which is derived from their immediate
contemplation by a mind susceptible of such impressions. As this
enjoyment is enhanced by insight into the more hidden connection of
the different powers and forces of nature, I have subjoined to each
treatise scientific elucidations and additions.

Throughout the entire work I have sought to indicate the unfailing
influence of external nature on the feelings, the moral dispositions,
and the destinies of man. To minds oppressed with the cares or the
sorrows of life, the soothing influence of the contemplation of nature
is peculiarly precious; and to such these pages are more especially
dedicated. May they, “escaping from the stormy waves of life,” follow
me in spirit with willing steps to the recesses of the primeval
forests, over the boundless surface of the Steppe, and to the higher
ridges of the Andes. To them is addressed the poet’s voice, in the
sentence of the Chorus--

    “Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit! Der Hauch der Grüfte
    Steigt nicht hinauf in die reinen Lüfte;
    Die Welt ist vollkommen überall,
    Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual.”



AUTHOR’S PREFACE

TO THE

SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS.


The twofold aim of the present work (a carefully prepared and executed
attempt to enhance the enjoyment of Nature by animated description, and
at the same time to increase in proportion to the state of knowledge at
the time the reader’s insight into the harmonious and concurrent action
of different powers and forces of Nature) was pointed out by me nearly
half a century ago in the Preface to the First Edition. In so doing, I
alluded to the various obstacles which oppose a successful treatment of
the subject in the manner designed. The combination of a literary and
of a purely scientific object,--the endeavour at once to interest and
occupy the imagination, and to enrich the mind with new ideas by the
augmentation of knowledge,--renders the due arrangement of the separate
parts, and the desired unity of composition, difficult of attainment.
Yet, notwithstanding these disadvantages, the public have long
regarded my imperfectly executed undertaking with friendly partiality.

The second edition of the “Ansichten der Natur” was prepared by me
in Paris in 1826; and at the same time two fresh treatises were
added,--one an Essay on the Structure and mode of Action of Volcanoes
in different regions of the earth; and the other on the “Vital
Power,” bearing the title “Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius.”
During my long stay at Jena, Schiller, in the recollection of his
youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me on physiological
subjects; and the considerations in which I was then engaged on the
muscular and nervous fibres when excited by contact with chemically
different substances, often gave a more specific and graver turn to our
discourse. The “Rhodian Genius” was written at this time: it appeared
first in Schiller’s “Horen,” a periodical journal; and it was his
partiality for this little work which encouraged me to allow it to be
reprinted. My brother, in a letter forming part of a collection which
has recently been given to the public (Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Briefe
an eine Freundin, Th. ii. S. 39), touches tenderly on the subject of
the memoir in question, but adds at the same time a very just remark:
“The development of a physiological idea is the object of the entire
treatise; men were fonder at that time than they would now be of such
semi-poetic clothing of severe scientific truths.”

In my eightieth year, I am still enabled to enjoy the satisfaction of
completing a third edition of my work, remoulding it entirely afresh to
meet the requirements of the present time. Almost all the scientific
Elucidations or Annotations have been either enlarged or replaced by
new and more comprehensive ones. I have hoped that these volumes might
tend to inspire and cherish a love for the study of Nature, by bringing
together in a small space the results of careful observation on the
most varied subjects; by showing the importance of exact numerical
data, and the use to be made of them by well-considered arrangement and
comparison; and by opposing the dogmatic half-knowledge and arrogant
scepticism which have long too much prevailed in what are called the
higher circles of society.

The expedition made by Ehrenberg, Gustav Rose, and myself, by the
command of the Emperor of Russia, in 1829, to Northern Asia (in the
Ural and Altai mountains, and on the shores of the Caspian Sea), falls
between the period of publication of the second and third editions.
This expedition has contributed materially to the enlargement of
my views in all that regards the form of the surface of the earth,
the direction of mountain-chains, the connection of steppes and
deserts with each other, and the geographical distribution of plants
in relation to ascertained conditions of temperature. The long
subsisting want of any accurate knowledge on the subject of the great
snow-covered mountain-chains which are situated between the Altai
and the Himalaya (_i. e._ the Thian-schan and the Kuen-lün), and the
ill-judged neglect of Chinese authorities, have thrown great obscurity
around the geography of Central Asia, and have allowed imagination
to be substituted for the results of observation in works which have
obtained extensive circulation. In the course of the last few months
the hypsometrical comparison of the culminating summits of the two
continents has almost unexpectedly received important corrections and
additions, of which I hasten to avail myself. (Vol. i. pp. 57-58, and
92-93.) The determinations of the heights of two mountains in the
eastern chain of the Andes of Bolivia, the Sorata and the Illimani,
have been freed from the errors which had placed those mountains above
the Chimborazo, but without as yet altogether restoring to the latter
with certainty its ancient pre-eminence among the snowy summits of
the New World. In the Himalaya the recently executed trigonometrical
measurement of the Kinchinjinga (28178 English feet) places it next
in altitude to the Dhawalagiri, a new and more exact trigonometrical
measurement of which has also been recently made.

For the sake of uniformity with the two previous editions of the
“Ansichten der Natur,” I have given the degrees of temperature in the
present work (unless where expressly stated otherwise) in degrees of
Reaumur’s scale. The linear measures are the old French, in which the
toise equals six Parisian feet. The miles are geographical, fifteen
to a degree of the equator. The longitudes are reckoned from the
Observatory at Paris as a first meridian.

  BERLIN, 1849.



NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.


In the translation the temperatures are given in degrees of Fahrenheit,
retaining at the same time the original figures in Reaumur’s scale.
In the same manner the measures are given in English feet, generally
retaining at the same time the original statements in Parisian or
French feet or toises, a desirable precaution where accuracy is
important. The miles are given in geographical miles, 60 to a degree,
but in this case the original figures have usually been omitted, the
conversion being so simple as to render the introduction of error very
improbable. In a very few instances “English miles” appear without
any farther epithet or explanation; these have been taken by the
author from English sources, and may probably signify statute miles.
The longitudes from Greenwich are substituted for those from Paris,
retaining in addition the original statement in particular cases.



CONTENTS.


                                                       PAGE

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION                 vii

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS      xi

  NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR                               xvii

  STEPPES AND DESERTS                                     1
    Annotations and Additions                            27

  CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO                              207
    Annotations and Additions                           233

  NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST      257
    Annotations and Additions                           273

  HYPSOMETRIC ADDENDA                                   277


  ⁂ For General Summary of the CONTENTS of the First Volume,
  _see_ page 289.



  ASPECTS OF NATURE

  IN

  DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES.



STEPPES AND DESERTS.


A widely extended and apparently interminable plain stretches from
the southern base of the lofty granitic crest, which, in the youth of
our planet, when the Caribbean gulf was formed, braved the invasion
of the waters. On quitting the mountain valleys of Caraccas, and the
island-studded lake of Tacarigua[1] whose surface reflects the stems
of plantains and bananas, and on leaving behind him meads adorned with
the bright and tender green of the Tahitian sugar cane or the darker
verdure of the Cacao groves, the traveller, looking southward, sees
unroll before him Steppes receding until they vanish in the far horizon.

Fresh from the richest luxuriance of organic life, he treads at once
the desolate margin of a treeless desert. Neither hill nor cliff rises,
like an island in the ocean, to break the uniformity of the boundless
plain; only here and there broken strata of limestone, several hundred
square miles in extent, appear sensibly higher than the adjoining
parts. “Banks”[2] is the name given to them by the natives; as if
language instinctively recalled the more ancient condition of the
globe, when those elevations were shoals, and the Steppes themselves
were the bottom of a great Mediterranean sea.

Even at the present time nocturnal illusion still recalls these images
of the past. When the rapidly rising and descending constellations
illumine the margin of the plain, or when their trembling image is
repeated in the lower stratum of undulating vapour, we seem to see
before us a shoreless ocean.[3] Like the ocean, the Steppe fills the
mind with the feeling of infinity; and thought, escaping from the
visible impressions of space, rises to contemplations of a higher
order. Yet the aspect of the clear transparent mirror of the ocean,
with its light, curling, gently foaming, sportive waves, cheers the
heart like that of a friend; but the Steppe lies stretched before us
dead and rigid, like the stony crust[4] of a desolated planet.

In every zone nature presents the phenomena of these great plains: in
each they have a peculiar physiognomy, determined by diversity of soil,
by climate, and by elevation above the level of the sea.

In northern Europe, the Heaths, which, covered with a single race of
plants repelling all others, extend from the point of Jutland to the
mouth of the Scheldt, may be regarded as true Steppes,--but Steppes of
small extent and hilly surface, if compared with the Llanos and Pampas
of South America, or even with the Prairies of the Missouri[5] and the
Barrens of the Coppermine river, where range countless herds of the
shaggy buffalo and musk ox.

A grander and severer aspect characterises the plains of the interior
of Africa. Like the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, it is only in
recent times that attempts have been made to explore them thoroughly.
They are parts of a sea of sand, which, stretching eastward, separates
fruitful regions from each other, or encloses them like islands; as
where the Desert, near the basaltic mountains of Harudsh,[6] surrounds
the Oasis of Siwah rich in date trees, and in which the ruins of the
temple of Ammon mark the venerable site of an ancient civilisation.
Neither dew nor rain bathe these desolate plains, or develope on their
glowing surface the germs of vegetable life; for heated columns of air,
every where ascending, dissolve the vapours, and disperse each swiftly
vanishing cloud.

Where the Desert approaches the Atlantic Ocean, as between the Wadi Nun
and Cape Blanco, the moist sea air pours in to supply the void left by
these upward currents. The mariner, steering towards the mouth of the
Gambia through a sea covered with weed, when suddenly deserted by the
east trade wind of the tropics,[7] infers the vicinity of the widely
extended heat-radiating desert. Herds of antelopes and swift-footed
ostriches roam through these vast regions; but, with the exception of
the watered Oases or islands in the sea of sand, some groups of which
have recently been discovered, and whose verdant shores are frequented
by nomade Tibbos and Tuaricks,[8] the African Desert must be regarded
as uninhabitable by man. The more civilised nations who dwell on its
borders only venture to enter it periodically. By trading routes, which
have remained unaltered for thousands of years, caravans traverse the
long distance from Tafilet to Timbuctoo, and from Moorzouk to Bornou;
adventurous undertakings, the possibility of which depends upon the
existence of the camel, the “ship of the desert,”[9] as it is called in
the traditionary language of the eastern world.

These African plains occupy an extent nearly three times as great
as that of the neighbouring Mediterranean sea. They are situated
partly within, and partly in the vicinity of the tropics; and on this
situation their peculiar character depends. In the eastern part of the
old continent, the same geognostic phenomenon occurs in the temperate
zone. On the plateaux of central Asia, between the gold mountains
or the Altai and the Kuen-lun,[10] from the Chinese wall to beyond
the Celestial mountains, and towards the sea of Aral, there extend,
through a length of many thousand miles, the most vast, if not the most
elevated, Steppes on the surface of the globe. I have myself had the
opportunity, fully thirty years after my South American journey, of
visiting a portion of them; namely, the Calmuck Kirghis Steppes between
the Don, the Volga, the Caspian, and the Chinese lake Dsaisang, being
an extent of almost 2800 geographical miles.

These Asiatic Steppes, which are sometimes hilly and sometimes
interrupted by pine forests, possess (dispersed over them in groups)
a far more varied vegetation than that of the Llanos and Pampas of
Caraccas and Buenos Ayres. The finest part of these plains, which is
inhabited by Asiatic pastoral tribes, is adorned with low bushes of
luxuriant white-blossomed Rosaceæ, and with Fritillarias, Tulips, and
Cypripedias.

As the torrid zone is characterised on the whole by a disposition in
all vegetation to become arborescent, so some of the Asiatic Steppes
in the temperate zone are characterised by the great height attained
by flowering herbaceous plants, Saussureas and other Synantheræ, and
Papilionaceæ especially a host of species of Astragalus. In traversing
pathless portions of these Steppes, the traveller, seated in the
low Tartar carriages, sees the thickly crowded plants bend beneath
the wheels, but without rising up cannot look around him to see the
direction in which he is moving. Some of the Asiatic Steppes are grassy
plains; others are covered with succulent, evergreen, articulated soda
plants: many glisten from a distance with flakes of exuded salt which
cover the clayey soil, not unlike in appearance to fresh fallen snow.

These Mongolian and Tartarian Steppes, interrupted frequently by
mountainous features, divide the very ancient civilisation of Thibet
and Hindostan from the rude nations of Northern Asia. They have
in various ways exercised an important influence on the changeful
destinies of man. They have compressed the population towards the
south, and have tended, more than the Himalaya, or than the snowy
mountains of Srinagur and Ghorka, to impede the intercourse of nations,
and to place permanent limits to the extension of milder manners, and
of artistic and intellectual cultivation in northern Asia.

But, in the history of the past, it is not alone as an opposing barrier
that we must regard the plains of Central Asia: more than once they
have proved the source from whence devastation has spread over distant
lands. The pastoral nations of these Steppes,--Moguls, Getæ, Alani,
and Usuni,--have shaken the world. As in the course of past ages,
early intellectual culture has come like the cheering light of the sun
from the East, so, at a later period, from the same direction barbaric
rudeness has threatened to overspread and involve Europe in darkness. A
brown pastoral race,[11] of Tukiuish or Turkish descent, the Hiongnu,
dwelling in tents of skins, inhabited the elevated Steppe of Gobi.
Long terrible to the Chinese power, a part of this tribe was driven
back into Central Asia. The shock or impulse thus given passed from
nation to nation, until it reached the ancient land of the Finns, near
the Ural mountains. From thence, Huns, Avari, Ghazarés, and various
admixtures of Asiatic races, broke forth. Armies of Huns appeared
successively on the Volga, in Pannonia, on the Marne, and on the Po,
desolating those fair and fertile fields which, since the time of
Antenor, civilised man had adorned with monument after monument. Thus
went forth from the Mongolian deserts a deadly blast, which withered on
Cisalpine ground the tender long-cherished flower of art.

From the salt Steppes of Asia, from the European Heaths smiling in
summer with their purple blossoms rich in honey, and from the arid
Deserts of Africa devoid of all vegetation, let us now return to those
South American plains of which I have already began to trace the
picture, albeit in rude outlines.

The interest which this picture can offer to the beholder is, however,
exclusively that of pure nature. Here no Oasis recalls the memory of
earlier inhabitants; no carved stone,[12] no ruined building, no fruit
tree once the care of the cultivator but now wild, speaks of the art
or industry of former generations. As if estranged from the destinies
of mankind, and riveting attention solely to the present moment, this
corner of the earth appears as a wild theatre for the free development
of animal and vegetable life.

The Steppe extends from the Caraccas coast chain to the forests of
Guiana, and from the snowy mountains of Merida (on the slope of which
the Natron Lake Urao is an object of superstitious veneration to the
natives,) to the great delta formed by the Orinoco at its mouth. To the
south-west a branch is prolonged, like an arm of the sea,[13] beyond
the banks of the Meta and Vichada to the unvisited sources of the
Guaviare, and to the lonely mountain to which the excited fancy of the
Spanish soldiery gave the name of Paramo de la Suma Paz--the seat of
perfect peace.

This Steppe occupies a space of 16,000 (256,000 English) square miles.
It has often been erroneously described as running uninterruptedly,
and with an equal breadth, to the straits of Magellan, forgetting
the forest-covered plain of the Amazons which intervenes between the
grassy Steppes of the Apure and those of the river Plate. The Andes
of Cochabamba, and the Brazilian group of mountains, send forth,
between the province of Chiquitos and the isthmus of Villabella, some
detached spurs, which advance, as it were, to meet each other.[14] A
narrow plain connects the forest lands of the Amazons with the Pampas
of Buenos Ayres. The latter far surpass the Llanos of Venezuela in
area; and their extent is so great that while their northern margin is
bordered by palm trees, their southern extremity is almost continually
covered with ice.

The Tuyu, which resembles the Cassowary (the Struthio rhea), is
peculiar to these Pampas, which are also the haunt of troops of
dogs[15] descended from those introduced by the colonists, but which
have become completely wild, dwelling together in subterranean hollows,
and often attacking with blood-thirsty rage the human race whom their
progenitors served and defended.

Like the greater portion of the desert of Sahara,[16] the northernmost
of the South American plains, the Llanos, are in the torrid zone:
during one half of the year they are desolate, like the Lybian sandy
waste; during the other, they appear as a grassy plain, resembling many
of the Steppes of Central Asia.[17]

It is a highly interesting though difficult task of general geography
to compare the natural conditions of distant regions, and to represent
by a few traits the results of this comparison. The causes which
lessen both heat and dryness in the New World[18] are manifold, and
in some respects as yet only partially understood. Amongst these
may be classed the narrowness and deep indentation of the American
land in the northern part of the torrid zone, where consequently the
atmosphere, resting on a liquid base, does not present so heated
an ascending current;--the extension of the continent towards the
poles;--the expanse of ocean over which the trade-winds sweep freely,
acquiring thereby a cooler temperature;--the flatness of the eastern
coasts;--currents of cold sea-water from the antarctic regions,
which, coming from the south-west to the north-east, first strike the
coast of Chili in the parallel of 35° south latitude, and advance
along the coast of Peru as far north as Cape Pariña, and then turn
suddenly to the west;--the numerous lofty mountain chains rich in
springs, and whose snow-clad summits, rising high above all the strata
of clouds, cause descending currents of cold air to roll down their
declivities;--the abundance of rivers of enormous breadth, which,
after many windings, seek the most distant coast;--Steppes which from
not being sandy are less susceptible of acquiring a high degree of
heat,--impenetrable forests occupying the alluvial plains situated
immediately beneath the equator, protecting with their shade the soil
beneath from the direct influence of the sunbeams, and exhaling in the
interior of the country at a great distance from the mountains and
from the ocean vast quantities of moisture, partly imbibed and partly
elaborated:--all these circumstances afford to the flat part of America
a climate which by its humidity and coolness contrasts wonderfully
with that of Africa. It is to the same causes that we are to attribute
the luxuriant vegetation, the magnificent forests, and that abundant
leafiness by which the new continent is peculiarly characterised.

If, therefore, one side of our planet has a moister atmosphere than
the other, the consideration of the present condition of things is
amply sufficient to explain the problem presented by this inequality.
The physical inquirer needs not to clothe the explanation of these
phenomena in a mantle of geological myths. He needs not to assume that
on our planet the harmonious reconciliation of the destructive conflict
of the elements took place at different epochs in the eastern and the
western hemispheres; or that America emerged later than the other parts
of the globe from the chaotic watery covering,[19] as an island of
swamps and marshes tenanted by alligators and serpents.

There is, indeed, a striking similarity between South America and the
southern peninsula of the old continent in the form of the outline
and in the direction of the coasts; but the nature of the soil, and
the relative position of the neighbouring masses of land, produce in
Africa that extraordinary aridity which over an immense area checks the
development of organic life. Four-fifths of South America are situated
on the southern side of the equator; or in a hemisphere which from the
greater proportion of sea and from other causes is cooler and moister
than our northern half of the globe,[20] to which the larger part of
Africa belongs. The breadth of the South American Steppe, measured from
east to west, is only a third of that of the African Desert. The Llanos
receive the influence of the tropical sea wind, while the African
Deserts, being situated in the same zone of latitude as Arabia and the
south of Persia, are in contact with strata of air which have blown
over warm heat-radiating continents. The venerable and only lately
appreciated father of history, Herodotus, in the true spirit of an
enlarged view of nature, described the Deserts of northern Africa, of
Yemen, of Kerman and Mekran (the Gedrosia of the Greeks), and even as
far as Moultan, as forming a single connected sea of sand.[21]

In addition to the action of these hot winds, there is (so far as we
know) an absence or comparative paucity in Africa of large rivers,
of widely extended forests producing coolness and exhaling moisture,
and of lofty mountains. Of mountains covered with perpetual snow, we
know only the western part of the Atlas,[22] whose narrow range, seen
in profile from the Atlantic, appeared to the ancient navigators when
sailing along the coast as a single detached lofty sky-supporting
mount. The eastern prolongation of the chain extends nearly to Dakul,
where Carthage, once mistress of the seas, now lies in mouldering
ruins. As forming a long extended coast-chain, or Gætulian rampart, the
effect of the Atlas range is to intercept the cool north breezes, and
the vapours which ascend from the Mediterranean.

The Mountains of the Moon, Djebel-al-Komr,[23] (fabulously represented
as forming part of a mountainous parallel extending from the high
plateaux of Habesh, an African Quito, to the sources of the Senegal),
were supposed to rise above the limit of perpetual snow. The Cordillera
of Lupata, which extends along the eastern coast of Mozambique and
Monomotapa, as the Andes along the western coast of Peru, is believed
to be covered with perpetual snow in the gold districts of Machinga and
Mocanga. But all these mountains, with the abundant waters to which
they give rise, are far remote from the immense Desert which stretches
from the southern declivity of the Atlas to the Niger.

Possibly, however, all the causes of heat and dryness which have been
enumerated may have been insufficient to transform such considerable
parts of the African plains into a dreadful desert, without the
concurrence of some revolution of nature,--such, for instance, as
an irruption of the ocean, whereby these flat regions may have been
despoiled of their coating of vegetable soil, as well as of the plants
which it nourished. Profound obscurity veils the period of such an
event, and the force which determined the irruption. Perhaps it may
have been caused by the great “rotatory current”[24] which sends the
warmer water of the Mexican gulf over the banks of Newfoundland and to
the shores of the old continent, and causes West India cocoa-nuts and
other tropical fruits to reach the coasts of Ireland and Norway. There
is still at least at the present time, an arm of this current directed
from the Azores to the south-east, which sometimes produces disasters
by carrying ships upon the west coast of Africa, which it strikes at a
part lined by sand-hills. Other sea coasts (I particularly recall that
of Peru between Amotape and Coquimbo) shew that in these hot regions of
the earth, where rain never falls and where neither Lecideas nor other
Lichens[25] germinate, centuries and perhaps thousands of years may
elapse before the moveable sand can afford to the roots of plants a
secure holding place.

These considerations are sufficient to explain why, with an external
similarity of form, Africa and South America present so marked a
difference of character both in respect to climate and to vegetation.
But although the South American Steppe is covered with a thin coating
of mould or fertile earth, and although it is periodically bathed by
rains, and becomes covered at such seasons with luxuriantly sprouting
herbage, yet it never could attract the surrounding nations or tribes
to forsake the beautiful mountain valleys of Caraccas, the margin of
the sea, or the wooded banks of the Orinoco, for the treeless and
springless wilderness; and thus, previous to the arrival of European
and African settlers, the Steppe was almost entirely devoid of human
inhabitants.

The Llanos are, indeed, well suited to the rearing of cattle, but the
care of animals yielding milk[26] was almost unknown to the original
inhabitants of the New Continent. Hardly any of the American tribes
have ever availed themselves of the advantages which nature offered
them in this respect. The American race (which, with the exception
of the Esquimaux, is one and the same from 65° North to 55° South
latitude), has not passed from the state of hunters to that of
cultivators of the soil through the intermediate stage of a pastoral
life. Two kinds of native cattle (the Buffalo and the Musk Ox) feed
in the northern prairies of western Canada and the plains of arctic
America, in Quivira, and around the colossal ruins of the Aztec
fortress which rises in the wilderness, like an American Palmyra,
on the solitary banks of the Gila. The long-horned Rocky Mountain
Sheep abounds on the arid limestone rocks of California. The Vicunas,
Huanacos, Alpacas, and Lamas, belong to South America; but the two
first named of all these useful animals, _i. e._, the Buffalo and the
Musk Ox, have retained their natural freedom for two thousand years,
and the use of milk and cheese, like the possession and cultivation of
farinaceous grasses,[27] has remained a distinguishing characteristic
of the nations of the old world.

If some of the latter have crossed from northern Asia to the west
coast of America, and if, keeping by preference to the cooler mountain
regions,[28] they have followed the lofty ridge of the Andes towards
the south, their migration must have taken place by ways in which
they could not be accompanied by their flocks and herds, or bring
with them the cultivation of corn. When the long shaken empire of the
Hiongnu fell, may we conjecture that the movement of this powerful
tribe may also have occasioned in the north-east of China and in Corea
a shock and an impulse which may have caused civilized Asiatics to
pass over into the new continent? If such a migration had consisted
of inhabitants of the Steppes in which agriculture was not pursued,
this hazardous hypothesis (which has hitherto been but little favoured
by the comparison of languages) would at least explain the striking
absence of the Cereals in America. Possibly one of those Asiatic
priestly colonies whom mystic dreams sometimes impelled to embark in
long voyages, (of which the history of the peopling of Japan[29] in
the time of Thsinchi-huang-ti offers a memorable example), may have
been driven by storms to the coasts of New California.

If, then, pastoral life, that beneficent middle stage which attaches
nomadic hunting hordes to desirable pastures and prepares them, as it
were, for agriculture, has remained unknown to the aboriginal nations
of America, this circumstance sufficiently explains the absence of
human inhabitants in the South American Steppes. This absence has
allowed the freest scope for the abundant development of the most
varied forms of animal life; a development limited only by their mutual
pressure, and similar to that of vegetable life in the forests of the
Orinoco, where the Hymenæa and the gigantic laurel are never exposed to
the destructive hand of man, but only to the pressure of the luxuriant
climbers which twine around their massive trunks. Agoutis, small
spotted antelopes, cuirassed armadilloes, which, like rats, startle the
hare in its subterranean holes, herds of lazy chiguires, beautifully
striped viverræ which poison the air with their odour, the large
maneless lion, spotted jaguars (often called tigers) strong enough to
drag away a young bull after killing him;--these and many other forms
of animal life[30] wander through the treeless plain.

Thus almost exclusively inhabited by these wild animals, the Steppe
would offer little attraction or means of subsistence to those
nomadic native hordes, who, like the Asiatics of Hindostan, prefer
vegetable nutriment, if it were not for the occasional presence of
single individuals of the fan palm, the Mauritia. The benefits of this
life-supporting tree are widely celebrated; it alone, from the mouth
of the Orinoco to north of the Sierra de Imataca, feeds the unsubdued
nation of the Guaranis.[31] When this people were more numerous and
lived in closer contiguity, not only did they support their huts on
the cut trunks of palm trees as pillars on which rested a scaffolding
forming the floor, but they also, it is said, twined from the
leaf-stalks of the Mauritia cords and mats, which, skilfully interwoven
and suspended from stem to stem, enabled them in the rainy season,
when the Delta is overflowed, to live in the trees like the apes. The
floor of these raised cottages is partly covered with a coating of
damp clay, on which the women make fires for household purposes,--the
flames appearing at night from the river to be suspended high in air.
The Guaranis still owe the preservation of their physical, and perhaps
also their moral, independence, to the half-submerged, marshy soil over
which they move with a light and rapid step, and to their elevated
dwellings in the trees,--a habitation never likely to be chosen from
motives of religious enthusiasm by an American Stylites.[32] But the
Mauritia affords to the Guaranis not merely a secure dwelling-place,
but also various kinds of food. Before the flower of the male palm
tree breaks through its tender sheath, and only at that period of
vegetable metamorphosis, the pith of the stem of the tree contains a
meal resembling sago, which, like the farina of the jatropha root, is
dried in thin bread-like slices. The fermented juice of the tree forms
the sweet intoxicating palm wine of the Guaranis. The scaly fruits,
which resemble in their appearance reddish fir cones, afford, like
the plaintain and almost all tropical fruits, a different kind of
nutriment, according as they are eaten after their saccharine substance
is fully developed, or in their earlier or more farinaceous state. Thus
in the lowest stage of man’s intellectual development, we find the
existence of an entire people bound up with that of a single tree; like
the insect which lives exclusively on a single part of a particular
flower.

Since the discovery of the New Continent, the Llanos have become
habitable to men. In order to facilitate communication between the
Orinoco country and the coasts, towns have been built here and there
on the banks of the streams which flow through the Steppes.[33] The
rearing of cattle has began over all parts of these vast regions. Huts,
formed of reeds tied together with thongs and covered with skins, are
placed at distances of a day’s journey from each other; numberless
herds of oxen, horses, and mules, estimated at the peaceful epoch of
my journey at a million and a half, roam over the Steppe. The immense
multiplication of these animals, originally brought by man from the Old
Continent, is the more remarkable from the number of dangers with which
they have to contend.

When, under the vertical rays of the never-clouded sun, the carbonized
turfy covering falls into dust, the indurated soil cracks asunder as
if from the shock of an earthquake. If at such times two opposing
currents of air, whose conflict produces a rotatory motion, come in
contact with the soil, the plain assumes a strange and singular aspect.
Like conical-shaped clouds[34] the points of which descend to the
earth, the sand rises through the rarified air in the electrically
charged centre of the whirling current; resembling the loud waterspout
dreaded by the experienced mariner. The lowering sky sheds a dim,
almost straw-coloured light on the desolate plain. The horizon draws
suddenly nearer; the Steppe seems to contract, and with it the heart of
the wanderer. The hot dusty particles which fill the air increase its
suffocating heat,[35] and the east wind, blowing over the long-heated
soil, brings with it no refreshment, but rather a still more burning
glow. The pools which the yellow fading branches of the fan palm
had protected from evaporation now gradually disappear. As in the
icy north the animals become torpid with cold, so here, under the
influence of the parching drought, the crocodile and the boa become
motionless and fall asleep, deeply buried in the dry mud. Every where
the death-threatening drought prevails, and yet, by the play of the
refracted rays of light producing the phenomenon of the mirage, the
thirsty traveller is every where pursued by the illusive image of a
cool rippling watery mirror.[36] The distant palm bush apparently
raised by the influence of the contact of unequally heated and
therefore unequally dense strata of air, hovers above the ground, from
which it is separated by a narrow intervening margin. Half concealed by
the dark clouds of dust, restless with the pain of thirst and hunger,
the horses and cattle roam around, the cattle lowing dismally, and the
horses stretching out their long necks and snuffing the wind, if haply
a moister current may betray the neighbourhood of a not wholly dried
up pool. More sagacious and cunning, the mule seeks a different mode
of alleviating his thirst. The ribbed and spherical melon-cactus[37]
conceals under its prickly envelope a watery pith. The mule first
strikes the prickles aside with his fore feet, and then ventures warily
to approach his lips to the plant and drink the cool juice. But resort
to this vegetable fountain is not always without danger, and one sees
many animals that have been lamed by the prickles of the cactus.

When the burning heat of the day is followed by the coolness of the
night, which in these latitudes is always of the same length, even then
the horses and cattle cannot enjoy repose. Enormous bats suck their
blood like vampires during their sleep, or attach themselves to their
backs, causing festering wounds, in which musquitoes, hippobosces,
and a host of stinging insects, niche themselves. Thus the animals
lead a painful life during the season when, under the fierce glow
of the sun, the soil is deprived of its moisture. At length, after
the long drought, the welcome season of the rain arrives; and then
how suddenly is the scene changed![38] The deep blue of the hitherto
perpetually cloudless sky becomes lighter; at night the dark space in
the constellation of the Southern Cross is hardly distinguishable; the
soft phosphorescent light of the Magellanic clouds fades away; even
the stars in Aquila and Ophiucus in the zenith shine with a trembling
and less planetary light. A single cloud appears in the south, like a
distant mountain, rising perpendicularly from the horizon. Gradually
the increasing vapours spread like mist over the sky, and now the
distant thunder ushers in the life-restoring rain. Hardly has the
surface of the earth received the refreshing moisture, before the
previously barren Steppe begins to exhale sweet odours, and to clothe
itself with Kyllingias, the many panicules of the Paspalum, and a
variety of grasses. The herbaceous mimosas, with renewed sensibility
to the influence of light, unfold their drooping slumbering leaves to
greet the rising sun; and the early song of birds, and the opening
blossoms of the water plants, join to salute the morning. The horses
and cattle now graze in full enjoyment of life. The tall springing
grass hides the beautifully spotted jaguar, who lurking in safe
concealment, and measuring carefully the distance of a single bound,
springs, cat-like, as the Asiatic tiger, on his passing prey.

Sometimes, (so the Aborigines relate), on the margin of the swamps the
moistened clay is seen to blister and rise slowly in a kind of mound;
then with a violent noise, like the outbreak of a small mud volcano,
the heaped-up earth is cast high into the air. The beholder acquainted
with the meaning of this spectacle flies, for he knows there will issue
forth a gigantic water-snake or a scaly crocodile, awakened from a
torpid state[39] by the first fall of rain.

The rivers which bound the plain to the south, the Arauca, Apure, and
Payara, become gradually swollen; and now nature constrains the same
animals, who in the first half of the year panted with thirst on the
dry and dusty soil, to adopt an amphibious life. A portion of the
Steppe now presents the aspect of a vast inland sea.[40] The brood
mares retire with their foals to the higher banks, which stand like
islands above the surface of the lake. Every day the space remaining
dry becomes smaller. The animals, crowded together, swim about for
hours in search of other pasture, and feed sparingly on the tops
of the flowering grasses rising above the seething surface of the
dark-coloured water. Many foals are drowned, and many are surprised by
the crocodiles, killed by a stroke of their powerful notched tails,
and devoured. It is not a rare thing to see the marks of the pointed
teeth of these monsters on the legs of the horses and cattle who have
narrowly escaped from their blood-thirsty jaws. Such a sight reminds
the thoughtful observer involuntarily of the capability of conforming
to the most varied circumstances, with which the all-providing Author
of Nature has endowed certain animals and plants.

The ox and the horse, like the farinaceous cerealia, have followed man
over the whole surface of the globe, from India to Northern Siberia,
from the Ganges to the River Plate, from the African sea shore to the
mountain plateau of Antisana,[41] which is higher than the summit
of the Peak of Teneriffe. The ox wearied from the plough reposes,
sheltered from the noontide sun in one country by the quivering shadow
of the northern birch, and in another by the date palm. The same
species which, in the east of Europe, has to encounter the attacks of
bears and wolves, is exposed in other regions to the assaults of tigers
and crocodiles.

But the crocodile and jaguar are not the only assailants of the South
American horses; they have also a dangerous enemy among fishes. The
marshy waters of Bera and Rastro[42] are filled with numberless
electric eels, which can at pleasure send a powerful discharge from
any part of their slimy yellow spotted bodies. These gymnoti are
from five to six feet in length, and are powerful enough to kill the
largest animals when they discharge their nervous organs at once in a
favourable direction.

The route from Uritucu through the Steppe was formerly obliged to be
changed, because the gymnoti had increased to such numbers in a small
stream that in crossing it many horses were drowned every year, either
from the effects of the shocks they received, or from fright. All other
fishes fly the vicinity of these formidable eels. Even the fisherman
angling from the high bank fears lest the damp line should convey the
shock to him from a distance. Thus, in these regions, electric fire
breaks forth from the bosom of the waters.

The capture of the gymnoti affords a picturesque spectacle. Mules and
horses are driven into a marsh which is closely surrounded by Indians,
until the unwonted noise and disturbance induce the pugnacious fish
to begin an attack. One sees them swimming about like serpents, and
trying cunningly to glide under the bellies of the horses. Many of
these are stunned by the force of the invisible blows; others, with
manes standing on end, foaming and with wild terror sparkling in their
eyes, try to fly from the raging tempest. But the Indians, armed with
long poles of bamboo, drive them back into the middle of the pool.
Gradually the fury of the unequal strife begins to slacken. Like clouds
which have discharged their electricity, the wearied fish begin to
disperse; long repose and abundant food are required to replace the
galvanic force which they have expended. Their shocks become gradually
weaker and weaker. Terrified by the noise of the trampling horses, they
timidly approach the bank, where they are wounded by harpoons, and
cautiously drawn on shore by non-conducting pieces of dry wood.

Such is the extraordinary battle between horses and fish. That which
forms the invisible but living weapon of this electric eel;--that
which, awakened by the contact of moist dissimilar particles,[43]
circulates through all the organs of plants and animals;--that which,
flashing from the thunder cloud, illumines the wide skyey canopy;--that
which draws iron to iron and directs the silent recurring march of
the guiding needle;--all, like the several hues of the divided ray
of light, flow from one source; and all blend again together in one
perpetually, every where diffused, force or power.

I might here close the hazardous attempt to trace a picture of nature
such as she shows herself in the Steppes. But as on the ocean fancy
not unwillingly dwells awhile on the image of its distant shores, so,
before the wide plain disappears from our view, let us cast a rapid
glance at the regions by which the Steppes are bounded.

The Northern Desert of Africa divides two races of men who belong
originally to the same part of the globe, and whose unreconciled
discord appears as ancient as the mythus of Osiris and Typhon.[44]
North of the Atlas there dwell nations with long and straight hair, of
sallow complexion and Caucasian features. On the south of the Senegal,
towards Soudan, live hordes of negroes in many different stages of
civilization. In Central Asia, the Mongolian Steppe divides Siberian
barbarism from the ancient civilisation of the peninsula of India.

The South American Steppes form the boundary of a partial European
cultivation.[45] To the north, between the mountains of Venezuela
and the Caribbean sea, we find commercial cities, neat villages, and
carefully cultivated fields. Even the love of art and scientific
culture, together with the noble desire of civil freedom, have long
been awakened there. Towards the south the Steppe terminates in a
savage wilderness. Forests, the growth of thousands of years, fill with
their impenetrable fastnesses the humid regions between the Orinoco and
the Amazons. Massive leaden-coloured granite rocks[46] narrow the bed
of the foaming rivers. Mountains and forests resound with the thunder
of the falling waters, with the roar of the tiger-like jaguar, and with
the melancholy rain-announcing howlings of the bearded apes.[47]

Where a sand-bank is left dry by the shallow current, the unwieldly
crocodiles lie, with open jaws, as motionless as pieces of rock and
often covered with birds.[48] The boa serpent, his body marked like
a chess-board, coiled up, his tail wound round the branch of a tree,
lies lurking on the bank secure of his prey; he marks the young bull
or some feebler inhabitant of the forest as it fords the stream, and
swiftly uncoiling seizes the victim, and covering it with mucus forces
it laboriously down his swelling throat.[49]

In the midst of this grand and savage nature live many tribes of men,
isolated from each other by the extraordinary diversity of their
languages: some are nomadic, wholly unacquainted with agriculture,
and using ants, gums, and earth as food[50]; these, as the Otomacs
and Jarures, seem a kind of outcasts from humanity: others, like the
Maquiritares and Macos, are settled, more intelligent and of milder
manners, and live on fruits which they have themselves reared.

Large spaces between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo are only inhabited
by the tapir and the social apes, and are wholly destitute of human
beings. Figures graven on the rocks[51] shew that even these deserts
were once the seat of some degree of intellectual cultivation. They
bear witness to the changeful destinies of man, as do the unequally
developed flexible languages; which latter belong to the oldest and
most imperishable class of historic memorials.

But as in the Steppe tigers and crocodiles fight with horses and
cattle, so in the forests on its borders, in the wildernesses of
Guiana, man is ever armed against man. Some tribes drink with unnatural
thirst the blood of their enemies; others apparently weaponless and yet
prepared for murder[52] kill with a poisoned thumb-nail. The weaker
hordes, when they have to pass along the sandy margin of the rivers,
carefully efface with their hands the traces of their timid footsteps.
Thus man in the lowest stage of almost animal rudeness, as well as
amidst the apparent brilliancy of our higher cultivation, prepares for
himself and his fellow men increased toil and danger. The traveller
wandering over the wide globe by sea and land, as well as the historic
inquirer searching the records of past ages, finds every where the
uniform and saddening spectacle of man at variance with man.

He, therefore, who, amidst the unreconciled discord of nations, seeks
for intellectual calm, gladly turns to contemplate the silent life of
vegetation, and the hidden activities of forces and powers operating
in the sanctuaries of nature; or, obedient to the inborn impulse which
for thousands of years has glowed in the human breast, gazes upwards
in meditative contemplation on those celestial orbs, which are ever
pursuing in undisturbed harmony their ancient and unchanging course.


ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.

[1] p. 1.--“_The Lake of Tacarigua._”

In proceeding through the interior of South America from the Caraccas
or Venezuela shore towards the boundary of Brazil, from the 10th
degree of North latitude to the Equator, the traveller crosses first
an elevated mountain-chain running in an east and west direction, next
vast treeless Steppes or Plains (los Llanos), which stretch from the
foot of the above-named mountains (the coast chain of Caraccas) to the
left bank of the Orinoco, and lastly the range which occasions the
Cataracts of Atures and Maypure. This latter range of mountains, to
which I have given the name of the Sierra Parime, runs in an easterly
direction from the Cataracts to Dutch and French Guiana. It is a mass
of mountains divided into many parallel ridges, and is the site of
the fabled Dorado. It is bordered on the south by the forest plain,
through which the river of the Amazons and the Rio Negro have formed
the channels in which their waters flow. Those who desire a fuller
acquaintance with the geography of these regions will do well to
consult and compare the great map of La Cruz-Olmedilla, bearing date
1775, (from which almost all the more recent maps of South America have
been formed,) and the map of Columbia constructed by me from my own
astronomical determinations of geographical positions, and published in
1825.

The coast chain of Venezuela, geographically considered, is a part of
the chain of the Andes of Peru. The chain of the Andes divides itself,
at the great mountain junction at the sources of the Magdalena, south
of Popayan, (between 1° 55′ and 2° 20′ latitude), into three chains,
the easternmost of which terminates in the snow-covered mountains of
Merida. These mountains sink down towards the Paramo de las Rosas into
the hilly land of Quibor and Tocuyo, which connects the coast chain of
Venezuela with the Cordilleras of Cundinamarca. The coast chain forms
an unbroken rampart from Porto Cabello to the promontory of Paria. Its
mean height hardly equals 750 toises or 4795 English feet; yet single
summits, like the Silla de Caracas (also called Cerro de Avila), decked
with the purple-flowering Befaria the American Rose of the Alps, rise
1350 toises or 8630 English feet above the level of the sea. The coast
of Terra Firma bears traces of devastation. We recognise everywhere the
action of the great current which, sweeping from east to west, formed
by disruption the West Indian Islands, and hollowed out the Caribbean
gulf. The projecting tongues of land of Araja and Chuparipari, and
especially the coast of Cumana and New Barcelona, offer a remarkable
spectacle to the geologist. The precipitous Islands of Boracha,
Caracas, and Chimanas, rise like towers from the sea, and bear witness
to the terrible pressure of the waters against the mountain chain when
it was broken by their irruption. Perhaps, like the Mediterranean, the
Antillean gulf was once an inland sea, which became suddenly connected
with the ocean. The islands of Cuba, Hayti, and Jamaica, still contain
the remnants of the lofty mountains of mica slate which bounded this
sea to the north. It is remarkable that where these three islands
approach each other most nearly the highest summits are found; and
we may conjecture that the highest part of this Antillean chain was
situated between Cape Tiburon and Point Morant. The Copper Mountains
(Montañas de Cobre) near Santiago de Cuba have not yet been measured,
but their elevation is probably greater than that of the Blue Mountains
of Jamaica, (1138 toises, 7277 English feet,) which somewhat exceeds
the height of the St. Gothard Pass. My conjectures on the valley-form
of the Atlantic Ocean, and on the ancient connection of the continents,
were given more in detail in a memoir written in Cumana, entitled
Fragment d’un Tableau Géologique de l’Amerique Meridionale (Journal
de Physique, Messidor, An. IX.) It is worthy of remark, that Columbus
himself, in his Official Reports, called attention to the connection
between the direction of the equatorial current and the form of the
coast line of the larger Antilles. (Examen critique de l’hist. de la
Géographie, p. 104-108.)

The northern and most cultivated part of the province of Caraccas is
a country of mountains. The coast chain is divided like the Swiss
Alps into several subordinate chains enclosing longitudinal valleys.
The most celebrated of these is the pleasant valley of Aragua, which
produces a great quantity of indigo, sugar, cotton, and, what is most
remarkable, European wheat. The southern margin of this valley adjoins
the beautiful lake of Valencia, whose old Indian name is Tacarigua. The
contrast between its opposite shores gives it a striking resemblance
to the Lake of Geneva. It is true that the bare mountains of Guigue
and Guiripa have less grandeur of character than the Savoy Alps; but,
on the other hand, the opposite bank of the Tacarigua lake, which is
thickly clothed with plantains, mimosas, and triplaris, far surpasses
in picturesque beauty the vineyards of the Pays de Vaud. The lake
is about thirty geographical miles in length, and is full of small
islands, which, as the loss of water by evaporation exceeds the influx,
are increasing in size. Within some years sand-banks have even become
real islands, and have received the significant name of the “Newly
Appeared,” Las Aparecidas. On the island of Cura the remarkable species
of Solanum is cultivated which has edible fruit, and which Wildenow has
described in the Hortus Berolinensis (1816, Tab. xxvii.) The height
of the Lake of Tacarigua above the sea is almost 1400 French feet,
(according to my measurement exactly 230 toises, or 1470 English feet,)
less than the mean height of the valley of Caraccas. The lake has
several kinds of fish (see my Observations de Zoologie et d’Anatomie
comparée, T. ii p. 179-181), and is one of the most pleasing natural
scenes which I know in any part of the globe. In bathing, Bonpland and
myself were often alarmed by the appearance of the Bava, an undescribed
crocodile-like lizard, three or four feet in length, of repulsive
aspect, but harmless to men. We found in the lake a Typha (Cats-tail),
identical with the European Typha angustifolia; a singular fact, and
important in reference to the geography of plants.

Two varieties of sugar-cane are cultivated near the lake, in the
valleys of Aragua: the common sugar-cane of the West Indies, Caña
criolla; and the cane recently introduced from the Pacific, Caña de
Otaheiti. The verdure of the Tahitian cane is of a much lighter and
more agreeable tint, and a field of it can readily be distinguished
at a great distance from a field of the common cane. The sugar-cane
of Tahiti was first described by Cook and George Forster, who appear,
however, from the excellent memoir of the latter upon the edible plants
of the islands of the Pacific, to have been but little acquainted with
its valuable qualities. Bougainville brought it to the Isle of France,
from whence it was conveyed to Cayenne, and since 1792 it has been
taken to Martinique, Hayti, and several of the smaller West Indian
Islands. It was carried with the bread-fruit tree to Jamaica by the
brave but unfortunate Captain Bligh, and was introduced from the Island
of Trinidad to the neighbouring coast of Caraccas, where it became a
more important acquisition than the bread-fruit, which is never likely
to supersede a plant so valuable and affording so large an amount of
sustenance as the plantain. The Tahitian sugar-cane is much richer in
juice than the common cane, said to be originally a native of the east
of Asia. On an equal surface of ground it yields a third more sugar
than the caña criolla, which has a thinner stalk and smaller joints.
As, moreover, the West India islands begin to suffer great want of
fuel, (in Cuba the wood of the orange tree is used for sugar boiling,)
the thicker and more woody stalk of the Tahitian cane is an important
advantage. If the introduction of this plant had not taken place almost
at the same time as the commencement of the bloody negro war in St.
Domingo, the prices of sugar in Europe would have risen still higher
than they did, in consequence of the ruinous effects of those troubles
on agriculture and trade. It was an important question, whether the
cane of the Pacific, when removed from its native soil, would gradually
degenerate and become the same as the common cane. Experience hitherto
has decided against any such degeneration. In Cuba a caballeria (nearly
33 English acres) planted with Tahitian sugar-cane produces 870 hundred
weight of sugar. It is singular that this important production of the
islands of the Pacific is only cultivated in those parts of the Spanish
colonies which are farthest from the Pacific. The Peruvian coast is
only twenty-five days’ sail from Tahiti, and yet, at the period of
my travels in Peru and Chili, the Tahitian cane was unknown there.
The inhabitants of Easter Island, who suffer much from deficiency of
fresh water, drink the juice of the sugar-cane, and (a very remarkable
physiological fact) also sea water. In the Society, Friendly, and
Sandwich Islands, the light green, thick-stalked sugar-cane is always
the one cultivated.

Besides the Caña de Otaheiti and the Caña Criolla, a reddish African
variety, called Caña de Guinea, is cultivated in the West Indies: its
juice is less in quantity than that of the common Asiatic cane, but is
said to be better suited for making rum.

In the province of Caraccas the dark shade of the cacao plantations
contrasts beautifully with the light green of the Tahitian sugar cane.
Few tropical trees have such thick foliage as the Theobroma cacao. It
loves hot and humid valleys: great fertility of soil and insalubrity of
atmosphere are inseparable from each other in South America as well as
in Asia; and it has even been remarked that as increasing cultivation
lessens the extent of the forests, and renders the soil and climate
less humid, the cacao plantations become less flourishing. For these
reasons these plantations are diminishing in number and extent in
the province of Caraccas, and increasing rapidly in the more eastern
provinces of New Barcelona and Cumana, and particularly in the moist
woody district between Cariaco and the Golfo Triste.

[2] p. 2.--“_‘Banks’ is the name given by the natives to this
phenomenon._”

The Llanos of Caraccas are occupied by a great and widely extended
formation of conglomerate of an early period. In descending from the
vallies of Aragua, and crossing over the most southern ridge of the
coast chain of Guigue and Villa de Cura towards Parapara, one finds
successively, gneiss and mica slate;--a probably silurian formation of
clay slate and black limestone;--serpentine and greenstone in detached
spheroidal masses;--and, lastly, close to the margin of the great
plain, small hills of augitic amygdaloid and porphyritic slate. These
hills between Parapara and Ortiz appear to me like volcanic eruptions
on the ancient sea-shore of the Llanos. Farther to the north are the
celebrated grotesque-shaped cavernous rocks of Morros de San Juan;
they form a kind of rampart, have a crystalline grain like upheaved
dolomite, and are rather to be regarded as parts of the shore of the
ancient gulf than as islands. I term the Llanos a gulf, for when we
consider their small elevation above the present sea level, their form
open as it were to the equatorial current sweeping from east to west,
and the lowness of the eastern coast between the mouth of the Orinoco
and the Essequibo, we can scarcely doubt that the sea once overflowed
the whole basin between the coast chain of Caraccas and the Sierra de
la Parime, and beat against the mountains of Merida and Pamplona; (as
it is supposed to have overflowed the plains of Lombardy, and beat
against the Cottian and Pennine Alps). The strike or inclination of
the American Llanos is also directed from west to east. Their height
at Calabozo, 400 geographical miles from the sea, is barely 30 toises
(192 English feet); being 15 toises (96 English feet) less than that
of Pavia, and 45 toises (288 English feet) less than that of Milan, in
the plains of Lombardy between the Alps and Apennines. The form of the
surface of this part of the globe reminds one of Claudian’s expression,
“curvata tumore parvo planities.” The horizontality of the Llanos is
so perfect that in many portions of them no part of an area of more
than 480 square miles appears to be a foot higher than the rest. If, in
addition to this, we imagine to ourselves the absence of all bushes,
and even in the Mesa de Pavones the absence of any isolated palm-trees,
it will afford some idea of the singular aspect of this sea-like desert
plain. As far as the eye can reach, it can hardly rest on a single
object a few inches high. If it were not that the state of the lowest
strata of the atmosphere, and the consequent changes of refraction,
render the horizon continually indeterminate and undulating, altitudes
of the sun might be taken with the sextant from the margin of the plain
as well as from the horizon at sea. This great horizontality of the
former sea bottom makes the “banks” more striking. They are broken
strata which rise abruptly from two to three feet above the surrounding
rock, and extend uniformly over a length of from 40 to 48 English
geographical miles. The small streams of the Steppes take their rise on
these banks.

In passing through the Llanos of Barcelona, on our return from the Rio
Negro, we found frequent traces of earthquakes. Instead of the banks
standing _higher_ than the surrounding rock, we found here solitary
strata of gypsum from 3 to 4 toises (19 to 25 English feet) _lower_.
Farther to the west, near the junction of the Caura with the Orinoco,
and to the east of the mission of S. Pedro de Alcantara, an extensive
tract of dense forest sank down in an earthquake in 1790, and a lake
was formed of more than 300 toises (1918 English feet) diameter. The
tall trees (Desmanthus, Hymenæas, and Malpighias) long retained their
foliage and verdure under the water.

