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BOHN, YORK STREET, COYENT GARDEN, 1850. LONDON : PBINTED BY HARRISON AND SON, ST. MARTIN’S LANE. PREFACE BY THE PUBLISHER. Gkeat pains have been taken 'with the present translation, as well in regard to fidelity and style, as in what may be termed the accessories. In addition to all that is contained in the original work, it comprises an interesting view of Chimborazo, from a sketch by Humboldt himself; a fac-simile of the author’s handwriting; head-lines of contents ; transla¬ tions of the principal Latin, French, and Spanish quotations ;* a very complete index; and a conversion of all the foreign measurements. It was at first intended to give both the foreign and English measurements, in juxta-position ; but this plan was abandoned on perceiving that the pages would become overloaded with figures, and present a perplexing and some¬ what appalling aspect, without affording any equivalent advan¬ tage to the English reader. In some few instances, however, where it seemed desirable, and in all the parallel tables, duplicate measurements have been inserted. The French toises are converted into their relative number of English feet; and German miles, whether simple or square, are re¬ duced to our own. The longitudes have been calculated from Greenwich, conformably to English maps, in lieu of those given by Humboldt, which are calculated from Paris. The degrees of temperature, instead of Reaumur’s, are Fahren¬ heit’s, as now the most generally recognised. It here becomes necesssary to say something of the trans- * To instance a few, see pp. 241, 245, 255, 259, 304, 320, 325, 326, 886, 422, 424. *T1 PREFACE. ators, and tlie cause of so much unexpected delay in producing this volume ; the more so as many of the subscribers to the Scientific Library have expressed an interest in the subject, owing, in some measure, to a controversy which arose out of my previous publication of Cosmos. The translation was originally entrusted to E. C. Otte, with an agreement as to time, according to which I had every reason to expect that I should fulfil my engagement to publish it in October last, or at latest in November; but, after much of the manuscript was prepared, the translator’s indisposition and subsequent absence from London, occasioned a serious suspension. In this di¬ lemma I found it necessary to call in aid, as well as to assist personally. The result of this “co-operation of forces” will no doubt prove satisfactory to the reader, inasmuch as every sheet has been at least trebly revised, and it is hoped proportionably improved. In addition to the responsible translator, my principal collaborates has been Mr. E. H. Whitelocke, a gentleman well qualified for the task. All the measurements are calculated by the scientific friend, who fulfilled this department so satisfactorily in my edition of Cosmos. The translation of the pretty poem, The Parrot of A f ares, (page 189,) now first given in English, is contributed by Mr. Edgar A. Bowring. For the additional notes subscribed “ Ed.” I am myself, in most instances, responsible. Much has been said, pro and con, about the sanction of the Author to the several translations of his works. My answer has, I believe, been generally considered satisfactory and conclusive. I have now only to add, that when I wrote to Baron Humboldt, more than a year and a-half ago, presenting PREFACE. Yll him with my then unpublished edition of Cosmos , I announced my intention of proceeding with his other works, and con¬ sulted him on the subject. He replied in the kindest spirit, without intimating any previous engagement, and honoured me with several valuable suggestions. A portion of one of his letters is annexed in facsimile. In consequence of what I then presumed to be his recommendation, I determined to make the Ansichten my next volume, and announced it, long before any one else, though not at first by its English name. At that time I had reason to hope that I should receive the new German edition at least as early as any one, but was disappointed. This circumstance, added to the delay already alluded to, has brought me late into the field. In now, how¬ ever, presenting my subscribers with what I have taken every available means to render a perfect book, I hope I shall afford them ample atonement. A few Avords respecting the work itself. The first edition was published forty-three years ago, the second in 1826, and the third, of which the present volume is a translation, in August last. The difference between the three editions in respect to the text (if I may so distinguish the more enter¬ taining part of the work from the scientific “Illustrations”) is not material, excepting that each has one or more new chapters. Thus to the second edition was added the Essay on Volcanos and the curious allegory on vital force