[3] p. 2.--“_We seem to see before us a shoreless ocean._”

The prospect of the distant Steppe is still more striking, when the
spectator has been long accustomed in the dense forests both to
a very restricted field of view, and to the aspect of a rich and
highly luxuriant vegetation. Ineffaceable is the impression which I
received on our return from the Upper Orinoco, when, from the Hato del
Capuchino, on a mountain opposite to the mouth of the Rio Apure, we
first saw again the distant Steppe. The sun had just set; the Steppe
appeared to rise like a hemisphere; and the light of the rising stars
was refracted in the lowest stratum of air. The excessive heating of
the plain by the vertical rays of the sun causes the variations of
refraction,--occasioned by the effects of radiation, of the ascending
current, and of the contact of strata of air of unequal density,--to
continue through the entire night.

[4] p. 2.--“_The naked stony crust._”

Immense tracts of flat bare rock form peculiar and characteristic
features in the Deserts both of Africa and Asia. In the Schamo, which
separates Mongolia and the mountain chains of Ulangom and Malakha-Oola
from the north-west part of China, these banks of rock are called
Tsy. They are also found in the forest-covered plains of the Orinoco,
surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation (Relation Hist. t. ii. p.
279). In the middle of these flat tabular masses of granite and syenite
of some thousand feet diameter, denuded of all vegetation save a few
scantily distributed lichens, we find small islands of soil, covered
with low and always flowering plants which give them the appearance
of little gardens. The monks of the Upper Orinoco regard these bare
and perfectly level surfaces of rock, when they are of considerable
extent, as peculiarly apt to cause fevers and other illnesses. Several
missionary villages have been deserted or removed elsewhere in
consequence of this opinion, which is very widely diffused. Supposing
the opinion correct, is such an influence of these flat rocks or laxas
to be attributed to a chemical action on the atmosphere, or merely to
the effect of increased radiation?

[5] p. 2.--“_The Llanos and Pampas of South America, and the Prairies
of the Missouri._”

The physical and geognostical views entertained respecting the
western part of North America have been rectified in many respects
by the adventurous journey of Major Long, the excellent writings of
his companion Edwin James, and more especially by the comprehensive
observations of Captain Frémont. These, and all other recent accounts,
now place in a clear light what, in my work on New Spain, I could
only put forward as conjecture, on the subject of the mountain ridges
and plains to the north. In the description of nature as well as in
historical inquiries, facts long remain isolated, until by laborious
investigation they are brought into connection with each other.

The east coast of the United States of North America runs from
south-west to north-east, in the same direction as that followed in
the southern hemisphere by the Brazilian coast from the river Plate to
Olinda. In the two hemispheres two ranges of mountains exist at a short
distance from the eastern coast; they are more nearly parallel to each
other than they are to the more westerly chain, called in South America
the Cordilleras of Peru and Chili, and in North America the Rocky
Mountains. The Brazilian system of mountains forms an isolated group,
of which the highest summits (the Itacolumi and Itambe) do not rise
above the height of 900 toises (5755 English feet). The most easterly
ridges, which are nearest to the Atlantic, follow a uniform direction
from SSW. to NNE.; more to the west the group becomes broader, but
diminishes considerably in height. The Parecis hills approach the
rivers Itenes and Guaporé, and the mountains of Aguapehi (to the south
of Villabella) approach the lofty Andes of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de
la Sierra.

There is no immediate connection between the eastern and western
chains,--the Brazilian mountains, and the Cordilleras of Peru,--for
the low province of Chiquitos, which is a longitudinal valley running
from north to south, and opening into the plains both of the Amazons
and of the river Plate, separates Brazil on the east from the Alto
Peru on the west. Here, as in Poland and Russia, an often almost
imperceptible rise of ground (called, in Slavonian, Uwaly) forms the
separating water-line between the Pilcomayo and the Madeira, between
the Aguapehi and the Guaporé, and between the Paraguay and the Rio
Topayos. The swell of the ground runs to the south-east from Chayanta
and Pomabamba (lat. 19°-20°), traverses the province of Chiquitos,
which, since the expulsion of the Jesuits, has again become almost a
terra incognita, and forms, to the north-east, where there are only
detached mountains, the “divortia aquarum” at the sources of the Baures
and near Villabella, lat. 15°-17°.

This line of separation of the waters is important in relation to
facilities of intercourse, and to the increase of cultivation and
civilisation: more to the north (2°-3° N. lat.), a similar line divides
the basin of the Orinoco from that of the Amazons and the Rio Negro.
These risings or swellings in the plains (called, by Frontin, terræ
tumores) might be regarded as undeveloped systems of mountains, which
would have connected two apparently isolated groups (the Sierra Parime
and the Brazilian mountains) with the Andes of Timana and Cochabamba.
These relations, which have been hitherto but little attended to, are
the ground of the division which I have made of South America into
three basins; viz. those of the lower Orinoco, of the Amazons, and
of the Rio de la Plata. The first and last of these are steppes or
prairies; the middle basin, that of the Amazons, between the Sierra
Parime and the Brazilian group of mountains, is a forest-covered plain
or _Hylæa_.

If we wish to trace, in equally few lines, a sketch of the natural
features of North America, let us cast our eyes first on the mountain
chain which, running from south-east to north-west, at first low and
narrow, and increasing both in breadth and height from Panama to
Veragua, Guatimala, and Mexico (where it was the seat of a civilisation
which preceded the arrival of Europeans), arrests the general
equatorial current of the waters of the ocean, and opposes a barrier to
the more rapid commercial intercourse of Europe and Western Africa with
the eastern parts of Asia. North of the 17th degree of latitude and the
celebrated isthmus of Tehuantepec, the mountains, quitting the coast
of the Pacific, and following a more direct northerly course, become
an inland Cordillera. In North Mexico, the “Crane Mountains” (Sierra
de las Grullas) form part of the Rocky Mountain chain. Here rise, to
the west, the Columbia and the Rio Colorado of California; and, to the
east, the Rio Roxo de Natchitoches, the Candian, the Arkansas, and the
Platte or shallow river, a name which has latterly been ignorantly
transformed into that of a silver-promising river Plate. Between the
sources of these rivers (from N. lat. 37° 20′ to 40° 13′) rise three
lofty summits (formed of a granite containing much hornblende and
little mica), called Spanish Peak, James’s or Pike’s Peak, and Big Horn
or Long’s Peak. (See my Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, 2me
édit. t. i. pp. 82 and 109.) The elevation of these peaks exceeds that
of any of the summits of the Andes of North Mexico, which, indeed, from
the 18th and 19th parallels of latitude, or from the group of Orizaba
and Popocatepetl (respectively 2717 toises or 17374 English feet, and
2771 toises or 17720 English feet,) to Santa Fé and Taos, never reach
the limits of perpetual snow. James Peak, in lat. 38° 40′, is supposed
to be 1798 toises, or 11497 English feet; but of this elevation only
1335 toises (8537 English feet) has been measured trigonometrically,
the remaining 463 toises, or 2960 English feet, being dependent, in the
absence of barometrical observations, on uncertain estimations of the
declivity of streams. As a trigonometrical measurement can hardly ever
be undertaken from the level of the sea, measurements of inaccessible
heights must generally be partly trigonometrical, and partly
barometrical. Estimations of the fall of rivers, of their rapidity and
of the length of their course, are so deceptive, that the plain at the
foot of the Rocky Mountains, nearest to the summits above spoken of,
was estimated, previous to the important expedition of Capt. Frémont,
sometimes at 8000, and sometimes at 3000 feet. (Long’s Expedition, vol.
ii. pp. 36, 362, 382, App. p. xxxvii.) It was from a similar deficiency
of barometrical measurements that the true elevation of the Himalaya
continued so long uncertain: but now the resources which belong to
the cultivation of science have increased in India to such a degree,
that Captain Gerard, when on the Tarhigang, near the Sutlej, north of
Shipke, at an elevation of 19411 English feet, after breaking three
barometers, had still four equally correct ones remaining. (Critical
Researches on Philology and Geography, 1824, p. 144.)

Frémont, in the expedition which he made in the years 1842-1844 by
order of the Government of the United States, found the highest summit
of the whole chain of the Rocky Mountains to the north north-west of
Spanish, James’s, Long’s, and Laramie Peaks. This snowy summit, of
which he measured the elevation barometrically, belongs to the group of
the Wind River mountains. It bears on the large map, edited by Colonel
Abert, Chief of the Topographical Office at Washington, the name of
Frémont’s Peak, and is situated in 43° 10′ lat. and 110° 13′ W. long.
from Greenwich, almost 5-1/2° north of Spanish Peak. Its height, by
direct measurement, is 12730 French, or 13568 English feet. This would
make Frémont’s Peak 324 toises (or 2072 English feet) higher than the
elevation assigned by Long to James’s Peak, which, according to its
position, appears to be identical with Pike’s Peak in the map above
referred to. The Wind River mountains form the divortia aquarum, or
division between the waters flowing towards either ocean. Captain
Frémont (in his Official Report of the Exploring Expedition to the
Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and North California
in the years 1843-44, p. 70,) says, “We saw, on one side, countless
mountain lakes, and the sources of the Rio Colorado which carries its
waters through the gulf of California to the Pacific; and, on the other
side, the deep valley of the Wind river, where are situated the sources
of the Yellowstone river, one of the principal branches of the Missouri
which unites with the Mississippi at St. Louis. To the north-west,
rise, covered with perpetual snow, the summits called the Trois Tetons,
where the true source of the Missouri itself is situated, not far from
that of the head water of the Oregon or Columbia, or the source of that
branch of it called Snake River or Lewis Fork.” To the astonishment
of the adventurous travellers, they found the top of Frémont’s Peak
visited by bees: perhaps, like the butterflies seen by me, also among
perpetual snow but in much more elevated regions in the Andes of Peru,
they had been carried thither involuntarily by ascending currents of
air. I have seen in the Pacific, at a great distance from the coast,
large winged lepidopterous insects fall on the deck of the ship,
having, no doubt, been carried far out to sea by land winds.

Frémont’s map and geographical investigations comprehend the extensive
region from the junction of the Kanzas river with the Missouri, to
the falls of the Columbia and to the missions of Santa Barbara and
Pueblo de los Angeles in New California; or a space of 28 degrees of
longitude, and from the 34th to the 45th parallel of latitude. Four
hundred points have been determined hypsometrically by barometric
observations, and, for the most part, geographically by astronomical
observations; so that a district which, with the windings of the route,
amounts to 3600 geographical miles, from the mouth of the Kanzas to
Fort Vancouver and the shores of the Pacific (almost 720 miles more
than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk), has been represented in
profile, shewing the relative heights above the level of the sea. As
I was, I believe, the first person who undertook to represent, in
geognostic profile, the form of entire countries,--such as the Iberian
peninsula, the highlands of Mexico, and the cordilleras of South
America, (the semi-perspective projections of a Siberian traveller,
the Abbé Chappe, were founded on mere and generally ill-judged
estimations of the fall of rivers),--it has given me peculiar pleasure
to see the graphical method of representing the form of the earth
in a vertical direction, or the elevation of the solid portions of
our planet above its watery covering, applied on so grand a scale as
has been done in Frémont’s map. In the middle latitudes of 37° to
43° the Rocky Mountains present, besides the higher snowy summits
comparable with the Peak of Teneriffe in elevation, lofty plains of
an extent hardly met with elsewhere on the surface of the earth, and
almost twice as extensive in an east and west direction as that of
the Mexican plateaux. From the group of mountains, which commences a
little to the west of Fort Laramie to beyond the Wahsatch mountains,
there is an uninterrupted swelling of the ground from 5300 to 7400
English feet above the level of the sea. A similar elevation may even
be said to occupy the whole space from 34° to 45° between the Rocky
Mountains proper and the Californian snowy coast chain. This space, a
kind of broad longitudinal valley like that of the lake of Titiaca,
has been called, by Joseph Walker, a traveller well acquainted with
these western regions, and by Captain Frémont, “The Great Basin.” It
is a terra incognita of at least 128000 square miles in extent, arid,
almost entirely without human inhabitants, and full of salt lakes, the
largest of which is 4200 English feet above the level of the sea, and
is connected with the narrow lake of Utah. (Frémont, Report of the
Exploring Expedition, pp. 154 and 273-276.) The last-mentioned lake
receives the abundant waters of the “Rock River;” Timpan Ogo, in the
Utah language. Father Escalante, in journeying, in 1776, from Santa Fé
del Nuevo Mexico to Monterey in New California, discovered Frémont’s
“Great Salt Lake,” and, confounding lake and river, gave it the name
of Laguna de Timpanogo. As such I inserted it in my map of Mexico;
and this has given rise to much uncritical discussion on the assumed
non-existence of a great inland salt lake in North America,--a question
previously raised by the well-informed American geographer, Tanner.
(Humboldt, Atlas Mexicain, planche 2; Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle
Espagne, T. i. p. 231, T. ii. pp. 243, 313, and 420; Frémont, Upper
California, 1848, p. 9; and, also, Duflot de Mofras, Exploration de
l’Oregon, 1844, T. ii. p. 40.) Gallatin says expressly, in the Memoir
on the Aboriginal Races in the Archæologia Americana, vol. ii. p. 140,
“General Ashley and Mr. J. S. Smith have found the lake Timpanogo in
the same latitude and longitude nearly as had been assigned to it in
Humboldt’s Atlas of Mexico.”

I have dwelt on the remarkable swelling of the ground in the region of
the Rocky Mountains, because, doubtless, by its elevation and extent,
it exercises an influence hitherto but little considered, on the
climate of the whole continent of North America, to the south and east.
In the extensive continuous plateau, Frémont saw the waters covered
with ice every night in the month of August. Nor is the elevation of
this region less important as respects the social state and progress
of the great United States of North America. Although the elevation
of the line of the separation of the waters nearly equals that of
the passes of the Simplon (6170 French, or 6576 English feet), of
the St. Gothard (6440 French, or 6865 English feet), and of the St.
Bernard (7476 French, or 7969 English feet), yet the ascent is so
gradual, as to offer no obstacle to the use of wheel carriages of all
kinds in the communication between the basins of the Missouri and the
Oregon; in other words, between the states on the Atlantic Sea Board
opposite Europe, and the new settlements on the Oregon and Columbia
opposite China. The itinerary distance from Boston to Astoria on the
Pacific at the mouth of the Columbia, is, according to the difference
of longitude, 2200 geographical miles, or about one-sixth less than
the distance of Lisbon from the Ural near Katharinenburg. From the
gentleness of the ascent of the high plateau which leads from the
Missouri to California and to the basin of the Oregon,--(from the River
and Fort Laramie, on the northern branch of the Platte River, to Fort
Hall on the Lewis Fork of the Columbia, all the camping places of which
the height was measured were from upwards of five to seven thousand,
and at Old Park even 9760 French, or 10,403 English feet);--it has
not been easy to determine the situation of the culminating point, or
“divortia aquarum.” It is south of the Wind River mountains, nearly
midway between the Mississipi and the coast of the Pacific, at an
elevation of 7027 French, or 7490 English feet; therefore only 450
French, or 480 English, feet lower than the Pass of the great St.
Bernard. The immigrants call this point “the South Pass.” (Frémont’s
Report, pp. 3, 60, 70, 100, 129). It is situated in a pleasant
district, in which the mica slate and gneiss rock are found covered
with many species of Artemisia, particularly Artemisia tridentata
(Nuttall), asters, and cactuses. Astronomical determinations give
the latitude 42° 24′, and the longitude 109° 24′ W. from Greenwich.
Adolph Erman has already called attention to the circumstance that the
direction of the great chain of the Aldan mountains in the east of
Asia, which divides the streams flowing into the Lena from those which
flow towards the Pacific, if prolonged on the surface of the globe
in the direction of a great circle, passes through several summits
of the Rocky Mountains, between the parallels of 40° and 55°. “Thus
an American and an Asiatic chain of mountains appear to belong to
one great fissure, following the direction of a great circle, or the
shortest course from point to point.” (Compare Erman’s Reise um die
Erde, Abth. I. Bd. iii. S. 8, Abth. II. Bd. i. S. 386, with his Archiv
für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland, Bd. vi. S. 671).

The Rocky Mountains which sink down towards the Mackenzie River which
is covered a large portion of the year with ice, and the highlands from
which single snow-clad summits rise, are altogether distinct from the
more westerly and higher mountains of the coast, or the chain of the
Californian Maritime Alps, the Sierra Nevada de California. However
ill selected the now generally used name of the Rocky Mountains, to
designate the most northerly continuation of the Mexican Central Chain,
it does not appear to me desirable to change it, as has been often
proposed, for that of the Oregon Chain. Although these mountains do
indeed contain the sources of Lewis’s, Clark’s, and North Fork, the
three chief branches which form the mighty Oregon, or Columbia River,
yet this river also breaks through the Californian chain of snow-clad
Maritime Alps. The name of Oregon District is also employed politically
and officially for the smaller territory west of the Coast Chain,
where Fort Vancouver and the Walahmutti settlements are situated, and
therefore it is the more desirable not to give the name of Oregon
either to the Central or the Coast Chain. This name is connected with a
most singular mistake of an eminent geographer, M. Malte Brun: reading
on an old Spanish map, “And it is not yet known, (y aun se ignora)
where the source of this river” (the river now called the Columbia)
“is situated,” he thought he recognised in the word ignora the name of
Oregon. (See my Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, T. ii. p. 314).

The rocks which, where the Columbia breaks through the Chain, form the
Cataracts, mark the continuation of the Sierra Nevada de California
from the 44th to the 47th degree of latitude. (Frémont, Geographical
Memoir upon Upper California, 1848, p. 6.) This northern continuation
comprises the three colossal summits of Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood,
and Mount St. Helen’s, which rise more than 14540 French or 15500
English feet above the level of the sea. The height of this Coast
Chain, or Range, far exceeds, therefore, that of the Rocky Mountains.
“During a journey of eight months’ duration which was made along the
Maritime Alps,” says Captain Frémont, in his Report, p. 274, “we had
snowy peaks always in view; we had surmounted the Rocky Mountains by
the South Pass at an elevation of 7027 (7490 E.) feet, but we found the
passes of the Maritime Alps, which are divided into several parallel
ranges, more than 2000 feet higher;” therefore, only about 1170 feet
(1247 E.) below the summit of Etna. It is extremely remarkable,
and reminds us of the difference between the eastern and western
cordilleras of Chili, that it is only the chain of mountains nearest
to the sea (the Californian range), which has still active volcanoes.
The conical mountains of Regnier and St. Helen’s are seen to emit smoke
almost constantly, and on the 23rd of November 1843, Mount St. Helen’s
sent forth a quantity of ashes which covered the banks of the Columbia
for forty miles like snow. To the volcanic Coast Range also belong, (in
Russian America in the high north), Mount St. Elias, 1980 toises high,
according to La Perouse, and 2792 toises, according to Malaspina (12660
and 17850 E. feet), and Mount Fair Weather, (Cerro de Buen Tempo) 2304
toises, or 14732 E. feet high. Both these mountains are supposed to
be still active volcanoes. Frémont’s expedition, (which was important
alike for its botanical and geological results), collected volcanic
products, such as scoriaceous basalt, trachyte, and even obsidian, in
the Rocky Mountains, and found an extinct volcanic crater a little to
the east of Fort Hall, (lat. 43° 2′, long. 112° 28′ W.); but there are
no signs of volcanoes still active, that is to say, emitting at times
lava or ashes. We are not to confound with such activity the still
imperfectly explained phenomenon of “smoking hills;” “côtes brûlées,”
or “terrains ardens,” as they are called by the English settlers,
and by natives speaking French. An accurate observer, M. Nicollet,
says, “ranges of low conical hills are covered with a thick black
smoke almost periodically, and often for two or three years together.
No flames are seen.” This phenomenon shews itself principally in
the district of the Upper Missouri, and still nearer to the eastern
declivity of the Rocky Mountains, where a river bears the native name
of Mankizitah-Watpa, or the “river of the smoking earth.” Scoriaceous
pseudo-volcanic products, such as a kind of porcelain jasper, are found
in the vicinity of the “smoking hills.” Since the expedition of Lewis
and Clark an opinion has become prevalent that the Missouri deposits
real pumice on its banks. Fine cellular whitish masses have been
confounded with pumice. Professor Ducatel was disposed to ascribe this
appearance, which was principally observed in the chalk formation, to a
“decomposition of water by sulphuric pyrites, and to a reaction on beds
of lignite.” (Compare Frémont’s Report, p. 164, 184, 187, 193, and 299,
with Nicollet’s Illustration of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper
Mississipi River, 1843, p. 39-41.)

If, in concluding these few general considerations on the physical
geography of North America, we once more turn our attention to the
spaces which separate the two diverging coast chains from the central
chain, we find, in striking contrast, on the one hand, the arid
uninhabited plateau of above five or six thousand feet elevation, which
in the west intervenes between the central chain and the Californian
Maritime Alps which skirt the Pacific; and on the eastern side of
the Rocky Mountains, between them and the Alleghanies, (the highest
summits of which, Mount Washington and Mount Marcy, are, according to
Lyell, 6240 and 5066 French, or 6652 and 5400 English feet above the
level of the sea,) the vast, well-watered, and fertile low plain or
basin of the Mississipi, the greater part of which is from 400 to 600
French feet above the level of the sea, or about twice the elevation of
the plains of Lombardy. The hypsometric conformation of this eastern
region, _i. e._ the altitude of its several parts above the sea, has
been elucidated by the valuable labours of the highly-talented French
astronomer, Nicollet, of whom science has been deprived by a too early
death. His large and excellent map of the Upper Mississipi, constructed
in the years 1836-1840, is based on 240 astronomically determined
latitudes, and 170 barometric measurements of elevation. The plain
which contains the basin of the Mississipi is one with the Northern
Canadian plain, so that one low region extends from the Gulf of Mexico
to the Arctic Sea. (Compare my Rélation Historique T. iii. p. 234, and
Nicollet’s Report to the Senate of the United States, 1843, p. 7 and
57.) Where the plain is undulating, and where, between 47° and 48° of
latitude, low hills (côteaux des prairies, and côteaux des bois, in
the still un-English nomenclature of the natives) occur in connected
ranges, these ranges and gentle swellings of the ground divide the
waters which flow towards Hudson’s Bay from those which seek the Gulf
of Mexico. Such a dividing line is formed north of Lake Superior
by the Missabay Heights, and more to the west by the “Hauteurs des
Terres,” in which were first discovered, in 1832, the true sources of
the Mississipi, one of the largest rivers in the world. The highest of
these ranges of hills hardly attains an elevation of 1400 to 1500 (1492
to 1599 English) feet. From St. Louis, a little to the south of the
junction of the Missouri and the Mississipi, to the mouth of the latter
river at Old French Balize, it has only a fall of 357 (380 English)
feet in an itinerary distance of more than 1280 geographical miles. The
surface of Lake Superior is 580 (618 English) feet above the level of
the sea, and its depth near Magdalen Island is 742 (791 English) feet;
its bottom, therefore, is 162 (173 English) feet below the surface of
the ocean. (Nicollet, p. 99, 125, and 128.)

Beltrami, who separated himself from Major Long’s expedition in 1825,
boasted of having discovered the source of the Mississipi in Lake Cass.
The river in the upper part of its course passes through four lakes,
of which Lake Cass is the second. The uppermost is the Istaca Lake (in
lat. 47° 13′ and long. 95° 0′), and was first recognised as the true
source of the Mississipi in the expedition of Schoolcraft and Allen in
1832. This afterwards mighty river is only 17 feet wide and 15 inches
deep when it issues from the singular horse-shoe-shaped Lake of Istaca.
It was not until the scientific expedition of Nicollet, in 1836, that
a clear knowledge of the localities was obtained and rendered definite
by astronomically determined positions. The height of the sources of
the Mississipi, viz. of the remotest affluent received by the Lake of
Istaca from the dividing ridge or “Hauteur de Terre,” is 1575 (1680
English) feet above the level of the sea. In the immediate vicinity,
and indeed on the southern slope of the same dividing ridge, is Elbow
Lake, in which the smaller Red River of the North, which after many
windings flows into Hudson’s Bay, has its origin. The Carpathian
mountains present similar circumstances in the proximity and relative
positions of the sources of rivers which send their waters respectively
to the Black Sea and to the Baltic. Twenty small lakes, forming narrow
groups to the south and west of Lake Istaca, have received from M.
Nicollet the names of distinguished European astronomers, adversaries
as well as friends. The map thus becomes a kind of geographical
album, reminding one of the botanical album of Ruiz and Pavon’s Flora
Peruviana, in which the names of new genera of plants were adapted to
the Court Calendar, and to the various changes taking place in the
Oficiales de la Secretaria.

To the east of the Mississipi dense forests still partially prevail;
but to the west of the river there are only Prairies, in which the
buffalo (Bos americanus), and the musk ox (Bos moschatus), feed in
large herds. Both these animals, (the largest of the New World) serve
the wandering Indians, the Apaches Llaneros and the Apaches Lipanos,
for food. The Assiniboins sometimes kill in a few days from seven to
eight hundred bisons in what are called “bison parks,” artificial
enclosures into which the wild herds are driven. (Maximilian, Prinz
zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-America, Bd. i. 1839, S. 443.) The
American bison, or buffalo, called by the Mexicans Cibolo, which is
frequently killed merely for the sake of the tongue, a much-prized
dainty, is by no means a mere variety of the Aurochs of the Old
Continent; although some other kinds of animals, as the elk (Cervus
alces) and the reindeer (Cervus tarandus), and even, in the human
race, the short-statured polar man, are common to the northern parts
of both continents, evidencing their former long continued connection.
The Mexicans call the European ox in the Aztec dialect “quaquahue,”
a horned animal, from quaquahuitl, a horn. Some very large horns of
cattle found in the ancient Mexican buildings not far from Cuernavaca,
to the south-west of the city of Mexico, appear to me to have belonged
to the musk ox. The Canadian bison can be tamed to agricultural labour.
It breeds with the European cattle, but it was long uncertain whether
the hybrid was fruitful. Albert Gallatin, who, before he appeared
in Europe as a distinguished diplomatist, had obtained by personal
inspection great knowledge of the uncultivated parts of the United
States, assures us that “the mixed breed was quite common fifty years
ago in some of the north-western counties of Virginia; and the cows,
the issue of that mixture, propagated like all others.” “I do not
remember,” he adds, “the grown bison being tamed, but sometimes young
bison calves were caught by dogs, and were brought up and driven out
with the European cows.” At Monongahela all the cattle were for a
long time of this mixed breed: but complaints were made that they
gave very little milk. The favourite food of the bison or buffalo is
Tripsacum dactyloides (called buffalo grass in North Carolina), and an
undescribed species of clover nearly allied to Trifolium repens, and
designated by Barton as Trifolium bisonicum.

I have already called attention elsewhere (Cosmos, vol. ii. note 455,
English ed.) to the circumstance that, according to a statement of the
trustworthy Gomara, (Historia General de las Indias, cap. 214) there
was still living in the sixteenth century, in the north-west of Mexico,
in 40° latitude, an Indian tribe, whose principal riches consisted in
herds of tame bisons (bueyes con una giba). But notwithstanding the
possibility of taming the bison, notwithstanding the quantity of milk
it yields, and notwithstanding the herds of lamas in the Cordilleras of
Peru, no pastoral life or pastoral people were found when America was
discovered, and there is no historical evidence of this intermediate
stage in the life of nations ever having existed there. It is worthy
of remark that the American buffalo or bison has exerted an influence
on the progress of geography in trackless mountainous regions. These
animals wander in the winter, in search of a milder climate, in herds
of several thousands to the south of the Arkansas River. In these
migrations their size and unwieldiness make it difficult for them to
pass over high mountains. When, therefore, a well-trodden buffalo path
is met with, it is advisable to follow it, as being sure to conduct
to the most convenient pass across the mountains. The best routes
through the Cumberland Mountains, in the south-west parts of Virginia
and Kentucky, in the Rocky Mountains between the sources of the Yellow
Stone and the Platte, and between the southern branch of the Columbia
and the Rio Colorado of California, were thus marked out beforehand by
buffalo paths. The advance of settlement and cultivation has gradually
driven the buffalo from all the Eastern states: they formerly roamed
on the banks of the Mississipi and of the Ohio far beyond Pittsburg.
(Archæologia Americana, vol. ii., 1836, p. 139.)

From the granitic cliffs of Diego Ramirez,--in the deeply indented
and intersected Tierra del Fuego, which contains on the east silurian
schists and on the west the same schists altered by the metamorphic
action of subterranean fire, (Darwin’s Journal of Researches into the
Geology and Natural History of the Countries visited in 1832-1836 by
the Ships Adventure and Beagle, p. 266),--to the North Polar Sea, the
Cordilleras extend in length more than 8000 geographical miles. They
are the longest though not the loftiest chain on our planet; being
raised from a cleft running in the direction of a meridian from pole
to pole, and exceeding in linear distance the interval which in the
Old Continent separates the Pillars of Hercules from the Icy Cape of
the Tchuktches in the north-east of Asia. Where the Andes divide into
several parallel chains, it is remarked that the ranges nearest the
sea are usually those which exhibit most volcanic activity; but it
has also been observed repeatedly, that when the phenomena of still
active subterranean fire disappear in one chain, they break out in
another chain running parallel to it. Generally speaking, the volcanic
cones are found in a direction corresponding with that of the axis of
direction of the entire chain; but in the elevated highlands of Mexico
the active volcanoes are placed along a transverse cleft running from
sea to sea in the east and west direction. (Humboldt, Essai Politique,
T. ii. p. 173.) Where, by the elevation of mountain masses in the
ancient corrugation or folding of the crust of the earth, access has
been opened to the molten interior, that interior continues to act,
through the medium of the cleft, upon the upheaved wall-like mass.
That which we now call a mountain chain has not arrived at once at
its present state: rocks, very different in the order of succession
in reference to age, are found superimposed upon each other, and have
penetrated to the surface by early formed channels. The various nature
of the formations is due to the outpouring and elevation of eruptive
rocks, as well as to the slow and complicated process of metamorphic
action taking place in clefts filled with vapours and favourable to the
conduction of heat.

For a long time past, from 1830 to 1848, the following have been
regarded as the culminating or highest points of the Cordilleras of the
New Continent.

 The Nevado de Sorata, also called Ancohuma or Tusubaya, (S. lat. 15°
 52′) a little to the south of the village of Sorata or Esquibel, in
 the eastern Bolivia Range: elevation 3949 toises, or 23692 Parisian,
 or 25250 English feet.

 The Nevado de Illimani, west of the Mission of Yrupana (S. lat. 16°
 38′) in the same mountain range as Sorata: elevation 3753 toises, or
 22518 Parisian, or 24000 English feet.

 The Chimborazo (S. lat. 1° 27′) in the province of Quito: elevation
 3350 toises, or 20100 Parisian, or 21423 English feet.

The Sorata and Illimani were first measured by a distinguished
geologist, Mr. Pentland, in 1827, and also in 1838. Since the
publication, in June 1848, of his great map of the basin of the lake
of Titicaca, we know that the above-mentioned elevations of these two
mountains are respectively 3960 and 2851 English feet, too great. The
map gives to the Sorata 21286, and to the Illimani 21149 English feet.
A more exact calculation of the trigonometrical operations of 1838 has
led Mr. Pentland to these new results. There are, according to him, in
the western Cordillera four peaks of from 21700 to 22350 English feet.
The highest of these, the peak of Sahama, would thus be 926 English
feet higher than the Chimborazo, and but 850 English feet lower than
the Volcano of Acongagua, measured by the expedition of the Beagle
(Fitz Roy’s Narrative, Vol. ii. p. 481.)

[6] p. 3.--“_The Desert near the basaltic mountains of Harudsh._”

Near the Egyptian Natron Lakes, (which in the time of Strabo had not
yet been divided into six reservoirs), there is a range of hills which
rises steeply on the northern side, and runs from east to west past
Fezzan, where it finally appears to join the chain of the Atlas. It
divides in north-eastern Africa, as the Atlas does in north-western
Africa, the inhabited maritime Lybia of Herodotus from the land of the
Berbers, or Biledulgerid, abounding in wild animals. From the limits
of Middle Egypt the whole region south of the 30th degree of North
latitude is a sea of sand, in which are dispersed islands, or Oases,
containing springs of water and a flourishing vegetation. The number
of these Oases, of which the ancients only reckoned three, and which
Strabo compared to the spots on a panther’s skin, has been considerably
augmented by the discoveries of modern travellers. The third Oasis of
the ancients, now called Siwah, was the Nomos of Ammon; a residence
of priests, a resting place for caravans, and the site of the temple
of the horned Ammon and the supposed periodically cool fountain of
the Sun. The ruins of Ummibida, (Omm-Beydah), belong incontestibly to
the fortified caravanserai at the temple of Ammon, and therefore to
the most ancient monuments which have come down to us from the early
dawn of civilization. (Caillaud, Voyage à Syouah, p. 14; Ideler in den
Fundgruben des Orients, Bd. iv. S. 399-411).

The word Oasis is Egyptian, and synonymous with Auasis and Hyasis
(Strabo, lib. ii. p. 130, lib. xvii. p. 813, Cas.; Herod. lib. iii.
cap. 26, p. 207, Wessel). Abulfeda calls the Oases, el-Wah. In the
later times of the Cæsars, malefactors were sent to the Oases; being
banished to these islands in the sea of sand, as the Spaniards and the
English have sent criminals to the Falklands or to New Holland. Escape
by the ocean is almost easier than through the desert. The fertility of
the Oases is subject to diminution by the invasion of sand.

The small mountain-range of Harudsh is said to consist of basaltic
hills of grotesque form (Ritter’s Afrika, 1822, S. 885, 988, 993, and
1003). It is the Mons Ater of Pliny; and its western extremity or
continuation, called the Soudah mountains, has been explored by my
unfortunate friend, the adventurous traveller Ritchie. This eruption
of basalt in tertiary limestone, rows of hills rising abruptly from
dike-like fissures, appears to be analogous to the outbreak of basalt
in the Vicentine territory. Nature often repeats the same phenomena in
the most distant parts of the earth. In the limestone formations of
the “white Harudsh” (Harudje el-Abiad), which perhaps belong to the
old chalk, Hornemann found an immense number of fossil heads of fish.
Ritchie and Lyon remarked that the basalt of the Soudah mountains,
like that of the Monte Berico, was in many places intimately mixed
with carbonate of lime,--a phenomenon probably connected with eruption
through limestone strata. Lyon’s map even mentions dolomite in the
neighbourhood. Modern mineralogists have found syenite and greenstone
in Egypt, but not basalt. Possibly the material of some of the ancient
Egyptian vases, which are occasionally found of true basalt, may have
been taken from these western mountains. May “Obsidius lapis” also have
been found there? or are basalt and obsidian to be sought for near the
Red Sea? The strip of volcanic or eruptive formations of the Harudsh,
on the margin of the African desert, reminds the geologist of the
augitic vesicular amygdaloid, phonolite, and greenstone porphyry, which
are only found at the northern and western boundaries of the Steppes of
Venezuela and of the plains of the Arkansas, as it were on the hills
of the ancient coast line. (Humboldt, Relation Historique, tom. ii. p.
142; Long’s Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, vol. ii. pp. 91 and 405.)

[7] p. 3.--“_When suddenly deserted by the east wind of the tropics in
a sea covered with weed._”

It is a remarkable phenomenon, well known among sailors, that in the
vicinity of the African coast (between the Canaries and the Cape de
Verde Islands, and particularly between Cape Bojador and the mouth of
the Senegal), a west wind often takes the place of the general east
or trade-wind of the tropics. It is the wide expanse of the desert of
Sahara which causes this westerly wind. The air over the heated sandy
plain becomes rarefied and ascends, the air from the sea rushes in to
supply the void so formed, and thus there sometimes arises a west wind,
adverse to ships bound to the American coast, which are made in this
manner to feel the vicinity of the heat-radiating desert without even
seeing the continent to which it belongs. The changes of land and sea
breezes, which blow alternately at certain hours of the day or night on
all coasts, are due to the same causes.

The accumulation of sea-weed in the neighbourhood of the African
coast has been often spoken of by ancient writers. The locality of
this accumulation is a problem which is intimately connected with
our conjectures respecting the extent of Phœnician navigation.
The Periplus, which has been ascribed to Scylax of Caryanda, and
which, according to the researches of Niebuhr and Letronne, was very
probably compiled in the time of Philip of Macedon, describes beyond
Cerne a quantity of fucus forming a weed-covered sea--a kind of “Mar
de Sargasso;” but the locality indicated appears to me to differ
very much from that assigned in the work entitled “De Mirabilibus
Auscultationibus,” which long bore, unduly, the great name of
Aristotle. (Compare Scyl. Caryand. Peripl. in Hudson, vol. ii. p. 53,
with Aristot. de Mirab. Auscult. in opp. omnia ex. rec. Bekkeri, p.
844, § 136.) The pseudo-Aristotle says, “Phœnician mariners, driven
by the east wind, came in four days’ sail from Gades to a part where
they found the sea covered with reeds and sea-weed (θρύον καὶ φῦκος.)
The sea-weed is uncovered at ebb and covered at flood tide.” Is he
not here speaking of a shallow place between the 34° and 36° of
latitude? Has a shoal disappeared in consequence of volcanic eruption?
Vobonne speaks of rocks north of Madeira. (Compare also Edrisi, Geog.
Nub., 1619, p. 157.) In Scylax it is said, “The sea beyond Cerne is
unnavigable on account of its great shallowness, its muddiness, and
the great quantity of sea grasses. The sea grass lies a span thick,
and is full of points at the top, so that it pricks.” The sea-weed
found between Cerne,--(the Phœnician station for laden vessels, Gaulea,
or, according to Gosselin, the small island of Fedallah, on the
north-western coast of Mauritania),--and Cape de Verde, does not now by
any means form a great sea meadow, or connected tract of fucus, a “mare
herbidum,” such as exists beyond the Azores. In the poetic description
of the coast by Festus Avienus, (Ora Maritima, v. 109, 122, 388, and
408), in the composition of which, as Avienus himself says, (v. 412)
he availed himself of the journals of Phœnician ships, the obstacle
presented by the sea-weed is referred to in a very circumstantial
manner; but its site is placed much farther north, towards Ierne, the
“Sacred Island.”

    Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,
    Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.
    Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
    Exstare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice
    Retinere puppim....
    Hæc inter undas multa cæspitem jacet,
    Eamque late gens Hibernorum colit.

In remarking that the fucus and the mud or mire, (πηλός), the
shallowness of the sea, and the perpetual calms, are always spoken
of by the ancients as characteristics of the western ocean beyond
the Pillars of Hercules, one is disposed, more particularly on
account of the mention of the _calms_, to ascribe something to Punic
artifice,--to the desire of a great trading people to deter others,
by the apprehension of dangers and difficulties, from entering into
competition with them in western navigation and commerce. But even
in the genuine writings of Aristotle (Meteorol. ii. p. 1, 14,) he
maintains this same opinion of the absence of wind in those regions,
and seeks the explanation of what he erroneously supposes to be a
fact of observation, but which is more properly a fabulous mariner’s
tale, in an hypothesis concerning the depth of the sea. In reality,
the stormy sea between Gades and the islands of the Blest or Fortunate
Islands, (between Cadix and the Canaries), is very unlike the sea
farther to the south between the tropics, where the gentle trade winds
blow, and which is called very characteristically by the Spaniards, el
Golfo de las Damas, the Ladies’ Gulf. (Acosta Historia natural y moral
de las Indias, lib. iii. cap. 4.)

From very careful researches by myself, and from the comparison of the
logs or journals of many English and French vessels, I infer that the
old and indefinite expression, Mar de Sargasso, includes two banks of
fucus, of which the greater and easternmost one, of a lengthened shape,
is situated between the parallels of 19° and 34° N. lat., in a meridian
of 7 degrees to the west of the Island of Corvo, one of the Azores;
while the lesser and westernmost bank, of a roundish form, is situated
between the Bermudas and the Bahamas, (lat. 25°-31°, long. 66°-74°.)
The longer axis of the small bank which is crossed by ships going from
Baxo de Plata (Caye d’Argent, Silver Cay) on the north of St. Domingo,
to the Bermudas, appears to have a N. 60° E. direction. A transverse
band of Fucus natans, running in an East and West direction between
the parallels of 25° and 30°, connects the greater and lesser banks. I
have had the gratification of seeing these inferences approved by my
honoured friend Major Rennell, and adopted by him in his great work on
Currents, where he has further supported and confirmed them by many new
and additional observations. (Compare Humboldt, Relation Historique,
tom. i. p. 202, and Examen critique, tom. iii. p. 68-99, with Rennell’s
Investigation of the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean, 1832, p. 184.)
The two groups of sea-weed, included together with the transverse
connecting band under the old general name of the Sargasso Sea, occupy
altogether a space exceeding six or seven times the area of Germany.

Thus it is the vegetation of the ocean which offers the most remarkable
example of an assemblage of “social plants” of a single species. On
terra firma, the savannahs or prairies, or grassy plains of America,
the heaths (ericeta), and the forests of the North of Europe and
Asia, consisting of coniferous trees, birches, and willows, offer a
less degree of uniformity than do those thalassophytes. Our heaths
show, in the north, in addition to the prevailing Calluna vulgaris,
Erica tetralix, E. ciliaris, and E. cinerea; and in the south, Erica
arborea, E. scoparia, and E. mediterranea. The uniformity of the
aspect offered by the Fucus natans is greater than that of any other
assemblage or association of plants. Oviedo calls the fucus banks
“meadows,” praderias de yerva. Considering that the island of Flores
was discovered in 1452, by Pedro Velasco, a native of the Spanish port
of Palos, by following the flight of certain birds from the island of
Fayal, it seems almost impossible, seeing the proximity of the great
fucus bank of Corvo and Flores, that a part of these oceanic meadows
should not have been seen before Columbus, by Portuguese ships driven
by storms to the westward. Yet the astonishment of the companions of
Columbus in 1492, when surrounded by sea-weed uninterruptedly from
the 16th of September to the 8th of October, shews that the magnitude
of the phenomenon at least was previously unknown to the sailors. The
anxieties excited by the accumulation of sea-weed, and the murmurs
of his companions in reference thereto, are not indeed mentioned by
Columbus in the extracts from the ship’s journal given by Las Casas.
He merely speaks of the complaints and murmurs respecting the danger
to be feared from the weak but constant East winds. It is only the
son, Fernando Colon, who, in writing his father’s life, endeavoured to
depict the fears of the sailors in a dramatic manner.

According to my researches, Columbus crossed the great fucus bank in
1492, in lat. 28-1/2°, and in 1493, in lat. 37°, both times in the
long. of from 38° to 41° W. This is deducible with tolerable certainty
from Columbus’s recorded estimation of the ship’s rate, and the
“distance daily sailed over;” derived indeed, not from casting the log,
but from data afforded by the running out of half-hour sand-glasses
(ampolletas). The first certain and definite mention of a log (catena
della poppa) which I have been able to discover, is in the year 1521,
in Pigafetta’s journal of Magellan’s Voyage round the World. (Cosmos,
vol. ii. p. 259, and Note 405, English ed.) The determination of the
ship’s place, while Columbus was engaged in traversing the great
meadows of sea-weed, is the more important, because we learn from
it that for three centuries and a half the situation of this great
accumulation of thalassophytes, whether resulting from the local
character of the bottom of the sea, or from the direction of the Gulf
stream, has remained the same. Such evidences of the permanency of
great natural phenomena arrest the attention of the physical inquirer
with double force, when they present themselves in the ever-moving
oceanic element. Although the limits of the fucus banks oscillate
considerably, in correspondence with the variations of the strength
and direction of the prevailing winds, yet we may still in the middle
of the 19th century take the meridian of 41° W. from Paris (38° 38′
W. from Greenwich) as the principal axis of the “great bank.” In the
vivid imagination of Columbus, the idea of the position of this bank
was intimately connected with the great physical line of demarcation,
which, according to him, divided the globe into two parts, with the
changes of magnetic variation, and with climatic relations. Columbus,
when uncertain respecting his longitude, (February 1493), directed
himself by the appearance of the first floating streamers of weed (de
la primera yerva) on the eastern margin of the great Corvo bank. The
physical line of demarcation was, by the powerful influence of the
Admiral, converted on the 4th of May, 1493, into a political line,
being made the celebrated “line of demarcation” between the Spanish and
Portuguese rights of possession. (Compare my Examen Critique, tom. iii.
p. 64-99, and Cosmos, English ed. vol. ii. p. 279-280.)

[8] p. 3.--“_The Nomadic Tibbos and Tuaricks._”

These two nations inhabit the deserts between Bornou, Fezzan, and
Lower Egypt. They were first made known to us with some exactness by
Hornemann’s and Lyon’s travels. The Tibbos or Tibbous roam through the
eastern, and the Tuaticks (Tueregs) through the western, parts of the
great desert. The first are called by the other tribes, from being in
continual movement, “birds.” The Tuaricks are distinguished into those
of Aghadez and those of Tagazi. They are often engaged as conductors
of caravans, and in trade. Their language is the same as that of the
Berbers; and they belong unquestionably to the number of the primitive
Lybian nations. The Tuaricks present a remarkable physiological
phenomenon. Different tribes among them are, according to the climate,
white, yellowish, and even almost black; but all are without woolly
hair or Negro features. (Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, T. ii.
p. 343.)

[9] p. 4.--“_The Ship of the Desert._”

In oriental poems, the camel is called the land-ship, or the ship
of the Desert (Sefynet-el-badyet); Chardin, Voyages, nouv. éd. par
Langlès, 1811, T. iii. p. 376.

But the camel is not merely the carrier of the desert, and the link
which, rendering communication between different countries possible,
connects them with each other: he is also, as Carl Ritter has shewn
in his excellent memoir on the sphere of diffusion of these animals,
the principal and essential condition of the nomadic life of nations
in the patriarchal stage of national development, in the hot parts of
our planet where rain is either altogether wanting or very infrequent.
No animal’s life is so closely associated by natural bonds with a
particular stage of the developement of the life of man,--a connection
historically established for several thousand years,--as the life of
the camel among the Bedouin tribes (Asien, Bd. viii. Abth. i. 1847,
S. 610 und 758). “The camel was entirely unknown to the cultivated
Carthaginian nation through all the centuries of their flourishing
existence, until the destruction of their city. The Marusians first
brought it into military use, in the train of armies, in Western Lybia,
in the times of the Cæsars; perhaps in consequence of its employment
in commercial operations in the valley of the Nile by the Ptolemies.
The Guanches, the inhabitants of the Canary Islands and probably
related to the Berber race, were not acquainted with the camel before
the 15th century, when it was introduced by Norman conquerors and
settlers. In the probably very limited communication of the Guanches
with the Coast of Africa, the small size of the boats would prevent the
transport of large animals. The true Berber race, diffused throughout
the interior of Northern Africa, and to which the Tibbos and Tuaricks,
as already mentioned, belong, owes doubtless to the use of the camel
throughout the Lybian desert and its Oases, not only the advantages of
intercommunication, but also the preservation of its national existence
to the present day. On the other hand, the negro races never, of their
own accord, made any use of the camel; it was only in company with
the conquering expeditions and proselyting missions of the Bedouins,
carrying their prophet’s doctrines over the whole of Northern Africa,
that the useful animal of the Nedjid, of the Nabatheans, and of all
the countries inhabited by Aramean races, spread to the westward and
was introduced among the black population. The Goths took camels as
early as the fourth century to the Lower Istros (the Danube), and
the Ghaznevides conveyed them in much larger numbers as far as India
and the banks of the Ganges.” We must distinguish two epochs in the
diffusion of the camel throughout the northern part of the African
continent; one under the Ptolemies, operating through Cyrene on the
whole of the north-west of Africa; and the Mohammedan epoch of the
conquering Arabs.

It has long been a question, whether those domestic animals which
have been the earliest companions of mankind--oxen, sheep, dogs, and
camels--are still to be met with in a state of original wildness. The
Hiongnu, in Eastern Asia, belong to the nations who earliest tamed and
trained wild camels as domestic animals. The compiler of the great
Chinese work, Si-yu-wen-kien-lo, (Historia Regionum occidentalium,
quæ Si-yu vocantur, visu et auditu cognitarum,) affirms that in the
middle of the 18th century wild camels, as well as wild horses and wild
asses, still wandered in East Turkestan. Hadji Chalfa, in his Turkish
Geography, written in the 17th century, speaks of the frequent chase
of the wild camel in the high plains of Kashgar, Turfan, and Khotan.
Schott translates, from a Chinese author, Ma-dschi, that wild camels
are to be found in the countries to the north of China and west of the
Hoang-ho, in Ho-si or Tangut. Cuvier alone (Règne Animal, T. i. p.
257), doubts the present existence of wild camels in the interior of
Asia. He believes they have merely “become wild;” because Calmucks, and
others having Buddhistic religious affinities with them, set camels
and other animals at liberty, in order “to acquire to themselves merit
for the other world.” According to Greek witnesses of the times of
Artemidorus and Agatharchides of Cnidus, the Ailanitic Gulf of the
Nabatheans was the home of the wild Arabian camel. (Ritter’s Asien,
Bd. viii. s. 670, 672, and 746.) The discovery of fossil camel bones
of the ancient world by Captain Cautley and Doctor Falconer, in
1834, in the sub-Himalaya range of the Sewalik hills, is peculiarly
deserving of notice. These bones were found with other ancient bones
of mastodons, of true elephants, of giraffes, and of a gigantic land
tortoise (Colossochelys), twelve feet in length and six feet in height.
(Humboldt, Cosmos, Engl. ed. vol. i. p. 268.) This camel of the
Ancient World has received the name of Camelus sivalensis, but does
not show any considerable difference from the still living Egyptian
and Bactrian camels with one and two humps. Forty camels have very
recently been introduced into Java, having been brought there from
Teneriffe. (Singapore Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1847, p.
206.) The first experiment has been made in Samarang. In like manner,
reindeer have only been introduced into Iceland from Norway in the
course of the last century. They were not found there when the island
was settled, notwithstanding the proximity to East Greenland, and the
existence of floating masses of ice. (Sartorius von Waltershausen
physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, S. 41.)

[10] p. 4.--“_Between the Altai and the Kuen-lün._”

The great highland, or, as it is commonly called, the mountain plateau
of Asia, which includes the lesser Bucharia, Songarei, Thibet,
Tangut, and the Mogul country of the Chalcas and Olotes, is situated
between the 36th and 48th degrees of latitude, and the meridians of
81° and 118° E. long. It is an erroneous view to represent this part
of the interior of Asia as a single undivided mountainous gibbosity,
continuous like the elevated plains of Quito and Mexico, and elevated
from seven to nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. That there
is not in this sense any undivided mountain plateau in the interior
of Asia, has already been shewn by me in my “Researches respecting
the Mountains of Northern India.” (Humboldt, Premier Mémoire sur les
Montagnes de l’Inde, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, T. iii.
1816, p. 303; Second Mémoire, T. xiv. 1820, p. 5-55.)

My views concerning the geographical range of plants, and the mean
degree of temperature requisite for certain kinds of cultivation, had
early led me to entertain considerable doubts as to the continuity of
a great Tartarian plateau between the Himalaya and the Altai. Writers
continued to characterise this plateau as it had been described by
Hippocrates (De Ære et Aquis, § xcvi. p. 74), as “the high and naked
plains of Scythia, which, without being crowned with mountains, rise
and extend to beneath the constellation of the Bear.” Klaproth has the
undeniable merit of having been the first to make us acquainted with
the true position, extent, and direction of two great and entirely
distinct chains of mountains--the Kuen-lün and the Thian-schan, in a
part of Asia which is better entitled to the name of “central” than
Kashmeer, Baltistan, and the Sacred Lakes of Thibet, (the Manasa and
the Ravanahrada). The importance of the Celestial Mountains, the
Thian-schan, had indeed been already surmised by Pallas, without
his being aware of their volcanic nature; but this highly-gifted
investigator of nature, hampered by the then prevailing hypothesis
of a dogmatic and fantastic geology, firmly believing in “chains of
mountains radiating from a centre,” saw in the Bogdo Oola (the Mons
Augustus, or culminating point of the Thian-schan) such a “central
node, from whence all the Asiatic mountain chains diverge in rays, and
which dominates over all the rest of the continent!”

The erroneous idea of a single vast elevated plain occupying the whole
of central Asia, the “Plateau de la Tartarie,” took its rise in France,
in the latter half of the 18th century. It was the result of historical
combinations, and of a not sufficiently attentive study of the writings
of the celebrated Venetian traveller, as well as of the naïve relations
of those diplomatic monks who, in the 13th and 14th centuries, (thanks
to the unity and extent of the Mogul empire at that time) were able to
traverse almost the whole of the interior of the continent, from the
ports of Syria and of the Caspian Sea to the shores of the Pacific on
the east coast of China. If a more exact acquaintance with the language
and ancient literature of India had dated farther back among us than
half a century, the hypothesis of this central plateau, occupying
the wide space between the Himalaya and the south of Siberia, would
no doubt have had adduced in its support an ancient and venerable
authority from that source. The poem of the Mahabharata appears, in the
geographical fragment Bhischmakanda, to describe “Meru” not so much
as a mountain as an enormous elevation of the land, which supplies
with water at once the sources of the Ganges, those of the Bhadrasoma
(Irtysh), and those of the forked Oxus. These physico-geographical
views were intermingled in Europe with ideas of other kinds, and with
mythical reveries relating to the origin of mankind. It was said that
the elevated regions from which the waters first retreated, (geologists
in general were long averse to the theory of elevation), must also
have received the first germs of civilisation. Hebraizing systems of
geology, and views connected with the Deluge and supported by local
traditions, favoured these assumptions. The intimate connection
between time and space, between the beginnings of social order and the
plastic character of the surface of the earth, lent to the supposed
“uninterrupted Plateau of Tartary” a peculiar importance, and an almost
moral interest. Acquisitions of positive knowledge, the late matured
fruit of scientific travels and direct measurements, as well as of
a fundamental study of Asiatic languages and literature especially
those of China, have gradually demonstrated the inaccuracies and
exaggerations of those wild hypotheses. The mountain plains (ὁροπέδια)
of Central Asia are no longer regarded as the cradle of civilization
and the primitive seat of all arts and sciences. The ancient nation of
Bailly’s Atlantis, happily described by d’Alembert as “having taught
us everything but their own name and existence,” has vanished. The
supposed inhabitants of the Oceanic Atlantis had already been treated,
in the time of Posidonius, in a no less derisive manner. (Strabo, lib.
ii. p. 102; and lib. xiii. p. 598, Casaub.)

A plateau of considerable but very unequal elevation, having the
names of Gobi, Scha-mo (sand desert), Scha-ho (sand river), and
Hanhai, runs in a SSW.-NNE. direction, with little interruption,
from Eastern Thibet towards the mountain knot of Kentei south of
Lake Baikal. This swelling of the ground is probably anterior to
the elevation of the mountain chains by which it is intersected; it
is situated, as already remarked, between 79° and 116° long. from
Paris, (81° and 118° E. from Greenwich). Measured at right angles to
its longitudinal axis, its breadth is, in the south between Ladak,
Gertop, and H’lassa, (the seat of the great Lama,) 720 geographical
miles; between Hami in the Celestial Mountains, and the great bend of
the Hoang-ho near the In-schan chain, hardly 480; and in the north,
between the Khanggai, where the great city of Karakhorum once stood,
and the chain of Khin-gan-Petscha, which runs north and south (in
the part of the Gobi traversed in travelling from Kiachta by Urga
to Pekin) 760 geographical miles. The whole extent of this swelling
ground, which must be carefully distinguished from the far more
elevated mountain range to the east, may be approximately estimated,
taking its inflections into account, at about three times the area of
France. The map of the mountain ranges and volcanoes of Central Asia
(Carte der Bergketten und Vulkane von Central-Asien), constructed
by me in 1839, but not published until 1843, shows in the clearest
manner the hypsometric relations between the mountain ranges and the
Gobi plateau. It was founded on the critical employment of all the
astronomical determinations accessible to me, and on a vast amount of
orographic description, in which Chinese literature is beyond measure
rich, examined at my request by Klaproth and Stanislas Julien. My map
marks the _mean_ direction and the height of the mountain chains,
and represents the leading features of the interior of the continent
of Asia, from 30° to 60° degrees of north latitude, and between
the meridians of Kherson and Pekin. It differs materially from any
previously published map.

The Chinese have enjoyed a threefold advantage towards the collection
of so great an amount of orographic data in the highlands of Asia, and
more especially in the regions (hitherto so little known in the west),
north and south of the Celestial mountains, between the In-schan, the
mountain lake Khuku-noor, and the banks of the Ili and the Tarim. The
three advantages I allude to are,--the military expeditions towards
the west, (under the dynasties of Han and Thang 122 years before our
era, and again in the ninth century when conquerors advanced as far as
Ferghana and to the borders of the Caspian), together with the more
peaceful conquests of Buddhistic pilgrims;--the religious interest
attaching to certain lofty mountain summits on account of sacrifices
to be periodically offered there;--and the early and general use of
the compass in giving the directions of mountains and of rivers. The
knowledge and use of the “South pointing” of the magnetic needle twelve
centuries before our era, has given to the orographic and hydrographic
descriptions of countries by the Chinese, a great superiority over
the descriptions of the same kind which Greek or Roman writers have
bequeathed to us, and which are besides extremely few. The acute and
sagacious Strabo, was alike imperfectly acquainted with the direction
of the Pyrenees, and with those of the Alps and of the Apennines.
(Compare Strabo, lib. ii. p. 71 and 128; lib. iii, p. 137; lib. iv. p.
199 and 202; lib. v. p. 211, Casaub.)

To the lowlands belong almost the whole of Northern Asia to the
north-west of the volcanic chain of the Thian-schan;--the Steppes to
the north of the Altai and of the Sayan chain;--the countries which
extend from the mountains of Bolor, or Bulyt-Tagh, (“cloud mountains”
in the Uigurian dialect) which follow a north and south direction,
and from the upper Oxus, (whose sources were found by the Buddhistic
pilgrims Hiuen-thsang and Song-yun in 518 and 629, by Marco Polo in
1277, and by Lieutenant Wood in 1838, in the Pamer Lake, Sir-i-kol,
Lake Victoria), towards the Caspian; and from Tenghir or the Balkhash
Lake through the Kirghis Steppe, towards the sea of Aral and the
southern extremity of the Ural mountains. As compared with high plains
of 6,000 to 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, it may well be
permitted to use the expression of “lowlands” for flats of little more
than 200 to 1200 feet of elevation. The lowest of the last two numbers
corresponds nearly to the altitude of the town of Mannheim, and the
highest to that of Geneva and Tubingen. If the word plateau, so often
misemployed in modern works on geography, is to have its use extended
to elevations which hardly present any sensible difference in climate
and vegetation, the indefiniteness of the expressions “highlands
and lowlands,” which are only relative terms, will deprive physical
geography of the means of expressing the idea of the connection
between elevation and climate, between the profile or relief of the
ground and the decrease of temperature. When I found myself in Chinese
Dzungarei, between the boundary of Siberia and Lake Dsaisang, at an
equal distance from the Icy Sea and from the mouth of the Ganges, I
might well consider myself in Central Asia. The barometer, however,
soon taught me that the plains through which the Upper Irtysh flows,
between Ustkamenogorsk and the Chinese Dzungarian Post, Chonimailachu,
(sheep-bleating,) are scarcely raised 850, or at the most 1170, feet
above the level of the sea. Pansner’s older barometric measurements
(which, however, were not published until after my expedition), are
confirmed by mine. Both refute the hypothesis of Chappe, relative to
the supposed high elevation of the banks of the Irtysh, in Southern
Siberia; an hypothesis based on estimations of river declivities. Even
further to the East, Lake Baikal is only 222 toises, or 1420 English
feet, above the level of the sea.

In order to connect the idea of the _relation_ of the terms _lowlands_
and _highlands_ and of the various gradations in the height of elevated
plains or undulating grounds, with actual examples ascertained by
measurement, I have subjoined a table, forming an ascending scale of
such districts in different parts of the Globe. What I have said above
respecting the mean height of those Asiatic plains, which I have termed
lowlands, may be compared with the following numbers:--

                                                 Toises.  English feet.
  Plateau of Auvergne                              170        1087
     „    of Bavaria                               260        1663
     „    of Castille                              350        2239
     „    of Mysore                                460        2942
     „    of Caraccas                              480        3070
     „    of Popayan                               900        5756
     „    round Lake Tzana (in Abyssinia)          950        6076
     „    of the Orange River (in South Africa)   1000        6395
     „    of Axum (in Abyssinia)                  1100        7034
     „    of Mexico                               1170        7483
     „    of Quito                                1490        9528
     „    of the Province de los Pastos           1600       10231
     „    round Lake Titiaca                      2010       12853

No portion of the so-called Desert of Gobi (parts of which contain fine
pastures) has been so thoroughly explored in respect to the differences
of elevation as the zone, of nearly 600 geographical miles in breadth,
between the sources of the Selenga and the great Wall of China. A very
exact series of barometric levellings was executed under the auspices
of the Academy of St. Petersburgh by two distinguished Savans, the
astronomer George Fuss, and the botanist Bunge. In the year 1832 they
accompanied the mission of Greek monks to Pekin, to establish there one
of the magnetic stations recommended by me. The mean height of this
part of Gobi does not amount, as had been too hastily inferred from
the measurement of neighbouring summits by the Jesuits Gerbillon and
Verbiest to from 7500 to 8000 French (8000 to 8500 English) feet, but
only to little more than half that height, or barely 4000 French or
4264 English feet. Between Erghi, Durma, and Scharaburguna, the ground
is only 2400 French, or 2558 English, feet above the level of the sea,
or hardly 300 French (320 English) feet higher than the plateau of
Madrid. Erghi is situated midway, in lat. 45° 31′, long. 111° 26′ E.
from Greenwich. There is here a depression of more than 240 miles in
breadth, in a SW. and NE. direction. An ancient Mogul tradition marks
it as the bottom of a former inland sea. There are found in it reeds
and saline plants, mostly of the same kinds as those on the low shores
of the Caspian. In this central part of the desert there are small salt
lakes, from which salt is carried to China. According to a singular
opinion very prevalent among the Moguls, the ocean will one day return
and establish its empire anew in Gobi. One is reminded of the Chinese
tradition of the _bitter lake_, in the interior of Siberia, mentioned
by me in another work. (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, tom. ii. p. 141;
Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, p. 232.) The valley or basin of Kashmeer, so
enthusiastically extolled by Bernier, and but too moderately praised
by Victor Jacquemont, has also given occasion to great hypsometric
exaggerations. By a careful barometrical measurement, Jacquemont found
the height of the Wulur Lake in the valley of Kashmeer, not far from
the chief city Sirinagur, 836 toises, or 5346 English feet. Uncertain
determinations by the boiling point of water gave Baron Carl von Hügel
a result of 910, and Lieutenant Cunningham only 790 toises. (Compare
my Asie Centrale, tom. iii. p. 310, with the Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, vol. x. 1841, p. 114.) Kashmeer,--respecting
which, in Germany particularly, so much interest has been felt, but
the delightfulness of whose climate is considerably impaired by four
months of winter snow in the streets of Sirinagur (Carl von Hügel,
Kaschmir, Bd. ii. S. 196),--is not situated, as is often supposed,
upon the ridge of the Himalaya, but is a true cauldron-shaped valley
(Kesselthal, Caldera,) on the southern declivity of those mountains.
On the south-west, where the rampart-like elevation of the Pir Panjal
separates it from the Punjaub, the snow-covered summits are crowned,
according to Vigne, with formations of basalt and amygdaloid. The
latter formation has received from the natives the characteristic name
of “schischak deyu,” marked by the devil’s small-pox. (Vigne, Travels
in Kashmeer, 1842, vol. i. p. 237-293.) The beauty of its vegetation
has from the earliest times been very differently described, according
as the visitor came from the rich and luxuriant vegetation of India, or
from the northern regions of Turkestan, Samarcand, and Ferghana.

It is also only very recently that clearer views have been obtained
respecting the elevation of Thibet; the level of the plateau having
long been most uncritically confounded with the summits which rise
from it. Thibet occupies the interval between the two great chains of
the Himalaya and the Kuen-lün, forming the raised ground of the valley
between them. It is divided from east to west, both by the natives
and by Chinese geographers, into three portions. Upper Thibet, with
its capital city H’lassa, probably 1500 toises (9590 English feet)
above the level of the sea;--Middle Thibet, with the town of Leh or
Ladak (1563 toises, or 9995 English feet);--and Little Thibet, or
Baltistan, called the Thibet of Apricots, (Sari Boutan), in which
are situated Iskardo (985 toises, or 6300 English feet), Gilgit, and
south of Iskardo but on the left bank of the Indus, the plateau of
Deotsuh, measured by Vigne, and found to be 1873 toises, or 11,977
English feet. On examining all the notices that we possess respecting
the three Thibets, (and which will have received in the present year a
rich augmentation by the boundary expedition under the auspices of the
governor-general, Lord Dalhousie), we soon become convinced that the
region between the Himalaya and the Kuen-lün is no unbroken plain or
table land, but that it is intersected by mountain groups, undoubtedly
belonging to wholly distinct systems of elevation. There are, properly
speaking, very few plains; the most considerable are those between
Gertop, Daba, Schang-thung (Shepherd’s Plain) the native country of
the Shawl-goat, and Schipke (1634 toises, 10,450 English feet);--those
round Ladak, which have an elevation of 2100 toises, or 13430 English
feet, and must not be confounded with the depression in which the
town is situated;--and lastly, the plateau of the Sacred Lakes Manasa
and Ravanahrada (probably 2345 toises), which was visited so early
as 1625 by Pater Antonio de Andrada. Other parts are entirely filled
with crowded mountainous elevations, “rising,” as a recent traveller
expresses it, “like the waves of a vast ocean.” Along the rivers,
the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Yaru-dzangbo-tschu which was formerly
regarded as identical with the Brahma-putra, points have been measured
which are only between 1050 and 1400 toises (6714 and 8952 English
feet) above the level of the sea; so also with respect to the Thibetian
villages of Pangi, Kunawur, Kelu, and Murung. (Humboldt, Asie Centrale,
T. iii. p. 281-325.) From many carefully collected measurements of
elevation I think I may conclude that the plateau of Thibet, between
73° and 85° E. long., does not reach a mean height of 1800 toises
(11510 English feet); this is hardly equal to the height of the fertile
plain of Caxamarca in Peru, and is 211 and 337 toises (1350 and 2154
English feet) less than the height of the plateau of Titicaca, and
the street pavement of the Upper Town of Potosi (2137 toises, 13,665
English feet).

That outside of the Thibetian highlands and of the Gobi, the boundaries
of which have been defined above, there are in Asia, between the
parallels of 37° and 48°, considerable depressions and even true
lowlands, where one boundless uninterrupted plateau was formerly
imagined to exist, is shewn by the cultivation of plants which cannot
thrive without a certain degree of heat. An attentive study of the
travels of Marco Polo, in which the cultivation of the vine and the
production of cotton in northern latitudes are spoken of, had long
called the attention of the acute Klaproth to this point. In a Chinese
work, entitled “Information respecting the recently-subdued Barbarians
(Sin-kiang-wai-tan-ki-lio),” it is said, “the country of Aksu, somewhat
to the south of the Celestial Mountains (the Thian-schan), near the
rivers which form the great Tarim-gol, produces grapes, pomegranates,
and numberless other excellent fruits; also cotton (Gossypium
religiosum), which covers the fields like yellow clouds. In the summer
the heat is exceedingly great, and in winter there is here, as at
Turfan, neither severe cold nor heavy snow.” The district round Khotan,
Kashgar, and Yarkand, still pays its tribute in home-grown cotton as it
did in the time of Marco Polo. (Il Milione di Marco Polo, pubbl. dal
Conte Baldelli, T. i. p. 32 and 87.) In the Oasis of Hami (Khamil),
above 200 miles east of Aksu, orange trees, pomegranates, and vines
whose fruit is of a superior quality, grow and flourish.

The products of cultivation which are thus noticed imply the existence
of only a small degree of elevation, and that over extensive districts.
At so great a distance from any coast, and in those easterly meridians
where the cold of winter is known to exceed that of corresponding
latitudes nearer our own part of the world, a plateau which should be
as high as Madrid or Munich might indeed have very hot summers, but
would hardly have, in 43° and 44° latitude, extremely mild winters with
scarcely any snow. Near the Caspian, 83 English feet below the level
of the Black Sea, at Astrachan in 46° 21′ lat., I saw the cultivation
of the vine greatly favoured by a high degree of summer heat; but the
winter cold is there from -20° to -25° Cent. (-4° to -13° Fahr.) It is
therefore necessary to protect the vines after November, by sinking
them deep in the earth. Plants which live, as we may say, only in the
summer, as the vine, the cotton bush, rice, and melons, may indeed
be cultivated with success between the latitudes of 40° and 44° on
plains of more than 500 toises (3197 English feet) elevation, being
favoured by the powerful radiant heat; but how could the pomegranate
trees of Aksu, and the orange trees of Hami, whose fruit Père Grosier
extolled as distinguished for its goodness, bear the cold of the
long and severe winter which would be the necessary consequence of a
considerable elevation of the land? (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 48-52,
and 429.) Carl Zimmerman (in the learned Analysis of his “Karte von
Inner Asien,” 1841, S. 99) has made it appear extremely probable that
the Tarim depression, _i. e._ the desert between the mountain chains
of the Thian-schan and the Kuen-lün, where the Steppe river Tarim-gol
empties itself into the Lake of Lop, which used to be described as an
alpine lake, is hardly 1200 (1279 English) feet above the level of the
sea, or only twice the height of Prague. Sir Alexander Burnes also
assigns to that of Bokhara only an elevation of 1190 English feet. It
is earnestly to be desired, that all doubt respecting the elevation of
the plateaux of middle Asia, south of 45° of latitude, should finally
be set at rest by direct barometric measurements, or by determinations
of the boiling point of water made with more care than is usually given
to them. All our calculations respecting the difference between the
limits of perpetual snow, and the maximum elevation of vine cultivation
in different climates, rest at present on too complex and uncertain
elements.

In order to rectify in the smallest space that which was said in the
last edition of the present work, relatively to the great mountain
systems which intersect the interior of Asia, I subjoin the following
general review. We begin with the four parallel chains, which follow
with tolerable regularity an east and west direction, and are connected
with each other at a few detached points by transverse elevations.
Differences of direction indicate, as in the Alps of western Europe, a
difference in the epoch of elevation. After the four parallel chains
(the Altai, the Thian-schan, the Kuen-lün, and the Himalaya), we have
to notice chains following the direction of meridians, viz. the Ural,
the Bolor, the Khingan, and the Chinese chains, which, with the great
bend of the Thibetian and Assamo-Bermese Dzangbo-tschu, run north and
south. The Ural divides a part of Europe but little elevated above
the level of the sea from a part of Asia similarly circumstanced. The
latter was called by Herodotus, (ed. Schweighaüser, T. v. p. 204) and
even as early as Pherecydes of Syros, a Scythian or Siberian Europe,
including all the countries to the north of the Caspian and of the
Iaxartes; in this view it would be a continuation of Europe “prolonged
to the north of Asia.”

1. The great mountain system of the Altai, (the “gold mountains” of
Menander of Byzantium, an historical writer who lived as early as the
7th century, the Altaï-alin of the Moguls, and the Kin-schan of the
Chinese), forms the southern boundary of the great Siberian lowlands;
and running between 50° and 52-1/2° of north latitude, extends from the
rich silver mines of the Snake Mountains, and the confluence of the Uba
and the Irtysh, to the meridian of Lake Baikal. The divisions and names
of the “Great” and the “Little Altai,” taken from an obscure passage of
Abulghasì, are to be altogether avoided. (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 247.)
The mountain system of the Altai comprehends (_a_) the Altai proper, or
Kolywanski Altai, the whole of which is under the Russian sceptre; it
is west of the transverse opening of the Telezki Lake, which follows
the direction of the meridian; and in ante-historic times probably
formed the eastern shore of the great arm of the sea, by which, in the
direction of the still existing groups of lakes, Aksakal-Barbi and
Sary-Kupa (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 138), the Aralo-Caspian basin was
connected with the Icy sea:--(_b_) East of the Telezki chain which
follows the direction of the meridian, the Sayani, Tangnu, and Ulangom
or Malakha chains, all running tolerably parallel with each other
and in an east and west direction. The Tangnu, which sinks down and
terminates in the basin of the Selenga, has from very ancient times
formed a boundary between the Turkish race to the south and the Kirghis
(Hakas, identical with Σάκαι) in the north. (Jacob Grimm, Gesch. der
deutschen Sprache, 1848, Th. i. S. 227.) It is the original seat of the
Samoieds or Soyotes, who wandered as far as the Icy Sea, and who were
long regarded in Europe as a nation belonging exclusively to the coasts
of the Polar Sea. The highest snow-clad summits of the Altai of Kolywan
are the Bielucha and the Katunia-Pillars. The height of the latter is
about that of Etna. The Daurian highland, to which the mountain knot
of Kemtei belongs, and on the eastern side of which is the Jablonoi
Chrebet, divides the depressions of the Baikal and the Amur.

2. The mountain system of the Thian-schan, or Celestial Mountains,
the Tengri-tagh of the Turks (Tukiu) and of the kindred race of the
Hiongnu, is eight times as long, in an east and west direction, as the
Pyrenees. Beyond,--_i. e._ west of its intersection with the transverse
or north and south chain of the Bolor and Kosuyrt, the Thian-schan
bears the names of Asferah and Aktagh, is rich in metals, and has open
fissures, which emit hot vapours, luminous at night, and which are used
for obtaining sal-ammoniac. (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 18-20.) East
of the transverse Bolor and Kosyurt chain, there follow successively
in the Thian-schan,--the Kashgar Pass (Kaschgar-dawan); the Glacier
Pass of Djeparle, which leads to Kutch and Aksu in the Tarim basin;
the volcano of Pe-schan, which sent forth fire and streams of lava
at least as late as the middle of the seventh century; the great
snow-covered massive elevation Bogdo-Oola; the Sol-fatara of Urumsti,
which furnishes sulphur and sal-ammoniac (nao-scha), and is situated
in a coal district; the still active volcano of Turfan (or volcano of
Ho-tscheu or Bischbalik), almost midway between the meridians of Turfan
(Kune-Turpan), and of Pidjan. The volcanic eruptions of the Thian-schan
chain, recorded by Chinese historians, reach as far back as the year
89, A.D., when the Hiongnu of the sources of the Irtysh were pursued
by the Chinese army as far as Kutch and Kharaschar (Klaproth, Tableau
hist. de l’Asie, p. 108). The Chinese General, Teu-hian, surmounted
the Thian-schan, and saw “the Fire Mountains which send out masses of
molten rock that flow for many Li.”

The great distance from the sea of the volcanoes of the interior of
Asia is a remarkable and solitary phenomenon. Abel Rémusat, in a letter
to Cordier (Annales des Mines, T. v. 1820, p. 137), first directed the
attention of geologists to this fact. The distance, for example, in
the case of the volcano of Pe-schan, to the north, or to the Icy Sea
at the mouth of the Obi, is 1528 geographical miles; to the south, or
to the mouths of the Indus and the Ganges, 1512 geographical miles;
to the west, 1360 geographical miles to the Caspian in the Gulf of
Karaboghaz; and to the east, 1020 geographical miles to the shores of
the sea of Aral. The active volcanoes of the New World were previously
supposed to offer the most remarkable instances of such phenomena
at a great distance from the sea; their distance, however, is only
132 geographical miles in the case of the volcano of Popocatepetl
in Mexico, and only 92, 104, and 156 geographical miles in those
of the South American volcanoes Sangai, Tolima, and de la Fragua,
respectively. I exclude from these statements all extinct volcanoes,
and all trachytic mountains which have no permanent connection with
the interior of the earth. (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 16-55, 69-77,
and 341-356.) East of the volcano of Turfan, and of the fertile Oasis
of Hami rich in fine fruit, the chain of the Thian-schan gives place
to the great elevated tract of Gobi which follows a S.W. and N.E.
direction. This interruption of the mountain chain, caused by the
transverse intersection of the Gobi, continues for more than 9-1/2
degrees of longitude; but beyond it the mountains recommence in the
somewhat more southerly chain of the In-schan, or the Silver Mountains,
running (north of the Pe-tscheli) from west to east almost to the
shores of the Pacific near Pekin, and forming a continuation of the
Thian-schan. As I have viewed the In-schan as an easterly prolongation
(beyond the interruption of the Gobi) of the cleft above which the
Thian-schan stands, so one might possibly view the Caucasus as a
westerly prolongation of the same, beyond the great basin of the Aral
and Caspian Seas or the depression of Turan. The mean parallel of
latitude or axis of elevation of the Thian-schan oscillates between
40-2/3° and 43° N. lat.; that of the Caucasus, according to the map of
the Russian Etat-Major (running rather E.S.E. and W.N.W.), is between
41° and 44° N. lat. (Baron von Meyendorff, in the Bulletin de la
Societé géologique de France, T. ix. 1837-1838, p. 230.) Of the four
parallel chains which traverse Asia from east to west, the Thian-schan
is the only one in which no summits have yet had their elevation above
the sea determined by measurement.

3. The mountain system of the Kuen-lün (Kurkun or Kulkun), if we
include in it the Hindu-Coosh and its western prolongation in the
Persian Elbourz and Demavend, is, next to the American Cordillera of
the Andes, the longest line of elevation on the surface of our planet.
Where the north-and-south chain of Bolor intersects the Kuen-lün at
right angles, the latter takes the name of the Thsung-ling (Onion
Mountains), which is also given to a part of the Bolor at the eastern
angle of intersection. The Kuen-lün, forming the northern boundary
of Thibet, runs very regularly in an east and west direction, in the
latitude of 36°. In the meridian of H’lassa an interruption takes
place from the great mountain knot which surrounds the alpine lake
of Khuku-noor, the Sing-so-hai, or Starry Sea, so celebrated in the
mythical geography of the Chinese. The somewhat more northerly chains
of Nan-schan and Kilian-schan may almost be regarded as an easterly
prolongation of the Thian-schan. They extend to the Chinese wall near
Liang-tscheu. West of the intersection of the Bolor and Kuen-lün (the
Thsung-ling) I think I have been the first to shew (Asie Centrale,
T. i. p. 23, and 118-159; T. ii. p. 431-434 and 465) that the
corresponding direction of the axes of the Kuen-lün and the Hindu-Coosh
(both being east and west, whereas the Himalaya is south-east and
north-west) makes it reasonable to regard the Hindu-Coosh as a
continuation, not of the Himalaya, but of the Kuen-lün. From the
Taurus in Lycia to Kafiristan, through an extent of 45 degrees of
longitude, this chain follows the parallel of Rhodes, or the diaphragm
of Dicearchus. The grand geognostical view of Eratosthenes (Strabo,
Lib. ii. p. 68; Lib. xi. p. 490 and 511; and Lib. xv. p. 689), which
is farther developed by Marinus of Tyre, and Ptolemy, and according to
which “the continuation of the Taurus in Lycia extends across the whole
of Asia to India, in one and the same direction,” appears to have been
partly founded on statements which reached the Persians and Indians
from the Punjaub. “The Brahmins affirm,” says Cosmas Indicopleustes,
in his Christian Topography, (Mountfauçon, Collectio nova Patrum, T.
ii. p. 137) “that a line drawn from Tzinitza (Thinæ) across Persia
and Romania, exactly cuts the middle of the inhabited earth.” It is
deserving of notice that Eratosthenes had so early remarked that this
longest axis of elevation in the Old Continent, in the parallels of
35-1/2° and 36°, points directly through the basin (or depression) of
the Mediterranean to the Pillars of Hercules. (Compare Asie Centrale,
T. i. p. 23 and 122-138; T. ii. p. 430-434, with Kosmos, Bd. ii. S.
222 and 438, p. 188, and note 292, Engl. ed.) The easternmost part
of the Hindu-Coosh is the Paropanisus of the ancients, the Indian
Caucasus of the companions of Alexander. The now generally used term
of Hindu-Coosh, belongs, as may be seen from the Travels of the Arab
Ibn Batuta (English version, p. 97), to a single mountain pass on
which many Indian slaves often perished from cold. The Kuen-lün, like
the Thian-schan, shews igneous outbreaks or eruptions at many hundred
miles from the sea. Flames, visible at a great distance, issue from
a cavity in the Schin-khieu Mountain. (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 427
and 483, where I have followed the text of Yuen-thong-ki, translated
by my friend Stanislas Julien.) The highest summit measured in the
Hindu-Coosh, north-west of Jellalabad, is 3164 toises above the sea
(20132 English feet); to the west, towards Herat, the chain sinks to
400 toises (2558 English feet), until, north of Teheran, it rises again
to a height of 2295 toises (14675 English feet) in the volcano of
Demavend.

4. The mountain system of the Himalaya. The normal direction of this
system is east and west when followed from 81° to 97° E. long. from
Greenwich, or through more than fifteen degrees of longitude from the
colossal Dhawalagiri (4390 toises, 28071 English feet) to the breaking
through of the long-problematical Dzangbo-tschu river (the Irawaddy,
according to Dalrymple and Klaproth), and to the chains running north
and south which cover the whole of Western China, and in the provinces
of Sse-tschuan, Hu-kuang, and Kuang-si form the great mountain group
of the sources of the Kiang. The next highest culminating point to the
Dhawalagiri, of this east and west part of the Himalaya, is not, as
has been hitherto supposed, the eastern peak of the Schamalari, but
the Kinchinjinga. This mountain is situated in the meridian of Sikhim,
between Bootan and Nepaul, and between the Schamalari (3750? toises,
23980 English feet) and the Dhawalagiri: its height is 4406 toises, or
26438 Parisian, or 28174 English feet. It was first measured accurately
by trigonometrical operations in the present year, and as the account
of this measurement received by me from India says decidedly, “that a
new determination of the Dhawalagiri leaves to the latter the first
rank among all the snow-capped mountains of the Himalaya,” the height
of the Dhawalagiri must necessarily be greater than that of 4390
toises, or 26340 Parisian, 28071 English feet, hitherto ascribed to
it. (Letter of the accomplished botanist of Sir James Ross’s Antarctic
Expedition, Dr. Joseph Hooker, written from Dorjiling, July 25, 1848.)
The turning point in the direction of the axis of the Himalaya range
is not far from the Dhawalagiri, in 79° E. long. from Paris (81° 22′
Greenwich). From thence to the westward the Himalaya no longer runs
east and west, but from SE. to NW., connecting itself, as a great cross
vein, between Mozuffer-abad and Gilgit south of Kafiristan, with a part
of the Hindu-Coosh. Such a bend or change in the direction or strike of
the axis of elevation of the Himalaya (from E-W. to SE-NW.), doubtless
points, as in the western part of our European Alps, to a difference
in the age or epoch of elevation. The course of the Upper Indus, from
the sacred lakes Manasa and Ravana-hrada (at an elevation of 2345
toises, 14995 English feet) in the vicinity of which the great river
rises, to Iskardo and to the plateau of Deo-tsuh, (at an elevation of
2032 toises, 12993 English feet) measured by Vigne, follows in the
Thibetian highlands the same north-westerly direction as the Himalaya.
Here is the summit of the Djawahir, long since well measured and known
to be 4027 toises (25750 English feet) in elevation, and the valley
of Kashmeer, where at an elevation of only 836 toises, (5346 English
feet), the Wulur Lake freezes every winter, and, from the perpetual
calm, no wave ever curls its surface.

Having thus described the four great mountain systems of Asia, which
in their normal geognostic character are chains coinciding with
parallels of latitude, I have next to speak of the series of elevations
coinciding nearly with meridians, (or more precisely, having a
SSE.-NNW. direction), which, from Cape Comorin opposite to the Island
of Ceylon to the Icy Sea, alternate between the meridians of 66° and
77° E. long. from Greenwich. To this system, of which the alternations
remind us of _faults in veins_, belong the Ghauts, the Soliman chain,
the Paralasa, the Bolor, and the Ural. The interruptions of the series
of elevations are so arranged that, beside their alternate position in
respect to longitude, each new chain begins in a degree of latitude to
which the preceding chain had not quite reached. The importance which
the Greeks (although probably not before the second century) attached
to these chains induced Agathodemon and Ptolemy (Tab. vii. and viii.)
to represent to themselves the Bolor, under the name of Imaus, as an
axis of elevation extending as far as 62° N. lat. into the low basin of
the Lower Irtisch and the Obi. (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 138, 154, and
198; T. ii. p. 367.)

As the perpendicular elevation of mountain summits above the level of
the sea (unimportant as in the eyes of the geologist the circumstance
of the greater or lesser corrugation of the crust of the earth may
be), is still, like all that is difficult of attainment, an object
of popular curiosity, the following historical notice of the gradual
progress of hypsometric knowledge may here find a suitable place.
When I returned to Europe in 1804 after a four years’ absence, not a
single Asiatic snowy summit either in the Himalaya, the Hindu-Coosh,
or the Caucasus, had been measured with any exactness; and I could
not therefore compare my determinations of the height of perpetual
snow in the Cordilleras of Quito, or the mountains of Mexico, with
any corresponding determinations in the East. The important journey
of Turner, Davis, and Saunders, to the highlands of Thibet, does
indeed belong to the year 1783, but Colebrooke justly remarks, that
the elevation given by Turner to the Schamalari (lat. 28° 57′, long.
89° 30′, a little to the north of Tassisudan) rests on foundations
as slight as those of the so-called measurements of the heights seen
from Patna and the Kafiristan by Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant
Macartney. (Compare Turner, in the Asiatic Researches, vol. xii. p.
234, with Elphinstone’s Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1815, p. 95,
and Francis Hamilton, Account of Nepal, 1819, p. 92.) The excellent
observations and writings of Webb, Hodgson, Herbert, and the brothers
Gerard, have thrown great and certain light on the elevation of the
colossal summits of the Himalaya; yet, in 1808, the hypsometric
knowledge of this great Indian chain was still so uncertain that Webb
wrote to Colebrooke: “The height of the Himalaya still remains a
problem. I find, indeed, that the summits visible from the high plain
of Rohilcund are 21000 English feet above that plain, but we do not
know the absolute height above the sea.”

It was not until the beginning of the year 1820 that it began to be
reported in Europe, that not only were there in the Himalaya, summits
much higher than those of the Cordilleras, but also that Webb had seen
in the Pass of Niti, and Moorcroft in the Thibetian plateau of Daba
and the Sacred Lakes, fine pastures and flourishing fields of corn,
at altitudes far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. These accounts
were received in England with much incredulity, and were met by doubts
respecting the influence of refraction. I have shown the groundlessness
of these doubts in two memoirs (Sur les Montagnes de l’Inde), printed
in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique. The Tyrolese jesuit, P.
Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 penetrated into the provinces of Kemaun
and Nepal, had already divined the importance of the Dhawalagiri.
We read on his map, “Montes Albi, qui Indis Dolaghir, nive obsiti.”
Captain Webb always uses the same name. Until the measurements of the
Djawahir (lat. 30° 22′, long. 79° 58′, altitude 4027 toises, or 25750
English feet) and of the Dhawalagiri (lat. 28° 40′, long. 83° 21′,
altitude 4390? toises, 28072 English feet) were made known in Europe,
the Chimborazo (3350 toises, or 21421 English feet), according to my
trigonometric measurement, (Recueil d’Observations astronomiques, T.
i. p. 73) was still everywhere regarded as the highest summit on the
surface of the earth. The Himalaya now appeared, according as the
comparison was made with the Djawahir or the Dhawalagiri, 676 toises
(4323 English feet), or 1040 toises (6650 English feet), higher than
the Chimborazo. Pentland’s South American travels, in the years 1827
and 1838, fixed attention (Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, 1830,
p. 320 and 323) on two snowy summits of Upper Peru, east of the
Lake of Titicaca, which were supposed to surpass the height of the
Chimborazo respectively by 598 and 403 toises, (3824 and 2577 English
feet.) I have remarked above, pp. 53-54, that the latest calculation
of the measurements of the Sorata and Illimani shews this view to be
incorrect. The Dhawalagiri (on the declivity of which, in the valley of
the Ghandaki, the Salagrana Ammonites, so celebrated among the Brahmins
as symbols of one of the incarnations of Vishnu, are collected)
therefore still shews a difference between the culminating points of
the Old and the New Continents of more than 6200 Parisian, or 6608
English feet.

The question has been raised, whether there may not exist behind the
southernmost more or less perfectly measured chain, other still greater
elevations. Colonel George Lloyd, who in 1840 edited the important
observations of Captain Alexander Gerard and his brother, entertains
an opinion that in the part of the Himalaya which he calls somewhat
vaguely “the Tartaric chain,” (meaning therefore in north Thibet
towards the Kuen-lün, and perhaps in Kailasa of the sacred lakes, or
beyond Leh) there are summits of from 29000 to 30000 English feet,--one
or two thousand feet higher therefore than the Dhawalagiri. (Lloyd
and Gerard, Tour in the Himalaya, 1840, vol. i. p. 143 and 312; Asie
Centrale, T. iii. p. 324.) So long as actual measurements are wanting,
one cannot decide respecting such possibilities; as the indication,
from which the natives of Quito, long before the arrival of Bouguer
and La Condamine, recognised the superior altitude of the Chimborazo
(namely, from the portion of its height above the region of perpetual
snow being greater than in any of the other mountains), might prove
very deceptive in the temperate zone of Thibet, where radiation is
so active in the table-land, and where the lower limit of perpetual
snow does not form a regular line at an equal elevation, as it does in
the tropics. The greatest elevation above the level of the sea ever
attained by human beings on the declivity of the Himalaya, is 3035
toises, or 18210 Parisian, or 19409 English feet, reached by Captain
Gerard, with seven barometers, on the mountain of Tarhigang, a little
to the north-west of Schipke. (Colebrooke, in the Transactions of the
Geological Society, vol. vi. p. 411.) This happens to be exactly the
same height as that reached by myself on the 23rd of June, 1802, and
thirty years later by my friend Boussingault, on the 16th of December,
1831, on the declivity of the Chimborazo. The unattained summit of the
Tarhigang is, however, 197 toises, or 1260 English feet, higher than
that of the Chimborazo.

The passes across the Himalaya, leading from Hindostan into Chinese
Tartary, or rather into Western Thibet, more particularly between
the rivers of Buspa and Schipke or Langzing Khampa, are from 2400
to 2900 toises, or 15346 to 18544 English feet. In the chain of the
Andes I found the pass of Assuay, between Quito and Cuenca on the
Ladera de Cadlud, having a similar elevation, being 2428 toises, or
15526 English feet, high. A great part of the mountain plains of the
interior of Asia would be buried throughout the year in perpetual
snow and ice, if it were not, that by the great radiation of heat
from the Thibetian plateau, by the constant serenity of the sky, by
the rarity of the formation of snow in the dry atmosphere, and by the
powerful solar heat peculiar to the eastern continental climate, the
limit of perpetual snow is wonderfully raised on the northern slope
of the Himalaya,--perhaps to 2600 toises, or 16625 English feet above
the level of the sea. Fields of barley (Hordeum hexastichon) are seen
in Kunawur up to 2300 toises, or 14707 English feet; and another
variety of barley called Ooa, and allied to Hordeum cœleste, even much
higher. Wheat succeeds extremely well in the Thibetian highlands up
to 1880 toises, or 12022 English feet. On the northern declivity of
the Himalaya, Captain Gerard found the upper limit of the higher birch
woods ascend to 2200 toises, 14068 English feet; and small bushes which
serve the inhabitants for fuel to warm their huts, attain, in the
latitude of 30-3/4° and 31° of north latitude, a height of 2650 toises
(16945 English feet), or almost 200 toises (1279 English feet) higher
than the limit of perpetual snow under the equator. From the data
hitherto collected it would follow, that we may take the lower limit of
perpetual snow on the northern side of the Himalaya, on the average,
and in round numbers, at 2600 toises, or about 16600 English feet;
whilst on the southern declivity of the Himalaya the snow-line sinks to
2030 toises, or about 13000 English feet.

But for this remarkable distribution of temperature in the upper strata
of the atmosphere, the mountain plain of Western Thibet would be
uninhabitable to the millions who dwell there. (Compare my Examination
of the Limit of Perpetual Snow on the two declivities of the Himalaya,
in the Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 435-437; T. iii. p. 281-326, and in
Kosmos, Engl. ed. vol. i. note 403; S. 483 of the original.)

A letter which I have just received from India from Dr. Joseph Hooker,
who is engaged in meteorological and geological researches, as well as
those connected with the geography of plants, says: “Mr. Hodgson, who
we regard here as the geographer best acquainted with the hypsometric
relations of the snow ranges, completely recognises the correctness of
your statement in the third part of the Asie Centrale, respecting the
reason of the inequality in the height of the limit of perpetual snow
on the northern and southern declivities of the Himalaya. In the ‘trans
Sutlej region’ in 36° lat. we often saw the snow limit only commence
at an altitude of 20000 English feet, while in the passes south of the
Brahmaputra, between Assam and Burman, in 27° lat., where the most
southern Asiatic snowy mountains are situated, the limit of perpetual
snow sinks to 15000 English feet.” I believe we ought to distinguish
between the extreme and the mean heights, but in both we see manifested
in the clearest manner the formerly contested differences between the
Thibetian and the Indian declivities.

  My statements respecting the mean   |   Extremes according to Dr.
  height of the Snow-line             |   Joseph Hooker’s letter.
  in the Himalaya.                    |
  (Asie Centrale, tom. iii. p. 326.)  |
                      Paris   Eng.    |                    Paris    Eng.
                      feet.   feet.   |                    feet.   feet.
  Northern declivity  15600   16626   |Northern declivity  18764   20000
  Southern     „      12180   12981   |Southern     „      14073   15000
                      -----   -----   |                    -----   -----
      Difference       3420    3645   |    Difference       4691    5000

The local differences vary still more, as may be seen from the list of
extremes given in my Asie Centrale, T. iii. p. 295. Alexander Gerard
saw the snow limit ascend, on the Thibetian declivity of the Himalaya,
to 19200 Parisian feet (20465 English); and on the southern Indian
declivity, Jacquemont once saw it, north of Cursali on the Jumnotri,
even as low as 10800 Parisian (11,510 English) feet.

[11] p. 6.--“_A brown Pastoral Race, the Hiongnu._”

The Hiongnu (Hiong-nou), who Deguignes, and with him many historians,
long considered to be the Huns, inhabited that vast region of Tartary
which is bounded on the east by Uo-leang-ho (the present Mantschu
dominion), on the south by the Chinese wall, on the west by the U-siün
territory, and on the north by the country of the Eleuthes. But the
Hiongnu belong to the Turkish, and the Huns to the Finnish or Uralian
race. The _northern_ Huns, a rude pastoral people, unacquainted
with agriculture, were dark brown (sunburnt); the southern Huns or
Haja-telah, (called by the Byzantines Euthalites or Nepthalites,
and dwelling along the eastern shore of the Caspian), had a fairer
complexion. The latter cultivated the ground, and possessed towns.
They are often called the white, or fair Huns, and d’Herbelot even
declares them to be Indo-Scythians. On Punu, the Leader or Tanju of
the Huns, and on the great drought and famine which, about 46 A.D.,
caused a part of the nation to migrate northwards, (see Deguignes,
Histoire gén. des Huns, des Turcs, &c., 1756, T. i. pt. i. p. 217; pt.
ii. p. 111, 125, 223, 447.) All the accounts of the Huns taken from
the above-mentioned celebrated work have been subjected to a learned
and strict examination by Klaproth. According to the result of this
research the Hiongnu belong to the widely diffused Turkish races of the
Altai and Tangnu Mountains. The name Hiongnu, even in the third century
before the Christian era, was a general name for the Ti, Thu-kiu or
Turks, in the north and north-west of China. The southern Hiongnu
overcame the Chinese, and in conjunction with them destroyed the empire
of the northern Hiongnu. These latter fled to the west, and this flight
seems to have given the first impulse to the migration of nations in
Middle Asia. The Huns, who were long confounded with the Hiongnu, (as
the Uigures with the Ugures and the Hungarians), belonged, according
to Klaproth, to the Finnish race of the Ural mountains between Europe
and Asia, a race which was variously mingled with Germans, Turks,
and Samoieds. (Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, p. 183 and 211; Tableaux
Historiques de l’Asie, p. 102 and 109.) The Huns (Οὖννοι) are first
named by Dionysius Perigetes, a writer who was able to obtain more
accurate information respecting the interior of Asia, because, as a
learned man born at Charax on the Arabian Gulf, Augustus had sent him
back to the East to accompany thither his adopted son Caius Agrippa.
Ptolemy, a century later, writes the word (Χοῦνοι) with a strong
aspiration, which, as St. Martin observes, is found again in the
geographical name of Chunigard.

[12] p. 7.--“_No carved Stone._”

On the banks of the Orinoco near Caicara where the forest region joins
the plain, we have indeed found representations of the sun, and figures
of animals, cut on the rocks: but in the Llanos themselves no traces
of these rude memorials of earlier inhabitants have been discovered.
It is to be regretted that we have not received any more complete and
certain information respecting a monument which was sent to France to
Count Maurepas, and which, according to Kalm, had been found by M. de
Verandrier in the Prairies of Canada 900 miles west of Montreal, in the
course of an expedition intended to reach the Pacific. (Kalm’s Reise,
Th. iii. S. 416.) This traveller found in the middle of the plain
enormous masses of stone, placed in an upright position by the hand of
man, and on one of them was something which was taken to be a Tartar
inscription. (Archæologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts, published by the
Society of Antiquaries of London, vol. viii., 1787, p. 304.) How is it
that so important a monument has remained unexamined? Can it really
have contained alphabetical writing? or is it not far more probably a
pictorial history, like the supposed Phœnician inscription on the bank
of the Taunton River? I consider it, however, very probable that these
plains were once traversed by civilised nations: pyramidal sepulchral
mounds, and entrenchments of extraordinary length, found in various
places between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, and on which
Squier and Davis (in the “Ancient Monuments of the Mississipi Valley”)
are now throwing a new light, appear to confirm this supposition.
(Relation Hist., T. iii. p. 155.) Verandrier had been sent on his
expedition by the Chevalier de Beauharnois, the French Governor-general
of Canada, in 1746. Several Jesuits in the city of Quebec assured
Kalm that they had themselves had the supposed inscription in their
hands: it was engraved upon a small tablet which had been let into
a pillar of cut stone, in which position it was found. I have asked
several of my friends in France to search out this monument, in case it
should really be in existence in the collection of Count Maurepas, but
without success. I find older, but equally doubtful, statements as to
the existence of alphabetical inscriptions belonging to the primitive
nations of America, in Pedro de Cieça de Leon, Chronica del Peru, P.
i. cap. 87 (losa con letras en los edificios de Vinaque); in Garcia,
Origen de los Indios, 1607, lib. iii. cap. 5, p. 258; and in Columbus’s
Journal of his first voyage, in Navarrete, Viages de los Espanoles,
T. i. p. 67. M. de Verandrier moreover affirmed, (and earlier
travellers had also thought they had observed the same thing), that
in the prairies of Western Canada, throughout entire days’ journeys,
traces of the ploughshare were discoverable; but the total ignorance
of the primitive nations of America with regard to this agricultural
implement, the want of draft cattle, and the great extent of ground
over which the supposed furrows are found,--all lead me to conjecture
that this singular appearance of a ploughed field has been produced by
some effect of water on the surface of the earth.

[13] p. 7.--“_Like an arm of the Sea._”

The great Steppe, which extends from east to west from the mouth of
the Orinoco to the snowy mountains of Merida, turns to the south in
the 8th degree of latitude, filling the space between the eastern
declivity of the high mountains of New Granada, and the Orinoco, the
course of which is, in this part, from south to north. This latter
portion of the Llanos, which is watered by the Meta, the Vichada, the
Zama, and the Guaviare, connects the valley of the Amazons with the
valley of the Lower Orinoco. The word Paramo, which I often employ in
these pages, signifies in Spanish America all those mountainous regions
which are elevated from 1800 to 2200 toises above the level of the
sea (11500 to 14000 English feet in round numbers), and in which an
ungenial, rough, and misty climate prevails. Hail and snow fall daily
for several hours in the upper Paramos, and furnish a beneficial supply
of moisture to the alpine plants; a supply not arising from a large
absolute quantity of aqueous vapour in these high regions, but from the
frequency of showers, (hail and snow being so termed as well as rain),
produced by the rapidly changing currents of air, and the variations of
the electric tension. The arborescent vegetation of these regions is
low and spreading, consisting chiefly of large flowering laurels and
myrtle-leaved alpine shrubs, whose knotty branches are adorned with
fresh and evergreen foliage. Escallonia tubar, Escallonia myrtilloides,
Chuquiragua insignis, Aralias, Weinmannias, Frezieras, Gualtherias,
and Andromeda reticulata, may be regarded as representatives of the
physiognomy of this vegetation. To the south of the town of Santa Fé
de Bogota is the Paramo de la Suma Paz; a lonely mountain group, in
which, according to Indian tradition, vast treasures are buried. The
torrent which flows under the remarkable natural bridge of the rocky
ravine of Icononzo rises in this Paramo. In my Latin memoir entitled
“De distributione geographica Plantarum secundem cœli temperiem et
altitudinem montium, 1817,” I have sought to characterise those
mountain regions: “Altitudine 1700-1900 hexapod. Asperrimæ solitudines,
quæ a colonis hispanis uno nomine Paramos appellantur, tempestatum
vicissitudinibus mire obnoxiæ, ad quas solutæ et emollitæ defluunt
nives; ventorum flatibus ac nimborum grandinisque jactu tumultuosa
regio, quæ æque per diem et per noctes riget, solis nubila et tristi
luce fere nunquam calefacta. Habitantur in hac ipsa altitudine sat
magnæ civitates, ut Micuipampa Peruvianorum, ubi thermometrum centes.
meridie inter 5° et 8°, noctu--0°.4 consistere vidi; Huancavelica,
propter cinnabaris venas celebrata, ubi altitudine 1835 hexap. fere
totum per annum temperies mensis Martii Parisiis.” (Humboldt de
distrib. geogr. Plant, p. 104.)

[14] p. 8.--“_The Andes and the eastern mountains send forth detached
spurs which advance towards each other._”

The vast region situated between the eastern coast of South America and
the eastern declivity of the Andes is narrowed by two mountain masses,
which partially divide from each other the three valleys or plains of
the Lower Orinoco, of the Amazons, and of the River Plate. The most
northern mountains, called the group of the Parime, are opposite to
the Andes of Cundinamarca which project far to the east, and assume
in the 66th and 68th degrees of longitude the form of high mountains,
connected by the narrow ridge of Pacaraima with the granite hills of
French Guiana. On the map of Columbia constructed by me from my own
astronomical observations, this connection is clearly marked. The
Caribs, who penetrated from the missions of the Caroni to the plains of
the Rio Branco, and as far as the Brazilian boundary, crossed in the
journey the ridges of Pacaraima and Quimiropaca. The second mountain
mass, which divides the valley of the Amazons from the River Plate,
is the Brazilian group. In the province of Chiquitos (west of the
Parecis range of hills), it approaches the promontory of Santa Cruz de
la Sierra. As neither the group of the Parime which causes the great
cataracts of the Orinoco, nor the Brazilian group of mountains, are
absolutely connected with the Andes, the plains of Venezuela have a
direct connection with those of Patagonia. (See my geognostical view of
South America, in Relat. Hist. T. iii. p. 188-244.)

[15] p. 8.--“_Troops of dogs._”

European dogs have become wild in the grassy plains or Pampas of
Buenos Ayres. They live in society, and in hollows in which they hide
their young. If the society becomes too numerous, some families detach
themselves and form new colonies. The European dog, which has become
wild, barks as loud as the original American hairy race. Garcilaso
relates, that before the arrival of the Spaniards the Peruvians had
dogs, “perros gozques.” He calls the native dog, Allco: it is called
at present in the Quichua language, to distinguish him from the
European dog, “Runa-allco,” “Indian dog” (dog of the inhabitants of
the country). The hairy Runa-allco seems to be a mere variety of the
shepherd’s dog. He is small, with long hair, (usually of an ochry
yellow, with white and brown spots,) and with upright sharp-pointed
ears. He barks a great deal, but seldom bites the natives, however
disposed to be mischievous to the whites. When the Inca Pachacutec, in
his religious wars with the Indians of Xauxa and Huanca (the present
valley of Huancaya and Jauja), conquered them, and converted them
forcibly to the worship of the sun, he found them paying divine honours
to dogs. Priests blew on the skulls of dogs, and the worshippers ate
their flesh. (Garcilaso de la Vega, Commentarios Reales, P. i. p.
184.) This veneration of dogs in the valley of Huancaya is probably
the reason why skulls and even entire mummies of dogs have been found
in the Huacas, or Peruvian graves belonging to the earliest epoch. Von
Tschudi, the author of an excellent Fauna Peruviana, has examined these
skulls, and believes them to belong to a peculiar species of dog which
he calls Canis ingæ, and which is different from the European dog.
The Huancas are still called derisively by the inhabitants of other
provinces, “dog-eaters.” Among the natives of the Rocky Mountains,
cooked dog’s flesh is set before strangers as a feast of honour. Near
Fort Laramie, (one of the stations of the Hudson’s Bay Company for the
fur trade with the Sioux Indians), Captain Frémont attended a feast of
this description. (Frémont’s Exploring Expedition, 1845, p. 42.)

The Peruvian dogs had a singular part to play in eclipses of the moon:
they were beaten until the eclipse was over. The Mexican Techichi, a
variety of the common dog, which latter was called in Anahuac Chichi,
was completely dumb. Techichi signifies literally stone-dog, from the
Aztec, Tetl, a stone. The Techichi was eaten according to the old
Chinese fashion. The Spaniards found this food, before the introduction
of European cattle, so indispensable, that almost the whole race
was gradually extirpated. (Clavigero, Storia antica del Messico,
1780, T. i. p. 73.) Buffon confounds the Techichi with the Koupara
of Guiana. (T. xv. p. 155.) The latter is identical with the Procyon
or Ursus cancrivorus, the Raton crabier, or crab-eating Aquaraguaza
of the Patagonian coast. (Azara sur les quadrupèdes du Paraguay, T.
i. p. 315.) Linnæus, on the other hand, confounds the dumb variety
of dogs with the Mexican Itzcuintepotzotli, a kind of dog still only
imperfectly described, said to be distinguished by a short tail, a
very small head, and a large hump on the back. The name signifies
humped-dog, and is formed from the Aztec, itzcuintli (another word for
dog), and tepotzotli, humped, a humpback. I was particularly struck in
America, and especially in Quito and generally in Peru, with the great
number of black dogs without hair, called by Buffon “chiens turcs”
(Canis ægyptius, Linn.) Even among the Indians this variety is common,
but it is generally despised and ill-treated. All European breeds of
dogs perpetuate themselves very well in South America, and if the dogs
there are not so handsome as those in Europe, the reason is partly
want of care, and partly that the handsomest varieties (such as fine
greyhounds and the Danish spotted breed) have never been introduced
there.

Herr von Tschudi makes the singular remark, that in the Cordilleras,
at elevations of 13000 feet, tender races of dogs and the European
domestic cat are exposed to a particular kind of mortal disease.
“Innumerable attempts have been made to keep cats as domestic animals
in the town of the Cerro de Pasco, 13228 French (or 14100 English) feet
above the level of the sea, but such attempts have failed, both cats
and dogs dying at the end of a few days in fits, in which the cats
were taken at first with convulsive movements, then tried to climb the
walls, fell back exhausted and motionless, and died. In Yauli I had
several opportunities of observing this chorea-like disease; it seems
to be a consequence of the absence of sufficient atmospheric pressure.”
In the Spanish colonies, the hairless dog was looked upon as of Chinese
origin, and called Perro Chinesco, or Chino. The race was supposed
to have come from Canton or from Manila: according to Klaproth, it
has certainly been extremely common in China since very early times.
Among the animals indigenous to Mexico there was an entirely hairless,
dog-like, but very large wolf, called Xoloitzcuintli (from the Mexican
xolo or xolotl, servant or slave). On American dogs, see Smith Barton’s
Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, P. i. p. 34.

The result of Tschudi’s researches on the American indigenous races
of dogs is the following. There are two kinds almost specifically
different: 1. The Canis caraibicus of Lesson, quite without hair,
except a small bunch of white hair on the forehead and at the point of
the tail, of a slate grey colour, and silent; it was found by Columbus
in the Antilles, by Cortes in Mexico, and by Pizarro in Peru, where
it suffers from the cold of the Cordilleras, but is still abundant in
the warmer parts of the country, under the name of perros chinos. 2.
The Canis ingæ, with pointed nose and pointed ears; this kind barks:
it is now employed in the care of cattle, and shews many varieties
of colours, from being crossed with European breeds. The Canis ingæ
follows man to the high regions of the Cordilleras. In ancient Peruvian
graves his skeleton is sometimes found resting at the feet of the human
mummy. We know how often the carvers of monuments in our own middle
ages employed the figure of a dog in this position, as an emblem of
fidelity. (J. J. v. Tschudi, Untersuchungen über die Fauna Peruana,
S. 247-251.) At the very beginning of the Spanish conquests European
dogs became wild in the islands of San Domingo and Cuba. (Garcilaso,
P. i. 1723, p. 326.) In the prairies between the Meta, the Arauca,
and the Apure, voiceless dogs, (perros mudos,) were eaten in the 16th
century. Alonso de Herrara, who, in 1535, undertook an expedition
to the Orinoco, says the natives called them “Majos” or “Auries.” A
well-informed traveller, Giesecke, found the same non-barking variety
of dog in Greenland. The Esquimaux dogs pass their lives entirely
in the open air; at night they scrape holes for themselves in the
snow; they howl like wolves, in accompaniment with a dog that sits in
the middle of the circle and sets them off. In Mexico the dogs were
subjected to an operation to make them fatter and better eating. On
the borders of the province of Durango, and farther to the north on
the slave lake, the natives, formerly at least, conveyed their tents
of buffalo skins on the backs of large dogs when changing their place
of residence with the change of season. All these traits resemble the
customs of the inhabitants of eastern Asia. (Humboldt, Essai polit. T.
ii. p. 448; Relation hist. T. ii. p. 625.)

[16] p. 8.--“_Like the greater part of the Desert of Sahara, the Llanos
are in the torrid zone._”

Significant denominations,--particularly such as refer to the form in
relief of the earth’s surface, and which have arisen at a period when
there was only very uncertain information respecting the countries
in question and their hypsometric relations,--have led to various
and long-continued geographical errors. The ancient denomination
of the “Greater and Lesser Atlas” (Ptol. Geogr. lib. iii. cap. 1)
has exercised the prejudicial influence here alluded to. No doubt
the snow-covered western summits of the Atlas in the territory of
Morocco may be regarded as the Great Atlas of Ptolemy; but where is
the limit of the Little Atlas? Is the division into two Atlas chains,
which the conservative tendencies of geographers have preserved for
1700 years, to be still maintained in the territory of Algiers, and
even between Tunis and Tlemse? Are we to seek between the coast and
the interior for parallel chains constituting a greater and a lesser
Atlas? All travellers familiar with geognostical views, who have
visited Algeria since it has been taken possession of by the French,
contest the meaning conveyed by the generally received nomenclature.
Among the parallel chains, that of Jurjura is generally supposed to be
the highest of those which have been measured; but the well-informed
Fournel, (long Ingenieur en chef des Mines de l’Algérie), affirms
that the mountains of Aurès, near Batnah, which were still found
covered with snow at the end of March, are higher. Fournel denies the
existence of a Little and a Great Atlas, as I do that of a Little and
a Great Altai (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 247-252). There is only one
Atlas, formerly called Dyris by the Mauritanians, and this name is to
be applied to the “foldings,” (“rides”) or succession of crests which
form the division between the waters flowing to the Mediterranean, and
those which flow towards the Sahara lowland. The strike or direction
of the Eastern Mauritanian portion of the Atlas is from east to west;
that of the elevated Atlas of Morocco from north-east to south-west.
The latter rises into summits which, according to Renou, (Exploration
Scientifique de l’Algérie de 1840 à 1842, publiée par ordre du
Gouvernement, Sciences Hist. et Geogr. T. viii. 1846, p. 364 and
373), attain an elevation of 10,700 Fr. (11400 Eng.) feet; exceeding,
therefore, the height of Etna. A singularly formed highland of an
almost square shape, (Sahab el Marga), bounded on the south by higher
elevations, is situated in 33° lat. From thence towards the sea to the
west, about a degree south of Mogador, the Atlas declines in height:
this south-westernmost part bears the name of Idrar-N-Deren.

The northern Mauritanian boundaries of the widely extended low region
of the Sahara, as well as its southern limits towards the fertile
Soudan, are still but little known. If we take on a mean estimation the
parallels of 16-1/2° and 32-1/2° as the outside limits, we obtain for
the Desert, including its Oases, an area of more than 118500 square
German geographical miles; or between nine and ten times the area of
Germany, and almost three times that of the Mediterranean exclusive of
the Black Sea. From the best and most recent intelligence, for which
we are indebted to the French Colonel Daumas and MM. Fournel, Renou,
and Carette, we learn that the desert of Sahara is composed of several
detached basins, and that the number and the population of the fertile
Oases is very much greater than had been imagined from the awfully
desert character of the route between Insalah and Timbuctoo, and that
from Mourzouk in Fezzan, to Bilma, Tirtuma, and Lake Tschad. It is now
generally affirmed that the sand covers only the smaller portion of the
great lowland. A similar opinion had been previously propounded by the
acutely observant Ehrenberg, my Siberian travelling companion, from
what he had himself seen (Exploration Scientifique de l’Algérie, Hist.
et Geogr. T. ii. p. 332). Of larger wild animals, only gazelles, wild
asses, and ostriches are to be met with. “Le lion du désert,” says M.
Carette, (Explor. de l’Alg. T. ii. p. 126-129; T. vii. p. 94 and 97),
“est un mythe popularisé par les artistes et les poètes. Il n’existe
que dans leur imagination. Cet animal ne sort pas de sa montagne où il
trouve de quoi se loger, s’abreuver et se nourrir. Quand on parle aux
habitans du désert de ces bêtes féroces que les Européens leur donnent
pour compagnons, ils repondent avec un imperturbable sang froid, il
y a donc chez vous des lions qui boivent de l’air et broutent des
feuilles? Chez nous il faut aux lions de l’eau courante et de la chair
vive. Aussi des lions ne paraissent dans le Zahara que là où il y a des
collines boisées et de l’eau. Nous ne craignons que la vipère (lefa) et
d’innombrables essaims de moustiques, ces derniers là où il y a quelque
humidité.”

Whereas Dr. Oudney, in the course of the long journey from Tripoli to
Lake Tschad, estimated the elevation of the southern Sahara at 1637
English feet, to which German geographers have even ventured to add
an additional thousand feet, the Ingenieur Fournel has, by careful
barometric measurements based on corresponding observations, made
it tolerably probable that a part of the northern desert is below
the level of the sea. That portion of the desert which is now called
“le Zahara d’Algérie” advances to the chains of hills of Metlili and
el-Gaous, where the northernmost of all the Oases,--that of el-Kantara,
fruitful in dates,--is situated. This low basin, which touches the
parallel of 34° lat., receives the radiant heat of a stratum of chalk,
(full of the shells of Inoceramus), inclined at an angle of 65° towards
the south (Fournel sur les Gisemens de Muriate de Soude en Algérie, p.
6 in the Annales des Mines, 4me Série, T. ix., 1846, p. 546). “Arrivés
a Biscara,” (Biskra), says Fournel, “un horizon indéfini comme celui
de la mer se déroulait devant nous.” Between Biscara and Sidi Ocba
the ground is only 228 (243 Eng.) feet above the level of the sea.
The inclination increases considerably towards the south. In another
work, (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 320), where I have brought together
everything relating to the depression of some portions of continents
below the level of the sea, I have already noticed that according to
Le Père the “bitter lakes” on the isthmus of Suez, when they have a
little water,--and, according to General Andréossy, the Natron lakes of
Fayoum,--are also lower than the level of the Mediterranean.

Among other manuscript notices of M. Fournel, I possess a vertical
geological profile, which gives all the inflexions and inclinations
of the strata, representing a section of the surface the whole way
from Philippeville on the coast to the Desert of Sahara, at a spot
not far from the Oasis of Biscara. The direction of the line on which
the barometric measurements were taken is south 20° west; but the
elevations determined are projected, as in my Mexican profiles, on a
different plane,--a north-south one. Ascending uninterruptedly from
Constantine, at an elevation of 332 toises (2122 Eng. feet), the
culminating point is found between Batnah and Tizur, at an elevation of
only 560 toises (3580 Eng. feet). In the part of the desert situated
between Biscara and Tuggurt, Fournel has had a series of Artesian
wells dug with success (Comptes Rendus de l’Acad. des Sciences, t. xx.
1845, p. 170, 882, and 1305). We learn from the old accounts of Shaw,
that the inhabitants of the country knew of a subterranean supply
of water, and relate fabulous tales of a “sea under the earth (bahr
tôht el-erd).” Fresh waters flowing between clay and marl strata of
the old cretaceous and other sedimentary deposits, under the action
of hydrostatic pressure form gushing fountains when the strata are
pierced (Shaw, Voyages dans plusieurs parties de la Berbérie, t. i. p.
169; Rennell, Africa, Append. p. lxxxv). That fresh water in this part
of the world should often be found near beds of rock salt, need not
surprise geologists acquainted with mines, since Europe offers many
analogous phenomena.

The riches of the desert in rock-salt, and the fact of rock-salt having
been used in building, have been known since the time of Herodotus. The
salt zone of the Sahara (zone salifère du désert), is the southernmost
of three zones, stretching across Northern Africa from south-west to
north-east, and believed to be connected with the beds or deposits
of rock-salt of Sicily and Palestine, described by Friedrich Hoffman
and by Robinson. (Fournel, sur les Gisements de Muriate de Soude en
Algérie, p. 28-41; Karsten über das Vorkommen des Kochsalzes auf der
Oberfläche der Erde, 1846, S. 497, 648, and 741.) The trade in salt
with Soudan, and the possibility of cultivating dates in the Oases,
formed by depressions caused probably by falls or subsidences of
the earth in the gypsum beds of the tertiary cretaceous or keuper
promotions, have alike contributed to enliven the Desert, at least to
some extent, by human intercourse. The high temperature of the air,
which makes the day’s march so oppressive, renders the coldness of the
nights, (of which Denham complained so often in the African Desert,
and Sir Alexander Burnes in the Asiatic), so much the more striking.
Melloni, (Memoria sull’ abassamento di temperatura durante le notti
placide e serene, 1847, p. 55), ascribes this cold, produced doubtless
by the radiation from the ground, less to the great purity and serenity
of the sky, (irrigiamento calorifico per la grande serenità di cielo
nell’ immensa e deserta pianura dell’ Africa centrale), than to the
profound calm, the nightly absence of all movement in the atmosphere.
(Consult also, respecting African meteorology, Aimé in the Exploration
de l’Algérie, Physique génerale, T. ii., 1846, p. 147.)

The southern declivity of the Atlas of Morocco sends to the Sahara, in
lat. 32°, a river, the Quad-Dra (Wady-Dra), which for the greater part
of the year is nearly dry, and which Renou (Explor. de l’Alg. Hist.
et Geogr., T. viii. p. 65-78) considers to be a sixth longer than the
Rhine. It flows at first from north to south, until, in lat. 29° N. and
long. 5° W., it turns almost at right angles to its former course, runs
to the west, and, after passing through the great fresh water Lake of
Debaid, enters the sea at Cape Nun, in lat. 28° 46′ N. and long. 11°
08′ W. This region, which was so celebrated formerly in the history
of the Portuguese discoveries of the 15th century, and was afterwards
wrapped in profound geographical obscurity, is now called on the coast
“the country of the Sheikh Beirouk,” (a chief independent of the
Emperor of Morocco.) It was explored in the months of July and August
1840, by Captain Count Bouet-Villaumez of the French Navy, by order of
his government. From the official Reports and Surveys which have been
communicated to me in manuscript, it appears evident that the mouth
of the Quad-Dra is at present very much stopped up with sand, having
an open channel of only about 190 English feet wide. A somewhat more
easterly channel in the same mouth is that of the still very little
known Saguiel el-Hamra, which comes from the south, and is supposed to
have a course of at least 600 geographical miles. One is astonished at
the length of these deep, but commonly dry river beds. They are ancient
furrows, such as I have seen in the Peruvian desert at the foot of the
Cordilleras, between those mountains and the coast of the Pacific.
In Bouet’s manuscript “Relation de l’Expédition de la Malouine,” the
mountains which rise to the north of Cape Nun are estimated at the
great elevation of 2800 metres (9185 English feet).

Cape Nun is usually supposed to have been discovered in 1433, by the
Knight Gilianez, acting under the command of the celebrated Infante
Henry Duke of Viseo, and founder of the Academy of Sagres, which was
presided over by the pilot and cosmographer Mestre Jacomè of Majorca;
but the Portulano Mediceo, the work of a Genoese Navigator in 1351,
already contains the name of Cavo di Non. The passage round this Cape
was then as much dreaded as that of Cape Horn has since been, although
it is 23′ north of the parallel of Teneriffe, and could be reached in
a few days’ voyage from Cadiz. The Portuguese proverb, “quem passa o
Cabo di Num, ou tornarà ou não,” could not deter the Infante, whose
heraldic French motto, “talent de bien faire,” expressed his noble,
enterprising, and vigorous character. The name of the Cape, in which
a play of words on the negative particle has long been supposed, does
not appear to me to have had a Portuguese origin. Ptolemy placed on the
north-west coast of Africa a river Nuius, in the Latin version Nunii
Ostia. Edrisi speaks of a town, Nul, or Wadi Nun, somewhat more to the
south, and three days’ journey in the interior: Leo Africanus calls it
Belad de Non. Long before the Portuguese squadron of Gilianez, other
European navigators had advanced much beyond, or to the southward of,
this Cape. The Catalan, Don Jayme Ferrer, in 1346, as we learn from
the Atlas Catalan published by Buchon at Paris, had advanced as far as
the Gold River, (Rio do Ouro), in lat. 23° 56′; and Normans, at the
end of the 14th century, as far as Sierra Leone in lat. 8° 30′. The
merit of having been the first to cross the equator on the western
coast of Africa belongs, however, like that of so many other memorable
achievements, to the Portuguese.

[17] p. 8.--“_As a grassy plain, resembling many of the Steppes of
Central Asia._”

The Llanos of Caraccas and of the Rio Apure and the Meta, over which
roam large herds of cattle, are, in the strictest sense of the term,
“grassy plains.” Their prevalent vegetation, belonging to the two
families of Cyperaceæ and Gramineæ, consists of various species of
Paspalum, P. leptostachyum and P. lenticulare; of Kyllingia, K.
monocephala (Rottb.), K. odorata; of Panicum, P. granuliferum, P.
micranthum; of Antephora; Aristida; Vilfa; and Anthistiria, A. reflexa,
and A. foliosa. Only here and there are found, interspersed among
the Gramineæ, a few herbaceous dicotyledonous plants, consisting of
two very low-growing species of Mimosa, (Sensitive Plant), Mimosa
intermedia, and Mimosa dormiens, which are great favourites with the
wild horses and cattle. The natives give to this group of plants, which
close their delicate feathery leaves on being touched, the expressive
name of Dormideras--sleepy plants. For many square miles not a tree
is seen; but where solitary trees are found, they are, in moist
places, the Mauritia Palm; in arid districts, a Proteacea, described
by Bonpland and myself, the Rhopala complicata (Chaparro bobo), which
Wildenow regarded as an Embothrium; also the highly useful Palma de
Covija, or de Sombrero; and our Corypha inermis, an umbrella palm
allied to Chamærops, which is used to cover the roofs of huts. How far
more varied is the aspect of the Asiatic plains! Throughout a large
portion of the Kirghis and Calmuck Steppes, which I have traversed
from the Don, the Caspian, and the Orenburg Ural river the Jaik, to
the Obi and the Upper Irtysh near Lake Dsaisang, through a space of 40
degrees of longitude, I have never seen, as in the Llanos, the Pampas,
and the Prairies, an horizon like that of the ocean, where the vault
of heaven appears to rest on the unbroken plain. At the utmost this
appearance presented itself in one direction, or towards one quarter of
the heavens. The Asiatic Steppes are often crossed by ranges of hills,
or clothed with coniferous woods or forests. Even in the most fruitful
pastures the vegetation is by no means limited to grasses; there is a
great variety of herbaceous plants and shrubs. In spring-time small
snow-white and red-flowering rosaceæ and amygdaleæ (Spiræa, Cratægus,
Prunus spinosa, and Amygdalus nana) present a smiling aspect. I have
already mentioned the tall and luxuriant Synantheræ (Saussurea amara,
S. salsa, Artemisias, and Centaureas), and of leguminous plants,
species of Astragalus, Cytisus, and Caragana. Crown Imperials,
(Fritillaria ruthenica, and F. meleagroides), Cypripedias, and tulips,
rejoice the eye by the bright variety of their colours.

A contrast to the pleasing vegetation of these Asiatic plains is
presented by the desolate salt Steppes, particularly by the part of the
Barabinski Steppe which is at the foot of the Altai mountains, and by
the Steppes between Barnaul and the Serpent Mountain and the country
on the east of the Caspian. Here Chenopodias, some species of Salsola
and Atriplex, Salicornias and Halimocnemis crassifolia, (each species
growing “socially”), form patches of vegetation on the muddy ground.
See Göbel’s Journey in the Steppes of the South of Russia (Reise in
die Steppe des südlichen Russlands, 1838, Th. ii. S. 244 and 301). Of
the 500 phanerogamous species which Claus and Göbel collected in the
Steppes, the Syrantheræ, the Chenopodeæ, and the Cruciferæ, were more
numerous than the grasses; the latter being only 1/11 of the whole, and
the former 1/7th and 1/9th. In Germany, from the mixture of hill and
plain districts, the Glumaceæ (_i. e._ the Gramineæ, Cyperaceæ, and
Juncaceæ collectively), form 1/7th; the Synantheræ or Compositæ 1/8th;
and the Cruciferæ 1/18th of all our German phanerogamia. In the most
northern parts of the flat Siberian lowlands, the fine map of Admiral
Wrangell shews that the extreme northern limit of tree and shrub
vegetation (Coniferæ and Amentaceæ) is, in the portion towards the
Behring’s Straits side, in 67-1/4° lat.; and more to the west, towards
the banks of the Lena, in 71°, which is the parallel of the north cape
of Lapland. The plains which border the Icy Sea are the domain of
cryptogamous plants. They are called Tundras (Tuntur in Finnish): they
are swampy districts extending farther than the eye can reach, partly
covered with a thick carpet of Sphagnum palustre and other mosses,
and partly with a dry snow-white covering of Cenomyce rangiferina
(Rein-deer moss), Stereocaulon paschale, and other lichens. Admiral
Wrangell, in describing his perilous expedition to the new Siberian
islands so rich in fossil wood, says: “These Tundras accompanied me to
the extreme arctic coast. Their soil has been frozen for thousands of
years. In the dreary uniformity of landscape, the eye of the traveller,
surrounded by rein-deer moss, dwells with pleasure on the smallest
patch of green turf showing itself now and then on a moist spot.”

[18] p. 8.--“_The causes which lessen both heat and dryness in the New
World._”

I have tried to bring together in a brief and compendious manner the
various causes which produce greater moisture and a less degree of
heat in America; it will of course be understood that the question
respects the _general_ hygrometric state of the atmosphere, and the
temperature of the New Continent as a _whole_. Single districts, such
as the island of Margarita, the Coasts of Cumana and Coro, are as hot
and as dry as any part of Africa. It must also be remarked that the
maximum of heat at certain hours of a summer’s day has been found,
on a series of years, to be almost equal at very different parts of
the earth’s surface, on the Neva, the Senegal, the Ganges, and the
Orinoco; being approximately between 27° and 32° Reaumur (93° and 104°
Fahrenheit), and generally not higher,--providing the observation
be made in the shade, at a distance from all solid bodies which
could radiate heat to the thermometer, not in an air filled with hot
particles of dust or sand, and not with spirit thermometers, which
absorb the light. It is probably to fine grains of sand floating in
the air, and forming centres of radiant heat, that we must ascribe
the dreadful temperature of 40° to 44°.8 Reaumur (122° to 133° Fah.)
in the shade, to which my unhappy friend Ritchie, who perished there,
and Captain Lyon, were exposed for weeks in the Oasis of Mourzouk. The
most remarkable instance of very high temperature, in an air probably
free from dust, has been recorded by an observer who knew well how to
place and to correct all his instruments with the greatest degree of
accuracy. Rüppell found 37°.6 Reaumur, (110°.6 Fahrenheit,) at Ambukol
in Abyssinia, with a clouded sky, strong south-west wind, and an
approaching thunderstorm. The _mean_ annual temperature of the tropics,
or of the proper climate of palms, is, on land, between 20°.5 and
23°.8 Reaumur (or 78°.2 and 85°.5 Fahrenheit) without any considerable
difference between the observations collected in Senegal, Pondichery,
and Surinam. (Humboldt, Mémoire sur les lignes isothermes, 1817, p. 54.
Asie Centrale, T. iii. Mahlmann, Table iv.)

The great coolness, I might almost say cold, which prevails for a
considerable part of the year within the tropics on the coast of Peru,
causing the thermometer to sink to 12° Reaumur (59° Fahrenheit), is, as
I have noticed elsewhere, by no means to be ascribed to the vicinity
of the snow-covered Andes, but rather to the fogs (garua) which veil
the solar disk, and to a _cold sea current_ which, commencing in the
antarctic regions and coming from the south-west, strikes the coast of
Chili near Valdivia and Conçeption, and thence streams rapidly along
the coast to the northward, as far as Cape Pariña. On the coast, near
Lima, the temperature of the Pacific is 12°.5 Reaumur (60°.2 Fahr.),
whilst in the same latitude out of the current it is 21° R. (79°.2
Fahr.) It is singular that so striking a fact should have remained
unnoticed until my visit to the shores of the Pacific, in October 1802.

The variations of temperature of different regions depend in a great
degree on the character of the bottom of the “aerial ocean,” or on
the nature of the floor or base, whether land or sea, continental
or oceanic, on which the atmosphere rests. Seas, often traversed by
currents of warmer or colder water, (oceanic rivers), have an effect
very different from that of continental masses, whether unbroken or
articulated, or of islands, which latter may be regarded as shallows in
the aerial ocean, and which, notwithstanding their small dimensions,
exert, often to a great distance, a notable influence on the climate
of the sea. In continental masses we must distinguish between sandy
deserts devoid of vegetation, savannahs or grassy plains, and
forest-covered districts. In Upper Egypt and in South America, Nouet
in the former, and myself in the latter, found respectively at noon
the temperature of the ground composed of granitic sand 54°.2 and
48°.4 Reaumur (154° and 141° Fahr.) Many careful observations in Paris
have given, according to Arago, 40° and 42° Reaumur, 122° and 126°.5
Fahrenheit. (Asie Centrale, T. iii. p. 176.) The Savannahs, which
between the Missouri and the Mississipi are called Prairies, and which
appear in South America as the Llanos of Venezuela and the Pampas of
Buenos Ayres, are covered with small monocotyledonous plants of the
family of Cyperaceæ, and with grasses of which the thin pointed stalks
or ears, and the delicate lanceolate leaves or blades, radiate towards
the unclouded sky, and possess an extraordinary power of “emission.”
Wells and Daniell (Meteor. Essays, 1827, p. 230 and 278) have even seen
in our latitude, where the atmosphere has so much less transparency,
the thermometer sink 6°.5 or 8° of Reaumur (14°.5 or 18° Fahrenheit),
on being placed on the grass. Melloni, in a memoir, “Sull abassamento
di temperatura durante le notti placide e serene,” 1847, p. 47 and 53,
has shewn how in a calm state of the atmosphere, which is a necessary
condition of strong radiation and of the formation of dew, the cooling
of the grassy surface is also promoted by the particles of air which
are already cooled sinking to the ground as being the heaviest. In the
vicinity of the equator, under the clouded sky of the Upper Orinoco,
the Rio Negro, and the Amazons River, the plains are clothed with dense
primeval forests; but to the north and south of this wooded region
there extend from the zone of palms and lofty dicotyledonous trees,
in the northern hemisphere, the Llanos of the Lower Orinoco the Meta
and the Guaviare, and in the southern hemisphere the Pampas of the Rio
de la Plata and of Patagonia. The space thus occupied by Savannahs or
grassy plains in South America is at least nine times as great as the
area of France.

The wooded region acts in a threefold manner in diminishing the
temperature by cooling shade, by evaporation, and by radiation.
Forests,--which in our temperate zone consist of trees living together
in “society,” _i. e._, many individuals of one, or of a few kinds, of
the families of Coniferæ or Amentaceæ, oaks, beeches, and birches,
but in the tropics, of an immense variety of trees living separately
or “unsocially,”--protect the ground from the direct rays of the sun,
evaporate fluids elaborated by the trees themselves, and cool the
strata of air in immediate contact with them by the radiation of heat
from their appendicular organs or leaves. The latter are far from being
all parallel with each other; they are, on the contrary, variously
inclined to the horizon, and, according to the law developed by Leslie
and Fourier, the influence of this inclination upon the quantity of
heat emitted by radiation is such, that the power of radiation (pouvoir
rayonnant) of a measured surface _a_, having a given oblique direction,
is equal to the “pouvoir rayonnant” which would belong to a surface of
the size of _a_, projected on a horizontal plane. Now in the initial
condition of radiation, of all the leaves which form the summit of a
tree and partly cover each other, those are first cooled which are
directed without any intervening screen towards the unclouded sky. The
cooling result (or the exhaustion of heat by emission) will be the
more considerable the greater the thinness of the leaves. A second
stratum of leaves has its upper surface turned to the under surface of
the first stratum, and will give out more heat by radiation towards
that stratum than it can receive by radiation from it. The result
of this unequal exchange will thus be a loss of temperature for the
second stratum of leaves also. A similar operation will continue from
stratum to stratum until all the leaves of the tree, by greater or
less radiation as modified by their diversity of position, have passed
into a state of stable equilibrium of which the law can be deduced by
mathematical analysis. In this manner, in the long and clear nights of
the equinoctial zone, the forest air contained in the intervals between
the strata of leaves becomes cooled by the process of radiation; and by
reason of the great quantity of its thin appendicular organs or leaves,
a tree, the horizontal section of whose summit would measure for
example 2000 square feet, would act in diminishing the temperature of
the air equivalently to a space of bare or turf-covered ground several
thousand times greater than 2000 square feet (Asie Centrale, T. iii.
p. 195-205). I have sought thus to develop in detail the complicated
effects which make up the total action of extensive forests upon the
atmosphere, because they have been so often touched upon in reference
to the important question concerning the climates of ancient Germany
and Gaul.

As in the old continent European civilization has had its principal
seats on a western coast, it could not but be early remarked that,
under equal degrees of latitude, the opposite eastern coast of the
United States was several degrees colder in mean annual temperature
than Europe, which is, as it were, a projecting western peninsula to
Asia, as Brittany is to the rest of France. But in this remark it was
forgotten that these differences decrease from the higher to the lower
latitudes in such manner that they almost entirely disappear from 30°
downwards. For the west coast of the new continent, exact thermometric
observations are still almost entirely wanting; but the mildness of
the winters in New California shews that the west coasts of America
and Europe, under the same parallels of latitude, probably differ
little from each other in mean annual temperature. The subjoined table
shows what are the corresponding mean annual temperatures, in the same
geographical latitudes, of the west coast of Europe and the east coast
of the New Continent.

  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  |         |            |          |         Reaumur.       |       Fahrenheit.     |
  |         |            |          +------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
  |Similar  | East Coast |West Coast|Mean        |Differences|Mean       |Differences|
  |degrees  | of         |of        |temperature |of annual  |temperature|of annual  |
  |of       | America.   |Europe.   |of the year,|temperature|of the     |temperature|
  |latitude.|            |          |of winter,  |of East    |year, of   |of East    |
  |         |            |          |and of      |coast of   |winter, and|coast of   |
  |         |            |          |summer.     |America    |of summer. |America    |
  |         |            |          |            |and West   |           |and West   |
  |         |            |          |            |coast of   |           |coast of   |
  |         |            |          |            |Europe.    |           |Europe.    |
  +---------+------------+----------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
  |         |            |          |       -14°.4 |         |        -0°.5  |       |
  |57° 10′  | Nain       |          | -2°.8  ----- |         |  25°.8  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |         6°.1 |         |         45°.8 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |  9°.2   |               | 20°.7 |
  |         |            |          |        -0°.2 |         |        -31°.5 |       |
  |57° 41′  |            |Gottenburg|  6°.4  ----- |         |  46°.4  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        13°.5 |         |         62°.4 |       |
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  |         |            |          |        -4°.0 |         |        23°.0  |       |
  |47° 34′  | St. John’s |          |  2°.7  ----- |         |  38°.0  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |         9°.8 |         |         54°.0 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |         |               |       |
  |         |            |          |        -0°.4 |         |         31°.0 |       |
  |47° 30′  |            |Ofen      |  8°.2  ----- |  5°.8   |  50°.5  ----- |13°.0  |
  |         |            |(or Buda) |        16°.8 |         |         69°.8 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |         |               |       |
  |         |            |          |         2°.6 |         |         37°.8 |       |
  |48° 50′  |            |Paris     |  8°.7  ----- |         |  51°.6  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        14°.5 |         |         64°.6 |       |
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  |         |            |          |        -3°.5 |         |         24°.2 |       |
  |44° 39′  |Halifax     |          |  5°.1  ----- |         |  43°.5  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        13°.8 |         |         63°.0 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |  6°.1   |               |  13°.7|
  |         |            |          |         4°.8 |         |         42°.8 |       |
  |44° 50′  |            |Bordeaux  | 11°.2  ----- |         |  57°.2  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        17°.4 |         |         71°.2 |       |
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  |         |            |          |         0°.1 |         |         32°.2 |       |
  |40° 43′  |New York    |          |  9°.1  ----- |         |  52°.5  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        18°.2 |         |         73°.0 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |         |               |       |
  |         |            |          |         0°.1 |         |         32°.2 |       |
  |39° 57′  |Philadelphia|          |  9°.0  ----- |         |  52°.2  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        18°.1 |         |         72°.8 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |         |               |       |
  |         |            |          |         1°.8 |         |         36°.0 |       |
  |38° 53′  |Washington  |          | 10°.2  ----- |  3°.4   |  55°.0  ----- |  8.0  |
  |         |            |          |        17°.4 |         |         71°.2 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |         |               |       |
  |         |            |          |         7°.8 |         |         49°.5 |       |
  |40° 51′  |            |Naples    | 12°.9  ----- |         |  61°.0  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        19°.1 |         |         75°.0 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |         |               |       |
  |         |            |          |         9°.0 |         |         52°.2 |       |
  |38° 52′  |            |Lisbon    | 13°.1  ----- |         |  61°.5  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        17°.4 |         |         71°.2 |       |
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+
  |         |            |          |        12°.2 |         |         59°.5 |       |
  |29° 48′  |St. Augustin|          | 17°.9  ----- |         |  72°.2  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        22°.0 |         |         81°.5 |       |
  |         |            |          |              |  0.2    |               |  0°.4 |
  |         |            |          |        11°.8 |         |         58°.5 |       |
  |30° 2′   |            |Cairo     | 17°.7  ----- |         |  71°.8  ----- |       |
  |         |            |          |        23°.4 |         |         84°.7 |       |
  +---------+------------+----------+------------------------+-----------------------+

In the column of temperatures in the preceding table the first number
represents the temperature of the year; that which stands in place
of a numerator the mean winter temperature; and that which stands in
the place of a denominator the mean summer temperature. Besides the
great difference of mean annual temperature, there is also a striking
difference between the two coasts in respect to the distribution of
that temperature into the different seasons of the year, and it is
this distribution which is most influential both on our feelings and
on the processes of vegetation. Dove remarks generally, that the
summer temperature of America is lower under equal degrees of latitude
than that of Europe: (Temperatur tafeln nebst Bemerkungen über die
Verbreitung der Wärme auf der Oberfläche der Erde, 1848, S. 95.) The
climate of St. Petersburgh, (or to speak more correctly the mean annual
temperature of that city which is in lat. 59° 56′), is found on the
east coast of America in lat. 47-1/2°, or 12-1/2° more to the south;
in like manner we find the climate of Konigsberg, (lat. 54° 43′), at
Halifax, (lat. 44° 39′). The temperature of Toulouse, (lat. 43° 36′)
corresponds to that of Washington (lat. 38° 53′).

It would be very hazardous to lay down any general statements
respecting the temperature in the territory of the United States of
America, as we must distinguish in that territory three regions:--1,
the Atlantic States east of the Alleghanies; 2, the Western States in
the wide basin between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, through
which flow the Mississipi, the Ohio, the Arkansas, and the Missouri;
3, the high plains between the Rocky Mountains, and the Maritime Alps
of New California through which the Oregon or Columbia River finds a
passage. Since the highly honourable establishment, by John Calhoun,
of uninterrupted observations of temperature, made on an uniform plan
at 35 military posts, and reduced to daily, monthly, and annual means,
we have arrived at more just climatic views than those which were so
generally received in the time of Jefferson, Barton, and Volney. These
meteorological stations or observatories extend from the point of
Florida and Thompson’s Island, (Key West), lat. 24° 33′, to the Council
Bluffs on the Missouri; and if we reckon amongst them Fort Vancouver,
lat. 45° 37′, they include differences of longitude of 40°.

It cannot be affirmed that, on the whole, the mean annual temperature
of the second or middle region is higher than that of the first or
Atlantic region. The further advance of certain plants towards the
north, on the west of the Alleghany mountains, depends partly on the
nature of those plants, and partly on the different distribution of
the same annual quantity of heat. The wide valley of the Mississipi
enjoys at its northern and southern extremities the warming influence
of the Canadian Lakes, and of the Mexican Gulf stream. The five
lakes, (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario), occupy a space
of 92,000 English square miles. The climate is much milder and more
equable in the neighbourhood of the lakes; for example, at Niagara,
(lat. 43° 15′), the mean winter temperature is only half a degree of
Reaumur (1°.2 Fahrenheit) below the freezing point, while at a distance
from the lakes, in lat. 44° 53′, at the confluence of the river St.
Peter’s with the Mississipi, the mean winter temperature of Fort
Snelling is -7°.2 Reaumur, or 15°.9 Fahrenheit (see Samuel Forry’s
excellent Memoir on “the Climate of the United States,” 1842, p. 37,
39, and 102.) At this distance from the Canadian Lakes, (whose surface
is from 500 to 600--530 to 640 English--feet above the level of the
sea, whilst the bottom of the lakes Michigan and Huron is about five
hundred feet below it), recent observations have shewn the climate
of the country to possess a proper continental character, _i. e._,
hotter summers and colder winters. “It is proved,” says Forry, “by
our thermometrical data, that the climate west of the Alleghany Chain
is more excessive than that of the Atlantic side.” At Fort Gibson, on
the Arkansas River which falls into the Mississipi in lat. 35° 47′,
with a mean annual temperature hardly equal to that of Gibraltar, the
thermometer in the shade, and without any reflected heat from the
ground, has been seen, in August 1834, to rise to 37°.7 Reaumur, or
117° Fahrenheit.

The statement so often repeated, although unsupported by any
thermometric measurements, that since the first European settlements
in New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the eradication of many
forests on both sides of the Alleghanies had rendered the climate more
equable, (_i. e._, milder in winter and cooler in summer), is now
generally doubted or disbelieved. Series of trustworthy thermometric
observations in the United States hardly extend so far back as 78
years. We see in the Philadelphia observations, that from 1771 to 1824,
the mean annual temperature has hardly increased 1°.2 Reaumur, (or 2°.8
Fahrenheit),--a difference which is attributed to the increased size of
the town, to its greater population, and to the numerous steam-engines.
The difference may possibly be merely accidental, for I find in the
same period an increase of mean winter cold, amounting to 0°.9 Reaumur,
or 2° Fahrenheit; the three other seasons had become somewhat warmer.
Three-and-thirty years’ observations at Salem in Massachusetts shew
no alteration at all: the annual means oscillate, within a degree
of Fahrenheit, about the mean of the whole number of years; and the
winters of Salem, instead of having become milder, as supposed from the
destruction of the forests in the course of the thirty-three years,
have become colder by 1°.8 Reaumur, or 4° Fahrenheit. (Forry, p. 97,
101, and 107.)

As the east coast of the United States is comparable in respect to
mean annual temperature in equal latitudes to the Siberian and Chinese
coasts of the old continent, so also the west coasts of Europe and
America have been very properly compared together. I will only take
a few examples from the western region on the shores of the Pacific,
for two of which (Sitka in Russian America, and Fort George, in the
same latitudes respectively as Gottenburg and Geneva) I am indebted
to Admiral Lütke’s voyage of circumnavigation. Iluluk and Danzig are
nearly on the same parallel, and although the mean temperature of
Iluluk, owing to its insular climate and to a cold sea-current, is
somewhat lower than that of Danzig, yet the winter temperature of the
American station is milder than that of the port on the Baltic.

  +-----------+---------+------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |           |Latitude.|  Longitude.      |  Reaumur.   |  Fahrenheit.|
  |           +---------+------------------+-------------+-------------+
  |           |         |                  |        0°.6 |        33°.4|
  |Sitka      | 57° 3′  |   135° 16′ W.    |5°.6   ----- | 44°.5  -----|
  |           |         |                  |       10°.2 |        55°.0|
  |           |         |                  |             |             |
  |           |         |                  |       -0°.2 |        31°.5|
  |Gottenburg | 57° 41′ |    11° 59′ E.    |6°.4   ----- | 46°.4  -----|
  |           |         |                  |       13°.5 |        62°.4|
  |           |         |                  |             |             |
  |           |         |                  |        2°.6 |        37°.9|
  |Fort George| 46° 18′ |   122° 58′ W.    |8°.1   ----- | 50°.3  -----|
  |           |         |                  |       12°.4 |        60°.0|
  |           |         |                  |             |             |
  |           |         |                  |        0°.7 |        33°.6|
  |Geneva     | 46° 12′ |(Alt. 1298 E. ft.)|7°.9   ----- | 49°.8  -----|
  |           |         |                  |       14°.0 |        63°.5|
  |           |         |                  |             |             |
  |           |         |                  |       -3°.1 |        25°.0|
  |Kherson    | 46° 38′ |    32° 39′ E.    |9°.4   ----- | 53°.2  -----|
  |           |         |                  |       17°.3 |        71°.0|
  +-----------+---------+------------------+-------------+-------------+

Snow is hardly ever seen on the banks of the Oregon or Columbia river,
and ice on the river lasts only a very few days. The lowest temperature
which Mr. Ball once observed there in the winter of 1833 was 6-1/2° of
Reaumur below the freezing point, or 17.4° Fahrenheit (Message from the
President of the United States to Congress, 1844, p. 160; and Forry,
Clim. of the U. States, p. 49, 67, and 73). A cursory glance at the
summer and winter temperatures above given, shews that on and near the
west coast, a true insular climate prevails. The winter cold is less
than in the western parts of the old continent, and the summers are
much cooler. The most striking contrast is presented by comparing the
mouth of the Oregon with Forts Snelling and Howard, and the Council
Bluffs, in the interior of the Mississipi and Missouri basin (Lat.
44°-46°),--where, to speak in the language of Buffon, we find an
_excessive_, or true _continental_ climate,--a winter cold, on single
days, of -28°.4 and -30°.6 Reaumur (-32° and -37° Fahr.), followed by
mean summer temperatures of 16°.8 and 17°.5 Reaumur (69° and 71°.4
Fahr.)

[19] p. 10.--“_As if America had emerged later from the chaotic watery
covering._”

An acute enquirer into nature, Benjamin Smith Barton, said long since
with great truth, (Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania,
P. i. p. 4), “I cannot but deem it a puerile supposition, unsupported
by the evidence of nature, that a great part of America has probably
later emerged from the bosom of the ocean than the other continents.”
The same subject was touched on by myself in a memoir on the primitive
nations of America (Neue Berlinische Monatschrift, Bd. xv. 1806, S.
190). “Writers generally and justly praised have repeated but too
often that America is in every sense of the word a New Continent. Her
luxuriance of vegetation, the abundant waters of her enormous rivers,
the unrepose of her powerful volcanoes, all (say they) proclaim that
the still trembling earth, from the face of which the waters have
not yet dried off, is here nearer to the chaotic primordial state
than in the Old Continent. Such ideas appeared to me, long before I
commenced my travels, alike unphilosophical and contrary to generally
acknowledged physical laws. Fantastic images of terrestrial youth,
and unrepose associated on the one hand,--and on the other, those
of increasing dryness, and inertia in maturer age,--could only have
presented themselves to minds more inclined to draw ingenious or
striking contrasts between the two hemispheres, than to strive to
comprehend, in one general view, the construction of the entire globe.
Are we to regard the south of Italy as more modern than its northern
portions, because the former is almost incessantly disquieted by
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? Besides, what small phenomena
are the volcanoes and earthquakes of the present day, in comparison
with those revolutions of nature which the geologist must suppose to
have accompanied, in the chaotic state of the earth, the elevation,
solidification, disruptions, and cleavings of the mountain masses?
Diversity of causes must produce diversity in the operations of natural
forces, in countries remote as well as near. Perhaps the volcanoes of
the new continent, (of which I still reckon above 28 in a state of
activity), have only continued to burn longer than others, because
the lofty mountain ridges, on which they have broken forth in rows
or series above long subterranean fissures, are nearer to the sea,
and because this proximity seems, with a few exceptions, to affect
the energy of the subterranean fires in some way not yet sufficiently
explained. Besides, both earthquakes and fire-emitting mountains have
periods of activity alternating with periods of repose. At the present
moment,” (I wrote thus 42 years ago!) “physical disquiet and political
calm reign in the New Continent, while in the Old the desolating strife
of nations disturbs the enjoyment of the repose of nature. Perhaps
a time is coming when, in this singular contrast between physical
and moral forces, the two sides of the Atlantic will change parts.
Volcanoes are quiescent for centuries before they burst forth anew;
and the idea that in the so-called older countries, a certain peace
must prevail in nature, is founded on a mere play of the imagination.
There exists no reason for assuming one entire side of our planet to
be older or newer than the other. Islands are indeed raised from the
bed of the ocean by volcanic action, and gradually heightened by coral
animals, as the Azores and many low flat islands of the Pacific; and
these may indeed be said to be newer than many Plutonic formations of
the European central chain. A small district of the earth, surrounded,
like Bohemia and Kashmeer, (and like many of the vallies in the Moon),
by annular mountains, may, by partial inundations, be long covered
with water; and after the flowing off of this lake or inland sea,
the ground on which vegetation begins gradually to establish itself
might be said, figuratively, to be of recent origin. Islands have
become connected with each other by the elevation of fresh masses of
land; and parts of the previously dry land have been submerged by the
subsidence of the oscillating ground; but submersions so general as
to embrace a hemisphere, can, from hydrostatic laws, only be imagined
as extending at the same time over all parts of the earth. The sea
cannot permanently overflow the boundless plains of the Orinoco and the
Amazons, without also overwhelming the plains adjoining the Baltic. The
sequence and identity of the sedimentary strata, and of the organic
remains of plants and animals belonging to the ancient world enclosed
in those strata, shew that several great depositions have taken place
almost simultaneously over the entire globe.” (For the fossil vegetable
remains in the coal formation in North America and in Europe, compare
Adolph Brongniart, Prodrome d’une Hist. des Végétaux Fossiles, p. 179;
and Charles Lyell’s Travels in North America, vol. ii. p. 20).

[20] p. 10.--“_The Southern Hemisphere is cooler and moister than our
Northern half of the globe._”

Chili, Buenos Ayres, and the southern parts of Brazil and Peru, have
all, as a result of the narrowness of the continent of South America
as it tapers towards the south, a true “insular climate;” or a climate
of cool summers and mild winters. As far as the 48th or 50th parallel
of latitude this character of the Southern Hemisphere may be regarded
as an advantage, but farther on towards the Antarctic Pole, South
America gradually becomes an inhospitable wilderness. The difference of
latitude of the southern terminating points of Australia, (including
Van Diemen Island), of Africa, and of America,--gives to each of these
continents a peculiar character. The Straits of Magellan are between
the 53d and 54th degrees of latitude, and yet in December and January,
when the sun is 18 hours above the horizon, the temperature sinks to 4°
Reaumur, or 41° Fahrenheit. Snow falls almost daily, and the highest
atmospheric temperature observed by Churruca (1788) in December, (the
summer of those regions), was not above 9° R., or 52°.2 Fahr. The Cabo
Pilar, whose towering rock, though only 218 toises, or 1394 English
feet high, may be regarded as the southern termination of the chain
of the Andes, is almost in the same latitude as Berlin. (Relacion del
Viage al Estrecho de Magallanes, apendice, 1793, p. 76.)

While in the Northern Hemisphere all the continents attain a sort of
mean limit towards the Pole, coinciding pretty regularly with the
parallel of 70° the terminating points in the Southern Hemisphere,--of
America, in the deeply indented and intersected Tierra del Fuego,--of
Australia,--and of Africa,--are respectively 34°, 46-1/2°, and 56°
distant from the south pole. The temperature of the very unequal
extents of ocean, which divide these southern points from the icy pole,
contributes very materially to modify their climates. The areas of dry
land in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are to each other in the
proportion of 3 to 1. But this inferiority in extent of continental
masses in the Southern Hemisphere, as compared with the Northern,
belongs much more to the temperate than to the torrid zone. In the
temperate zones of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the ratio
is as 13 to 1; in the torrid zones as 5 to 4. The great inequality in
the distribution of the dry land exercises a very sensible influence
on the strength of the ascending aerial current which turns towards
the southern pole, and on the temperature of the Southern Hemisphere.
Some of the noblest forms of tropical vegetation, for example the
tree-ferns, advance south of the equator as far as the parallels of
46°, and of even 53°; whereas north of the equator they are not found
beyond the tropic of Cancer. (Robert Brown, Appendix to Flinders’
Voyage, p. 575 and 584; Humboldt, de distributione geographica
Plantarum, p. 81-85.) Tree-ferns thrive extremely well at Hobart Town
in Van Diemen Island, (lat. 42° 53′), where the mean annual temperature
is 9° Reaumur, or 52°.2 Fahrenheit, and is therefore 1°.6 Reaumur, or
3°.6 Fahrenheit, less than that of Toulon. Rome is almost a degree of
latitude farther from the equator than Hobart Town, and has an annual
temperature of 12°.3 R., or 59°.8 Fahr.;--a winter temperature of 6°.5
R., or 46°.4 Fahr.,--and a summer temperature of 24° R., or 86° Fahr.;
these three values being in Hobart Town 8°.9, 4°.5, and 13°.8 R., or
52°.0, 42°.2, and 63°.0 Fahr. In Dusky Bay, New Zealand, tree-ferns
grow in S. lat. 46° 8′, and in the Auckland and Campbell Islands, even
in 53° S. lat. (Jos. Hooker, Flora Antarctica, 1844, p. 107.)

In the Archipelago of Tierra del Fuego,--where, in the same latitude
as Dublin, the mean winter temperature is 0°.4 Reaumur, (33° Fah.) and
the mean summer temperature only 8° R., or 50° Fahr.,--Captain King
found the “vegetation thriving most luxuriantly in large woody-stemmed
trees of Fuchsia and Veronica”; while this vigour of vegetation,
which, especially on the western coast of America in 38° and 40° of
south latitude, is so picturesquely described by Charles Darwin,
suddenly disappears south of Cape Horn, on the rocks of the Southern
Orkney and Shetland Islands, and of the Sandwich Archipelago. These
Islands, but scantily covered with grass, moss, and lichens, “Terres de
Désolation,” as the French navigators call them, are still far north
of the Antarctic Circle; whereas in the Northern Hemisphere in 70° of
latitude, at the extremity of Scandinavia, fir-trees attain a height
of between 60 and 70 English feet. (Compare Darwin in the “Journal of
Researches,” 1845, p. 244, with King in vol. i. of the Narrative of the
Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, p. 577.) If we compare Tierra del
Fuego, and particularly Port Famine in the Straits of Magellan in lat.
53° 38′, with Berlin, which is one degree nearer the equator, we find
for

  Berlin      6°.8, -0°.5/13°.9 R., 47°.2, 30°.8/63°.2 Fahr.; and for

  Port Famine 4°.7, 1°.2/8°.0 R., 42°.6, 34°.8/50°.0 Fahr.

I subjoin in one view the few well-assured temperature data which we at
present possess, for the lands of the temperate zone in the Southern
Hemisphere, and which may be compared with the temperatures of the
Northern Hemisphere, in most parts of which the distribution into
summer heat and winter cold is so different and so much less equable. I
employ the convenient method of notation before used and explained in
pages 129-131.

  +---------------------+---------+------------------------------+
  |                     |         |     Mean Annual, Winter,     |
  |  Place.             |  South  |     and Summer Temperature.  |
  |                     |         |---------------+--------------+
  |                     |Latitude.|       Reaumur.|   Fahrenheit.|
  +---------------------+---------+---------------+--------------+
  |Sidney and Paramatta |         |       10°.0   |        54°.5 |
  |  (New Holland.)     | 33°.50′ |14°.5  -----   |64°.5   ----- |
  |                     |         |       20°.2   |        77°.5 |
  |                     |         |               |              |
  |                     |         |       11°.8   |        58°.5 |
  |Cape Town (Africa.)  | 33°.55′ |15°.0  -----   |65°.7   ----- |
  |                     |         |       18°.3   |        73°.3 |
  |                     |         |               |              |
  |                     |         |        9°.1   |        52°.5 |
  |Buenos Ayres         | 34°.17′ |13°.5  -----   |62°.4   ----- |
  |                     |         |       18°.2   |        73°.0 |
  |                     |         |               |              |
  |                     |         |       11°.3   |        57°.3 |
  |Monte Video          | 34°.54′ |15°.5  -----(?)|66°.8   ----- |
  |                     |         |       20°.2   |        77°.5 |
  |                     |         |               |              |
  |Hobart Town (Van     |         |        4°.5   |        42°.2 |
  |  Diemen Island.)    | 42°.45′ | 9°.1  -----   |52°.5   ----- |
  |                     |         |       13°.8   |        63°.0 |
  |                     |         |               |              |
  |Port Famine (Straits |         |        1°.2   |        34°.8 |
  |  of Magellan.)      | 53°.38′ | 4°.7  -----   |42°.6   ----- |
  |                     |         |        8°.0   |        50°.0 |
  +---------------------+---------+---------------+--------------+


[21] p. 11.--“_A connected Sea of Sand._”

As the Heaths formed of socially growing Ericeæ, which stretch from
the mouth of the Scheldt to that of the Elbe and from the point of
Jutland to the Harz, may be regarded as one connected _tract of
vegetation_,--so the seas of sand may be traced through Africa and
Asia, from Cape Blanco to beyond the Indus, or through an extent of
5600 geographical miles. Herodotus’s Sandy Region interrupted by Oases,
called by the Arabs the Desert of Sahara, traverses almost the whole of
Africa, which it intersects like a dried-up arm of the sea. The valley
of the Nile is the eastern limit of the Lybian Desert. Beyond the
Isthmus of Suez, beyond the porphyritic, syenitic, and basaltic rocks
of Sinai, begins the Desert mountain plateau of Nedjid, which occupies
the whole of the interior of the Arabian Peninsula, and is bounded to
the west and south by the fertile and happier coast lands of Hedjaz
and Hadhramaut. The Euphrates bounds the Arabian and Syrian Deserts
towards the east. Immense seas of sand, (bejaban), cross Persia from
the Caspian to the Indian Sea. Among them are the salt and soda Deserts
of Kerman, Seistan, Beloochistan, and Mekran. The latter is separated
from the Desert of Moultan by the Indus.

[22] p. 11.--“_The western part of the Atlas._”

The question respecting the position of the ancient Atlas has been
much discussed in modern times, but the oldest Phœnician legends have
been confounded in this discussion with the later fables of the Greeks
and the Romans. A man who combined deep philological with thorough
mathematical and astronomical knowledge, Professor Ideler, (the
father,) was the first person who explained and dispelled the confusion
of ideas which had previously existed on this subject. I permit myself
to introduce here the remarks that clear-sighted and highly-informed
writer has communicated to me on this important subject.

“At a very early period of the world the Phœnicians ventured beyond the
Straits of Gibraltar. They built Gades and Tartessus on the Spanish,
and Lixus and several other towns on the Mauritanian coasts of the
Atlantic. They sailed along those coasts northwards to the Cassiterides
where they obtained tin, and to the Prussian coast from whence they
brought amber; and southwards, past Madeira, to the Cape de Verde
Islands. They visited, among other places, the Canaries, and were
struck by the appearance of the lofty Peak of Teneriffe, enhanced by
its rising immediately from the sea. Through the colonies which they
sent to Greece, and especially through that which came under Cadmus
to Bœotia, the notice of this mountain rising high above the region
of clouds, and of the “Fortunate Islands,” adorned with fruits of
every kind, and especially with the golden orange, spread into Greece.
Here the tradition was propagated by the songs of the bards, and thus
reached Homer. He speaks in the Odyssey (i. 52) of an “Atlas who knows
all the depths of the sea, and who supports the great pillars which
divide heaven and earth from each other.” He speaks, too, in the
Iliad, of the Elysian fields, which he describes as a lovely land in
the west. (Il. iv. 561.) Hesiod expresses himself in a similar manner
respecting Atlas, who he makes a neighbour of the nymphs the daughters
of Hesperus. (Theog. V. 517.) He calls the Elysian fields, which he
places at the western limit of the earth, the islands of the Blest.
(Op. et dies, v. 167.) Later poets have added further embellishments to
these myths of Atlas, of the Hesperides, their golden apples, and the
Islands of the Blest, assigned as the dwelling-place of the virtuous
after death; and have combined with them the expeditions of the Tyrian
god of trade, Melicertes (the Grecian Hercules).

“The Greeks only began at a very late date to rival the Phœnicians and
Carthaginians in navigation. They visited the coasts of the Atlantic
it is true, but never appear to have penetrated far into the ocean. I
doubt whether they ever saw the Canaries and the Peak of Teneriffe.
They believed that Atlas, which their poets and legends described as a
very high mountain placed at the western limit of the earth, must be
sought on the west coast of Africa. It was placed there also by their
later geographers, Strabo, Ptolemy, and others. As there is not any
single mountain distinguished by its elevation in north-western Africa,
the true situation of Mount Atlas has been a subject of perplexity; and
it has been sought, sometimes on the coast, sometimes in the interior,
sometimes near the Mediterranean, and sometimes further towards the
south. It became the custom (in the first century of our era, when the
Roman arms penetrated into the interior of Mauritania and Numidia,) to
give the name of Atlas to the African chain of mountains which runs
from west to east almost parallel with the coast of the Mediterranean.
Pliny and Solinus were, however, very sensible that the descriptions
of Mount Atlas given by the Greek and Roman poets were not applicable
to this long mountain chain; and they therefore thought it necessary
to transfer the Atlas, of which they gave a picturesque description in
accordance with the poetic legends, to the terra incognita of Central
Africa. According to what has been said, the Atlas of Homer and Hesiod
can only be the Peak of Teneriffe; and the Atlas of the Greek and Roman
geographers must be in Northern Africa.”

I will only add the following remarks to this instructive discussion
by Professor Ideler. According to Pliny and Solinus, Atlas rises from
a sandy plain (e medio arenarum); and elephants (which certainly were
never known in Teneriffe) feed on its declivity. What we now term
Atlas is a long ridge. How came the Romans to recognise in this long
ridge the isolated conical mountain of Herodotus? May not the reason
be found in the optical delusion by which every mountain chain seen in
profile, in the prolongation of its direction, has the appearance of a
narrow cone? I have often seen in this manner, from the sea, the ends
of long chains or ridges, which might be taken for isolated mountains.
According to Höst the Atlas is covered near Morocco with perpetual
snow, which implies an elevation of above 1800 toises, or 11510 English
feet. It is also remarkable that, according to Pliny, the “Barbarians,”
_i. e._ the ancient Mauritanians, called the Atlas “Dyris.” The chain
of the Atlas is still called by the Arabs Daran, a word which has
almost the same consonants as Dyris. Hornius, on the other hand (de
Originibus Americanorum, p. 195), thinks that he recognises the word
Dyris in the Guanche name of the Peak of Teneriffe, Aya-Dyrma. On the
connection between purely mythical ideas and geographical traditions,
and on the way in which the Titan Atlas gave occasion to the image of
a mountain supporting the heavens, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, see
Letronne’s “Essai sur les Idées cosmographiques qui se rattachent au
nom d’Atlas,” in Férussac’s Bulletin universel des Sciences, Mars 1831,
p. 10.

Considering that our present (it is true, very limited) geological
knowledge of the mountainous parts of North Africa does not make us
acquainted with any trace of volcanic eruptions within historic times,
it is very remarkable to find among the ancients so many indications
of a belief in the existence of this class of phenomena, in the
Western Atlas, and in the neighbouring west coast of the continent.
The streams of fire, so often mentioned in Hanno’s ship-journal, may
indeed have only been strips of burning grass, or signal fires kindled
by the wild inhabitants of the coasts to give to each other notice of
the danger threatened by the appearance of the hostile vessels. The
lofty flame-enlightened summit of the “chariot of the gods” (θεῶν
ὅχημα), may recall obscurely the Peak of Teneriffe; but farther on
Hanno describes a singular conformation of ground. He finds in the
Gulf near the Western Horn, a large island, and in it a salt lake
which again contains a smaller island. South of the bay of the Gorilla
Apes, the same conformation is repeated. Is this a description of
coral productions, of “lagoon islands, (Atolls)” or volcanic “crater
lakes” in the middle of which a cone has been upheaved? The Triton
lake was not in the neighbourhood of the lesser Syrtis, but near the
Atlantic coast. (Asie Cent. T. i. p. 179.) The lake disappeared in
consequence of earthquakes which were accompanied by great outbursts
of fire. Diodorus (Lib. iii. 53, 55) says expressly, πυρὸς ἐκφυσήματα
μεγάλα. But the most wonderful conformation is ascribed to the “hollow
Atlas” in a passage hitherto little noticed, occurring in one of the
philosophic Dialexes of Maximus Tyrius. This Platonic philosopher
lived in Rome, under Commodus. The situation of his Atlas is “on the
continent, where the Western Lybians inhabit a projecting peninsula.
The mountain has in it towards the sea a semicircular deep abyss.”
The precipices are so steep that they cannot be descended; the abyss
below is filled with trees, and “one looks down upon their summits,
and on the fruits which they bear, as if one was looking into a well.”
(Maximus Tyrius, viii., 7, ed. Markland.) The description is so graphic
and so individually marked, that it doubtless conveys the recollections
impressed by a real prospect.

[23] p. 11.--“_The Mountains of the Moon, Djebel al Komr._”

The Mountains of the Moon of Ptolemy (Lib. iv. cap. 9,) (σελήνης
ὅρος) form on our older maps an immense uninterrupted mountain zone,
traversing Africa from east to west. The existence of these mountains
appears certain; but their extent, their distance from the Equator,
and their general direction, are all unsolved problems. I have already
alluded in another work, (Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 191, and note 297,
Engl. ed.) to the manner in which a closer acquaintance with Indian
languages, and with the ancient Persian idiom, the Zend, teaches us
that part of the geographical nomenclature of Ptolemy forms an historic
monument of the commercial connection of the west with the most distant
regions of Southern Asia and Eastern Africa. The same direction of
ideas shews itself in a question very recently brought forward. It is
asked, whether the great geographer and astronomer of Pelusium meant
in the name of “Mountains of the Moon,” as in that of the “Island
of Barley” (Jabadiu, Java), merely to give the Greek translation of
a native name;--whether (as is most probable) El Istachri, Edrisi,
Ibn-al-Vardi, and other early Arabian geographers, only transferred
the nomenclature of Ptolemy into their own language;--or whether they
were misled by similarity in the sound of the words and the manner of
writing. In the notes to the translation of Abd-Allatif’s celebrated
description of Egypt, my great instructor, Silvestre de Sacy, (éd. de
1810, p. 7 and 353,) says expressly: “On traduit ordinairement le nom
de ces montagnes que Léon Africain regarde comme les sources du Nil,
par _montagnes de la lune_, et j’ai suivi cet usage. Je ne sais si les
Arabes ont pris originairement cette dénomination de Ptolémée. On peut
croire qu’ils entendent effectivement aujourd’hui le mot قمر dans le
sens de la _lune_ en le prononçant ‘Kamar’; je ne crois pas cependant
que ç’ait été l’opinion des anciens écrivains arabes qui prononcent,
comme le prouve Makrizi, Komr. Aboulféda rejette positivement l’opinion
de ceux qui prononcent kamar, et qui dérivent ce nom de celui de la
lune. Comme le mot komr, considéré comme pluriel de اقمر, signifie un
objet d’une _couleur verdâtre_ ou d’un blanc sale, suivant l’auteur du
Kamous, il paroit que quelques écrivains ont cru que cette montagne
tiroit son nom de sa couleur.”

The learned Reinaud, in his recent excellent translation of Abulfeda
(T. ii., P. i., p. 81-82), considers it probable that the Ptolemaic
interpretation of the name, by “Mountains of the Moon” (ὅρη σεληναῖα),
was that originally adopted by the Arabian writers. He remarks that in
the Moschtarek of Yakut, and in Ibn-Said, the mountains are written
al-Komr, and that Yakut writes in the same way the name of the island
of Zendj (Zanguebar). The Abyssinian traveller Beke, in his learned
critical memoir on the Nile and its tributaries (Journal of the Royal
Geographical Society of London, vol. xvii. 1847, p. 74-76), seeks to
prove that Ptolemy had merely formed his σελήνης ὅρος from a native
name, for which he was indebted to intelligence received through the
medium of the extensive commercial intercourse which prevailed. He
says, “Ptolemy knew that the Nile rises in the mountainous country
of Moezi; and in the languages which extend over a great portion of
South Africa (for example, in the languages of Congo, Monjou, and
Mozambique), the word Moezi signifies the moon. A great south-western
country was called Mono-Muezi, or Mani-Moezi, _i. e._ the land of the
king of Moezi (of the king of the Moon country), for in the same family
of languages in which Moezi or Muezi signifies the Moon, Mono or Mani
signifies a king. Alvarez, in the Viaggio nella Ethiopia (Ramusio, vol.
i, p. 249,) speaks of the ‘regne di Manicongo,’ the kingdom of the king
of Congo.” Beke’s opponent, Ayrton, seeks the origin of the White Nile
(Bahr el Abiad), not as do Arnaud, Werne, and Beke, near the equator,
or even south of it (and in 29° E. long. from Paris, or 31° 22′ from
Greenwich), but with Antoine d’Abbadie far to the north-east, in the
Godjeb and Gibbe of Eneara (Iniara); therefore in the high mountains
of Habesch, in 7° 20′ N. latitude, and 33° E. long. from Paris, or 35°
22′ from Greenwich. He conjectures that the Arabs, from a similarity
of sound, may have interpreted the native name Gamaro belonging to the
Abyssinian mountains, in the south-west of Gaka in which the Godjeb (or
White Nile?) has its source, to mean Moon Mountains (Djebel al-Kamar);
so that Ptolemy himself, familiar with the intercourse between
Abyssinia and the Indian Ocean, may have taken the Semitic version,
given by early Arab immigrants. (Compare Ayrton in the Journal of the
Royal Geogr. Soc. vol. xviii. 1848, p. 53, 55, and 59-63, with Fred.
Werne’s instructive expedition for the discovery of the sources of the
Nile, Exped. zur Entd. der Nil-Quellen, 1848, S. 534-536.)

The lively interest which has again been excited in England for the
discovery of the most southern sources of the Nile, induced the
above-named Abyssinian traveller, Charles Beke, at the recent meeting
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at
Swansea, August 1848, to develop more in detail his ideas respecting
the connection between the Mountains of the Moon and the Mountains of
Habesch. He says:--“The Abyssinian elevated plain, generally above 8000
feet high, extends towards the south to nearly 9° or 10° N. latitude.
The eastern declivity of the highlands has to the inhabitants of the
coast the appearance of a mountain chain. The plateau at its southern
extremity passes into the Mountains of the Moon, which run, not east
and west, but parallel to the coast, or from NNE. to SSW.; extending
from 10° N. to 5° S. latitude. The sources of the White Nile are
situated in the Mono-Moezi country, probably in 2-1/2° S., not far from
where the river Sabaki, on the eastern side of the Mountains of the
Moon, falls into the Indian Ocean near Melindeh, north of Mombaza. Last
autumn (1847) the two Abyssinian missionaries Rebmann and Krapf were
still on the coast of Mombaza. They have established in the vicinity,
among the Wakamba tribe, a missionary station called Rabbay Empie,
which promises to be very useful also for geographical discovery.
Families belonging to the Wakamba tribe have advanced to the west five
or six hundred miles into the interior of the country, as far as the
upper course of the river Lusidji, the great lake Nyassi or Zambeze
(5° S. lat.?), and the sources of the Nile which are not far distant.
An expedition to these sources, which Herr Friedrich Bialloblotzky,
of Hanover, is preparing to undertake, (by the advice of Beke), is to
set out from Mombaza. The Nile coming from the west referred to by the
ancients is probably the Bahr-el-Ghazal, or Keilah, which falls into
the Nile in 9° N. lat., above the mouth of the Godjeb or Sobat.”

Russegger’s scientific expedition,--which by Mehemet Ali’s desire
was sent to the gold-washings of Fazokl on the Blue (Green) Nile,
Bahr-el-Azrek, in 1837 and 1838,--had made the existence of the
“Mountains of the Moon” appear very doubtful. The Blue Nile, the
Astapus of Ptolemy, issuing from the lake of Coloe (now called lake
Tzana) winds from amongst the colossal Abyssinian mountains; but
towards the south-west an extensive low tract of country appears. The
three exploring expeditions sent by the Egyptian government, (one in
November 1839 from Chartum to the confluence of the Blue and the White
Nile, under the command of Selim Bimbashi; another in the autumn of
1840, which was accompanied by the French engineers Arnaud, Sabatier,
and Thibaud; and a third in August 1841), first unveiled the high
mountains which, between the parallels of 6°-4°, and probably still
farther to the south, run at first from west to east, and afterwards
from north-west to south-east, and approach the left bank of the
Bahr-el-Abiad. The second of Mehemet Ali’s expeditions first saw the
mountain chain, according to Werne’s account, in lat. 11-1/3° where
Gebel Abul and Gebel Kutak rise to 3400 (3623 Eng.) feet. The high land
continued and approached nearer to the river more to the south, between
4-3/4° lat., to the parallel of the island of Tschenker in 4° 4′, where
the expedition of Commander Selim and Feizulla Effendi terminated. The
shallow river makes its way between rocks, and detached mountains rise
again in the country of Bari to 3000 (3197 Eng.) feet. These probably
belong to the Mountains of the Moon as represented in our most recent
maps, although they are not indeed mountains covered with perpetual
snow such as Ptolemy had described (lib. iv. cap. 9). The limit of
perpetual snow in these latitudes would not certainly be found below
an elevation of 14500 (15450 Eng.) feet. Perhaps Ptolemy transferred
to the country of the sources of the White Nile the knowledge which
he may have had of the high mountains of Habesch, which are nearer to
Upper Egypt and to the Red Sea. In Godiam, Kaffa, Miecha, and Sami,
the Abyssinian mountains rise to 10000 and 14000 (10657 and 14920
Eng.) feet, according to exact measurements; not according to Bruce,
who gives the elevation of Chartum exceedingly wide of the truth,
_i. e._, 4730 (5041 Eng.) feet, instead of 1430 (1524 Eng.) feet!
Rüppell, one of the most accurate observers of the present day, found
Abba Jaret, in 13° 10′ of latitude, only 66 (70 Eng.) feet lower than
Mont Blanc. (Compare Rüppell, Reise in Abyssinien, Bd. i. S. 414, and
Bd. ii. S. 443). Rüppell found, adjoining the Buahat, an elevated
plain 13080 (13939 Eng.) feet above the Red Sea, barely covered with
a small quantity of fresh fallen snow (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, T.
iii. p. 272). The celebrated inscription of Adulis, which Niebuhr
considers to be somewhat later than Juba and than Augustus, also speaks
of Abyssinian snow “that reaches to the knees.” This is, I believe,
the earliest mention in antiquity of snow within the tropics (Asie
Centrale, T. iii. p. 235); as the Paropanisus is 12° of latitude north
of the northern limit of the torrid zone.

Zimmermann’s map of the countries about the Upper Nile shews the
dividing line which determines the basin of the Great River, and
separates it on the south-east from the domain of the rivers which flow
into the Indian Ocean;--that is to say, from the Doara, which enters
the sea north of Magadoxo; from the Teb, which has its embouchure
on the Amber coast, near Ogda; and from the Goschop, whose abundant
stream is formed by the confluence of the Gibu and the Zebi, and which
he distinguishes from the Godjeb, rendered celebrated since 1839 by
Antoine d’Abbadie, the missionary Krapf, and Beke. These results of
the travels of Beke, Krapf, Isenberg, Russegger, Rüppell, Abbadie,
and Werne, brought together and shewn in the most comprehensive and
convenient manner by Zimmermann, were hailed by me on their appearance
in 1843 with the most lively joy, as expressed in a letter to Carl
Ritter. “If,” I wrote to him, “a life prolonged to an advanced period
brings with it several inconveniences to the individual, and perhaps
some even to those who live with him, there is a compensation in the
delight of being able to compare older states of knowledge with that
which now exists, and to see great advances in knowledge grow and
develope themselves under our eyes in departments where all had long
slumbered in inactivity, with the exception, perhaps, of attempts
by hypercriticism to render previous acquisitions doubtful. This
enjoyment has from time to time fallen to our share, yours and mine,
in our geographical studies, and this particularly in reference to
those very parts of the world which formerly could only be treated of
with timid hesitating uncertainty. The conformation of a continent
depends in its leading traits on several plastic relations which are
usually among the latest to be discovered and unravelled. A new and
excellent work of our friend Carl Zimmermann, on the upper country of
the Nile and the eastern parts of central Africa, has again brought
these considerations very vividly before me. His new map shews in the
clearest manner to the eye, by means of a particular method of shading,
what is still unknown, and what, by the courage and perseverance of
travellers of all nations,--among whom our own countrymen happily
hold an important place,--has been already disclosed to us. It is a
valuable service, and one which opens the way for farther advances and
more comprehensive inferences, when persons, thoroughly acquainted
with the existing, often widely scattered, materials,--men who do not
merely draw and compile, but compare, select, and, wherever it is
possible, check and control the routes of travellers by astronomical
determinations of position,--undertake to represent graphically the
results of the elements of knowledge possessed at the time. Those who
have themselves given to the world so much as you have done, have an
especial right to expect much; since their combinations have largely
augmented the number of connecting points; yet I believe that when
you executed your great work on Africa in 1822 you could hardly have
expected so many accessions as we have now received.” The knowledge
acquired is, indeed, often only that of rivers, their direction, their
branches, and the various synonyms by which they are called in dialects
belonging to different families of languages; but rivers reveal to us
by their course the form of the surface of the earth, and are at once
the nourishers of vegetation, the channels of intercourse between men,
and pregnant with unknown influences on the future.

The northerly course of the White Nile, and the south-easterly course
of the great Goschop, would indicate that a swelling of the ground
separates the domains or basins of these rivers. We know, indeed, but
imperfectly, how such a swelling or elevation may be connected with the
mountains of Habesch, and in what manner it may be continued southward
beyond the equator. Probably, and this is also the opinion of my friend
Carl Ritter, the Lupata mountains, which, according to the excellent
Wilhelm Peters, extend to 26° S. latitude, are connected with the
elevated parts of the Earth’s surface on the north side of the equator,
(or with the Abyssinian mountains), by the mountains of the Moon. The
word “Lupata,” we learn from the last-named African traveller, is used
in the language of Tette as an adjective, meaning “closed.” The chain
of mountains would thus be called the “closed” or “barred.” “The Lupata
chain, of Portuguese writers,” says Peters, “is about 90 legoas or
leagues from the mouth of the Zambeze, and is only about two thousand
feet high. The direction of this mountain rampart is north and south,
but with occasional bends alternately to the east and to the west. It
is sometimes interrupted by plains. Along the whole of the Zanzibar
coast, the traders into the interior speak of this long but not very
elevated ridge, which extends from 6° to 26° S. latitude, as far as the
Factory of Lourenzo-Marques, on the Rio de Espiritu Santo (in the Bay
da Lagoa, or Delagoa Bay of the English). The farther the Lupata chain
advances towards the south, the nearer it approaches the coast, from
which it is only fifteen legoas distant at Lourenzo-Marques.”

[24] p. 12.--“_Caused by the great revolving current._”

In the northern part of the Atlantic, between Europe, North Africa,
and the New Continent, the waters of the ocean are driven round in a
true revolving current, or circle. This general current,--which, from
its cause, might be called a “Rotation Current,”--moves between the
tropics, as is well known, with the trade wind, from east to west. It
accelerates the passage of ships sailing from the Canaries to South
America, and makes it almost impossible to sail “up stream,” or in a
direct line from Cartagena de Indias to Cumana. This set to the west,
attributed to the trade winds, receives, however, in the Caribbean
Sea, the accession of a much stronger movement, originating in a very
remote cause, which was discovered as early as 1560 by Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, (Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. iii. p. 14), and developed with
greater certainty by Rennell in 1832. The Mosambique current, flowing
from north to south between Madagascar and the east coast of Africa,
sets on the Lagullas Bank, turns on the north side of it round the
south point of Africa, and advances with much force up the western
coast of the Continent to a little beyond the equator near the Island
of St. Thomas. It gives at the same time a north-westerly direction to
a part of the water of the South Atlantic, causing it to strike Cape
St. Augustin, and to follow the coast of Guiana to beyond the mouth
of the Orinoco, the Boca del Drago, and the coast of Paria. (Rennell,
Investigation of the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean, 1832, p. 96 and
136.) The New Continent, from the Isthmus of Panama to the northern
part of Mexico, opposes a barrier to the farther continuance of this
movement of the waters, and thus the current is constrained to assume
a northerly course off Veragua, and thence to follow the windings of
the coast of Costa Rica, Mosquito, Campeachy, and Tabasco. The waters
which enter the Mexican Gulf between Cape Catoche of Yucatan and Cape
San Antonio of Cuba, after completing a great rotatory movement or
circuit, by Vera Cruz, Tamiagua, the mouth of the Rio Bravo del Norte,
and that of the Mississipi, force their way northwards through the
Bahama Channel, and re-issue into the open ocean. Here they form the
well-known “Gulf Stream,” a current or river of warm and rapidly moving
water, flowing in an oblique or diagonal direction carrying it farther
and farther from the North American coast. Ships from Europe bound for
this coast, when uncertain in respect to their longitude, are enabled
by this oblique direction of the current to direct their course, as
soon as they reach the Gulf Stream, by observations of latitude only.
The position of this great current was first indicated with accuracy by
Franklin, Williams, and Pownall.

From the 41st degree of latitude, the river of warm water, which has
been gradually diminishing in rapidity and increasing in breadth, turns
suddenly to the east. It almost touches the southern edge of the great
Newfoundland bank, where I found the greatest amount of difference
between the temperature of the warm water of the Gulf stream, and
that of the waters resting on the banks and subjected thereby to a
cooling process. Before the stream reaches the westernmost of the
Azores it divides into two branches, one of which, at least at certain
seasons, advances towards Ireland and Norway, and the other towards the
Canaries and the West Coast of Africa. This Atlantic rotatory movement,
(described by me in more detail in the first volume of my Voyage to
the Equinoctial Regions), explains the possibility of trunks of South
American and West Indian trees being carried, in spite of the trade
winds, to the coasts of the Canary Islands, and stranded there. I have
made many experiments on the temperature of the Gulf Stream in the
vicinity of the Banks of Newfoundland. The Stream brings the warmer
water of lower latitudes into more northern regions with much rapidity,
and I have thus found its temperature two or three degrees of Reaumur
(5° to 7° Fah.) higher than that of the adjacent unmoved masses of
water, which form as it were the banks of the warm oceanic river.

The flying fish of the tropics (Exocetus volitans) accompanies the warm
water of the Gulf Stream far into the temperate zone. Floating sea-weed
(Fucus natans), chiefly taken up by the stream in the Gulf of Mexico,
shews when a ship is entering the current, and the arrangement of the
branches of the sea-weed shews the direction of the movement of the
water. The mainmast of the English ship of war, the Tilbury, destroyed
by fire on the coast of San Domingo, was carried by the Gulf Stream
to the north coast of Scotland. Even casks filled with palm oil, the
remains of the cargo of a ship wrecked off Cape Lopez on the coast of
Africa, were carried in the same manner to Scotland[*], after having
twice traversed the whole breadth of the Atlantic; once from east to
west with the equatorial current between 2° and 12° N. lat., and once
from west to east by the aid of the Gulf Stream, between 45° and 55°
N. lat. Rennell, in p. 347 of the “Investigation of Currents,” relates
the voyage of a bottle with papers enclosed, thrown overboard by the
English ship Newcastle on the 20th of January, 1819, in lat. 38° 52′,
and long. 63° 58′, which was picked up on the 2nd of June, 1820, at
the Rosses, (near the Island of Arran), on the west coast of Ireland.
A short time before my arrival at Teneriffe a stem of South American
cedar (Cedrela odorata), well covered with lichens, had been cast
ashore in the harbour of Santa Cruz.

Effects of the Gulf Stream in stranding on the Islands of Fayal,
Flores, and Corvo in the Azores, bamboos, artificially cut pieces of
wood, trunks of an unknown species of Pine from Mexico and the West
Indian Islands, and corpses of men of unknown race with unusually broad
faces, contributed to the discovery of America, by confirming Columbus
in his belief of the existence to the westward of Asiatic countries and
islands at no impassable distance. The great discoverer even heard from
the lips of settlers near the Cape de la Verga in the Azores, of some,
“who, in sailing westward, had met decked or covered boats, manned by
persons of strange and foreign appearance, and built apparently in
such a manner that they could not founder,--almadias con casa movediza
que nunca se hunden.” There is highly credible and well-confirmed
testimony to the fact, much as it has long been doubted, of natives
of America, (probably Esquimaux from Greenland or Labrador), carried
by currents or driven by storms from the North West, having actually
crossed the Atlantic in their canoes and reached our shores. James
Wallace, in his “Account of the Islands of Orkney, (1700, p. 60),”
relates, that in 1682 a Greenlander was seen in his boat off the South
Point of the Island of Eda by several persons, who did not succeed
in bringing him to shore. In 1684, a Greenland fisherman appeared in
his boat off the Island of Westram. In the church at Barra there was
suspended an Esquimaux boat, driven thither by currents and tempests.
The inhabitants of the Orkneys call Greenlanders so appearing among
them Finns or “Finnmen.”

In Cardinal Bembo’s History of Venice, I find a narrative to the
effect that in 1508 a French ship captured near the English coast a
small boat, with seven persons of a strange and foreign appearance.
The description suits extremely well with Esquimaux, (homines erant
septem _mediocri statura, colore subobscuro, lato et patente vultu_,
cicatriceque una violacea signato.) No one understood their language.
Their clothing was composed of fish skins sewn together. On their heads
they wore “coronam e culmo pictam, septem quasi auriculis intextam.”
They ate raw flesh, and drank blood as we would wine. Six of the men
died during the passage of the vessel, on board which they had been
taken; but the seventh, a youth, was presented to the king of France,
who was then at Orleans. (Bembo, Historia Venetæ, ed. 1718, lib. vii.
p. 257).

The appearance of men called _Indians_ on the western coasts of
Germany, under the Othos, and under Frederic Barbarossa, in the 10th
and 12th centuries, and even, as is related by Cornelius Nepos, (ed.
Van Staveren, cur. Bardili, T. ii., 1820, p. 356), Pomponius Mela,
(lib. iii. cap. 5, § 8), and Pliny, (Hist. Nat., T. ii. p. 67), when
Quintus Metellus Celer was Pro-consul in Gaul, may be explained by
similar effects of currents and north-west winds of long continuance.
A king of the Boii, others say of the Suevi, gave the shipwrecked
dark-coloured men to Metellus Celer. Gomara, in his Historia Gen. de
las Indias, (Saragossa, 1553, fol. vii.), refers to this account, and
considers the Indians spoken of in it to have been natives of Labrador.
“Si ya no fuesen de Tierra del Labrador, y los tuviesen, los Romanos
por Indianos engañados en el color.” The appearance of Esquimaux on
the northern coasts of Europe may be believed to have occurred more
often in earlier times, because we know, from the researches of Rask
and Finn Magnusen, that in the 11th and 12th centuries this race
extended in considerable numbers, under the name of the Skrälinges of
Labrador, even as far south as the “good Vinland;” _i. e._, the coast
of Massachusets and Connecticut. (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 270; English ed.
p. 234; Examen critique de l’Hist. de la Géographie, T. ii. p. 247-278.)

As the winter cold of the most northern parts of Scandinavia is
softened by the influence of the Gulf Stream, by which American
tropical fruits (cocoa nuts, and seeds of the Mimosa scandens and the
Anacardium occidentale) are cast upon the shore beyond the 62nd degree
of latitude, so does Iceland also occasionally enjoy the beneficial
influence of the extension of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream far
to the northward. The coasts of Iceland as well as those of the Färoe
Islands, receive a great deal of drift-wood, which, coming formerly
in greater abundance, was cut into beams and planks and used for
building timber. Fruits of tropical plants, collected on the coast
of Iceland, between Raufarhavn and Vapnafiord, testify the movement
of the waters from the southward. (Sartorius von Waltershausen,
physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, S. 22-35.)

[25] p. 12.--“_Neither Lecideas nor other Lichens._”

In northern countries, the earth, if left bare, soon becomes covered
with Bæomyces roseus, Cenomyce rangiferinus, Lecidea muscorum, L.
icmadophila, and similar Cryptogameæ, which prepare the way for the
growth of grasses and herbaceous plants. In the tropics, where mosses
and lichens only abound in shady places, some species of succulent
plants take their place.

[26] p. 13.--“_The care of animals yielding milk_, ... ... _The ruins
of the Aztec fortress._”

The two kinds of cattle alluded to, and subsequently spoken of,--the
Bos americanus and Bos moschatus,--are peculiar to the American
continent. But the natives--

    Queis neque mos, neque cultus erat, nec jungere tauros.

        _Virgil, Æn._ i. 316.

--drink the fresh blood, not the milk, of these animals. Single
exceptions have indeed been found, but only among tribes who at the
same time cultivated maize. I have before remarked, (p. 54), that
Gomara speaks of a people in the north-west of Mexico who possessed
herds of tame bisons, and derived from these animals clothing, meat,
and drink. The drink may have been the blood, (Prescott, Conquest of
Mexico, vol. iii. p. 416) for, as I have more than once remarked, the
dislike to milk, or at least the absence of its use, appears, before
the arrival of Europeans, to have been, generally speaking, a feature
common to all the natives of the New Continent,--and one which they
possess in common with the inhabitants of China and Cochin China, who
yet were near neighbours to true pastoral nations. The herds of tame
lamas, found in the highlands of Quito, Peru, and Chili, belonged to
a settled population, who cultivated the ground and did not follow a
nomadic life. Pedro de Cieça de Leon, (Chronica del Peru, Sevilla,
1553, cap. 110, p. 264) seems to imply, though certainly as a rare and
exceptional case, that in the Peruvian mountain plateau of Collao lamas
were used for drawing the plough. (Compare Gay, Zoologia de Chile,
Mamiferos, 1847, p. 154.) The usual custom in Peru was to plough with
men only. (See the Inca Garcilaso’s Commentarios reales, P. i. lib. v.
cap. 2, p. 133; and Prescott, Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, 1847, vol.
i. p. 136.) Mr. Barton has made it appear probable that, among some of
the tribes of Western Canada, the buffalo was from early times made an
object of care for the sake of its flesh and skin. (Fragments of the
Nat. Hist. of Pennsylvania, P. i. p. 4.) In Peru and Quito the lama
is now nowhere found in a state of original wildness. I was told by
the natives that the lamas on the western declivity of the Chimborazo
had become wild when the ancient residence of the rulers of Quito
“Lican” was laid in ashes. In the same manner the oxen in the Ceja de
la Montaña, in Middle Peru, have become perfectly wild: they are a
small and daring race, and often attack the Indians. The natives call
them Vacas del Monte, or Vacas cimarronas. (Tschudi, Fauna Peruana,
S. 256.) Cuvier’s opinion, that the lama had descended from the still
wild Guanaco, has been unfortunately still further disseminated by the
meritorious traveller Meyen, (Reise um die Erde, Th. iii. S. 64), but
has been completely refuted by von Tschudi.

The Lama, the Paco or Alpaca, and the Guanaco, are three originally
distinct species of animals. (Tschudi, S. 228 and 237.) The Guanaco
(Huanacu in the Quichua language) is the largest of the three; and
the Alpaca, measured from the ground to the crown of the head, the
smallest. The lama is next to the guanaco in stature. Herds of lamas,
when they are as numerous as I have seen them in the high plateau
between Quito and Riobamba, are a great ornament to the landscape. The
Moromoro of Chili appears to be a mere variety of the lama. Vicuñas,
Guanacoes, and Alpacas, still live wild at elevations of from 13000
to 16000 feet above the level of the sea. The two latter species are
sometimes met with tamed, but the guanaco only rarely. The alpaca does
not bear the warmer climate of the lower elevations so well as the
lama. Since the introduction of the more useful horses, mules, and
asses, (the latter acquire great spirit and beauty within the tropics),
the custom of rearing and using the lama and the alpaca as beasts of
burden, in the mountains and among the mines, has much decreased.
But the wool, of such different qualities in respect to fineness, is
still an important article in the industry of the inhabitants of the
mountains. In Chili the wild and the tamed guanaco are distinguished by
separate names; the wild being called Luan, and the tame Chilihueque.
The wide dissemination of the wild guanaco, from the Peruvian
Cordilleras to Tierra del Fuego, sometimes in herds of 500, has been
favoured by the circumstance that these animals can swim with great
ease from island to island, so that the Patagonian fiords offer no
obstacle to their wanderings. (See the pleasing descriptions by Darwin
in his Journal, 1845, p. 66.)

South of the Gila River, which, together with the Rio Colorado, enters
the Californian Gulf or Mar de Cortes, stand, in the solitude of the
Steppe, the enigmatical ruins of the Aztec Palace, called by the
Spaniards las Casas grandes. When the Aztecs, about the year 1160, came
from the unknown land of Aztlan to Anahuac, they settled themselves
for a time on the banks of the Gila. The Franciscan monks, Garces and
Font, are the latest travellers who have visited the Casas grandes,
and they did so in 1773. They stated the ruins to extend over above
a square German mile (16 English square miles). The whole plain is
strewed with fragments of painted pottery. The principal palace, (if a
house built of unburnt clay can be so designated), is 447 English feet
long and 277 English feet broad. (See a rare work printed in Mexico,
and entitled Cronica seráfica y apostólica del Colegio de Propaganda
Fide de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro por Fr. Juan Domingo Arricivita).

The Tayé of California, as drawn by Father Venegas, appears to differ
little from the Ovis musimon of the Old Continent. The same animal
is also seen on the “Stony Mountains,” near the sources of the Peace
River. Very different from it, on the other hand, is the small white
and black spotted goat-like creature which feeds near the Missouri and
Arkansas rivers. The synonymy of Antilope furcifer, A. tememazama of
Smith, and Ovis montana, is still very undetermined.

[27] p. 14.--“_The cultivation of farinaceous grasses._”

The original habitat of the farinaceous grasses is wrapped in the same
obscurity as that of the domestic animals which have accompanied man
since his earliest migrations. The German word for corn, “Getraide,”
has been ingeniously derived by Jacob Grimm from the old German
gitragidi, getregede. “It is as it were the _tame_ fruit (fruges,
frumentum), which has come into the hands of man; as we speak of
tame animals in opposition to wild ones.” (Jacob Grimm, Gesch. der
deutschen Sprache, 1848, Th. i. S. 62.) It is certainly a very striking
phenomenon, to find on one side of our planet nations to whom flour or
meal from small-eared grasses (Hordeaceæ and Avenaceæ), and the use of
milk, were completely unknown, while the nations of almost all parts
of the other hemisphere cultivate the Cerealia, and rear milk-yielding
animals. The cultivation of different kinds of grasses may be said to
afford a characteristic distinction between the two parts of the world.
In the New Continent, from 52° north to 46° south latitude, we see
only one species cultivated, viz. maize. In the Old Continent, on the
other hand, we find every where, from the earliest times of history,
the fruits of Ceres, wheat, barley, spelt or red wheat, and oats. That
wheat grew wild in the Leontine fields, as well as in several other
places in Sicily, was a belief entertained by ancient nations, and
is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus. (Lib. v. p. 199 and 232, Wessel.)
Ceres was found in the alpine meadow of Enna; and Diodorus fables that
“the inhabitants of the Atlantis were unacquainted with the fruits
of Ceres, because they had separated from the rest of mankind before
those fruits had been shewn to mortals.” Sprengel has collected several
interesting passages which lead him to think it probable that the
greater part of our European kinds of grain were originally wild in
the northern parts of Persia and India, namely, summer wheat in the
country of the Musicanes, a province in Northern India (Strabo, xv.
1017); barley (“antiquissimum frumentum,” as Pliny calls it, and which
is also the only cereal with which the Guanches of the Canaries were
acquainted), according to Moses of Chorene (Geogr, Armen. ed. Whiston,
1736, p. 360), on the Araxes or Kur in Georgia, and according to Marco
Polo in Balascham in Northern India (Ramusio, vol. ii. p. 10); and
spelt or red wheat, near Hamadan. But these passages, as has been
shewn by my keen-sighted friend and teacher Link, in an instructive
critical memoir (Abhandl. de Berl. Akad. 1816, S. 123), still leave
much uncertainty. I also early regarded the existence of originally
wild kinds of grain in Asia as extremely doubtful, and viewed such
as might have been seen there as having _become wild_. (Essai sur la
Géographie des Plantes, 1805, p. 28.) Reinhold Forster, who before
his voyage with Captain Cook, made by order of the Empress Catherine
an expedition into Southern Russia for purposes of natural history,
reported that the two-stalked summer barley (Hordeum distichon), grew
wild near the junction of the Samara and the Volga. At the end of the
month of September, 1829, Ehrenberg and myself, on our journey from
Orenburg and Uralsk to Saratow and the Caspian, also herborised on
the banks of the Samara. We were, indeed, struck with the quantity of
wheat and rye plants growing in what might be called a wild state in
the uncultivated ground, but the plants did not appear to us to differ
from the ordinary cultivated ones. Ehrenberg received from M. Carelin
a kind of rye, Secale fragile, gathered on the Kirgis Steppe, and
which Marschall von Bieberstein regarded for a time as the original or
mother plant of our cultivated rye, Secale cereale. Although Olivier
and Michaux speak of spelt (Triticum spelta) as growing wild at Hamadan
in Persia, Achill Richard does not consider that Michaux’s herbarium
bears out this statement. Greater confidence is due to the most
recent accounts obtained by the unwearied zeal of a highly-informed
traveller, Professor Carl Koch. He found much rye (Secale cereale,
var. β pectinata) in the Pontic Mountains, at elevations of upwards
of five or six thousand feet, in places where within the memory of
the inhabitants no grain of the kind had ever been cultivated. Koch
remarks, that the circumstance is “the more important because with us
this grain never propagates itself spontaneously.” In the Schirwan
parts of the Caucasus, Koch collected a kind of barley which he calls
“Hordeum spontaneum,” and considers to be the originally wild “Hordeum
zeocriton” of Linnæus. (Carl Koch Beiträge zur Flora des Orients, Heft
i. S. 139 and 142.)

A negro slave of the great Cortes was the first who cultivated wheat in
New Spain. He had found three grains of it amongst the rice which had
been brought from Spain for provision for the army. In the Franciscan
convent at Quito, I saw preserved as a relic the earthen vessel which
had contained the first wheat sowed there by the Franciscan monk Fray
Jodoco Rixi, a native of Ghent in Flanders. The first sowing had been
made in front of the convent, on what is now the Plazuela de San
Francisco, after cutting down the forest which then extended from the
foot of the volcano of Pichincha to the spot in question. The monks,
who I often visited during my stay at Quito, begged me to explain to
them the inscription on the earthen vessel, which they thought must
contain some mystic reference to the wheat. I read the motto, which
was in the old German dialect, and was--“Whoso drinks from me let him
not forget his God.” I too felt with the monks that this old German
drinking vessel was a truly venerable relic. Would that there had been
preserved every where in the New Continent the names, not of those
who made the earth desolate by bloody conquests, but of those who
first intrusted to it these its fruits so early associated with the
civilisation of mankind in the Old Continent! In respect generally to
the names of the kinds of grain, as bearing on the original affinities
of different languages, a high authority has remarked, that “such
indications are much more rare in the case of different kinds of grain,
and on subjects of agriculture, than on those connected with the care
of cattle: herdsmen when dispersed had still much in common, whereas
the subsequent cultivators of the soil had to create new words. But the
fact that in comparison with the Sanscrit, Romans and Greeks appear
nearly on a par with the Germans and Slavonians, argues in favour
of the very early contemporaneous emigration of the two latter. Yet
the Indian “java” (Frumentum hordeum), compared with the Lithuanian
“jawai,” and the Finnish “jywa,” offers a singular exception.” (Jac.
Grimm, Gesch. der deutschen Sprache, Th. i. S. 69.)

[28] p. 14.--“_Keeping by preference to the cooler mountain regions._”

Throughout Mexico and Peru the traces of a great degree of civilisation
are confined to the elevated plateaux. We have seen on the Andes the
ruins of palaces and baths at heights between 1600 and 1800 toises
(10230 and 11510 English feet). It can only have been men of a northern
race, who, migrating from the north towards the south, could find
delight in such a climate.

[29] p. 15.--“_The history of the peopling of Japan._”

The probability of the western nations of the New Continent having had
communication with the east of Asia long before the arrival of the
Spaniards, was I think shewn by me in a work on the monuments of the
native inhabitants of America (Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des
peuples indigenes de l’Amérique). I inferred this probability from
a comparison of the Mexican and Thibeto-Japanese calendars,--from
the correct orientation of the steps of the pyramidal elevations
towards the different quarters of the heavens,--and from the ancient
myths and traditions of the four ages or four epochs of destruction
of the world, and the dispersion of mankind after a great flood of
waters. The accounts published since my work, in England, France, and
the United States, describing the wonderful bas reliefs, almost in
the Indian style, in the ruins of Guatimala and Yucatan, have given
to these analogies a still higher value. (Compare Antonio del Rio,
Description of the Ruins of an Ancient City discovered near Palenque,
1822, translated from the original manuscript report by Cabrera (del
Rio’s exploration took place in 1787), p. 9, tab. 12-14; with Stephens,
Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 1843, vol. i. pp. 391 and 429-434;
vol. ii. pp. 21, 54, 56, 317, 323; with the magnificent volume of
Catherwood, “Views of ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas,
and Yucatan,” 1844; and lastly, with Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico,”
vol. iii. App. p. 360.)

The architectural remains in the peninsula of Yucatan shew, still
more than those of Palenque, a degree of civilisation and art which
excites our astonishment. They are situated between Valladolid,
Merida, and Campeachy, chiefly in the western part of the country.
But the monuments in the island of Cozumel (more properly Cuzamil),
east of Yucatan, were the first which were seen by the Spaniards in
the expedition of Juan de Grijalva, 1518, and that of Cortes in 1519,
and the report of them did much to spread over Europe a high idea of
ancient Mexican civilisation. The most important ruins of the peninsula
of Yucatan, which unfortunately have not yet been thoroughly measured
and drawn by architects, are the Casa del Gobernador of Uxmal, the
Teocallis and vaulted constructions at Kabah, the ruins of Labnah with
domed columns, those of Zayi with columns very nearly of the Doric
order, and those of Chiche with large ornamented pilasters. An old
manuscript written in the Maya language by a Christian Indian, and
which is still in the hands of the Gefe politico of Peto, Don Juan Pio
Perez, gives the different epochs (“Katunes” of 52 years) in which the
Toltecs settled in different parts of the peninsula. From these data
Perez infers that the monuments or buildings of Chiche go back to the
close of the fourth century of our era, while those of Uxmal belong to
the middle of the tenth century. But the accuracy of these conclusions
is subject to much uncertainty. (Stephens, Incidents of Travel in
Yucatan, vol. i. p. 439; and vol. ii. p. 278.)

I regard the existence of ancient connections between the inhabitants
of western America and eastern Asia as more than probable, but by
what routes, or with what Asiatic nations, the communications took
place, cannot at present be decided. A small number of individuals
of the educated priestly caste might perhaps be sufficient to bring
about great alterations in the civil and social state of western
America. The stories formerly narrated of Chinese expeditions to the
New Continent really apply only to voyages to Fusang or Japan. On
the other hand, Japanese and Sian-Pi from the Corea may have been
driven by storms to the American coast, and landed there. We know as
matter of history that Bonzes and other adventurers sailed over the
eastern Chinese seas in search of some medicine which should entirely
prevent death. Under Tschin-schi-kuang-ti, 209 years before our era,
300 young couples, young men and young women, were sent to Japan, and
instead of returning to China they settled at Nipon (Klaproth, Tableaux
historiques de l’Asie, 1824, p. 79; Nouveau Journal Asiatique, T. x.
1832, p. 335; Humboldt, Examen critique, T. ii. p. 62-67). May not
similar expeditions have been driven by storms or other accidents
to the Aleutian islands, to Alashka, or to New California? As the
western coasts of the American continent trend from NW. to SE., and
the eastern coasts of Asia in the opposite direction, or from NE. to
SW., the distance between the two continents in 45° of latitude, or
in the temperate zone which is most favourable to mental development,
is too considerable to admit of the probability of such an accidental
settlement taking place in that latitude. We must, then, assume the
first landing to have been made in the inhospitable climate of from
55° to 65° and that the civilisation thus introduced, like the general
movement of population in America, has proceeded by successive stations
from north to south (Humboldt, Relat. historique, t. iii p. 155-160).
The remains of ships from Cathay, _i. e._, from Japan or China, were
supposed to have been found on the coasts of the northern Dorado,
(called Quivira and Cibora) at the beginning of the 16th century
(Gomara, Hist. general de las Indias, p. 117).

Our knowledge of the languages of America is still too limited,
considering their great variety, for us as yet entirely to relinquish
the hope of some day discovering an idiom which may have been spoken,
with certain modifications, at once in the interior of South America
and in that of Asia; or which may at least indicate an ancient
affinity. Such a discovery would certainly be one of the most brilliant
which can be expected in reference to the history of mankind. But
analogies of language only deserve confidence when the enquirer, not
resting in or dwelling on resemblances of sound in the roots, traces
the analogies into the organic structure, the grammatical forms, and
into all which in languages shews itself as the product of the human
intellect and character.

[30] p. 15.--“_Many other forms of animals._”

Whole herds of the Cervus mexicanus wander over the Caraccas Steppes:
the young stag is spotted, and resembles in appearance the roe-deer of
Europe. We saw among them many entirely white,--a singular circumstance
in the torrid zone. The Cervus mexicanus is not found at greater
elevations on the mountain-slopes of the Andes under the equator than
from 700 to 800 toises (4476 to 5115 Eng. feet); but a larger, and also
often white, stag,--which I could hardly distinguish from the European
by any specific characters,--is met with up to 2000 toises (12789
Eng. feet). The Cavia capybara, called in the province of Caraccas
“chiguire,” is an unfortunate animal; being pursued in the water by the
crocodile, and on the plain by the tiger or jaguar. It runs so badly
that we could often catch it with our hands. Its extremities are smoked
for hams, but their taste is very disagreeable from the smell of musk;
and on the Orinoco we willingly ate monkey hams in preference. The
beautifully marked animals which have so disagreeable an odour are the
Viverra mapurito, Viverra zorilla, and Viverra vittata.

[31] p. 16.--“_The Guaranis, and the fan-palm, Mauritia._”

The small coast tribe or nation of the Guaranis, (called in British
Guiana the Warraws or Guaranos, and by the Caribs U-ara-u), inhabit
not only the marshy Delta and river network of the Orinoco, and
particularly the banks of the Manamo Grande and the Caño Macareo, but
also extend, with little variation in their modes of life, along the
sea coast between the mouths of the Essequibo and the Boca de Navios
of the Orinoco. (Compare my Relation historique, T. i. p. 492, T.
ii. p. 653 and 703, with Richard Schomburgk’s “Reisen in Britisch
Guiana,” Th. i. 1847, S. 62, 120, 173, and 194). According to the
testimony of the last-named excellent explorer and observer, there
are still 1700 Warraus or Guaranis living in the district of Cumaca,
and along the banks of the Barima river, which empties itself into
the gulf of the Boca de Navios. The manners and customs of the tribes
living in the Delta of the Orinoco were already known to the great
historical writer Cardinal Bembo, the contemporary of Columbus, Amerigo
Vespucci, and Alonzo de Hojeda. He says, “quibusdam in locis propter
paludes incolæ domus in arboribus ædificant” (Historiæ Venetæ, 1551,
p. 88). It is more probable that Bembo is alluding to the Guaranis
at the mouth of the Orinoco, than to the natives near the mouth of
the Gulph of Macaraibo, where Alonzo de Hojeda, in August 1499, when
he was accompanied by Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa, also found a
population having their residence “fondata sopra l’ acqua come Venezia”
(Riccardi’s Text in my Examen crit. t. iv. p. 496). In Vespucci’s
account of his voyage (in which we find the first indication of the
etymology of the term Province of Venezuela, Little Venice, for
Province of Caraccas), he only speaks of houses raised upon foundation
pillars, not of habitations in the trees.

Sir Walter Raleigh offers a later evidence of high authority; he says
expressly, in his description of Guiana, that on his second voyage in
1595, when in the mouth of the Orinoco, he saw the “_fires_” of the
Tivitives and the Oua-raa-etes (so he calls the Guaranis) “high up
in the trees” (Raleigh, Discov. of Guiana, 1596, p. 90). The fire is
represented in a drawing in the Latin edition: “brevis et admiranda
descriptio regni Guianæ,” (Norib. 1599) tab. 4. Raleigh was also the
first who brought to England the fruit of the Mauritia-palm, which he
very justly compared, on account of its scales, to a fir cone. The
Padre José Gumilla, who twice visited the Guaranis as a missionary,
says, indeed, that this people had their habitation in the palmares
(palm groves) of the morasses; but he only mentions dwellings raised
upon high pillars, and not scaffoldings attached to trees still in a
growing state; (Gumilla, Historia natural, civil, y geografica de las
Naciones situadas en las riveras del Rio Orinoco, nueva imp. 1791, p.
143, 145, and 163). Hillhouse and Sir Robert Schomburgk, (Journal of
the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xii. 1842, p. 175; and Description
of the Murichi or Ita Palm, read at the Meeting of the British
Association held at Cambridge, June 1845; printed in Simond’s Colonial
Magazine), are of opinion that both Bembo and Raleigh, (the former
speaking from the reports of others, the latter as an eye-witness),
were deceived by the high tops of the palm-trees being lit up at night
by the flames of fires beneath, so that those who sailed by thought the
habitations themselves were attached to the trees. “We do not deny that
in order to escape the attacks of the musquitos, the Indian sometimes
suspends his hammock from the tops of trees; on such occasions,
however, no fires are made under the hammock.” (Compare also Sir Robert
Schomburgk’s New Edition of Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana, 1848, p. 50.)

According to Martius, the fine Palm Moriche, Mauritia flexuosa,
Quiteve, or Ita palm, (Bernau, Missionary Labours in British Guiana,
1847, p. 34 and 44), belongs, as well as Calamus, to the group of
Lepidocaryeæ or Coryphineæ. Linnæus has described it very imperfectly,
as he erroneously considers it to be leafless. The trunk grows as
high as 26 feet, but it probably requires from 120 to 150 years to
reach this height. The Mauritia extends high up on the declivity of
the Duida, north of the Esmeralda mission, where I have found it in
great beauty. It forms in moist places fine groups of a fresh shining
verdure, which reminds us of that of our Alder groves. The trees
preserve the moisture of the ground by their shade, and hence the
Indians say that the Mauritia draws the water round its roots by a
mysterious attraction. By a somewhat similar theory they advise that
serpents should not be killed; because the destruction of the serpents
and the drying up of the pools or lagunas accompany each other: thus
the untutored child of nature confounds cause and effect. Gumilla terms
the Mauritia flexuosa of the Guaranis the tree of life, arbol de la
vida. It grows in the mountains of Ronaima, east of the sources of the
Orinoco, as high as 4000 (4263 Eng.) feet. On the unvisited banks of
the Rio Atabapo, in the interior of Guiana, we discovered a new species
of Mauritia with prickly stems, our Mauritia aculeata; (Humboldt,
Bonpland and Kunth, Nova Genera et Species Plantarum, t. i. p. 310).

[32] p. 16.--“_An American Stylites._”

The founder of the sect of the Stylites, the fanatical pillar-saint
Simeon Sisanites, the son of a Syrian herdsman, is said to have passed
thirty-seven years in religious contemplation on the summits of five
successive pillars, each higher than the preceding. The last pillar was
40 ells high. He died in the year 461. For seven hundred years there
continued to be men who imitated this manner of life, and were called
“sancti columnares” (pillar saints). Even in Germany, in the Diocese of
Treves, it was proposed to erect such aerial cloisters, but the Bishops
opposed the undertaking (Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. 1755, p. 215.)

[33] p. 17.--“_Towns on the banks of the streams which flow through the
Steppe._”

Families who live not by agriculture but by the care of cattle, have
congregated in the middle of the Steppe in small towns, which, in the
cultivated parts of Europe, would hardly be regarded as villages.
Such are Calabozo, in 8° 56′ 14″ N. lat. and 67° 42′ long. according
to my observations, Villa del Pao, lat 8° 38′ 1″, long. 66° 57′, S.
Sebastian, and others.

[34] p. 17.--“_Conical-shaped clouds._”

The singular phenomenon of these “sand spouts,”--something analogous
to which may occasionally be seen on a small scale in Europe where
four roads meet,--is particularly characteristic of the Peruvian Sand
Desert between Amotape and Coquimbo. Such a dense cloud of sand or dust
may prove dangerous to the traveller who does not cautiously avoid its
approach. It is also worthy of notice that these partial conflicting
currents of air only arise when the air generally is perfectly calm.
The aerial ocean resembles the sea in this respect, for in the latter
also the small currents which are often heard to ripple audibly,
(filets de courant), are only perceptible in a dead calm (calme plat).

[35] p. 18.--“_Increases the suffocating heat._”

I have observed in the Llanos de Apure, at the Guadalupe cattle farm,
the thermometer rise from 27° to 29° Reaumur (92°.7 to 97°.2 Fahr.)
whenever the hot wind began to blow from the Desert, which at such
times was covered either with sand or with short withered turf. In the
middle of the sand-cloud the temperature was for some minutes 35° R.
(111° F.). The dry sand in the village of San Fernando de Apure had a
temperature of 42° R. (126° Fahr.)

[36] p. 18.--“_The illusive image of a cool rippling watery mirror._”

The well-known phenomenon of the mirage is called in Sanscrit the
“thirst of the gazelle.” (See my Relation historique, T. i. pp. 296 and
625; T. ii. p. 161.) All objects appear to hover in the air, and are
at the same time seen reflected in the lower stratum of air. At such
times the entire desert assumes the aspect of the wave-covered surface
of a wide spread lake. Palm trees, cattle, and camels, sometimes
appear inverted on the horizon. In the French expedition to Egypt,
the soldiers, parched with thirst, were often brought by this optical
illusion into a state of desperation. This phenomenon has been remarked
in all quarters of the globe. The ancients were acquainted with the
remarkable refraction of the rays of light in the Lybian Desert. I find
mention made in Diod. Sic. lib. iii. p. 184, Rhod. (p. 219, Wessel),
of extraordinary illusive images, an African Fata Morgana, with
most extravagant explanations of the supposed conglomeration of the
particles of air.

[37] p. 19.--“_The Melon-Cactus._”

The Cactus melo cactus is often 10 to 12 inches in diameter, and has
usually 14 ribs. The natural group of Cactaceæ, the whole family of
Nopaleæ of Jussieu, belong exclusively to the New Continent. The
cactuses assume a great variety of shapes: ribbed and melon-like (Melo
cacti); articulated or jointed (Opuntiæ); forming upright columns or
pillars (Cerei); serpentine and creeping (Rhipsalides); or provided
with leaves (Pereskiæ). Many extend high up the sides of the mountains.
Near the foot of the Chimborazo, in the elevated sandy plain around
Riobamba, I have found a new kind of Pitahaya, the Cactus sepium, even
at a height of 10,000 (10,660 Eng.) feet. (Humboldt, Bonpland, and
Kunth, Synopsis Plantarum æquinoct. Orbis novi, T. iii. p. 370).

[38] p. 19.--“_The scene in the Steppe is suddenly changed._”

I have endeavoured to depict the coming in of the rainy season, and the
signs by which it is announced. The usual deep dark azure of the sky
in the tropics arises from the more complete solution of the vapour
contained in the atmosphere. The cyanometer indicates a paler blue as
soon as the vapours begin to be precipitated. The dark spot or patch in
the constellation of the Southern Cross gradually becomes indistinct
as the transparency of the atmosphere diminishes, and this alteration
announces the near approach of rain. The brightness of the Magellanic
clouds, (Nubecula major and minor), gradually vanishes in a similar
manner. The fixed stars, which before shone like planets with a steady,
tranquil, and not trembling light, now scintillate even in the zenith,
where the vapours are least. (See Arago, in my Relation hist. T. i. p.
623). All these appearances are the results of the increased quantity
of vapour diffused in the atmosphere.

[39] p. 20.--“_Awakened from a torpid state by the first fall of rain._”

Extreme dryness produces in plants and animals the same phenomena as
does the withdrawal of the stimulus of heat. Many tropical trees and
plants shed their leaves during the dry season. The crocodiles and
other amphibious animals hide themselves in the mud, where they lie
apparently dead, like animals in a state of hybernation or plunged into
winter sleep by cold. (See my Relation historique, T. ii. pp. 192 and
626.)

[40] p. 20.--“_The aspect of a vast inland sea._”

Nowhere are these inundations more extensive than in the network
of rivers formed by the Apure, the Arachuna, Pajara, Arauca, and
Cabuliare. Large vessels sail across the country over the Steppe for 40
or 50 miles.

[41] p. 21.--“_To the mountain plateau of Antisana._”

The great mountain plain or plateau surrounding the volcano of Antisana
is 2107 toises (13473 English feet), above the level of the sea. The
atmospheric pressure at this elevation is so small that the wild
cattle, when hunted with dogs, bleed from the nose and mouth.

[42] p. 22.--“_Bera and Rastro._”

I have described the capture of the Gymnoti in detail in another place.
(Observations de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée, vol. i. p. 83-87; and
Relation historique, T. ii. p. 173-190). M. Gay Lussac and I found the
experiment without a circuit succeed perfectly with a living Gymnotus,
which was still very vigorous when brought to Paris. The discharge is
solely dependent on the will of the animal. We did not see any spark,
but other physicists have done so on several occasions.

[43] p. 23.--“_Awakened by the contact of moist dissimilar particles._”

In all parts of organic bodies dissimilar substances are in contact
with each other: in all, solids are associated with fluids. Thus,
wherever there is organization and life, there is also electric tension
or the play of the voltaic pile, as the experiments of Nobili and
Matteucci, and especially the latest admirable labours of Emil du
Bois, teach us. The last named physicist has succeeded in “manifesting
the presence of the electric muscular current in living and wholly
uninjured animal bodies:” he shews that “the human body, through the
medium of a copper wire, can cause a magnetic needle at a distance
to be deflected at pleasure, first in one and then in the opposite
direction.” (Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität, von Emil du
Bois-Reymond, 1848, Bd. i. S. xv.) I have witnessed these movements
produced at pleasure, and have had the gratification of seeing
thereby great and unexpected light thrown on phenomena to which I had
laboriously and hopefully devoted several years of my youth.

[44] p. 23.--“_Osiris and Typhon._”

On the conflict between two races of men, the Arabian pastoral people
in Lower Egypt, and the agricultural race in Upper Egypt who were in a
more advanced state of civilisation, on the fair-haired Prince Baby or
Typhon, who founded Pelusium, and on the dark-complexioned Dionysos or
Osiris, see Zoëga’s ancient, and now for the most part abandoned views,
in his great work “De Origine et Usu Obeliscorum,” p. 577.

[45] p. 24.--“_The boundary of a partial European cultivation._”

In the Capitania general de Caracas, as generally every where on the
eastern shores of America, the cultivation introduced by Europeans, and
their presence and influence, are limited to a narrow strip of country
along the coast. In Mexico, New Granada, and Quito, on the other hand,
European civilisation has penetrated deep into the interior of the
country, and advanced up the ridges of the Cordilleras. There existed
in these last-named regions a considerable degree of settled and
civilised life previous to the arrival of the Spaniards; and they have
followed this civilisation wherever they found it, regardless whether
its seat was near or at a distance from the sea coast. They retained
and enlarged the ancient cities, of which they either mutilated the old
significant Indian names, or gave them new names, as, for example, of
Christian saints.

[46] p. 24.--“_Massive leaden-coloured granite rocks._”

In the Orinoco, and more especially at the Cataracts of Maypures
and Atures, all blocks of granite, and even white pieces of quartz,
whenever they are touched by the water of the river, acquire a
greyish-black coating which scarcely penetrates a hundredth of a
line below the surface of the rock. The appearance produced is that
of basalt, or fossils coloured with graphite. The crust appears to
contain manganese and carbon; I say appears, for the phenomenon has
not yet been thoroughly examined. Something similar was remarked by
Rozier on the syenite rocks of the Nile, near Syene and Philæ; by the
unfortunate Captain Tuckey on the rocky banks of the Congo; and by Sir
Robert Schomburgh on the Berbice. (Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoko, S.
212.) On the Orinoco these leaden-coloured rocks are considered to give
out pernicious exhalations when wet; and their proximity is believed
to produce fevers. (Rel. hist. T. ii. p. 299-304.) In the Rio Negro,
and generally in the South American rivers which have “black waters,”
“aguas negras,” or waters of a coffee-brown or yellow tint, no such
effects take place. No black colour is imparted to the granite rocks
by the waters; that is to say, they do not act upon the stone so as to
form from its constituent particles a black or leaden-coloured crust.

[47] p. 24.--“_The rain-announcing howlings of the bearded apes._”

The melancholy howlings of the small apes, Simia seniculus, Simia
beelzebub, &c., are heard some hours before the rain commences: it is
as if the tempest were heard raging at a distance. The intensity of the
noise produced by such small animals can only be explained by their
number; seventy or eighty being often lodged in a single tree. On the
organs of voice of these animals, see my anatomical treatise in the
first chapter of my Recueil d’Observations de Zoologie, vol. i. p. 18.

[48] p. 24.--“_Often covered with birds._”

The crocodiles lie so motionless that I have seen flamingos
(Phœnicopterus) resting on their heads; the body at the same time being
covered with aquatic birds, like the trunk of a tree.

[49] p. 24.--“_Down his swelling throat._”

The saliva with which the boa covers his prey hastens the process of
decomposition; the muscular flesh thus becomes softened into such a
gelatinous state, that he can force entire limbs of larger, and bodies
of smaller, animals down his throat without division. The Creoles call
this gigantic serpent from these circumstances, “Tragavenado,” which
means “Stag swallower:” they tell fabulous stories of snakes being
seen with the antlers of a stag (which it was impossible to swallow)
sticking in their throats. I have several times seen the boa swimming
in the Orinoco, and in the smaller forest streams, the Tuamini, the
Temi and the Atabapo. It holds its head above the water like a dog.
Its skin is finely spotted. It is said to attain a length of 48 feet;
but the largest skins which have as yet been brought to Europe and
carefully measured do not exceed 21 to 23 feet. The South American boa
(which is a Python) differs from the East Indian. On the Ethiopian boa,
see Diodor. lib. iii. p. 204, ed. Wesseling.

[50] p. 25.--“_Using ants, gums, and earth as food._”

It was a very prevalent report on the coasts of Cumana, New Barcelona,
and Caraccas, visited by the Franciscan monks of Guiana on their return
from the missions, that there were men on the banks of the Orinoco
who ate earth. When, in returning from the Rio Negro, we descended
the Orinoco in thirty-six days, we passed the day of the 6th of June,
1800, in the Mission inhabited by the earth-eating Otomacs. This little
village is called La Concepcion de Uruana, and is very picturesquely
situated at the foot of a granite rock. I found its geographical
position to be 7° 8′ 3″ N. lat., and 67° 18′ W. long. from Greenwich.
The earth which the Otomacs eat is a soft unctuous clay; a true
potter’s clay, of a yellowish-grey colour due to a little oxide of
iron. They seek for it in particular spots on the banks of the Orinoco
and the Meta, and select it with care. They distinguish the taste of
one kind of earth from that of another, and do not consider all clays
as equally agreeable to eat. They knead the earth into balls of about
five or six inches diameter, which they burn or roast by a weak fire
until the outside assumes a reddish tint. The balls are remoistened
when about to be eaten. These Indians are generally wild uncultivated
beings, and altogether averse to any kind of tillage. It is a proverb
even among the most distant of the nations living on the Orinoco, when
speaking of anything very unclean, to say that it is “so dirty, that
the Otomacs eat it.”

As long as the waters of the Orinoco and the Meta are low these Indians
live on fish and river tortoises. They kill the fish with arrows when
at the surface of the water, a pursuit in which we have often admired
their great dexterity. During the periodical swelling of the rivers the
taking of fish ceases, for it is as difficult to fish in deep river
water as in the deep sea. It is in this interval, which is of two or
three months’ duration, that the Otomacs swallow great quantities of
earth. We have found considerable stores of it in their huts, the clay
balls being piled together in pyramidal heaps. The very intelligent
monk, Fray Ramon Bueno, a native of Madrid (who lived twelve years
among these Indians), assured us that one of them would eat from three
quarters of a pound to a pound and a quarter in a day. According to
the accounts which the Otomacs themselves give, this earth forms their
principal subsistence during the rainy season, though they eat at the
same time occasionally, when they can obtain it, a lizard, a small
fish, or a fern root. They have such a predilection for the clay, that
even in the dry season, when they can obtain plenty of fish, they
eat a little earth after their meals every day as a kind of dainty.
These men have a dark copper-brown complexion, and unpleasing Tartar
features. They are fat, but not large-bellied. The Franciscan monk who
lived among them as a missionary, assured us that he could perceive no
alteration in their health during the earth-eating season.

The simple facts are therefore as follows:--The Indians eat large
quantities of earth without injury to their health; and they themselves
regard the earth so eaten as an alimentary substance, _i. e._ they
feel themselves satisfied by eating it, and that for a considerable
time; and they attribute this to the earth or clay, and not to the
other scanty articles of subsistence which they now and then obtain in
addition. If you inquire from an Otomac about his winter provision, (in
tropical South America the rainy season is usually called winter), he
points to the heap of clay balls stored in his hut. But these simple
facts by no means determine the questions, whether the clay be really
an alimentary substance? whether earths be capable of assimilation? or
whether they merely serve to appease hunger by distending the stomach?
I cannot pretend to decide these questions. (Rel. hist. T. ii. p.
618-620.) It is curious that the usually credulous and uncritical
Father Gumilla positively denies the earth-eating as such. (Historia
del Rio Orinoco, nueva impr. 1791, T. i. p. 179.) He affirms that the
balls of clay had maize-meal and crocodile-fat mixed with them. But the
missionary, Fray Ramon Bueno, and our friend and travelling companion,
the lay brother Fray Juan Gonzalez, who was lost at sea off the Coast
of Africa with part of our collections, both assured us that the
Otomacs never mix crocodile fat with the clay; and of the meal said to
be mixed with it we heard absolutely nothing during our stay in Uruana.
The earth which we brought back with us, and which Vauquelin analysed,
is thoroughly pure and unmixed. May Gumilla, by a confusion of things
wholly distinct, have been alluding to the preparation of bread from
the long pod of a kind of Inga, which is previously buried in the earth
in order to hasten the commencement of the first stage of decay? That
the health of the Otomacs should not suffer from eating so much earth
appears to me particularly remarkable. Have they become accustomed to
it in the course of several generations?

In all tropical countries, human beings shew an extraordinary and
almost irresistible desire to swallow earth; and not alkaline earths,
which they might be supposed to crave to neutralize acid, but unctuous
and strong-smelling clays. It is often necessary to confine children
to prevent them from running out to eat earth immediately after a fall
of rain. I have observed with astonishment the Indian women in the
village of Banco on the Magdalena River, whilst engaged in shaping
earthen vessels on the potter’s wheel, put great lumps of clay into
their mouths. The same thing was remarked at an earlier period by Gili.
(Saggio di Storia Americana, T. ii. p. 311.) Wolves also eat earth, and
especially clay, in winter. It would be important to examine carefully
the excrements of animals and men that eat earth. With the exception of
the Otomacs, individuals of all other races who indulge for any length
of time the strange desire of earth-eating have their health injured by
it. At the mission of San Borja, we saw the child of an Indian woman,
who, his mother said, would hardly eat anything but earth. He was,
however, wasted nearly to a skeleton.

Why is it that in the temperate and cold zones this morbid craving for
eating earth is so much more rare, and is almost entirely confined,
when it is met with, to children and pregnant women; while in the
tropics it would appear to be indigenous in all quarters of the globe?
In Guinea the negroes eat a yellowish earth, which they call Caouac.
When brought as slaves to the West Indies, they try to obtain a similar
earth, and affirm that in their own country the habit never did them
any harm. In the American Islands they were made ill by it, and it was
forbidden in consequence; but a kind of earth (un tuf rouge jaunâtre)
was, in 1751, sold secretly in the market in Martinique. “Les negres
de Guinée disent que dans leur pays ils mangent habituellement une
certaine terre, dont le goût leur plait, sans en être incommodés.
Ceux qui sont dans l’abus de manger du Caouac en sont si friands
qu’il n’y a pas de châtiment qui puisse les empêcher de dévorer de la
terre.” (Thibault de Chanvalon, Voyage à la Martinique, p. 85.) In
the Island of Java, between Sarabaya and Samarang, Labillardière saw
small square reddish-coloured cakes exposed for sale in the villages.
The natives called them tana ampo (tanah, in Malay and Javanese,
signifies earth). On examination and enquiry he found that the cakes
consisted of reddish clay, and that they were eaten. (Voyage à la
Récherche de la Pérouse, T. ii. p. 322.) The edible clay of Samarang
has recently been sent to Berlin by Mohnike, in 1847, in the shape of
rolled tubes, like cinnamon, and has been examined by Ehrenberg. It
is a fresh-water formation deposited on limestone, and consisting of
microscopic Polygastrica, Gaillonella, Naviculas, and Phytolitharia.
(Bericht über die Verhandl. der Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin, aus dem J.
1848, S. 222-225.) The inhabitants of New Caledonia, to appease their
hunger, eat pieces as big as the fist of friable steatite, which
Vauquelin found to contain in addition no inconsiderable quantity
of copper. (Voyage à la Récherche de la Pérouse, T. ii. p. 205.) In
Popayan, and several parts of Peru, calcareous earth is sold in the
streets as an eatable for the Indians; it is used with Coca (the
leaves of the Erythroxylon peruvianum.) Thus we find the practice
of eating earth diffused throughout the torrid zone, among indolent
races inhabiting the finest and most fertile parts of the globe. But
accounts have also come from the North, through Berzelius and Retzius,
according to which, hundreds of cartloads of earth containing Infusoria
are said to be annually consumed by the country people, in the most
remote parts of Sweden, as breadmeal, and even more from fancy (like
the smoking of tobacco) than from necessity! In Finland this kind of
earth is occasionally mixed with the bread. It consists of empty shells
of animalculæ, so small and soft that they do not crunch perceptibly
between the teeth; it fills the stomach, but gives no real nourishment.
In periods of war, chronicles and documents preserved in archives often
give intimation of earths containing infusoria having been eaten;
speaking of them under the vague and general name of “mountain meal.”
It was thus during the Thirty Years’ War in Pomerania (at Camin); in
the Lausitz (at Muskau); and in the territory of Dessau (at Klieken);
and subsequently in 1719 and 1733 at the fortress of Wittenberg. (See
Ehrenberg über das unsichtbar wirkende organische Leben, 1842, S. 41.)

[51] p. 25.--“_Figures graven on the rock._”

In the interior of South America, between the 2d and 4th degrees of
North latitude, a forest-covered plain is enclosed by four rivers,
the Orinoco, the Atabapo, the Rio Negro, and the Cassiquiare. In this
district are found rocks of granite and of syenite, covered, like
those of Caicara and Uruana, with colossal symbolical figures of
crocodiles and tigers, and drawings of household utensils, and of the
sun and moon. At the present time this remote corner of the earth is
entirely without human inhabitants, throughout an extent of more than
8000 square geographical miles. The tribes nearest to its boundaries
are wandering naked savages, in the lowest stage of human existence,
and far removed from any thoughts of carving hieroglyphics on rocks.
One may trace in South America an entire zone, extending through
more than eight degrees of longitude, of rocks so ornamented; viz.
from the Rupuniri, Essequibo, and the mountains of Pacaraima, to the
banks of the Orinoco and of the Yupura. These carvings may belong to
very different epochs, for Sir Robert Schomburgk even found on the
Rio Negro representations of a Spanish galiot (Reisen in Guiana und
am Orinoko, übersetzt von Otto Schomburgk, 1841, S. 500), which must
have been of a later date than the beginning of the 16th century;
and this in a wilderness where the natives were probably as rude
then as at the present time. But it must not be forgotten that, as I
have elsewhere noticed, nations of very different descent, when in a
similar uncivilized state, having the same disposition to simplify and
generalise outlines, and being impelled by inherent mental dispositions
to form rhythmical repetitions and series, may be led to produce
similar signs and symbols. (Compare Relation hist. T. ii. p. 589, and
Martius über die Physionomie des Pflanzenreichs in Brasilien, 1824, S.
14.)

At the Meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, on the 17th of
November, 1836, there was read a memoir by Sir Robert Schomburgk “On
the Religious Traditions of the Macusi Indians, who inhabit the Upper
Mahu and a part of the Pacaraima Mountains;” a nation, consequently,
who for a century (since the journey of the adventurous Hortsmann,)
have not changed their residence. Sir Robert Schomburgk says: “The
Macusis believe that the sole survivor of a general deluge repeopled
the earth by changing stones into human beings.” This myth (the fruit
of the lively imagination of these nations, and which reminds us
of Deucalion and Pyrrha), shews itself in a somewhat altered form
among the Tamanaks of the Orinoco. When asked how mankind survived
the great flood, the “age of waters” of the Mexicans, they reply
without any hesitation, that ‘one man and one woman took refuge on
the high mountain of Tamanacu, on the banks of the Asiveru, and that
they then threw over their heads and behind their backs the fruits
of the Mauritia-palm, from the kernels of which sprang men and women
who repeopled the earth.’ Some miles from Encaramada, there rises,
in the middle of the savannah, the rock Tepu-Mereme, or the painted
rock. It shews several figures of animals and symbolical outlines
which resemble much those observed by us at some distance above
Encaramada, near Caycara, in 7° 5′ to 7° 40′ lat. and 66° 28′ to 67°
23′ W. long. from Greenwich. Rocks thus marked are found between the
Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (in 2° 5′ to 3° 20′ lat.), and what is
particularly remarkable, 560 geographical miles farther to the East in
the solitudes of the Parime. This last fact is placed beyond a doubt
by the journal of Nicholas Hortsmann, of which I have seen a copy in
the handwriting of the celebrated D’Anville. That simple and modest
traveller wrote down every day, on the spot, what had appeared to
him most worthy of notice, and he deserves perhaps the more credence
because, being full of dissatisfaction at having failed to discover
the objects of his researches, the Lake of Dorado, with lumps of gold
and a diamond mine, he looked with a certain degree of contempt on
whatever fell in his way. He found, on the 16th of April, 1749, on the
banks of the Rupunuri, at the spot where the river winding between the
Macarana mountains forms several small cascades, and before arriving
in the district immediately round Lake Amucu, “rocks covered with
figures,”--or as he says in Portuguese, “de varias letras.” We were
shown at the rock of Culimacari, on the banks of the Cassiquiare,
signs which were called characters, arranged in lines,--but they were
only ill-shaped figures of heavenly bodies, boa-serpents, and the
utensils employed in preparing manioc-meal. I have never found among
these painted rocks (piedras pintadas) any symmetrical arrangement or
any regular even-spaced characters. I am therefore disposed to think
that the word “letras” in Hortsmann’s journal must not be taken in the
strictest sense.

Schomburgk was not so fortunate as to rediscover the rock seen by
Hortsmann, but he has seen and described others on the banks of the
Essequibo, near the cascade of Warraputa. “This cascade,” he says,
“is celebrated not only for its height but also for the quantity of
figures cut on the rock, which have great resemblance to those which
I have seen in the Island of St. John, one of the Virgin Islands, and
which I consider to be, without doubt, the work of the Caribs, by whom
that part of the Antilles was formerly inhabited. I made the utmost
efforts to detach portions of the rock which contained the inscription,
and which I desired to take with me; but the stone was too hard, and
fever had taken away my strength. Neither promises nor threats could
prevail on the Indians to give a single blow with a hammer to these
rocks,--the venerable monuments of the superior mental cultivation of
their predecessors. They regard them as the work of the Great Spirit,
and the different tribes who we met with, though living at a great
distance, were nevertheless acquainted with them. Terror was painted on
the faces of my Indian companions, who appeared to expect every moment
that the fire of heaven would fall on my head. I saw clearly that my
endeavours would be fruitless, and I contented myself with bringing
away a complete drawing of these memorials.” The last determination was
certainly the best, and the editor of the English Journal, to my great
satisfaction, adds a note to the effect that it is to be wished that
no one else may be more successful than Mr. Schomburgk, and that no
future traveller from civilized countries may do anything towards the
destruction of these monuments of the unprotected Indians.

The symbolical signs seen by Robert Schomburgk in the Valley of the
Essequibo, near the rapids of Waraputa, (Richard Schomburgk, Reisen in
Britisch-Guiana, Th. i. S. 320), were remarked by him to bear a great
resemblance to genuine Carib ones in one of the small Virgin Islands
(St. John’s); but notwithstanding the wide extent of the invasions
of the Caribs, and the ancient power of this fine race, I cannot
believe that all the rock engravings,--which, as I have said, form
an immense belt traversing a great part of South America from west
to east,--are to be regarded as their work. I am inclined rather to
view these remains as traces of an ancient civilisation,--belonging,
perhaps, to an epoch when the tribes whom we now distinguish by various
appellations were still unknown. Even the veneration everywhere
testified by the Indians of the present day for these rude sculptures
of their predecessors, shews that they have no idea of the execution
of similar works. There is another circumstance which should be
mentioned: between Encaramada and Caycara, on the banks of the Orinoco,
a number of these hieroglyphical figures are sculptured on the face
of precipices at a height which could now be reached only by means of
extraordinarily high scaffolding. If one asks the natives how these
figures can have been cut, they answer, laughing, as if it were a fact
of which none but a white man could be ignorant, that “in the days of
the great waters their fathers went in canoes at that height.” Thus a
geological fancy is made to afford an answer to the problem presented
by a civilisation which has long passed away.

Let me be permitted to introduce here a remark which I borrow from
a letter addressed to me by the distinguished traveller, Sir Robert
Schomburgk. “The hieroglyphical figures are more widely extended than
you had perhaps supposed. During my expedition, which had for its
object the examination of the Corentyn River, I not only observed some
colossal figures on the rock of Timeri (4-1/2° N. lat. and 57-1/2° W.
long.), but I also discovered similar ones near the great cataracts
of the Corentyn, in 4° 21′ 30″ N. lat. and 57° 55′ 30″ W. long. These
figures are executed with much greater care than any which I discovered
in Guiana. Their size is about ten feet, and they appear to represent
human figures. The head-dress is extremely remarkable; it encompasses
the head, spreading out considerably in breadth, and is not unlike the
halos represented in paintings as surrounding the heads of Saints and
Sacred Persons. I have left my drawings of these figures in the colony,
but I hope some day to be able to lay them all before the public. I
saw ruder figures on the Cuyuwini, a river which empties itself into
the Essequibo in latitude 2° 16′ N., entering it from the north-west;
and I have since seen similar figures on the Essequibo itself in 1°
40′ N. lat. These figures extend, therefore, as ascertained by actual
observation, from 7° 10′ to 1° 40′ N. lat., and from 57° 30′ to 66° 30′
W. long. Thus the zone of pictured rocks extends, so far as it has been
at present examined, over a space of 192000 square geographical miles,
comprising the basins of the Corentyn, the Essequibo, and the Orinoco;
a circumstance from which we may form some inferences respecting the
former amount of population in this part of the continent.”

Other remarkable remains of a degree of civilisation which no longer
exists, are the granite vases with graceful labyrinthine ornaments, and
the earthen masks resembling Roman ones, which have been discovered on
the Mosquito coast, among wild Indians. (Archæologia Britan. vol. v.
1779, p. 318-324; and vol. vi. 1782, p. 107.) I have had them engraved
in the “Picturesque Atlas” which accompanies the historical portion
of my Travels to the Equinoctial Regions. Antiquaries are astonished
at the similarity of these ornaments (resembling a well-known Grecian
form), to those of the Palace of Mitla, near Oaxaca, in Mexico. In
looking at Peruvian carvings, I have never remarked any figures of the
large-nosed race of men, so frequently represented in the bas-reliefs
of Palenque in Guatimala, and in the Aztec paintings. Klaproth
remembered having seen individuals with similar large noses among the
Chalcas, a northern Mogul tribe. It is well known that many tribes of
the North American red or copper-coloured Indians have fine aquiline
noses; and that this is an essential physiognomic distinction between
them and the present inhabitants of Mexico, New Granada, Quito, and
Peru. Are the large-eyed, comparatively fair-complexioned people,
spoken of by Marchand as having been seen in 54° and 58° lat. on the
north-west coast of America, descended from an Alano-Gothic race, the
Usüni of the interior of Asia?

[52] p. 25.--“_Apparently weaponless, and yet prepared for murder._”

The Otomacs often poison the thumb-nail with Curare. A mere scratch
of the nail is deadly if the curare mixes with the blood. We obtained
specimens of the climbing plant, from the juice of which the curare is
prepared, at Esmeralda on the Upper Orinoco, but unfortunately we did
not find it in blossom. Judging by its physiognomy it appears to be
related to Strychnos (Rel. hist. T. ii. p. 547-556). Since the notice
in the work referred to of the curare or ourari (previously mentioned
by Raleigh, both as a plant and as a poison), the brothers Robert
and Richard Schomburgk have done much towards making us accurately
acquainted with the nature and preparation of this substance, of
which I was the first to bring a considerable quantity to Europe.
Richard Schomburgk found the plant in blossom in Guiana on the banks
of the Pomeroon and the Sururu in the territory of the Caribs, who
are not, however, acquainted with the manner of preparing the poison.
His instructive work (Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, Th. i. S. 441-461),
contains the chemical analysis of the juice of the Strychnos toxifera,
which, notwithstanding its name and its organic structure, does not
contain, according to Boussingault, any trace of strychnine. Virchou
and Münter’s interesting physiological experiments make it probable
that the curare or ourari poison does not kill by mere external
absorption, but only when absorbed by living animal substance of
which the continuity has been severed (_i. e._ which has been wounded
slightly); that it does not belong to the class of tetanic poisons;
and that its particular effect is to take away the power of voluntary
muscular movement, whilst the involuntary functions of the heart and
intestines still continue. Compare, also, the older chemical analysis
of Boussingault, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, T. xxxix.
1828, p. 24-37.

[*] [The circumstance referred to was even more remarkable. Casks of
palm oil, part of the cargo of the ship wrecked near Cape Lopez, were
conveyed by the current to Finmarken, and stranded near the North Cape.
Vide Editor’s note in the English translation of “Cosmos,” vol. i. p.
xcvii.]--_Tr._



THE

CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO.


In the preceding section, which was made the subject of an academical
lecture, I sought to depict those boundless plains which, according
to the varying modification of their natural characters induced by
climatic relations, appear to us sometimes as Deserts devoid of
vegetation, and sometimes as Steppes, or widely-extended grassy plains
or Prairies. In so doing I contrasted the Llanos of the southern part
of the New Continent with the dreadful seas of sand which form the
African Deserts; and these again with the Steppes of Central Asia, the
habitation of world-assailing pastoral nations, who at a former period,
when pressed hitherward from the East, spread barbarism and devastation
over the earth.

If on that occasion, (in 1806,) I ventured to combine widely
distributed portions of the earth’s surface in a single picture of
nature, and to entertain a public assembly with images whose colouring
was in unison with the mournful disposition of our minds at that epoch,
I will now, limiting myself to a narrower circle of phenomena, sketch
the more cheerful picture of river scenery composed of foaming rapids
and rich luxuriant vegetation. I propose to describe in particular
two scenes of nature in the wildernesses of Guiana,--the celebrated
Cataracts of the Orinoco, Atures and Maypures,--which, previous to my
visit, few Europeans had ever seen.

The impression left on our minds by the aspect of nature is frequently
determined, less even by the peculiar character of the strictly
terrestrial portion of the scene, than by the light thrown on mountain
or plain, either by a sky of azure purity, or by one veiled by lowering
clouds; and in the same manner descriptions of nature act upon us
more powerfully or more feebly, according as they are more or less in
harmony with the requirements of our feelings. For it is the inward
mirror of the sensitive mind which reflects the true and living
image of the natural world. All that determines the character of a
landscape,--the outline of the mountains, which, in the far-vanishing
distance, bound the horizon,--the dark shade of the pine forests,--the
sylvan torrent rushing between overhanging cliffs to its fall,--all are
in antecedent mysterious communion with the inner feelings and life of
man.

On this communion rests the nobler portion of the enjoyment which
nature affords. Nowhere does she penetrate us more deeply with the
feeling of her grandeur, nowhere does she speak to us with a more
powerful voice, than in the tropical world, under the “Indian sky,”
as, in the early middle ages, the climate of the torrid zone was
called. If, therefore, I venture again to occupy this Assembly with a
description of those regions, I do so in the hope that the peculiar
charm which belongs to them will not be unfelt. The remembrance of
a distant richly endowed land,--the aspect of a free and vigorous
vegetation,--refreshes and strengthens the mind; in the same manner
as our spirits, when oppressed with the actual present, love to escape
awhile, and to delight themselves with the earlier youthful age of
mankind, and with the manifestations of its simple grandeur.

Favouring winds and currents bear the voyager westward across the
peaceful Ocean arm,[53] which fills the wide valley between the New
Continent and western Africa. Before the American shore rises from the
liquid plain, he hears the tumult of contending, mutually opposing,
and inter-crossing waves. The mariner unacquainted with the region
would surmise the vicinity of shoals, or a wonderful outbreak of fresh
springs in the middle of the ocean,[54] like those in the neighbourhood
of Cuba. On approaching nearer to the granitic coast of Guiana, he
becomes sensible that he has entered the wide embouchure of a mighty
river, which issues forth like a shoreless lake and covers the ocean
around with fresh water. The green, and on the shallows the milk-white,
tint of the fresh water contrasts with the indigo-blue colour of the
sea, and marks with sharp outlines the limits of the river waves.

The name Orinoco, given to the river by its first discoverers, and
which probably originated in some confusion of language, is unknown
in the interior of the country. Nations in a rude state designate by
proper geographical names only such objects as can be confounded with
each other. The Orinoco, the Amazons, and the Magdalena rivers, are
called simply “The River,” or “The Great River,” or “The Great Water;”
whilst those who dwell on their banks distinguish even the smallest
streams by particular names.

The current produced by the Orinoco, between the mainland and the
Island of Trinidad with its asphaltic lake, is so strong, that ships
with all sail set, and with a favourable breeze, can with difficulty
make way against it. This deserted and dreaded part of the sea is
called the Bay of Sadness (Golfo Triste); the entrance forms the
Dragon’s Mouth (Boca del Drago). Here detached cliffs rise like towers
above the foaming floods, and seem still to indicate the ancient site
of a rocky bulwark[55], which, before it was broken by the force of the
current, united the island of Trinidad with the coast of Paria.

The aspect of this region first convinced the great discoverer of the
New World of the existence of an American continent. Familiar with
nature, he inferred that so immense a body of fresh water could only be
collected in a long course, and “that the land which supplied it must
be a continent, not an island.” As, according to Arrian, the companions
of Alexander, after crossing the snow-covered Paropanisus,[56] on
reaching the Indus imagined, from the presence of crocodiles, that
they recognised in that river a branch of the Nile; so Columbus,
unaware of the similarity of physiognomy which characterises the
various productions of the climate of Palms, readily supposed this
new continent to be the eastern coast of the far-projecting continent
of Asia. The mild coolness of the evening air, the ethereal purity of
the starry firmament, the balsamic fragrance of the flowers wafted
to him by the land breeze,--all led him (as Herrara tells us in the
Decades)[57], to deem that he had approached the garden of Eden, the
sacred dwelling-place of the first parents of the human race. The
Orinoco appeared to him to be one of the four rivers descending from
Paradise, to divide and water the earth newly decked with vegetation.
This poetic passage from the journal of Columbus’s voyage, or rather
from a letter written from Hayti, in October 1498, to Ferdinand and
Isabella, has a peculiar psychological interest. It teaches us anew
that the creative imagination of the poet exists in the Discoverer as
in every form of human greatness.

In considering the quantity of water which the Orinoco bears to the
Atlantic, the question arises--Which of the great South American
Rivers,--the Orinoco, the Amazons, or the River Plate,--is the largest?
The question, however, thus put is not a determinate one, the idea of
size in this case not being altogether definite. The River Plate has
the widest embouchure, being 92 geographical miles across; but, like
the British rivers, its length is comparatively small. Even at Buenos
Ayres its depth is already so inconsiderable as to impede navigation.
The Amazons is the longest of all rivers: its course from its origin
in the Lake of Lauricocha to its mouth is 2880 geographical miles. But
its breadth in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, near the cataract of
Rentama, as measured by me at the foot of the picturesque mountain of
Patachuma, hardly equals that of the Rhine at Mayence.

The Orinoco is narrower at its mouth than either the River Plate or
the Amazons; and its length, according to positions astronomically
determined by me, only amounts to 1120 geographical miles. But, on the
other hand, far in the interior of Guiana, 560 miles from its mouth,
I still found its breadth, when full, 16200 Parisian (17265 Eng.)
feet. The periodical swelling of the river annually raises its level
at this part of its course from 30 to 36 feet above its lowest level.
Sufficient materials for an accurate comparison of the enormous rivers
which intersect the continent of South America are still wanting. For
such a comparison it would be needful to know in each case the profile
of the river-bed, and the velocity of the water, which differs very
greatly in different parts of the same stream.

If, in the Delta enclosed by its variously divided and still unexplored
arms,--in the regularity of its periodical rise and fall--and in
the number and size of its crocodiles,--the Orinoco shews points of
resemblance to the Nile, there is this further analogy between the
two rivers, that after long rushing rapidly through many windings
between wood-fringed shores formed by granitic and syenitic rocks and
mountains, during the remainder of their course they slowly roll their
waters to the sea, between treeless banks, over an almost horizontal
bed. An arm of the Nile (the Green Nile, Bahr-el-Azrek) flows from the
celebrated mountain-lake near Gondar, in the Abyssinian Gojam Alps, to
Syene and Elephantis, through the mountains of Shangalla and Sennaar.
In a similar manner the Orinoco rises on the southern declivity of the
mountain chain which, in the 4th and 5th parallel of North latitude,
extends westward from French Guiana towards the Andes of New Granada.
The sources of the Orinoco[58] have never been visited by any European,
or even by any natives who have been in communication with Europeans.

In ascending the Upper Orinoco in the summer of 1800, we passed the
Mission of Esmeralda, and reached the mouths of the Sodomoni and the
Guapo. Here rises high above the clouds the massive summit of the
Yeonnamari or Duida, a grand and picturesque mountain which presents
to the spectator one of the finest scenes of nature which the tropical
world has to offer. Its altitude, according to my trigonometrical
measurement, is 8278 (8823 Eng.) feet above the level of the sea. The
southern slope of the mountain presents a treeless grassy surface, and
the humid evening air is filled far and wide with the fragrance of the
ripe ananas. The stalks of the pine apples, swelling with rich juice,
rise between the lowly herbs of the meadow, and the golden fruit is
seen shining at a distance from under its leafy crown of bluish-green.
Where mountain springs or rivulets break forth from the turfy covering,
the scene is further adorned by groups of tall fan-palms, whose foliage
never feels the influence of a cool breeze.

On the east of the Duida mountain a dense thicket of wild Cacao groves
begins, and amidst these are found trees of the celebrated Bertholletia
excelsa, the most vigorous of the productions of the tropical world[59].
Here the Indians collect the materials for their blow-pipes, colossal
grass-stalks having joints above 18 feet long from knot to knot.[60]
Some Franciscan monks have penetrated as far as the mouth of the
Chiguire, where the river is already so narrow that the natives have
thrown across it, near the waterfall of the Guaharibes, a suspension
bridge formed of the twining stems of climbing plants. The Guaicas, a
race of comparatively light complexion but of small stature, armed with
poisoned arrows, forbid any farther advance towards the east.

All, therefore, that has been put forward respecting the lake origin of
the Orinoco is fabulous[61]. We seek in vain in nature for the Laguna of
El Dorado, which is still marked in Arrowsmith’s maps as an inland sea
80 geographical miles in length. Has the little reedy lake of Amucu,
from which the Pirara (a branch of the Mahu) flows, given rise to this
fable? But the swamp in which the lake of Amucu is situated is four
degrees of longitude to the east of the district in which the sources
of the Orinoco must be sought.

It was an ancient custom of dogmatising geographers to make all the
larger rivers of the world originate in considerable lakes. To the
lake forming the supposed origin of the Orinoco was transferred the
site of the island of Pumacena, a rock of micaceous slate, the glitter
of which, in the 16th century, played, in the fable of El Dorado, a
memorable, and to deceived humanity often a fatal part. It is the
belief of the natives, that the Magellanic clouds of the southern
hemisphere, and even the fine nebulæ in the constellation of the
ship Argo, are a reflection of the metallic brilliancy of the silver
mountains of the Parime.

The Orinoco is one of those rivers which, after many windings, seem to
return back towards the region in which they took their rise. After
following a westerly and then a northerly course, it runs again to the
east, so that its mouth is almost in the same meridian as its source.
From the Chiguire and the Gehette as far as the Guaviare the Orinoco
flows to the west, as if it would carry its waters to the Pacific.
It is in this part of its course that it sends out towards the south
a remarkable arm, the Cassiquiare, but little known in Europe, which
unites with the Rio Negro, (called by the natives the Guainia), and
offers perhaps the only example of a bifurcation forming in the very
interior of a continent a natural connection between two great rivers
and their basins.

The nature of the ground, and the junction of the Guaviare and Atabapo
with the Orinoco, cause the latter to turn suddenly towards the north.
In the absence of correct geographical knowledge, the Guaviare flowing
in from the west was long regarded as the true origin of the Orinoco.
The doubts raised by an eminent geographer, M. Buache, since 1797, as
to the probability of a connection with the Amazons, have I hope been
entirely refuted by my expedition. In an uninterrupted navigation of
920 geographical miles I passed through the singular network of rivers,
from the Rio Negro, by the Cassiquiare, into the Orinoco; traversing in
this manner the interior of the Continent, from the Brazilian boundary
to the coast of Caraccas.

In the upper portion of the basin of the Orinoco and its tributaries,
between the 3rd and 4th degrees of north latitude, nature has several
times repeated the enigmatical phenomenon of the so-called “black
waters.” The Atabapo, whose banks are adorned with Carolinias
and arborescent Melastomas, and the Temi, Tuamini, and Guainia,
are all rivers of a coffee-brown colour. In the shade of the palm
groves this colour seems almost to pass into ink-black. When placed
in transparent vessels, the water appears of a golden yellow. The
image of the Southern Constellations is reflected with wonderful
clearness in these black streams. Where their waters flow gently,
they afford to the observer, when taking astronomical observations
with reflecting instruments, a most excellent artificial horizon. A
cooler atmosphere, less torment from stinging mosquitoes, greater
salubrity, and the absence of crocodiles (fish, however, are also
wanting), mark the region of these black rivers. They probably owe
their peculiar colour to a solution of carburetted hydrogen, to the
luxuriance of the tropical vegetation, and to the quantity of plants
and herbs on the ground over which they flow. On the western declivity
of the Chimborazo, towards the coast of the Pacific, I remarked that
the flooded waters of the Rio de Guayaquil gradually assumed a golden
yellow or almost coffee-brown colour, when covering the meadows for
some weeks.

In the vicinity of the mouths of the Guaviare and Atabapo grows the
Piriguao,[62] one of the noblest of palm trees, whose smooth and
polished trunk, between 60 and 70 feet high, is adorned with a delicate
flag-like foliage curled at the margins. I know no palm which bears
such large and beautifully coloured fruits. They resemble peaches,
and are tinged with yellow mingled with a roseate crimson. Seventy or
eighty of them form enormous pendulous bunches, of which each tree
annually ripens three. This fine tree might be called the peach palm.
The fleshy fruits are from the luxuriance of vegetation most often
devoid of seeds, and offer to the natives a nutritious farinaceous food
which, like plantains and potatoes, can be prepared in a variety of
ways.

Hitherto, or as far as the mouth of the Guaviare, the Orinoco flows
along the southern declivity of the Sierra de Parime; and from its
southern bank the vast forest-covered plain of the Amazons River
stretches far beyond the equator, even to the 15th degree of south
latitude. When the Orinoco turns suddenly to the north near San
Fernando de Atabapo, it breaks through a part of the mountain chain
along the base of which it had previously flowed; and this is the site
of the great waterfalls of Atures and Maypures. The river bed is here
everywhere hemmed in by colossal masses of rock, and divided as it were
into separate reservoirs by natural dikes.

In front of the entrance of the Meta there stands in the middle of a
mighty whirlpool an isolated cliff, to which the natives have given
the very appropriate name of the “rock of patience;” because when the
waters are low it sometimes costs those who are ascending the river two
days to pass it. Here the Orinoco, eating deep into the land, forms
picturesque rocky bays. Opposite to the Indian mission of Carichana
the traveller is surprised by the singular prospect which presents
itself to his view. His eye is involuntarily riveted on an abrupt
granitic rock, el Mogote de Cocuyza, a cube with vertically precipitous
sides, above 200 feet high and bearing on its upper surface a forest
of trees of rich and varied foliage. Resembling a Cyclopean monument
in its simple grandeur, this mass of rock rises high above the tops of
the surrounding palms, its sharp outlines appearing in strong relief
against the deep azure of the sky, and its summit uplifting high in air
a forest above the forest.

In descending the Orinoco from this point, still within the range
of the Carichana mission, we arrive at the part of the river where
the stream has forced for itself a way through the narrow pass of
Baraguan. Here we recognise everywhere traces of chaotic devastation.
To the north, (towards Uruana and Encaramada), masses of granite of
extraordinarily notched and serrated outline and grotesque aspect shine
with dazzling whiteness high above the thickets from amidst which they
rise.

It is in this region, after receiving the Apure, that the Orinoco
leaves the granitic chain of mountains and flows eastward to the
Atlantic, dividing the impenetrable forests of Guiana from the grassy
plains on which the vault of heaven seems everywhere to rest as on
the horizon of the ocean. Thus the elevated cluster of the Parime
mountains, which occupies the entire space between the sources of the
Jao and the Caura, is surrounded on three sides, to the South, to the
West, and to the North, by the Orinoco. Below Carichana the course of
the river is uninterrupted by rocks or rapids to its mouth, excepting
at the whirlpool of the Boca del Infierno (Hell’s mouth) near Muitaco,
where, however, the rocks which occasion the rapid do not extend across
the entire bed of the river as at Atures and Maypures. In these lower
parts of the river in the vicinity of the sea, the only danger feared
by the boatmen is that of encountering the great natural rafts,
consisting of trees torn from the banks by the swelling of the river,
against which canoes are often wrecked during the night. These rafts,
covered like meadows with flowering water plants, remind the spectator
of the floating gardens of the Mexican lakes.

After this rapid review of the course of the Orinoco, and of its
general relations to the surrounding country, I pass to the description
of the Falls of Maypures and Atures.

Between the sources of the rivers Sipapo and Ventuari a granite ridge
projects from the elevated mountain group of Cunavami, and advances far
to the west towards the mountains of Uniama. Four streams, which may be
said to mark the limits of the cataracts of Maypures, descend from this
ridge; two, the Sipapo and the Sanariapo, on the eastern side of the
Orinoco; and two, the Cameji and the Toparo, on its western side. Near
the Missionary village of Maypures the mountains retire and form a wide
bay open to the south-west.

The foaming stream flows at the present time at the foot of the eastern
mountain declivity, and far to the west we recognise the ancient bank
now forsaken by the water. A grass-covered plain, only about thirty
feet above the present highest level of the river, extends between the
two chains of hills. The Jesuits have built upon it a small church
formed of the trunks of palm trees.

The geological aspect of the district, the shapes of the rocks of Keri
and Oco, which have so much the character of islands, the water-worn
hollows in the first named of these rocks, situated at exactly the same
height as the cavities in the opposite island of Uivitari, all testify
that the Orinoco once filled the whole of this now dry gulf or bay.
Probably the waters formed a wide lake as long as the northern dike
was able to withstand their pressure. When it gave way, the prairie
now inhabited by the Guareke Indians must have been the first part
which appeared above the waters; which may subsequently, perhaps, have
long continued to surround the rocks of Keri and Oco, which rising
like mountain fortresses from the ancient bed of the river, present a
picturesque aspect. As the waters gradually diminished they withdrew
altogether to the foot of the eastern hills, where the river now flows.

This conjecture is confirmed by several circumstances. The Orinoco,
like the Nile near Philæ and Syene, has the property of imparting a
black colour to the reddish white masses of granite which it has bathed
for thousands of years. As far as the waters reach, one may remark on
the rocky shore the leaden-coloured coating described in page 189: its
presence, and the hollows before mentioned, mark the ancient height of
the waters of the Orinoco.

In the rock of Keri, in the islands of the Cataracts, in the gneiss
hills of Cumadaminari above the island of Tomo, and lastly at the mouth
of the Jao, we trace these black-coloured hollows at elevations of
150 to 180 (160 to 192 English) feet above the present height of the
river. Their existence teaches us a fact of which we may also observe
indications in the river beds of Europe; viz. that the streams whose
magnitude now excites our astonishment are only the feeble remains of
the immense masses of water belonging to an earlier age of the world.

These simple remarks and inferences have not escaped even the rude
natives of Guiana. The Indians everywhere called our attention to the
traces of the former height of the waters. There is in a grassy plain
near Uruana an isolated granite rock, on which, according to the report
of trustworthy witnesses, there are at a height of more than eighty
feet drawings of the sun and moon, and of many animals, particularly
crocodiles and boas, engraven or arranged almost in rows or lines.
Without artificial aid it would now be impossible to ascend this
perpendicular precipice, which deserves to be carefully examined by
future travellers. The hieroglyphical rock engravings on the mountains
of Uruana and Encaramada are equally remarkable in respect to situation.

If one asks the natives how these figures can have been cut in the
rocks, they answer that it was done when the waters were so high that
their fathers’ boats were only a little lower than the drawings. Those
rude memorials of human art would in such case have belonged to the
same age as a state of the waters implying a distribution of land and
water very different from that which now prevails, and belonging to an
earlier condition of the earth’s surface; which must not, however, be
confounded with that in which the earlier vegetation which adorned our
planet, the gigantic bodies of extinct land animals, and the oceanic
creatures of a more chaotic state, became entombed in the indurating
crust of globe.

At the northernmost extremity of the cataracts, attention is excited by
what are called the natural drawings or pictures of the Sun and Moon.
The rock Keri, to which I have several times referred, has received
its name from a white spot which is conspicuous from a great distance,
and in which the Indians have thought they recognised a remarkable
similarity to the disk of the full moon. I was not myself able to climb
the steep precipice, but the white mark in question is probably a
large knot of quartz formed by a cluster of veins in the greyish-black
granite.

Opposite to the Keri rock, on the twin mountain of the island of
Uivitari, which has a basaltic appearance, the Indians shew with
mysterious admiration a similar disk which they venerate as the image
of the Sun, Camosi. Perhaps the geographical position of the two rocks
may have contributed to these denominations, as the Keri (or Moon Rock)
is turned to the West, and the Camosi to the East. Some etymologists
have thought they recognised in the American word Camosi a similarity
to Camosh, the name of the Sun in one of the Phœnician dialects, and to
Apollo Chomeus, or Beelphegor and Ammon.

Unlike the grander falls of Niagara (which are 140 French or 150
English feet high) the “Cataracts of Maypures” are not formed by the
single precipitous descent of a vast mass of waters, nor are they
“narrows” or passes through which the river rushes with accelerated
velocity, as in the Pongo of Manseriche in the River of the Amazons.
The Cataracts of Maypures consist of a countless number of little
cascades succeeding each other like steps. The “Raudal” (the name given
by the Spaniards to this species of cataract) is formed by numerous
islands and rocks which so restrict the bed of the river, that out of
a breadth of 8000 (8526 E.) feet there often only remains an open
channel of twenty feet in width. The eastern side is now much more
inaccessible and dangerous than the western.

At the confluence of the Cameji with the Orinoco, goods are unladen in
order that the empty canoe, or, as it is here called, the Piragua, may
be conveyed by Indians well acquainted with the Raudal to the mouth
of the Toparo, where the danger is considered to be past. Where the
separate rocks or steps (each of which is designated by a particular
name) are not much above two or three feet high, the natives, if
descending the stream, venture, remaining themselves in the canoe, to
let it go down the falls: if they are ascending the stream they leave
the boat, swim forward, and when after many unsuccessful attempts they
have succeeded in casting a rope round the points of rock which rise
above the broken water, they draw up their vessel, which is often
either overset or entirely filled with water in the course of these
laborious proceedings.

Sometimes, and it is the only case which gives the natives any
uneasiness, the canoe is dashed in pieces against the rocks; the men
have then to disengage themselves with bleeding bodies from the wreck
and from the whirling force of the torrent, and to gain the shore by
swimming. Where the rocky steps are very high and extend across the
entire bed of the river, the light boat is brought to land and drawn
along the bank by means of branches of trees placed under it as rollers.

The most celebrated and difficult steps, those of Purimarimi and
Manimi, are between nine and ten feet high. I found with astonishment
by barometric measurements, (geodesical levelling being out of
the question from the inaccessibility of the locality, its highly
insalubrious atmosphere, and the swarms of mosquitoes which fill the
air), that the whole fall of the Raudal from the mouth of the Cameji to
that of the Toparo hardly amounts to 28 or 30 feet (30 or 32 English).
I say, “I found with astonishment;” for this shews that the dreadful
noise and wild dashing and foaming of the river are the results of the
narrowing of its bed by countless rocks and islands, and of the counter
currents produced by the form and situation of the masses of rock. The
best ocular demonstration of the small height of the whole fall is
obtained by descending from the village of Maypures to the bed of the
river by the rock of Manimi.

From this point a wonderful prospect is enjoyed. A foaming surface of
four miles in length presents itself at once to the eye: iron-black
masses of rock resembling ruins and battlemented towers rise frowning
from the waters. Rocks and islands are adorned with the luxuriant
vegetation of the tropical forest; a perpetual mist hovers over the
waters, and the summits of the lofty palms pierce through the cloud
of spray and vapour. When the rays of the glowing evening sun are
refracted in these humid exhalations a magic optical effect begins.
Coloured bows shine, vanish, and reappear; and the ethereal image is
swayed to and fro by the breath of the sportive breeze. During the
long rainy season the streaming waters bring down islands of vegetable
mould, and thus the naked rocks are studded with bright flower-beds
adorned with Melastomas and Droseras, and with small silver-leaved
mimosas and ferns. These spots recall to the recollection of the
European those blocks of granite decked with flowers which rise
solitary amidst the glaciers of Savoy, and are called by the dwellers
in the Alps “Jardins,” or “Courtils.”

In the blue distance the eye rests on the mountain chain of Cunavami, a
long extended ridge which terminates abruptly in a truncated cone. We
saw the latter, (Calitamini is its Indian name), glowing at sunset as
if in roseate flames. This appearance returns daily: no one has ever
been near the mountain to detect the precise cause of this brightness,
which may perhaps proceed from a reflecting surface produced by the
decomposition of tale or mica slate.

During the five days which we passed in the neighbourhood of the
cataracts, it was striking to hear the thunder of the rushing torrents
sound three times louder by night than by day. In all European
waterfalls the same phenomenon is remarked. What can be its cause in a
wilderness where there is nothing to interrupt the repose of nature?
Perhaps the currents of heated ascending air by causing irregular
density in the elastic medium impede the propagation of sound during
the day, by the disturbance they may occasion in the waves of sound;
whereas during the nocturnal cooling of the earth’s surface the upward
currents cease.

The Indians called our attention to ancient tracks of wheels. They
speak with admiration of the horned animals, (oxen), which in the times
of the Jesuit missions used to draw the canoes on wheeled supports,
along the left bank of the Orinoco, from the mouth of the Cameji
to that of the Toparo. The lading was not then removed from the
boats, nor were the latter worn and injured as they now are by being
constantly stranded upon the rocks and dragged over their rough surface.

The topographical plan of the district sketched by me shews the
facilities which the nature of the ground offers for the opening of a
canal from the Cameji to the Toparo, which would form a navigable side
arm to the river, the dangerous portion of which would be thus avoided.
I proposed its execution to the Governor-General of Venezuela.

The Raudal of Atures closely resembles that of Maypures; like it, it is
a cluster of islands between which the river forces its way for ten or
twelve thousand yards; a forest of palms rising from the midst of the
foaming waters. The most celebrated “Steps” of this Raudal are situated
between the islands of Avaguri and Javariveni, between Suripamana and
Uirapuri.

When M. Bonpland and I returned from the banks of the Rio Negro, we
ventured to pass the latter or lower half of the Raudal of Atures with
the loaded canoe, often leaving it for the rocky dikes which connect
one island with another. Sometimes the waters rush over these dikes,
and sometimes they fall with a hollow thundering sound into cavities,
and flowing for a time through subterranean channels, leave large
pieces of the bed of the river dry. Here the golden Pipra rupicola
makes its nest; it is one of the most beautiful of tropical birds, with
a double moveable crest of feathers, and is as pugnacious as the East
Indian domestic cock.

In the Raudal of Canucari the rocky dike or weir consists of piled-up
granite spheres. We crept into the interior of a grotto the damp walls
of which were covered with confervæ and shining Byssus, and where the
river rushed high above our heads with deafening noise.

We had accidentally more time than we desired for the enjoyment of
this grand scene of nature. The Indians had left us in the middle of
the cataract, proposing to take the canoe round a long narrow island
below which we were to re-embark. We waited an hour and a half under
a heavy tempestuous rain; night was coming on, and we sought in vain
for shelter between the masses of granite. The little monkeys, which
we had carried with us for months in wicker cages, by their mournful
cries attracted crocodiles whose size and leaden-grey colour shewed
their great age. I should not here notice an occurrence so usual in
the Orinoco, if the Indians had not assured us that no crocodiles were
ever seen in the cataracts; and in dependence on this assurance we had
even ventured repeatedly to bathe in this part of the river. Meanwhile
our anxiety lest we might be forced to pass the long tropical night in
the middle of the Raudal, wet through and deafened by the thundering
noise of the falling waters, increased every moment; until at last the
Indians reappeared with our canoe. From the low state of the waters
they had found the steps by which they had intended to let themselves
down inaccessible, and had been forced to seek among the labyrinth of
channels for a more practicable passage.

Near the southern entrance of the Raudal of Atures, on the right bank
of the river, is the cave of Ataruipe, which is widely celebrated among
the Indians. The grand and melancholy character of the scenery around
fits it for the burying-place of a deceased nation. We climbed with
difficulty, and not without danger of falling to a great depth below, a
steep and perfectly bare granite precipice. It would be hardly possible
to keep one’s footing on the smooth surface, if it were not for large
crystals of feldspar, which, resisting “weathering,” project as much as
an inch from the face of the rock.

On reaching the summit the traveller beholds a wide, diversified, and
striking prospect. From the foaming river-bed rise wood-crowned hills,
while beyond the western shore of the Orinoco the eye rests on the
boundless grassy plain of the Meta, uninterrupted save where at one
part of the horizon the Mountain of Uniama rises like a threatening
cloud. Such is the distance; the nearer prospect is desolate, and
closely hemmed in by high and barren rocks. All is motionless save
where the vulture or the hoarse goat-sucker hover solitarily in
mid-air, or, as they wing their flight through the deep-sunk ravine,
their silent shadows are seen gliding along the face of the bare rocky
precipice until they vanish from the eye.

This precipitous valley is bounded by mountains on whose rounded
summits are enormous detached granite spheres of more than 40 to 50
feet diameter: they appear to touch the base on which they rest only in
a single point, as if the slightest movement, such as that of a faint
earthquake shock, must cause them to roll down.

The farther part of the valley is densely wooded, and it is in this
shady portion that the cave of Ataruipe is situated. It is not properly
speaking a cave, but rather a vaulted roof formed by a far over-hanging
cliff, the cavity having apparently been formed by the waters when at
their ancient level. This place is the vault or cemetery of an extinct
nation.[63] We counted about 600 well-preserved skeletons placed in as
many baskets woven from the stalks of palm leaves. These baskets, which
the Indians call “mapires,” are shaped like square sacks, differing in
size according to the age of the deceased. Even new-born children had
each its own mapire. The skeletons are so perfect that not a bone or a
joint is wanting.

The bones had been prepared in three different ways; some bleached,
some coloured red with onoto, the pigment of the Bixa Orellana; and
some like mummies closely enveloped in sweet-smelling resin and
plantain leaves.

The Indians assured us that the custom had been to bury the fresh
corpses for some months in damp earth, which gradually consumed the
flesh; they were then dug up, and any remaining flesh scraped away with
sharp stones. This the Indians said was still the practice of several
tribes in Guiana. Besides the mapires or baskets we found urns of half
burnt clay which appeared to contain the bones of entire families.
The larger of these urns were about three feet high and nearly six
feet long, of a pleasing oval form and greenish colour, having handles
shaped like snakes and crocodiles, and meandering or labyrinthine
ornaments round the upper margin. These ornaments are quite similar
to those which cover the walls of the Mexican Palace at Mitla. They
are found in all countries and climates, and in the most different
stages of human cultivation,--among the Greeks and Romans, as well as
on the shields of the natives of Tahiti and other islands of the South
Sea,--wherever the eye is gratified by the rhythmical recurrence of
regular forms. These similarities, as I have elsewhere remarked in more
detail, are rather to be ascribed to psychological causes, or to such
as belong inherently to our mental constitution, than to be viewed as
evidences of kindred descent or ancient intercourse between different
nations.

Our interpreters could give us no certain information as to the age of
these vessels; that of the skeletons appeared for the most part not
to exceed a century. It is reported among the Guareca Indians, that
the brave Atures, being pressed upon by cannibal Caribs, withdrew to
the rocks of the Cataracts; a melancholy refuge and dwelling-place,
in which the distressed tribe finally perished, and with them their
language. In the most inaccessible parts of the Raudal there are
cavities and recesses which have served like the cave of Ataruipe as
burying-places. It is even probable that the last family of the Atures
may not have been long deceased, for (a singular fact,) there is still
in Maypures an old parrot of whom the natives affirm that he is not
understood because he speaks the Ature language.

We left the cave at nightfall, after having collected, to the great
displeasure of our Indian guides, several skulls and the entire
skeleton of a man. One of these skulls has been figured by Blumenbach
in his excellent craniological work, but the skeleton (together
with a large part of our natural history collections, especially the
entomological) was lost in a shipwreck on the coast of Africa, in which
our friend and former travelling companion, the young Franciscan monk
Juan Gonzalez, perished.

As if with a presentiment of this painful loss, we turned our steps
in a thoughtful and melancholy mood from this burying-place of a race
deceased. It was one of those clear and cool nights so frequent in the
tropics. The moon, encircled with coloured rings, stood high in the
zenith illuminating the margin of the mist which lay with well-defined
cloud-like outlines on the surface of the foaming river. Countless
insects poured their red phosphoric light on the herb-covered ground,
which glowed with living fire as if the starry canopy of heaven had
sunk down upon the turf. Climbing Bignonias, fragrant Vanillas, and
yellow-flowering Banisterias, adorned the entrance of the cave; and the
summits of the palms rustled above the graves.

Thus perish the generations of men! Thus do the name and the traces of
nations fade and disappear! Yet when each blossom of man’s intellect
withers,--when in the storms of time the memorials of his art moulder
and decay,--an ever new life springs forth from the bosom of the earth;
maternal Nature unfolds unceasingly her germs, her flowers, and her
fruits; regardless though man with his passions and his crimes treads
under foot her ripening harvest.


ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.

[53] p. 209.--“_Across the peaceful ocean arm, which fills the wide
valley between the American shore and Western Africa._”

The Atlantic Ocean, from the 23d degree of South to the 70th degree of
North latitude, has the form of an excavated longitudinal valley, in
which the salient and re-entering angles are opposite to each other.
I first developed this idea in my “Essai d’un Tableau géologique de
l’Amérique méridionale,” printed in the Journal de Physique, T. liii.
p. 61. (Geognostische Skizze von Südamerika, in Gilbert’s Annalen der
Physik, Bd. xvi. 1804, S. 394-449.) From the Canaries, and especially
from the 21st degree of North latitude and the 23d degree of West
longitude, to the North-East coast of South America, the surface of
the sea is usually so calm, and the waves so gentle, that an open boat
might navigate in safety.

[54] p. 209.--“_A wonderful outbreak of fresh springs in the middle of
the ocean._”

On the southern coast of the island of Cuba, south-west of the Port of
Batabano in the gulf of Xagua, a few miles from the coast, springs of
fresh water gush from the bed of the ocean probably under the influence
of hydrostatic pressure, and rise through the midst of the salt water.
They issue forth with such force that boats are cautious in approaching
this locality, which has an ill repute on account of the high cross sea
thus caused. Trading vessels sailing along the coast and not disposed
to land, sometimes visit these springs to take in a supply of fresh
water, which is thus obtained in the open sea. The greater the depth
from which the water is taken, the fresher it is found to be. The
“river cow,” Trichecus manati, which does not remain habitually in
salt water, is often killed here. This remarkable phenomenon of fresh
springs issuing from the sea has been most carefully examined by a
friend of mine, Don Francisco Lemaur, who made a trigonometrical survey
of the Bay of Xagua. I have been farther to the South in the group
of islands called the Jardines del Rey, (the King’s Gardens), making
astronomical observations for latitude and longitude; but I have never
been at Xagua itself.

[55] p. 210.--“_The ancient site of a rocky bulwark._”

Columbus, whose unwearied spirit of observation exerted itself in
every direction, propounds in his letters to the Spanish monarchs a
geognostical hypothesis respecting the forms of the larger Antilles.
Having his mind deeply impressed with the strength of the East and
West Equinoctial current, he ascribes to it the breaking up of the
group of the smaller West Indian islands, and the singularly lengthened
configuration of the southern coasts of Porto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, and
Jamaica, which all follow almost exactly the direction of parallels
of latitude. On his third voyage (from the end of May 1498 to the end
of November 1500), in which, from the Boca del Drago to the Island
of Margarita, and afterwards from that island to Haiti, he felt
the whole force of the Equinoctial current, “that movement of the
waters which is in accordance or conformity with the movement of the
heavens--movimiento de los cielos,” he says expressly that the Island
of Trinidad had been torn from the mainland by the violence of the
current. He alludes to a chart which he sends to the monarchs,--a
“pintura de la tierra” by himself, which is often referred to in the
celebrated lawsuit against Don Diego Colon respecting the rights of
the Admiral. “Es la carta de marear y figura que hizo el Almirante
señalando los rumbos y vientos por los quales vino á Paria, que dicen
parte del Asia”, (Navarrete Viages y Descubrimientos que hiciéron por
mar los Españoles, T. i. p. 253 and 260; T. iii. p. 539 and 587.)

[56] p. 210.--“_Over the snow-covered Paropanisus._”

Diodorus’s descriptions of the Paropanisus (Diodor. Sicul. lib. xvii.
p. 553, Rhodom.) might almost pass for a description of the Andes of
Peru. The Army passed through inhabited places where snow fell daily!

[57] p. 211.--“_Herrara in the Decades._”

Historia general de las Indias occidentales, Dec. i. lib iii. cap. 12
(ed. 1601, p. 106); Juan Bautista Muñoz, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, lib.
vi. c. 31, p. 301; Humboldt, Examen Crit. T. iii p. 111.

[58] p. 213.--“_The Sources of the Orinoco have never been visited by
any European._”

Thus I wrote respecting these sources in the year 1807, in the first
edition of the “Ansichten der Natur,” and I have to repeat the same
statement after an interval of 41 years. The travels of the brothers
Robert and Richard Schomburgk, so important for all departments
of natural knowledge and geography, have afforded us thorough
investigations of other and more interesting facts; but the problem of
the situation of the sources of the Orinoco has been only approximately
solved by Sir Robert Schomburgk. It was from the West that M. Bonpland
and myself advanced as far as Esmeralda, or the confluence of the
Orinoco and the Guapo; and I was able to describe with certainty, by
the aid of well-assured information, the upper course of the Orinoco to
above the mouth of the Gehette, and to the small Waterfall (Raudal) de
los Guaharibos. It was from the East that Robert Schomburgk, advancing
from the mountains of the Majonkong Indians, (the altitude of the
inhabited portions of which he estimated by the boiling point of water
at 3300 F., or 3517 E. feet), came to the Orinoco by the Padamo River,
which the Majonkongs and Guinaus (Guaynas?) call Paramu (Reisen in
Guiana, 1841, S. 448). In my Atlas I had estimated the position of the
confluence of the Padamo with the Orinoco at N. lat. 3° 12′, and W.
long. 65° 46′: Robert Schomburgk found it by direct observation, lat.
2° 53′, long. 65° 48′. The leading object of this traveller’s arduous
journey was not the pursuit of natural history, but the solution of the
prize question proposed by the Royal Geographical Society of London
in November 1834,--viz. the connection of the coast of British Guiana
with the easternmost point which I had reached on the Upper Orinoco.
After many difficulties and much suffering, the desired object was
completely attained. Robert Schomburgk arrived with his instruments
on the 22d of February, 1839, at Esmeralda. His determinations of the
latitude and longitude of the place agreed more closely with mine than
I had expected would be the case (S. xviii. and 471). Here let us
allow the observer to speak for himself:--“I want words to describe
the feelings which overpowered me as I sprang to shore. My aim was
attained; my observations, began on the coast of Guiana, were brought
into connection with those of Humboldt at Esmeralda: I frankly own,
that in the course of this enterprise, at a time when almost all my
physical powers had well nigh deserted me, and when I was surrounded
by dangers and difficulties of no common nature, it was only by the
recognition which I hoped for from him, that I had been encouraged to
press onward with unalterable determination towards the goal which
I had now reached. The emaciated figures of my Indians and faithful
guides told more plainly than any words could do, what difficulties we
had had to surmount, and had surmounted.” After expressions so kind
towards myself, I must be permitted to subjoin the following passage,
extracted from my Preface to the German Edition of Robert Schomburgk’s
Account of his Travels, published in 1841.

“Immediately after my return from Mexico, I notified the direction and
the routes which should be followed to explore the unknown portion of
the South American Continent between the sources of the Orinoco, the
mountain chain of Pacaraima, and the sea-shore near Essequibo. These
wishes, which I expressed so strongly in my Rélation Historique, have
at last, after the lapse of almost half a century, been for the greater
part fulfilled. Besides the joy of having lived to see so important
an extension of our geographical knowledge, I have had that of seeing
it attained by means of a courageous and well-conducted enterprise,
requiring the most devoted perseverance, executed by a young man with
whom I feel united by the double bond of similarity of pursuits and
efforts, and of our common country. Motives such as these have alone
been sufficient to overcome the distaste which I entertain, perhaps
without reason, to introductory prefaces by another hand than that of
the author of the work. But in this case I could not consent to forego
the opportunity of expressing, thus publicly, my heartfelt esteem
for the accomplished traveller who, in pursuit of an object deriving
all its interest from the mind,--namely, in the self-imposed task of
penetrating from East to West, from the Valley of the Essequibo to
Esmeralda,--succeeded, after five years of efforts and of sufferings
(which I can in part appreciate from my own experience), in reaching
the goal which he had proposed to himself. Courage for the momentary
execution of a hazardous action is more easily met with, and implies
less of inward strength, than does the resolution to endure patiently
long-continued physical sufferings, incurred in the pursuit of some
deeply-felt mental interest, and still to determine to go forward,
undismayed by the certainty of having to retrace the same painful
route, and to support the same privations in returning with enfeebled
powers. Serenity of mind, almost the first requisite for an undertaking
in inhospitable regions, passionate love for some class of scientific
labour, (be it in natural history, astronomy, hypsometrics, magnetism,
or aught else,) and a pure feeling for the enjoyment which nature in
her freedom is ready to impart, are elements which, when they meet
together in an individual, ensure the attainment of valuable results
from a great and important journey.”

In discussing the question respecting the sources of the Orinoco,
I will begin with the conjectures which I had myself formed on the
subject. The dangerous route travelled in 1739 by the surgeon Nicolas
Hortsmann, of Hildesheim; in 1775 by the Spaniard Don Antonio Santos,
and his friend Nicolas Rodriguez; in 1793 by the Lieutenant-Colonel
of the 1st Regiment of the Line of Para, Don Francisco Jose Rodriguez
Barata; and (according to manuscript papers, for which I am indebted
to the former Portuguese Ambassador in Paris, Chevalier de Brito) by
several English and Dutch settlers, who in 1811 went from Surinam to
Para by the Portage of the Rupunuri and by the Rio Branco;--divides the
terra incognita of the Parime into two unequal portions, and serves
to limit the situation of a very important point in the geography of
those regions--viz. the sources of the Orinoco, which it is no longer
possible to remove to an uncertain distance to the East, without
interfering thereby with what we know of the course of the Rio Branco,
which flows from north to south through the basin of the Upper Orinoco;
while that river itself, in this part of its course, pursues for the
most part an East and West direction. From political reasons, the
Brazilians, since the beginning of the present century, have testified
a lively interest in the extensive plains east of the Rio Branco.
See the memoir which I drew up at the request of the Portuguese
court in 1817, “sur la fixation des limites des Guyanes Française et
Portuguaise” (Schoell, Archives historiques et politiques, ou Recueil
de Pièces officielles, Memoires, &c. T. i. 1818, p. 48-58). Viewing
the position of Santa Rosa on the Uraricapara, the course of which
appears to have been determined with tolerable accuracy by Portuguese
engineers, the sources of the Orinoco cannot be looked for east of
the meridian of 65-1/2° from Paris, (63°.8′ W. long. from Greenwich).
This being the eastern limit beyond which they cannot be placed, and
considering the state of the river at the Raudal de los Guaharibos
(above Caño Chiguire, in the country of the surprisingly fair-skinned
Guaycas Indians, and 52′ East of the great Cerro Duida), it appears to
me probable that the upper part of the Orinoco does not really extend,
at the utmost, beyond the meridian of 66-1/2° from Paris (64°.08′ W.
from Greenwich.) This point is according to my combinations 4°.12′ West
of the little lake of Amucu, which was reached by Sir Robert Schomburgk.

I next subjoin the conjectures of that gentleman, having given the
earlier ones formed by myself. According to his view, the course of the
upper Orinoco to the east of Esmeralda is dedicated from South-east to
North-west; my estimations of latitude for the mouths of the Padamo and
the Gehette appearing to be respectively 19 and 36′ too small. Robert
Schomburgk supposes the sources of the Orinoco to be in lat. 2°.30′
(S. 460); and the fine “Map of Guayana, to illustrate the route of R.
H. Schomburgk,” which accompanies the splendid English work entitled
“Views in the Interior of Guiana,” places the sources of the Orinoco
in 67°.18′ (W. from Paris), _i. e._ 1°.6′ west of Esmeralda, and only
48′ of longitude nearer to the Atlantic than I had thought admissible.
From astronomical combinations Schomburgk has placed the mountain of
Maravaca, which is upwards of nine thousand feet high, in lat. 3°.41′
and long. 65°.38′. Near the mouth of the Padamo or Paramú the Orinoco
was scarcely three hundred yards wide; and more to the west, where
it spreads to a breadth of from four to six hundred yards, it was so
shallow and so full of sand-banks that the Expedition were obliged
to dig channels, the river bed being only fifteen inches deep. Fresh
water Dolphins were still to be seen everywhere in large numbers; a
phenomenon which the zoologists of the 18th century would not have been
prepared to expect in the Orinoco and the Ganges.

[59] p. 213.--“_The most vigorous of the productions of the tropical
world._”

The Bertholletia excelsa (Juvia), of the family of Myrtaceæ (and placed
in Richard Schomburgk’s proposed division of Lecythideæ), was first
described by Bonpland and myself in the “Plantes équinoxiales,” T. i.
1808, p. 122, tab. 36. This gigantic and magnificent tree offers, in
the perfect formation of its cocoa-like, round, thick, woody fruit
enclosing the three-cornered and also woody seed-vessels, the most
remarkable example of high organic development. The Bertholletia grows
in the forests of the Upper Orinoco between the Padamo and the Ocamu,
near the mountain of Mapaya, and also between the rivers Amaguaca and
Gehette. (Rélation historique, T. ii. p. 474, 496, 558-562.)

[60] p. 213.--“_Grass stalks having joints above eighteen feet long from
knot to knot._”

Robert Schomburgk, when visiting the small mountainous country of the
Majonkongs, on his way to Esmeralda, was so fortunate as to determine
the species of Arundinaria which furnishes the material for the
blowpipes or tubes through which the Indians discharge their arrows.
He says of this plant: “It grows in large tufts like the Bambusa;
the first joint rises without a knot to a height of from 16 to 17
feet before it begins to put forth leaves. The entire height of the
Arundinaria, as it grows at the foot of the great mountain of Maravaca,
is from 30 to 40 feet, with a thickness of scarcely half an inch
diameter. The top is always inclined. This kind of grass is peculiar to
the sandstone mountains between the Ventuari, the Paramu (Padamo), and
the Mavaca. The Indian name is Curata, and hence, from the excellence
of these far-famed blow tubes of great length, the Majonkongs and
Guinaus of these districts have been given the names of the Curata
nation.” (Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoco, S. 451.)

[61] p. 214.--“_Fabulous lake--origin of the Orinoco._”

The lakes of these regions (some of which have had their real size
much exaggerated by theoretical geographers, while the existence of
others is purely imaginary), may be divided into two groups. The first
of these groups comprises the lakes, whether real or imaginary, placed
between Esmeralda (the easternmost mission on the upper Orinoco), and
the Rio Branco; and the second those assumed to exist in the district
between the Rio Branco and French, Dutch, and British Guiana. This
general view, of which travellers should never lose sight, shews that
the question of whether there is yet a Lake Parime east of the Rio
Branco, other than the Lake Amucu, seen by Hortsmann, Santos, Colonel
Barata, and Schomburgk, has nothing whatever to do with the problem
of the sources of the Orinoco. As the name of my friend the former
Director of the Hydrographic Office at Madrid, Don Felipe Bauza, is
deservedly of great weight in geography, the impartiality which ought
to preside over every scientific investigation makes me feel it a duty
to recall that this learned man was inclined to the view, that there
must be lakes west of the Rio Branco and not far from the sources of
the Orinoco. He wrote to me from London, a short time before his death:
“I wish you were here, that I might converse with you on the subject of
the geography of the upper Orinoco, which has occupied you so much. I
have been so fortunate as to rescue from entire destruction the papers
of the General of Marine, Don José Solano, father of the Solano who
perished in so melancholy a manner at Cadiz. These documents relate
to the boundary division between the Spaniards and the Portuguese,
with which the elder Solano had been charged, in conjunction with Chef
d’Escadron Yturriaga and Don Vicente Doz, since 1754. In all these
plans and sketches I see a Laguna Parime, represented sometimes as the
source of the Orinoco, and sometimes quite detached from that river.
Are we, then, to admit the existence of another lake north-east of
Esmeralda?”

Löffling, the celebrated pupil of Linnæus, came to Cumana as the
botanist of the boundary expedition above alluded to. After traversing
the missions on the Piritu and the Caroni he died on the 22d of
February, 1756, at the mission of Santa Eulalia de Murucuri, a little
to the south of the confluence of the Orinoco and the Caroni. The
documents of which Bauza speaks are the same as those on which the
great map of De la Cruz Olmedilla is based. They constitute the type
of all the maps which appeared in England, France, and Germany up to
the close of the last century; and they also served for the two maps
drawn in 1756 by Peter Caulin, the historian of Solano’s expedition,
and by an unskilful compiler, M. de Surville, Keeper of the Archives
of the Secretary of State’s office at Madrid. The discordance between
these maps shews the little dependence which can be placed on the
surveys of the expedition; besides which, Caulin’s acute remarks lead
us to perceive the circumstances which gave occasion to the fiction
of the Lake Parime; and Surville’s map, which accompanies his work,
not only restores this lake under the name of the White Sea and of the
Mar Dorado, but also adds another lake, from which, partly through
lateral outlets, the Orinoco, the Siapa, and the Ocamo issue. I was
able to satisfy myself on the spot of the fact, well known in the
missions, that Don José Solano went indeed beyond the cataracts of
Atures and Maypures, but not beyond the confluence of the Guaviare and
the Orinoco, in lat. 4°.3′ and long. 68°.09′; that the instruments
of the Boundary Expedition were not carried either to the Isthmus
of the Pimichin and the Rio Negro, or to the Cassiquiare; and that
even on the Upper Orinoco they were not taken above the mouth of the
Atabapo. This extensive country, in which previous to my journey no
exact observations had been attempted, had been traversed since the
time of Solano only by a few soldiers sent in search of discoveries;
and Don Apolinario de la Fuente (whose journals I obtained from the
archives of the province of Quiros), had collected, without critical
discrimination, from the lying tales told by Indians, whatever could
flatter the credulity of the governor Centurion. No member of the
Expedition had seen any lake, and Don Apolinario had not advanced
farther than the Cerro Yumariquin and the Gehette.

Having now established throughout the extensive district, to which
it is desired to direct the inquiring zeal of travellers, a dividing
line bounding the basin of the Rio Branco, it still remains to remark,
that for a century past no advance has taken place in our geographical
knowledge of the country west of this valley between 61-1/2° and
65-1/2° W. longitude. The attempts repeatedly made by the Government
of Spanish Guiana, since the expeditions of Iturria and Solano, to
reach and to pass the Pacaraima mountains, have only produced very
inconsiderable results. When the Spaniards, in travelling to the
missions of the Catalonian Capuchin monks of Barceloneta at the
confluence of the Caroni and the Rio Paragua, ascended the latter
river, in going southward, to its junction with the Paraguamusi, they
founded at the site of the latter junction the mission of Guirion,
which at first received the pompous name of Ciudad de Guirion. I
place it in about 4-1/2° of North latitude. From thence the governor
Centurion, stimulated by the exaggerated accounts given by two
Indian chiefs, Paranacare and Arimuicapi, of the powerful nation of
the Ipurucotos, to search for el Dorado, prosecuted what were then
called spiritual conquests still farther, and founded beyond the
Pacaraima mountains the two villages of Santa Rosa and San Bautista de
Caudacacla; the former on the higher eastern bank of the Uraricapara,
a tributary of the Uraricuera which in the narrative of Rodriguez I
find called Rio Curaricara; and the latter six or seven German (24
or 28 English) geographical miles farther to the east south-east.
The astronomer of the Portuguese Boundary Commission, Don Antonio
Pires de Sylva Pontes Leme, captain of a frigate, and the captain
of engineers, Don Ricardo Franco d’Almeida de Serra, who between
1787 and 1804 surveyed with the greatest care the whole course of
the Rio Branco and its upper branches, call the westernmost part of
the Uraricapara “the Valley of Inundation.” They place the Spanish
mission of Santa Rosa in 3°.46′ N. lat., and point out the route which
leads from thence northward across the chain of mountains to the
Caño Anocapra, an affluent of the Paraguamusi, by means of which one
passes from the basin of the Rio Branco to that of the Caroni. Two
maps of these Portuguese officers, which contain the whole details
of the trigonometrical survey of the windings of the Rio Branco, the
Uraricuera, the Tacutu, and the Mahu, have been kindly communicated
to Colonel Lapie and myself by the Count of Linhares. These valuable
unpublished documents, of which I have made use, are in the hands of
the learned geographer who began a considerable time ago to have them
engraved at his own expense. The Portuguese sometimes give the name
of Rio Parime to the whole of the Rio Branco, and sometimes confine
that denomination to one branch or tributary, the Uraricuera, below
the Caño Mayari and above the old mission of San Antonio. As the
words Paragua and Parime signify water, great water, lake, or sea,
it is not surprising to find them so often repeated among nations at
a distance from each other, the Omaguas on the Upper Marañon, the
Western Guaranis, and the Caribs. In all parts of the world, as I
have already remarked, the largest rivers are called by those who
dwell on their banks “the River,” without any distinct and peculiar
appellation. Paragua, the name of a branch of the Caroni, is also the
name given by the natives to the Upper Orinoco. The name Orinucu is
Tamanaki; and Diego de Ordaz first heard it pronounced in 1531, when
he ascended the river to the mouth of the Meta. Besides the “Valley of
Inundation,” above spoken of, we find other large lakes or expanses of
water between the Rio Xumuru and the Parime. One of these belongs to
the Tacutu river, and the other to the Uraricuera. Even at the foot
of the Pacaraima mountains the rivers are subject to great periodical
overflows; and the Lake of Amucu, which will be spoken of more in the
sequel, imparts a similar character to the country at the commencement
of the plains. The Spanish missions of Santa Rosa and San Bautista
de Caudacacla or Cayacaya, founded in the years 1770 and 1773 by the
Governor Don Manuel Centurion, were destroyed before the close of
the century, and since that period no fresh attempt has been made to
penetrate from the basin of the Caroni to the southern declivity of the
Pacaraima mountains.

The territory east of the valley of the Rio Branco has of late years
been the subject of some successful examination. Mr. Hillhouse
navigated the Massaruni as far as the bay of Caranang, from whence,
he says, a path would have conducted the traveller in two days to the
sources of the Massaruni, and in three days to streams flowing into the
Rio Branco. In regard to the windings of the great river Massaruni,
described by Mr. Hillhouse, that gentleman remarks, in a letter written
to me from Demerara (January 1, 1831), that “the Massaruni beginning
from its source flows first to the West, then to the North for one
degree of latitude, afterwards almost 200 English miles to the East,
and finally North and N.N.E. to its junction with the Essequibo.”
As Mr. Hillhouse was unable to reach the southern declivity of the
Pacarima chain, he was not acquainted with the Amucu Lake: he says
himself, in his printed account, that “from the information he had
gained from the Accaouais, who constantly traverse all the country
between the shore and the Amazons river, he had become satisfied that
there is no lake at all in these districts.” This statement occasioned
me some surprise, as it was in direct contradiction to the views which
I had formed respecting the Lake of Amucu, from which the Caño Pirara
flows according to the narratives of Hortsmann, Santos, and Rodriquez,
whose accounts inspired me with the more confidence because they
agree entirely with the recent Portuguese manuscript maps. Finally,
after five years of expectation, Sir Robert Schomburgk’s journey has
dispelled all doubts.

“It is difficult to believe,” says Mr. Hillhouse, in his interesting
memoir on the Massaruni, “that the report of a great inland water is
entirely without foundation. It seems to me possible that the following
circumstances may have given occasion to the belief in the existence of
the fabulous lake of the Parime. At some distance from the fallen rocks
of Teboco the waters of the Massaruni appear to the eye as motionless
as the tranquil surface of a lake. If at a more or less remote epoch
the horizontal stratum of granite at Teboco had been perfectly compact
and unbroken, the waters must have stood at least fifty feet above
their present level, and there would thus have been formed an immense
lake, ten or twelve English miles broad and 1500 to 2000 English miles
long.” (Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1836, Sept. p. 316.) It is not
solely the vast extent of this supposed inundation which prevents me
from accepting this explanation. I have seen plains (the Llanos),
where during the rainy season the overflowing of the affluents of the
Orinoco annually cover with water a space of 400 German geographical
square miles (equal to 6400 English geographical square miles). At such
times the labyrinth of branches between the Apure, the Arauca, the
Capanaparo, and the Sinaruco (see Maps 17 and 18 of my Geographical
and Physical Atlas), can no longer be traced, for the separate courses
are obliterated, and all appears one vast lake. But the fable of the
Dorado of the Parime, and of the White Sea or Lake of the Parime,
belongs historically, as I endeavoured to shew in another work thirty
years ago, to an entirely different part of Guiana, namely, to the
country south of the Pacaraima mountains; and originated in the shining
appearance of the micaceous rocks of the Ucucuamo, the name of the Rio
Parime (Rio Branco), the overflowings of the tributaries of that river,
and especially the existence of the Lake of Amucu, which is in the
vicinity of the Rio Rupunuwini or Rupunuri, and is connected through
the Pirara with the Rio Parime.

I have seen with pleasure that the travels of Sir Robert Schomburgk
have fully confirmed these early views. The part of his map which gives
the course of the Essequibo and the Rupunuri is entirely new and of
great geographical importance. It places the Pacaraima chain in 3° 52′
to 4° North latitude (I had given it 4° to 4° 10′), and makes it reach
the confluence of the Essequibo and the Rupunuri, in 3° 57′ N. lat.
and 60° 23′ W. long. from Paris (58° 01′ from Greenwich). I had placed
this spot half a degree too far to the north. Sir Robert Schomburgk
calls the last named river Rupununi, according to the pronunciation
of the Macusis; he gives as synonymes of Rupuniri, Rupunuwini and
Opununy, the Carib tribes in these districts having much difficulty in
articulating the sound of the letter _r_. The situation of Lake Amucu
and its relations to the Mahu (Maou) and Tacutu (Tacoto) are quite
in accordance with my map of Columbia in 1825. We agree equally well
respecting the latitude of the lake, which I gave 3° 35′, and which he
finds to be 3° 33′; but the Caño Pirara, (Pirarara) which connects the
Lake of Amucu with the Rio Branco, flows from it to the north, instead
of to the west as I had supposed. The Sibarana of my map, of which
Hortsmann places the source near a fine mine of rock-crystal, a little
to the north of the Cerro Ucucuamo, is the Siparuni of Schomburgk’s
map. His Waa-Ekuru is the Tavaricuru of the Portuguese geographer
Pontes Leme; it is the tributary of the Rupunuri, which approaches
nearest to the Lake of Amucu.

The following remarks from the narrative of Robert Schomburgk throw
some light on the subject before us. “The Lake of Amucu,” says this
traveller, “is incontestably the nucleus of the Lake of Parime and the
supposed White Sea. When we visited it in December and January its
length scarcely amounted to a mile, and its surface was half covered
with reeds.” (This remark is found as early as in D’Anville’s map, in
1748.) “The Pirara issues from the lake west north-west of the Indian
village of Pirara, and falls into the Maou or Mahu. The last named
river, from such information as I was able to gather, rises on the
north side of the Pacaraima mountains, the easternmost part of which
only attains a height of 1500 French (in round numbers 1600 English)
feet. The sources of the Mahu are on a plateau, from whence it descends
in a fine waterfall called Corona. We were about to visit this fall
when on the third day of our excursion to the mountains the sickness
of one of my companions obliged us to return to the station near Lake
Amucu. The Mahu has “black” or coffee-brown water, and its current
is more rapid than that of the Rupunuri. In the mountains through
which it makes its way it is about 60 yards broad, and its environs
are remarkably picturesque. This valley, as well as the banks of the
Buroburo which flows into the Siparuni, are inhabited by the Macusis.
In April the whole of the savannahs are overflowed, and present the
peculiar phenomenon of the waters belonging to different river basins
being intermixed and united. The enormous extent of this temporary
inundation may not improbably have given occasion to the story of the
Lake of Parime. During the rainy season there is formed in the interior
of the country a water communication between the Essequibo, the Rio
Branco, and Gran Para. Some groups of trees, which rise like oases on
the sand hills of the savannahs, assume at the time of the inundation
the character of islands scattered over the extensive lake; they are,
no doubt, the Ipomucena Islands of Don Antonio Santos.”

In D’Anville’s manuscripts, which his heirs have kindly permitted me
to examine, I find that the surgeon Hortsmann, of Hildesheim, who
described these countries with great care, saw a second Alpine lake,
which he places two days’ journey above the confluence of the Mahu
with the Rio Parime (Tacutu?). It is a lake of black water on the top
of a mountain. He distinguishes it clearly from the Lake of Amucu,
which he describes as “covered with reeds.” The narratives of Hortsmann
and Santos are as far as the Portuguese manuscript maps of the Bureau
de la Marine at Rio Janeiro from indicating or admitting a constant
connection between the Rupunuri and the Lake of Amucu. In D’Anville’s
maps the rivers are better drawn in the first edition of his South
America, published in 1748, than in the more widely circulated edition
of 1760. Schomburgk’s travels have completely established this general
independence of the basins of the Rupunuri and the Essequibo; but he
remarks that during the rainy season the Rio Waa-Ekuru, a tributary
of the Rupunuri, is in connection with the Caño Pirara. Such is the
state of these river basins, which are, as it were, still imperfectly
developed, and are almost entirely without separating ridges.

The Rupunuri and the village of Anai (lat. 3° 56′, long. 58° 34′), are
at present recognised as the political boundary between the British and
the Brazilian territories in these uncultivated regions. Sir Robert
Schomburgk makes his chronologically determined longitude of the Lake
of Amucu depend on the mean of several lunar distances (East and West)
measured by him during his stay at Anai, where he was detained some
time by severe illness. His longitudes for these points of the Parime
are in general a degree more easterly than the longitudes of my map of
Columbia. I am far from throwing any doubt on the observations of lunar
distances taken at Anai, and would only remark that their calculation
is important if it is desired to carry the comparison from the Lake of
Amucu to Esmeralda, which I found in long. 68° 23′ 19″ W. from Paris
(66° 21′ 19″ Gr.)

We see, then, the great Mar de la Parima,--which was so difficult to
displace from our maps that, after my return from America, it was still
set down as having a length of 160 English geographical miles,--reduced
by the result of modern researches to the little Lake of Amucu, of
two or three miles circumference. The illusions cherished for nearly
two centuries (several hundred lives were lost in the last Spanish
expedition for the discovery of el Dorado, in 1775), have thus finally
terminated, leaving some results of geographical knowledge as their
fruit. In 1512, thousands of soldiers perished in the expedition
undertaken by Ponce de Leon for the discovery of the “Fountain of
Youth,” supposed to exist in one of the Bahama Islands called Bimini,
and which is not to be found on our maps. This Expedition led to the
conquest of Florida, and to the knowledge of the great current of the
Gulf Stream, which issues forth through the Bahama channel. The thirst
for treasures, and the desire of renovated youth, stimulated with
nearly equal force the passions and cupidity of the nations of Europe.

[62] p. 216.--“_The Piriguao, one of the noblest of palm trees._”

Compare Humboldt, Bonpland, and Kunth, Nova Genera Plant. æquinoct. T.
i. p. 315.

[63] p. 229.--“_The vault or cemetery of an extinct nation._”

During the period of my stay in the forests of the Orinoco, these
caves of bones were examined by order of the Court. The Missionary of
the Cataracts had been unjustly accused of having discovered in the
caves treasures which had been hidden there by the Jesuits previous to
their flight.



THE NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS

IN THE

PRIMEVAL FOREST.


If the vivid appreciation and sentiment of nature which differ so
greatly in nations of different descent, and if the natural character
and aspect of the countries which those nations now inhabit, or
which have been the scene of their earlier wanderings or abode, have
rendered different languages more or less rich in well defined and
characteristic expressions denoting the forms of mountains, the state
of vegetation, the appearance of the atmosphere, and the contour and
grouping of the clouds, it is also true that long use, and perhaps
their arbitrary employment by literary men, have diverted many such
words from their original meaning. Terms have been gradually regarded
as synonymous which ought to have been preserved distinct; and thus
languages have lost part of the vigour and the grace, as well as the
fidelity, which they might otherwise have been capable of imparting to
descriptions of natural scenery and of the characteristic physiognomy
of a landscape. With the view of shewing how much an intimate
acquaintance and contact with nature, and the wants and necessities
of a laborious nomade life, may increase the riches of a language,
I would recall the numerous characteristic appellations which may be
used in Arabic[64] and in Persian to distinguish plains, steppes, and
deserts, according as they are quite bare, covered with sand, broken
by tabular masses of rock, or interspersed with patches of pasturage,
or with long tracts occupied by social plants. Scarcely less striking
is it to observe in the old Castilian idiom[65] the many expressions
afforded for describing the physiognomy of mountain-masses, and more
particularly for designating those features which, recurring in every
zone of the earth’s surface, announce from afar to the attentive
beholder the nature of the rock. As the declivities of the Andes, of
Peru, Chili, and Mexico, and the mountainous parts of the Canaries,
the Antilles and the Philippines, are all inhabited by men of Spanish
descent, and as these are the parts of the earth where, (with the
exception, perhaps, of the Himalaya and the Thibetian Highlands), the
manner of life of the inhabitants is most affected by and dependent
on the form of the earth’s surface, so all the expressions which the
language of the mother country afforded for denoting the forms of
mountains in trachytic, basaltic, and porphyritic districts, as well as
in those where schists, limestones, and sandstone are the prevailing
rocks, have been happily preserved in daily use. Under such influences
even newly formed words become part of the common treasure. Speech is
enriched and animated by everything that tends to and promotes truth
to nature, whether in rendering the impressions received through the
senses from the contemplation of the external world, or in expressing
thoughts, emotions, or sentiments which have their sources in the inner
depths of our being.

In descriptions of natural objects or scenery, both in the manner of
viewing the phenomena, and in the choice of the expressions employed
to describe them, this truth to nature must ever be kept in view as
the guiding aim: its attainment will be at once most easily and most
effectually secured by simplicity in the narration of what we have
ourselves beheld or experienced, and by limiting and individualising
the locality with which the narrative is connected. Generalisation of
physical views, and the statement of general results, belong rather
to the “study of the Cosmos,” which, indeed, must ever continue to be
to us a science of Induction; but the animated description of organic
forms (plants and animals) in their local and picturesque relations
to the varied surface of the earth (as a small fragment of the whole
terrestrial life) affords materials towards the study of the Cosmos,
and also tends to advance it by the stimulus or impulse imparted to the
mind when artistic treatment is applied to phenomena of nature on a
great scale.

Among such phenomena must certainly be classed the vast forest
region which, in the tropical portion of South America, fills the
great connected basins of the Orinoco and the Amazons. If the name
of primeval forest, or “Urwald,” which has of late years been so
prodigally bestowed, is to be given to any forests on the face of the
earth, none can claim it perhaps so strictly as the region of which
we are speaking. The term “Urwald,” primitive or primeval forest, as
well as Urseit and Urvolk,--primitive age, primitive nation,--are words
of rather indefinite meaning, and, for the most part, only relative
import. If this name is to be given to every wild forest full of a
thick growth of trees on which Man has never laid a destroying hand,
then the phenomenon is one which belongs to many parts of the temperate
and cold zones. But if the character of the “Urwald” is that of a
forest so truly impenetrable, that it is impossible to clear with an
axe any passage between trees of eight or twelve feet diameter for more
than a few paces, then such forests belong exclusively to the tropical
regions. Nor is it by any means, as is often supposed in Europe, only
the interlacing “lianes” or climbers which make it impossible to
penetrate the forest; the “lianes” often form only a very small portion
of the underwood. The chief obstacle is presented by an undergrowth of
plants filling up every interval in a zone where all vegetation has a
tendency to become ligneous. An impatient desire for the fulfilment of
a long cherished wish may sometimes have led travellers who have only
just landed in a tropical country, or perhaps island, to imagine that
although still in the immediate vicinity of the sea-shore they had
entered the precincts of a primeval forest, or “Urwald,” such as I have
described as impenetrable. In this they deceived themselves; it is not
every tropical forest which is entitled to an appellation which I have
scarcely ever used in the narrative of my travels; although I believe
that of all investigators of nature now living, Bonpland, Martius,
Poppig, Robert and Richard Schomburgk, and myself, are those who have
spent the longest period of time in primeval forests in the interior of
a great continent.

Rich as is the Spanish language, (as I have already remarked), in
appellations of distinct and definite meaning in the description of
nature, yet the same word “Monte” is employed for mountain and forest,
for cerro, (montaña) and for selva. In an inquiry into the true breadth
and greatest easterly extension of the chain of the Andes, I have
shewed how this two-fold signification of the word “monte” led to the
introduction, in a fine and extensively circulated English map of South
America, of high mountain ranges, where, in reality, only plains exist.
When the Spanish map of La Cruz Olmedilla, which has served as the
foundation of so many other maps, shewed “Montes de Cacao,”[66] “cacao
woods,” Cordilleras were made to rise although the cacao seeks only the
lowest and hottest localities.

If we comprehend in one general view the wooded region which includes
the whole of the interior of South America, from the grassy steppes
of Venezuela (los Llanos de Caracas) to the Pampas of Buenos Ayres,
or from 8° North to 19° South latitude, we shall perceive that this
connected forest of the tropical zone has an extent unequalled in any
other portion of the earth’s surface. Its area is about twelve times
that of Germany. Traversed in all directions by systems of rivers, in
which the minor and tributary streams sometimes exceed our Rhine or
our Danube in the abundance of their waters, it owes the wonderful
luxuriance of the growth of its trees to the combined influence of
great moisture and high temperature. In the temperate zone, and
especially in Europe and Northern Asia, forests may be named from
particular genera or species, which, growing together as social plants,
(plantæ sociales) form separate and distinct woods. In the northern
forests of Oaks, Pines, and Birches, and in the eastern forests of
Limes or Linden trees, usually only one species of Amentaceæ, Coniferæ,
or Tiliaceæ, prevails or is predominant; sometimes a single species
of Needle-trees is intermingled with the foliage of trees of other
classes. Tropical forests, on the other hand, decked with thousands
of flowers, are strangers to such uniformity of association; the
exceeding variety of their flora renders it vain to ask of what trees
the primeval forest consists. A countless number of families are here
crowded together, and even in small spaces individuals of the same
species are rarely associated. Each day, and at each change of place,
new forms present themselves to the traveller, who, however, often
finds that he cannot reach the blossoms of trees whose leaves and
ramifications had previously arrested his attention.

The rivers, with their countless lateral arms, afford the only routes
by which the country can be traversed. Between the Orinoco, the
Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, astronomical observations, and where
these were wanting, determinations by compass of the direction of the
rivers, respectively shewed us that two lonely mission villages might
be only a few miles apart, and yet that the monks when they wished
to visit each other could only do so by spending a day and a half in
following the windings of small streams, in canoes hollowed out of
the trunks of trees. A striking evidence of the impenetrability of
particular parts of the forest is afforded by a trait related by an
Indian of the habits of the large American tiger, or panther-like
jaguar. While in the Llanos of Varinas and the Meta, and in the Pampas
of Buenos Ayres, the introduction of European cattle, horses, and mules
has enabled the beasts of prey to find an abundant subsistence,--so
that since the first discovery of America their numbers have increased
exceedingly in those extended and treeless grassy steppes,--their
congeners in the dense forests around the sources of the Orinoco lead a
very different and far less easy life. In a bivouac near the junction
of the Cassiquiare with the Orinoco we had had the misfortune of losing
a large dog, to which we were much attached, as the most faithful and
affectionate companion of our wanderings. Being still uncertain whether
he had been actually killed by the tigers, a faint hope of recovering
him induced us, in returning from the mission of Esmeralda through the
swarms of musquitoes by which it is infested, to spend another night at
the spot where we had so long sought him in vain. We heard the cries
of the jaguar, probably the very individual which we suspected of the
deed, extremely near to us; and as the clouded sky made astronomical
observations impossible, we passed part of the night in making our
interpreter (lenguaraz) repeat to us the accounts given by our native
boat’s crew of the tigers of the country.

The “black jaguar” was, they said, not unfrequently found there; it is
the largest and most bloodthirsty variety, with black spots scarcely
distinguishable on its deep dark-brown skin. It lives at the foot of
the mountains of Maraguaca and Unturan. One of the Indians of the
Durimund tribe then related to us that jaguars are often led, by their
love of wandering and by their rapacity, to lose themselves in such
impenetrable parts of the forest that they can no longer hunt along
the ground, and live instead in the trees, where they are the terror
of the families of monkeys and of the prehensile-tailed viverra, the
Cercoleptes. I borrow these notices from journals written at the time
in German, and which were not entirely exhausted in the Narrative of
my Travels, which I published in the French language. They contain a
detailed description of the nocturnal life, or perhaps I might rather
say the nocturnal voices, of the wild animals in the forests of the
torrid zone; which appears to me particularly suited to form part of a
work bearing the title of the present volumes. That which is written
down on the spot, either in the immediate presence of the phenomena,
or soon after the reception of the impressions which they produce, may
at least lay claim to more life and freshness than can be expected in
recollections.

Descending from West to East the Rio Apure, the overflowings of whose
waters and the inundations produced by them were noticed in the chapter
on Steppes and Deserts, we arrived at its junction with the Orinoco. It
was the season of low water, and the average breadth of the Apure was
only a little more than twelve hundred English feet, yet I found the
Orinoco at the confluence of the two rivers, not far from the granite
rock of Curiquima, where I was able to measure a base line, still
upwards of 11430 French (12180 English) feet wide. Yet this point, _i.
e._ the Rock of Curiquima, is four hundred geographical miles in a
straight line from the sea and from the Delta of the Orinoco. Part of
the plains watered by the Apure and the Pagara are inhabited by tribes
of the Yaruros and Achaguas, who, as they persist in maintaining their
independence, are called savages in the mission villages established by
the monks: their manners, however, are scarcely more rude than those of
the Indians of the villages,--who, although baptized and living “under
the bell” (baxo la compana), are still almost entirely untaught and
uninstructed.

On leaving the Island del Diamante, in which Zambos who speak Spanish
cultivate sugar-canes, we entered on scenes of nature characterized
by wildness and grandeur. The air was filled with countless flocks
of flamingoes (Phœnicopterus) and other water birds, which appeared
against the blue sky like a dark cloud with continually varying
outlines. The river had here narrowed to between 900 and 1000 feet, and
flowing in a perfectly straight line formed a kind of canal enclosed
on either side by dense wood. The margin of the forest presents at
this part a singular appearance. In front of the almost impenetrable
wall of giant trunks of Cæsalpinia, Cedrela, and Desmanthus, there
rises from the sandy river beach, with the greatest regularity, a low
hedge of Sauso, only four feet high, consisting of a small shrub,
Hermesia castaneifolia, which forms a new genus[67] of the family of
Euphorbiaceæ. Some slender thorny palms, called by the Spaniards Piritu
and Coroso (perhaps species of Martinezia and Bactris), stand next;
and the whole resembles a close, well-pruned garden hedge, having only
occasional openings at considerable distances from each other, which
have doubtless been made by the larger four-footed beasts of the forest
to gain easy access to the river. One sees, more especially in the
early morning and at sunset, the American tiger or jaguar, the tapir,
and the peccary, lead their young through these openings to the river
to drink. When startled by the passing canoe, they do not attempt to
regain the forest by breaking forcibly through the hedge which has
been described, but one has the pleasure of seeing these wild animals
stalk leisurely along between the river and the hedge for four or
five hundred paces, until they have reached the nearest opening, when
they disappear through it. In the course of an almost uninterrupted
river navigation of 1520 geographical miles on the Orinoco to near its
sources, on the Cassiquiare, and on the Rio Negro,--and during which
we were confined for seventy-four days to a small canoe,--we enjoyed
the repetition of the same spectacle at several different points,
and I may add, always with new delight. There came down together, to
drink, to bathe, or to fish, groups consisting of the most different
classes of animals, the larger mammalia, being associated with many
coloured herons, palamedeas, and proudly-stepping curassow and cashew
birds (Crax Alector and C. Pauxi). “Es como en el Paraiso;” it is here
as in Paradise, said, with a pious air, our steersman, an old Indian
who had been brought up in the house of an ecclesiastic. The peace of
the golden age was, however, far from prevailing among the animals of
this American paradise, which carefully watched and avoided each other.
The Capybara, a Cavy three or four feet long, (a magnified repetition
of the Brazilian Cavy, Cavia aguti), is devoured in the river by the
crocodiles, and on shore by the tiger. It runs so indifferently that we
were several times able to catch individuals from among the numerous
herds which presented themselves.

Below the mission of Santa Barbara de Arichuna we passed the night
as usual, under the open sky, on a sandy flat on the bank of the
Rio Apure closely bordered by the impenetrable forest. It was not
without difficulty that we succeeded in finding dry wood to kindle the
fire with which it is always customary in that country to surround
a bivouac, in order to guard against the attacks of the jaguar. The
night was humid, mild, and moonlight. Several crocodiles approached
the shore; I think I have observed these animals to be attracted by
fire, like our cray-fish and many other inhabitants of the water. The
oars of our boat were placed upright and carefully driven into the
ground, to form poles from which our hammocks could be suspended. Deep
stillness prevailed; only from time to time we heard the blowing of the
fresh-water dolphins[68] which are peculiar to the Orinoco net-work of
rivers (and, according to Colebrooke, to the Ganges as far as Benares),
which followed each other in long lines.

Soon after 11 o’clock such a disturbance began to be heard in the
adjoining forest, that for the remainder of the night all sleep was
impossible. The wild cries of animals appeared to rage throughout the
forest. Among the many voices which resounded together, the Indians
could only recognise those which, after short pauses in the general
uproar, were first heard singly. There was the monotonous howling of
the aluates (the howling monkeys); the plaintive, soft, and almost
flute-like tones of the small sapajous; the snorting grumblings of the
striped nocturnal monkey[69] (the Nyctipithicus trivirgatus, which I was
the first to describe); the interrupted cries of the great tiger, the
cuguar or maneless American lion, the peccary, the sloth, and a host of
parrots, of parraquas, and other pheasant-like birds. When the tigers
came near the edge of the forest, our dog, which had before barked
incessantly, came howling to seek refuge under our hammocks. Sometimes
the cry of the tiger was heard to proceed from amidst the high branches
of a tree, and was in such case always accompanied by the plaintive
piping of the monkeys, who were seeking to escape from the unwonted
pursuit.

If one asks the Indians why this incessant noise and disturbance arises
on particular nights, they answer, with a smile, that “the animals
are rejoicing in the bright moonlight, and keeping the feast of the
full moon.” To me it appeared that the scene had probably originated
in some accidental combat, and that hence the disturbance had spread
to other animals, and thus the noise had increased more and more. The
jaguar pursues the peccaries and tapirs, and these, pressing against
each other in their flight, break through the interwoven tree-like
shrubs which impede their escape; the apes on the tops of the trees,
being frightened by the crash, join their cries to those of the larger
animals; this arouses the tribes of birds, who build their nests in
communities, and thus the whole animal world becomes in a state of
commotion. Longer experience taught us that it is by no means always
the celebration of the brightness of the moon which disturbs the repose
of the woods: we witnessed the same occurrence repeatedly, and found
that the voices were loudest during violent falls of rain, or when,
with loud peals of thunder, the flashing lightning illuminated the deep
recesses of the forest. The good-natured Franciscan monk, who, although
he had been suffering for several months from fever, accompanied us
through the Cataracts of Atures and Maypures to San Carlos on the Rio
Negro, and to the Brazilian boundary, used to say, when fearful on the
closing in of night that there might be a thunder-storm, “May Heaven
grant a quiet night both to us and to the wild beasts of the forest!”

Scenes, such as those I have just described, were wonderfully
contrasted with the stillness which prevails within the tropics during
the noontide hours of a day of more than usual heat. I borrow from the
same journal the recollections of a day at the Narrows of Baraguan. At
this part of its course the Orinoco forces for itself a passage through
the western portion of the Parime Mountains. What is called at this
remarkable pass a “Narrow” (Angostura del Baraguan), is still a bed or
water-basin of 890 toises (5690 English feet) in breadth. On the naked
rocks which formed the shores we saw only, besides an old withered
stem of Aubletia (Apeiba tiburba), and a new Apocinea (Allamanda
salicifolia), a few silvery croton shrubs. A thermometer observed in
the shade, but brought within a few inches of the towering mass of
granite rock, rose to above 40° Reaumur (122° Fah.) All distant objects
had wave-like undulating outlines, the effect of mirage; not a breath
of air stirred the fine dust-like sand. The sun was in the zenith, and
the flood of light which he poured down upon the river, and which,
from a slight rippling movement of the waters, flashed sparkling back,
rendered still more sensible the red haze which veiled the distance.
All the naked rocks and boulders around were covered with a countless
number of large thick-scaled iguanas, gecko-lizards, and variously
spotted salamanders. Motionless, with uplifted heads and open mouths,
they appeared to inhale the burning air with ecstacy. At such times
the larger animals seek shelter in the recesses of the forest, and
the birds hide themselves under the thick foliage of the trees, or in
the clefts of the rocks; but if, in this apparent entire stillness of
nature, one listens for the faintest tones which an attentive ear can
seize, there is perceived an all-pervading rustling sound, a humming
and fluttering of insects close to the ground, and in the lower strata
of the atmosphere. Every thing announces a world of organic activity
and life. In every bush, in the cracked bark of the trees, in the earth
undermined by hymenopterous insects, life stirs audibly. It is, as it
were, one of the many voices of Nature, heard only by the sensitive and
reverent ear of her true votaries.


ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.

[64] p. 260.--“_Characteristic names in Arabic and Persian._”

More than twenty different terms might be cited as used by Arabs in
speaking of steppes, (tanufah), to denote deserts without water,
entirely bare, covered with siliceous sand, or interspersed with
spots affording some pasture: (sahara, kafr, mikfar, tih, and mehme.)
Sahl, is a low plain; dakkah, a desolate elevated plain. In Persian,
“beyaban” signifies the arid sandy desert,--as do the Mogul “gobi,”
and the Chinese “han-hai,” and “scha-mo.” “Yaila” is a steppe covered
rather with grasses or herbage than with herbaceous plants; so are also
the Mogul “küdah,” and the Turkish “tala,” or “tschol,” and the Chinese
“huang.” “Deshti-reft” is an elevated plain devoid of vegetation.
(Humboldt, Relation hist. T. ii. p. 158.)

[65] p. 260.--“_In the old Castilian idiom._”

Pico, picacho, mogote, cucurucho, espigon, loma tendida, mesa,
panecillo, farallon, tablon, peña, peñon, peñasco, peñoleria, roca
partida, laxa, cerro, sierra, serrania, cordillera, monte, montaña,
montañuela, cadena de montes, los altos, malpais, reventazon, bufa, &c.

[66] p. 263.--“_Where the map had exhibited Montes de Cacao._”

On the range of hills which had been converted into the lofty Andes de
Cuchao, see my Rel. hist. T. iii. p. 238.

[67] p. 268.--“_Hermesia._”

The genus Hermesia, the Sauso, has been described by Bonpland, and
figured in our Plantes equinoxiales, T. i. p. 162, tab. xlvi.

[68] p. 269.--“_The fresh-water dolphin._”

These are not sea-dolphins, ascending the rivers for a great distance,
as is done by some species of Pleuronectes (flat fish, which always
have both eyes on one side of the body); for example, the Limande
(Pleuronectes Limanda), which comes up the Loire to Orleans. Some
sea forms of fish, as dolphins and skates, are repeated in the great
rivers of both continents. The fresh-water dolphin of the Apure and the
Orinoco differs specifically from the Delphinus gangeticus, as well as
from all sea-dolphins. See my Rel. hist. T. ii. pp. 223, 239, 406-413.

[69] p. 270.--“_The striped nocturnal monkey._”

This is the Douroucouli, or Cusi-cusi of the Cassiquiare, described
by me as Simia trivirgata in my Recueil d’Observations de Zoologie
et d’Anatomie comparée, T. i. p. 306-311, tab. xxviii., the plate
being taken from a drawing made by myself from the living animal. We
subsequently saw this nocturnal monkey living in the menagerie of the
Jardin des Plantes at Paris. (See the work above cited, T. ii. p. 340.)
Spix also found this remarkable little animal on the Amazons river, and
called it Nyctipithecus vociferans.


 Potsdam, June 1849.



HYPSOMETRIC ADDENDA.


I am indebted to Mr. Pentland (whose scientific labours have thrown so
much light on the geology and geography of Bolivia) for the following
determinations, which he communicated to me in a letter written from
Paris, in October 1848, after the publication of his great map:--

  Nevado of Sorata, or               Long. from       Height in
     Ancohuma.          S. lat.       Greenwich.    English Feet.
  South Peak          15° 51′ 33″   68° 33′ 55″      21286
  North Peak          15° 49′ 18″   68° 33′ 52″      21043

   Illimani.
  South Peak          16° 38′ 52″   67° 49′ 18″      21145
  Middle Peak         16° 38′ 26″   67° 49′ 17″      21094
  North Peak          16° 37′ 50″   67° 49′ 39″      21060

The heights (with the exception of the unimportant difference of a few
feet in the South Peak of Illimani) are the same as those given in
the map of the Lake of Titicaca. A sketch of the last-named mountain
(Illimani), as it shews itself in all its majesty from La Paz, has been
given by Mr. Pentland in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society,
Vol. V. (1835), p. 77. This was five years after the publication of the
first measurements in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes for 1830,
p. 323, which results I myself hastened to make known in Germany.
(Hertha, Zeitschrift für Erd und Völkerkunde, von Berghaus, Bd. xiii.
1829, S. 3-29.) The Nevado de Sorata is to the east of the village
Sorata, or Esquibel: it is called in the Ymarra language, according to
Pentland, Ancomani, Itampu, and Illhampu. We recognise in “Illimani,”
the Ymarra word “illi,” snow.

If, however, in the _eastern_ chain of Bolivia the Sorata was long
assumed 3718 French, or 3952 English feet, and the Illimani 2675
French, or 2851 English, feet too high, there are in the _western_
chain of the same country, according to Pentland’s map of Titicaca
(1848), four peaks to the east of Arica and between lat. 18° 7′ and 18°
25′, all of which are higher than Chimborazo, which is 21422 English or
20100 French feet. These four peaks are--

  Pomarape      21700 English feet, or 20360 French feet.
  Gualateiri    21960   „       „      20604   „      „
  Parinacota    22030   „       „      20670   „      „
  Sahama        22350   „       „      20971   „      „

Berghaus has applied to the eastern and western chains of the Andes of
Bolivia the investigation published by me in the Annales des Sciences
Naturelles, T. iv. 1825, p. 225-253, of the proportion (very different
in different mountain chains), which the general height of the ridge,
the crest, or kamm (the mean height of the passes), bears to the
highest summits or culminating points. He finds, following Pentland’s
map, the mean height of the passes in the eastern chain 12672 French,
or 13502 English feet; and in the western chain 13602 French, or 14896
English feet. The culminating points are 19972 and 20971 French, 21286
and 22350 English feet; consequently the ratio of the height of the
ridge to that of the culminating point is, in the eastern chain, as 1 :
1.57, and in the western chain as 1 : 1.54. (Berghaus, Zeitschrift für
Erdkunde, Band. ix. S. 322-326). This ratio, which is, as it were, the
measure of the subterranean elevating force, is very similar to that
which exists in the Pyrenees, but very different from the Alps, where
the mean height of the passes is less as compared with Mont Blanc. The
ratios are, in the Pyrenees, = 1 : 1.43, and in the Alps, = 1 : 2.09.

But, according to Fitz Roy and Darwin, the height of the Sahama is
still surpassed by 796 French, or 850 English feet, by that of the
volcano of Aconcagua, on the north east of Valparaiso, in Chili, in S.
lat. 32° 39′. The officers of the Adventure and Beagle, in Fitz Roy’s
Expedition, found, in August 1835, the summit of Acongagua between
23000 and 23400 English feet. If we take it at 23200 (equal to 21767
Paris feet), this volcano would be 1667 French, or 1777 English, feet
higher than the Chimborazo. (Fitz Roy, Voyages of the Adventure and
Beagle, 1839, Vol. ii. p. 481; Darwin, Journal of Researches, 1845,
pp. 223 and 291.) According to more recent calculations, the height
of Acongagua is given as 22431 French, or 23907 English feet. (Mary
Somerville, Physical Geogr. 1849, Vol. ii. p. 425.)

Our knowledge of the systems of mountains which, north of the parallels
of 30° and 31° N. lat., are called the Rocky Mountains and the
Sierra Nevada of California, has received most important additions,
geologically, botanically, hypsometrically, and geographically by
astronomical determinations of position, from the excellent works
of Charles Frémont (Geographical Memoir upon Upper California, an
illustration of his Map of Oregon and California, 1848); of Dr.
Wislizenus (Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico, connected with Col.
Doniphan’s Expedition, 1848); and of Lieutenants Abert and Peck
(Expedition on the Upper Arkansas, 1845; and Examination of New Mexico
in 1846 and 1847.) There prevails throughout these different North
American works a true scientific spirit, which is deserving of the
greatest commendation. The remarkable elevated plain, which rises to
an uninterrupted height of four or five thousand French (4260 and 5330
English) feet, between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada of
California, of which I have spoken in p. 44, and which is called the
Great Basin, forms an inland closed river basin, and has hot springs
and salt lakes. None of its rivers,--Bear River, Carson River, and
Humboldt River,--find their way to the sea. The Lake, which I was led
by combinations and inferences to represent, in the great Map of Mexico
drawn by me in 1804, under the name of Lake Timpanogos, is the great
Salt Lake of Frémont’s Map: it is sixty geographical miles long from
north to south, and ten broad; and it communicates with the fresh water
lake of Utah, which is situated at a higher level, and receives the
Timpanogos or Timpanaozu River, which enters it from the eastward, in
lat. 40° 13′. The circumstance of the Timpanogos Lake of my map not
having been placed by me sufficiently far to the north and west, is to
be attributed to the entire want, at that time, of any astronomical
determinations of the position of Santa Fé, in New Mexico. The error
amounts, for the western margin of the lake, to almost 50 minutes
of arc; a difference of absolute longitude which will appear less
surprising, if it is remembered that my itinerary map of Guanaxuato
could only be based for 15 degrees of latitude on compass surveys, or
compass directions, for which I was indebted to Don Pedro de Rivera.
(Humboldt, Essai polit. sur la Nouvelle Espagne, T. i. pp. 127-136.)
These directions being differently combined by my early deceased
fellow-labourer, Herr Friesen, and myself, gave him as the result of
his combinations 107° 58′ from Paris as the longitude of Santa Fé, and
to me as the result of mine, 107° 13′. According to actual astronomical
determinations since obtained, the true longitude appears to be 108°
22′ W. of Paris, or 106° 00′ W. of Greenwich. The relative position
of the beds of fossil salt--found in “thick strata of red clay,” on
the south east of the island-studded Great Salt Lake (my Laguna de
Timpanogos), and not far from the present Fort Mormon and the Utah
Lake--was given with perfect correctness in my large map of Mexico. I
may refer on this point to the latest evidence of the traveller who
made the first well-assured determinations of geographical position
in that district:--“The mineral or rock salt, of which a specimen is
placed in Congress Library, was found in the place marked by Humboldt
in his map of New Spain (northern half), as derived from the journal
of the missionary Father Escalante, who attempted (1777) to penetrate
the unknown country from Santa Fé of New Mexico to Monterey of the
Pacific Ocean. South-east of the Lake Timpanogos is the chain of the
Wha-satch Mountains; and in this, at the place where Humboldt has
written _Montagnes de sel gemme_, this mineral is found.” (Frémont,
Geogr. Mem. of Upper California, 1848, pp. 8 and 67; compare Humboldt,
Essai politique, T. ii. p. 261.)

A great historical interest attaches to this part of the highland, and
more particularly to the country round the Lake of Timpanogos, which
is perhaps the same with the Lake of Teguayo, the ancestral seat of
the Aztecs. In their migration from Aztlan to Tula, and to the Valley
of Tenochtitlan (Mexico), this people made three halting places or
stations, at which the ruins of the Casas grandes are still to be seen.
The first sojourn of the Aztecs was at the Lake of Teguayo, the second
on the Rio Gila, and the third not far from the Presidio de Llanos.
Lieutenant Abert found on the banks of the Gila the same immense number
of fragments of pottery ornamented with painting, and scattered over
a considerable tract of ground, which had astonished the missionaries
Francisco Garces and Pedro Fonte in that locality. These remains of
the products of human skill are supposed to indicate the existence of
a former higher civilisation in these now solitary regions. Remains
of buildings in the singular style of architecture of the Aztecs, and
of their houses of seven stories, are also found far to the eastward
of the Rio Grande del Norte; for example, in Taos. (Compare Abert’s
Examination of New Mexico, in the Documents of Congress, No. 41, pp.
489 and 581-605, with my Essai pol. T. ii. pp. 241-244.) The Sierra
Nevada of California is parallel to the Coast of the Pacific; but
between the latitudes of 34° and 41°, between San Buenaventura and
the Bay of Trinidad, there runs, on the West of the Sierra Nevada,
another (smaller) coast chain, of which Monte del Diablo, 3448 French,
3674 English feet high, is the culminating point. In the narrow
valley, between this coast chain and the great Sierra Nevada, flow
from the south the Rio de San Joaquin, and from the north the Rio del
Sacramento, on the banks of which, in rich alluvial soil, are the rich
gold-washings now so much resorted to.

I have already referred, p. 43, to a hypsometric levelling, and to
barometric measurements made from the junction of the Kanzas River with
the Missouri to the Pacific, or throughout the immense extent of 28
degrees of longitude. Dr. Wislizenus has now successfully continued the
levelling began by me from the city of Mexico, in the Equinoctial Zone,
to the North as far as Santa Fé del Nuevo Mexico, in lat. 35° 38′. It
will be seen, perhaps, with surprise, that the elevated plain which
forms the broad crest of the Mexican Andes is far from sinking down,
as had long been supposed, to an inconsiderable height. I give here
for the first time, according to the measurements which we at present
possess, the elevations of several points, forming a line of levelling
from the city of Mexico to Santa Fé, which latter town is less than
four German (sixteen English) geographical miles from the Rio del Norte.

                             French Feet.   Eng. Feet.    Observer.
  Mexico                         7008          7490          Ht.
  Tula                           6318          6733          Ht.
  San Juan del Rio               6090          6490          Ht.
  Queretaro                      5970          6363          Ht.
  Celaya                         5646          6017          Ht.
  Salamanca                      5406          5761          Ht.
  Guanaxuato                     6414          6836          Ht.
  Silao                          5546          5910          Br.
  Villa de Leon                  5755          6133          Br.
  Lagos                          5983          6376          Br.
  Aguas Calientes                5875          6261          Br.
  San Luis Potosi                5714          6090          Br.
  Zacatecas                      7544          8040          Br.
  Fresnillo                      6797          7244          Br.
  Durango                        6426          6848        (Oteiza)
  Parras                         4678          4985          Ws.
  Saltillo                       4917          5240          Ws.
  El Bolson de Mapimi           {3600 to       3837 to}      Ws.
                                { 4200          4476  }
  Chihuahua                      4352          4638          Ws.
  Cosiquiariachi                 5886          6273          Ws.
  Passo del Norte, on the}
    Rio Grande del Norte }       3557          3812          Ws.
  Santa Fé del Nuevo Mexico      6612          7047          Ws.

The letters Ws., Br., and Ht., are placed to distinguish the barometric
measurements of Dr. Wislizenus, Oberbergrath Burkart, and my own.
Wislizenus has appended to his valuable memoir three vertical sections
of the surface of the ground: one from Santa Fé to Chihuahua by Passo
del Norte; one from Chihuahua to Reynosa by Parras; and one from Fort
Independence (a little to the east of the Confluence of the Missouri
and the Kanzas River) to Santa Fé. The calculation is founded on daily
corresponding observations of the barometer, made by Engelmann at St.
Louis, and by Lilly at New Orleans. If we consider that the difference
of latitude between Santa Fé and Mexico is 16° and that thus (apart
from deviations from a straight line) the distance in the north and
south direction is above 960 geographical miles, we are led to inquire
whether there be in any other part of the whole globe a similar
conformation of the Earth, equal in extent and elevation (between 5000
and 7000 French, or 5330 and 7460 English feet above the level of the
sea) to the highland of which I have just given the levelling, and yet
over which four-wheeled waggons can travel as they do from Mexico to
Santa Fé. It is formed by the broad, undulating, flattened crest of the
chain of the Mexican Andes, and is not the swelling of a valley between
two mountain chains, as is the case in some other remarkable elevations
of plain or undulating surface--in the Northern Hemisphere, in the
“Great Basin” between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada of
California,--in the Southern Hemisphere, in the high plain of the lake
of Titicaca, between the eastern and western chains of the Andes of
Bolivia,--and in Asia, in the highlands of Thibet, between the Himalaya
and the Kuen-lün.



  GENERAL SUMMARY

  OF THE

  CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.


  _Preface to the First Edition_--p. vii. to p. ix.

  _Preface to the Second and Third Editions_--p. xi. to p. xv.

  _Note by the Translator_--p. xvii.

  _Steppes and Deserts_--p. 1 to p. 26.

  Coast chain and mountain valleys of Caraccas. Lake of Tacarigua.
  Contrast in respect to the luxuriance of vegetation between
  those districts and the treeless plains. The steppe regarded as
  the bottom of a Mediterranean Sea; broken strata a little higher
  than the rest of the plain called “banks.” General phenomena of
  extensive plains; the Heaths of Europe, the Pampas and Llanos of
  South America, the African Deserts, and the Steppes of Northern
  Asia. Different characters of the vegetable covering of the
  surface. Animal life. Pastoral nations, and their invasive
  migrations 1-6

  Description of the South American plains and prairies--their
  extent and climate; the latter dependent on the outline of
  the coasts, and on the hypsometric conformation of the New
  Continent. Comparison with the plains and deserts of Africa 7-13

  Original absence of pastoral life in America. Food furnished by
  the Mauritia palm; the Guaranis’ huts raised on trees 13-17

  Since the discovery of America the Llanos have become more
  habitable. Extraordinary increase in the number of wild cattle,
  horses, asses, and mules. Description of the season of extreme
  dryness, and of the rainy season. Appearance of the surface
  of the ground and of the sky. Life of the animals--their
  sufferings, their conflicts; power of adaptation with which
  certain animals and plants are endowed. Jaguars, crocodiles, and
  electric fishes. Unequal conflict between Gymnoti and horses
  17-23

  Retrospective glance at the countries surrounding the Steppes
  and Deserts. Forest wildernesses of the Orinoco and the Amazons.
  Indian tribes separated by the wonderful diversity of their
  languages and differences of their habits; their hardships, and
  frequent variance between the different tribes. Figures graven
  on the rocks show that these solitudes were once the seat of a
  degree of civilisation which has now disappeared 23-26


  _Scientific Elucidations and Additions_--p. 27 to p. 204.

  The island-studded lake of Tacarigua; its relations to the
  neighbouring mountain chains. Geological description. Progress
  of cultivation and of European civilisation. Varieties of
  the sugar-cane. Cacao plantations. Great fertility of soil
  associated within the tropics with insalubrity of atmosphere
  27-33

  “Banks” or broken strata. General horizontality of the surface.
  Subsidences of the surface 33-35

  Resemblance of the distant steppe to the ocean. Naked stony
  crust. Tabular masses of syenite; whether prejudicial to health
  36-37

  General views respecting the mountain systems of North and South
  America, embracing the most recent information. Chains running
  in a south-west and north-east direction in Brazil and in the
  Atlantic portion of the United States of North America. The low
  province of Chiquitos; small swellings of the ground constitute
  the division between the waters of the Guaporé and Aguapehi in
  15° and 17° S. lat., and between the river basins of the Orinoco
  and the Rio Negro in 2° and 3° N. lat. 37-39

  Continuation of the chain of the Andes north of the isthmus of
  Panama (through the Aztec country, where Popocatepetl, 16626
  French, or 17720 English feet high, has very recently been again
  ascended by Captain Stone) in the Sierra de las Grullas and the
  Rocky Mountains. Excellent scientific investigations of Captain
  Frémont. The longest barometric levelling ever made, showing a
  profile or vertical section of the earth’s surface through a
  space of 28° of longitude. Culminating point of the route from
  the coast of the Atlantic to the Pacific. “South Pass,” south of
  the Wind River Mountains. Swelling of the ground in the Great
  Basin. Long contested existence of the Timpanogos Lake. Coast
  Chain, Maritime Alps, or Sierra Nevada of California. Volcanic
  eruptions. Falls of the Columbia 39-50

  General considerations on the contrasts shown by the spaces
  included between the central chain (the Rocky Mountains) and
  the diverging chains on the east and west (the Alleghanies and
  the Sierra Nevada of California); hypsometric characters of the
  low eastern space, which is only from 400 to 600 French, or
  426 to 639 English feet above the level of the sea, and of the
  arid uninhabited plain 5000 or 6000 (5330 to 6400 English) feet
  above the same level, called the Great Basin. Sources of the
  Mississipi in the Lake of Istaca according to Nicollet’s highly
  meritorious researches. Buffalo country; Gomara’s assertion of
  buffaloes having been formerly tamed in the northern part of
  Mexico 50-55

  Retrospective view of the chain of the Andes from the Rocks
  of Diego Ramirez to Behring’s Strait. Long circulated errors
  respecting the heights of mountains in the eastern chain of
  the Andes of Bolivia, especially the Sorata and the Illimani.
  Four summits of the western chain of Bolivia, which, according
  to Pentland’s latest determinations, are higher than the
  Chimborazo, but are not equal in height to the still active
  volcano of Acongagua measured by Fitz-Roy 55-58

  The African mountains of Harudsch-el-Abiad. Oases 58-60

  West winds on the coast of the Sahara. Accumulation of sea-weed;
  position of the great bank of Fucus from the time of Scylax of
  Caryanda to that of Columbus, and to the present day 60-67

  Tibbos and Tuaricks. The camel and its distribution 67-71

  Mountain systems of the interior of Asia between Northern
  Siberia and India. Erroneous belief in the existence of a single
  great elevated plain called “Plateau de la Tartarie” 71-75

  Chinese literature a rich source of orographic knowledge. Series
  of elevations of different highlands. Desert of Gobi. Probable
  mean height of Thibet 75-85

  Review of the mountain systems of the interior of Asia. Chains
  running in the direction of the meridian; the Ural, which
  separates the low part of Europe from the low part of Asia, or
  divides into two portions the Scythian Europe of Pherecydes of
  Syros and of Herodotus; Bolor; Khingan and the Chinese chains,
  which, near the great bend in the direction of the Thibetian and
  Assamo-Burmese river Dzangbo-tschu, run north and south. The
  elevations which, between 66° and 77° E. long. from Greenwich,
  follow the direction of meridians from Cape Comorin to the
  Icy Sea, alternate like veins or dikes in which there are
  faults or displacements; thus the Ghauts, the Soliman Chain,
  the Paralasa, the Bolor, and the Ural, succeed each other from
  south to north: the Bolor gave occasion among the ancients
  to the idea of the Imaus, which Agathodæmon supposed to be
  prolonged to the north into the low basin of the lower Irtysch.
  Parallel chains running east and west; the Altai; Thian-schan,
  with its active volcanoes at a distance of 1528 geographical
  miles from the Icy Sea at the mouth of the Obi, and of 1512
  geographical miles from the Indian Sea at the mouth of the
  Ganges; the Kuen-lün, recognised by Eratosthenes, Marinus of
  Tyre, Ptolemy, and Cosmas Indicopleustes, as the longest axis
  of elevation in the Old World, runs between 35-1/2° and 36°
  of latitude in the direction of the diaphragm of Dicearchus.
  Himalaya. The Kuen-lün, considered as an axis of elevation, may
  be traced from the wall of China near Lung-tscheu through the
  somewhat more northerly chains of Nan-schan and Kilian-schan,
  through the mountain knot near the Lake called the “Starry Sea,”
  through the Hindu-Coosh (the Parapanisus and Indian Caucasus
  of the ancients), and through the chain of Demawend and the
  Persian Elbourz, to Taurus in Lycia. Near the intersection of
  the Kuen-lün and the Bolor the correspondence of the direction
  of the axes of elevation (east and west in the Kuen-lün and the
  Hindu-Coosh, whereas that of the Himalaya is south-east and
  north-west) shows that the Hindu-Coosh is a continuation of the
  Kuen-lün, and not of the Himalaya. The point where the direction
  of the Himalaya changes to south-east and north-west from having
  been east and west, is about the 79th degree of east longitude
  from Paris (81° 22′ Greenwich). Next to the Dhawalagiri, it is
  not, as has been hitherto supposed, the Jawahir which is the
  highest summit of the Himalaya; that rank belonging, according
  to the most recent intelligence received from Dr. Joseph
  Hooker, to a mountain situated between Boutan and Nepaul in the
  meridian of Sikkim, the Kinchinjinga: the western summit of this
  mountain, which has been measured by Colonel Waugh, director
  of the trigonometrical survey of India, is 28178 feet, and its
  eastern summit 27826 feet high, according to the Journal of the
  Asiatic Society of Bengal, Nov. 1848:--The mountain which is now
  supposed to be higher than the Dhawalagiri is figured on the
  frontispiece of the magnificent work of Joseph Hooker entitled
  “The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya, 1849.”--Determination of
  the lower limits of the snow-line on the northern and southern
  declivities of the Himalaya; its height being on an average
  3400 to 4600 French, or 3620 to 4900 English feet higher on the
  northern face. New data on the subject from Hodgson. Without
  this remarkable distribution of temperature in the upper strata
  of the atmosphere, the mountain plains of Western Thibet would
  be uninhabitable to the millions of human beings who now dwell
  there 85-101

  The Hiong-nu, regarded by Deguignes and Johannes Müller
  as a tribe of Huns, appear rather to have been one of the
  widely scattered tribes of the Turks of the Altai and Tang-nu
  mountains. The Huns, whose name was known to Dionysius
  Perigetes, and who are noticed by Ptolemy as Chuns (whence the
  later appellation of Chunigard given to a country!), are a
  Finnish race of the Ural mountains 101-102

  Figures of the sun and of animals, and other signs carved on
  rocks in the Sierra Parime, as well as in North America, have
  often been supposed to be writing 102-104

  Description of the cold mountain elevations between 11000 and
  13000 (or 11720 and 13850 English) feet, which are distinguished
  by the appellation of Paramos; character of their vegetation
  104-106

  Notices of the two groups of mountains (Pacaraima Mountains,
  and the Sierra de Chiquitos) which separate the three plains of
  the Lower Orinoco, the Amazons, and the Rio de la Plata 106-107

  On the dogs of South America; both the aboriginal race and the
  descendants of European dogs which have become wild. Sufferings
  of cats when taken to elevations exceeding 13000 (13850 Eng.)
  feet 107-112

  The low tract of the Sahara, and its relations to the Atlas
  Mountains, according to the latest information given by Daumas,
  Carette, and Renou. The barometric measurements of Fournel make
  it appear very probable that part of the North African desert
  is lower than the level of the sea. Oasis of Biscara; abundance
  of fossil salt in zones or bands running from south-west to
  north-east. Causes of the nocturnal cold in the desert according
  to Melloni 112-118

  Notices of the River Wady Dra (1/6th longer than the Rhine,
  and dry a large portion of the year), and of the country of
  Sheikh Beirouk, a chief independent of the Emperor of Morocco,
  from manuscript communications of the Naval Captain Count
  Bouet-Villaumez. The mountains north of Cape Noun (a name used
  by Edresi, in which, since the 15th century, an allusion to the
  negative particle has been erroneously sought) attain 8600 (9166
  English) feet of elevation 118-120

  The vegetation of the tropical American Llanos consisting of
  grasses, compared with the vegetation of the North Asiatic
  Steppes consisting of herbaceous plants. In the last-named
  Steppes, and especially the more fertile among them, a
  pleasing effect is produced in spring by small snow-white
  and red-flowering Rosaceæ, Amygdaleæ, species of Astragalus,
  Crown Imperials, Cypripedias, and Tulips. Contrast with the
  desolate salt Steppes full of Chenopodiaceæ, species of Salsola
  and Atriplex. Considerations on the relative numbers of the
  prevailing families of plants. The plains adjoining the Icy Sea,
  north of the limit determined by Admiral Wrangel as that of the
  growth of Coniferæ and Amentaceæ, are the domain of cryptogamous
  plants. Aspect and physiognomy of the Tundras, where the soil,
  which is perpetually frozen, is covered either with a thick
  coating of Sphagnum and other mosses, or with the snow-white
  Cenomyce and Stereocaulon paschale 120-123

  Principal causes of the very different distribution of
  temperature in the European and American Continents. Direction
  and curvature of the isothermal lines, or lines of equal
  temperature, for the entire year, for the winter, and for the
  summer 123-136

  Are there any grounds for believing that America emerged later
  than the Old Continent from the chaotic watery covering? 136-139

  Thermic comparison of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in
  high latitudes 139-143

  Apparent connection of the African sea of sand with those
  of Persia, Kerman, Beloochistan, and the interior of Asia.
  On the western part of Mount Atlas, and the connection of
  purely mythical ideas with geographical traditions. Indistinct
  allusions to igneous eruptions. Triton Lake. Crater-like forms
  of a locality south of Hanno’s “Bay of the Gorilla Apes.”
  Singular description of the “hollow Atlas” from the Dialexes of
  Marinus Tyrius 143-149

  Notices respecting the Mountains of the Moon (Djebel al-Komr)
  in the interior of Africa by Reinaud, Beke, and Ayrton. Werne’s
  instructive notice of the second expedition undertaken by the
  orders of Mehemet Ali. The Abyssinian mountains, which rise,
  according to Rüppell, almost to the height of Mont Blanc. The
  most ancient notice of snow between the tropics contained in
  the Inscription of Adulis, which is somewhat more modern than
  Juba. High mountains which, between 6° and 4° of north latitude,
  and still more to the south, approach the Bahr el-Abiad. A
  considerable swelling of the ground divides the White Nile from
  the basin of the Goschop. Line of separation between the waters
  which flow to the Mediterranean and those which flow to the
  Indian Ocean according to Carl Zimmermann’s map. Lupata Chain
  according to the instructive researches of Wilhelm Peters 149-158

  Oceanic currents. In the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean the
  waters are impelled in a true revolving current. That the first
  impulse which causes the Gulf Stream is to be sought at the
  southern extremity of Africa, was already known to Sir Humphry
  Gilbert in 1560. Influence of the Gulf Stream on the climate of
  Scandinavia. How it contributed to the discovery of America.
  Instances of Esquimaux who, aided by the returning eastward
  flowing portion of the warm Gulf Stream, and by north-west
  winds, arrived on the coasts of Europe. Such a case related
  by Cornelius Nepos and Pomponius Mela (of Indians given by a
  king of the Boii to Quintus Metellus Celer, Proconsul of Gaul);
  others in the time of the Othos and of Frederic Barbarossa, of
  Columbus and of Cardinal Bembo. Again, in the years 1682 and
  1684 natives of Greenland appeared in the Orkneys 159-165

  Operation of lichens and other Cryptogamia in the cold and
  temperate zones in preparing the way for the more rapid
  establishment of larger phænogamous plants. Within the tropics
  lichens are often replaced in this respect by succulent plants.
  Milk-yielding animals of the New Continent; the Lama, the
  Alpaca, the Guanaco 165-169

  Cultivation of farinaceous grasses 169-173

  On the earliest population of America 173-174

  The coast nation of the Guaranis (Warraus), and the Mauritia
  palm of the coasts, according to the accounts given by Bembo in
  the Historiæ Venetæ, and those of Raleigh, Hillhouse, and Robert
  and Richard Schomburgk 174-182

  Phenomena which long-continued drought produces in the Steppe;
  sand-spouts, hot winds (Mirage); awakening of crocodiles and
  tortoises from long summer sleep 182-190

  Otomacs. General considerations on the practice of earth-eating
  among particular nations or tribes. Clays and earths containing
  Infusoria 190-196

  Figures graven on rocks throughout a zone running from east
  to west, and extending from the Rupunuri, Essequibo, and the
  Pacaraima Mountains, to Caycara and the wildernesses of the
  Cassiquiare. Earliest notice (April 1749) of these traces of
  former civilization in the manuscript account of the travels
  of the surgeon Nicolas Hortsmann of Hildesheim, found among
  D’Anville’s papers 196-203

  The vegetable poison Curare or Ourari 203-204


  _Cataracts of the Orinoco_--p. 207 to p. 231.

  The Orinoco; general view of its course. Ideas excited in
  Columbus on seeing its embouchure. Its unknown sources are east
  of the Mountain of Duida and the groves of Bertholletia. Causes
  of the principal bends of the river 207-219

  The falls or rapids; Raudal of Maypures enclosed by four
  streams. Former state of the district. Island-like form of the
  rocks Keri and Oco. Grandeur of the view obtained on descending
  the hill of Manimi, where a foaming river-surface of four
  miles in extent presents itself at once to the eye. Iron-black
  masses of rock rise like castles from the bed of the river;
  the summits of the lofty palm trees pierce through the cloud of
  spray and vapour 219-226

  Raudal of Atures; numerous islands; rocky dikes connecting one
  island with another, and the resort of pugnacious golden Pipras.
  Parts of the bed of the river at the cataracts are dry, from
  the waters having found a passage by subterranean channels. We
  visited the rocks at the closing in of night and during storm
  and heavy rain. Unsuspected proximity of crocodiles 226-227

  Celebrated cave of Ataruipe, the sepulchral vault of an extinct
  nation 227-231


  _Scientific Elucidations and Additions_--p. 233 to p. 255.

  The river-cow (Trichecus manati) lives in the sea at the place
  where, in the Gulf of Xagua, on the south coast of the Island of
  Cuba, springs of fresh water break forth 233-234

  Geographical discussion on the sources of the Orinoco 236-241

  The Bertholletia, a Lecythidea, a remarkable example of highly
  developed organization. Stem of an Arundinarea sixteen to
  seventeen feet long from knot to knot 241-243

  On the myth or fable of the Lake of Parime 243-254


  _The Nocturnal Life of Animals in the Primeval Forest_--p. 259
  to p. 272.

  Difference between languages in respect to their richness in
  well-defined expressions for characterising natural phenomena,
  such as the state of vegetation, the forms of plants, the
  outlines and grouping of clouds, the appearance of the surface
  of the ground, and the forms of rocks and mountains. Loss
  which languages suffer by the disuse of such words, or by
  their signification becoming impaired. The misinterpretation
  of a Spanish word, “Monte,” has caused the undue extension or
  introduction of mountains in maps. Primeval Forest; frequent
  abuse of the term. Absence of the uniformity which is produced
  by the association of the same kinds of trees, characteristic
  of tropical forests. Causes of the impenetrability of forests
  between the tropics; the twining plants, Lianes, often form only
  a small portion of the Underwood 259-266

  Appearance of the Rio Apure in the lower part of its course.
  Margin of the forest fenced like a garden by a low hedge of
  Sauso (Hermesia). The wild animals of the forest lead their
  young to the river through small openings in this hedge. Flocks
  of large water-hogs or Cavies (Capybara). Fresh-water dolphins
  266-269

  Wild cries of animals resound throughout the forest. Cause of
  the nocturnal uproar 269-271

  Contrast with the stillness which reigns during the noon-tide
  hours on days of more than usual heat in the torrid zone.
  Description of the narrows of the Orinoco at Baraguan. Humming
  and fluttering of insects. Life stirs audibly in every bush, in
  the clefts of the bark of trees, and in the earth undermined and
  furrowed by Hymenopterous insects 271-272


  _Scientific Elucidations and Additions_--p. 273 to p. 275.

  Characteristic terms in Arabic and Persian descriptive of the
  surface of the ground (Steppes, grassy plains, deserts, &c.)
  Richness of the old Castilian idiom in words expressive of the
  form of mountains. Fresh-water skates and dolphins. In the great
  rivers of both continents some organic sea-forms are repeated.
  American nocturnal monkeys, the three-striped Douroucouli of the
  Cassiquiare. 273-275


  _Hypsometric Addenda_--p. 277 to p. 285.

  Pentland’s measurements in the eastern mountain chain of
  Bolivia. Height of the volcano of Aconcagua according to Fitzroy
  and Darwin. Western mountain chain of Bolivia 277-279

  Mountain systems of North America. Rocky Mountains and the Snowy
  Chain (Sierra Nevada) of California. Laguna de Timpanogos 279-283

  Hypsometrical profile of the Highland of Mexico from the city of
  Mexico to Santa Fé 283-285


END OF VOL. I.


Wilson and Ogilvy, Printers, 57, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London.



Transcriber's Note


Duplicate chapter headings have been removed.


The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 47 "parallels of 40° and 55°" changed to "parallels of 40° and 55°."

p. 49 "Mount St. Elias (1980 toises" changed to "Mount St. Elias, 1980
toises"

p. 49 "43° 2′, long. 112° 28" changed to "43° 2′, long. 112° 28′"

p. 50 "Scoriacous" changed to "Scoriaceous"

p. 52 "miles The surface of" changed to "miles. The surface of"

p. 53 "the tongue a much-prized" changed to "the tongue, a much-prized"

p. 60 "greenstone porpyhry" changed to "greenstone porphyry"

p. 62 "θρύον καὶφῦκος" changed to "θρύον καὶ φῦκος"

p. 62 "shoal dissappeared" changed to "shoal disappeared"

p. 65 "E. meditterranea" changed to "E. mediterranea"

p. 68 "Bedouin tribes”" changed to "Bedouin tribes"

p. 71 "p. 4.)--" changed to "p. 4.--"

p. 76 "Appennines. (Compare" changed to "Apennines. (Compare"

p. 91 "view of Erastosthenes" changed to "view of Eratosthenes"

p. 91 "issue from a avcity" changed to "issue from a cavity"

p. 97 "than the Dawalagiri" changed to "than the Dhawalagiri"

p. 113 "and “this name" changed to "and this name"

p. 116 "oises (3580 Eng. feet)" changed to "toises (3580 Eng. feet)"

p. 128 "leaves also A similar" changed to "leaves also. A similar"

p. 132 "in lat 44° 53′" changed to "in lat. 44° 53′"

p. 137 "repose. “At the present moment" changed to "repose. At the
present moment"

p. 139 "true “insular climate;" changed to "true “insular climate;”"

p. 141 "lat 42° 53′" changed to "lat. 42° 53′"

p. 141 "42°.2, and 63°." changed to "42°.2, and 63°.0"

p. 142 "Berlin 6°8" changed to "Berlin 6°.8"

p. 148 "πυρὸς ὲκφυτηματα μεγάλα" changed to "πυρὸς ἐκφυσήματα μεγάλα"

p. 149 "semicircular deep abyss." changed to "semicircular deep abyss.”"

p. 151 "σεληνης ὅρος" changed to "σελήνης ὅρος"

p. 152 "S. 534-536." changed to "S. 534-536.)"

p. 154 "second of Mehemed" changed to "second of Mehemet"

p. 156 "Isenberg, Russeger" changed to "Isenberg, Russegger"

p. 162 "with the equitorial" changed to "with the equatorial"

p. 173 "Beitrage zur Flora des" changed to "Beiträge zur Flora des"

p. 178 "so disagreable an odour" changed to "so disagreeable an odour"

p. 187 "Electricetät" changed to "Elektricität"

p. 192 "as a misssionary" changed to "as a missionary"

p. 199 "of Nicholas Hortsman" changed to "of Nicholas Hortsmann"

p. 225 "These spots recal" changed to "These spots recall"

p. 235 "(ed. 1601, p. 106]" changed to "(ed. 1601, p. 106)"

p. 239 "uncertain disance" changed to "uncertain distance"

p. 240 "4°.12" changed to "4°.12′"

p. 241 "65°.38′ Near" changed to "65°.38′. Near"

p. 248 "Pacaraima monntains" changed to "Pacaraima mountains"

p. 262 "believe that of al’" changed to "believe that of all"

p. 262 "Bonpland, Martius" changed to "Bonpland, Martius,"

p. 281 "107° 58" changed to "107° 58′"

p. 285 "undulating suface" changed to "undulating surface"

p. 295 "(1-6th" changed to "(1/6th"


Inconsistent or archaic spelling and punctuation have otherwise been
kept as printed.


The following possible errors have been kept as printed:

p. 79 two distinguished Savans

p. 182 mountains of Ronaima

p. 221 of globe




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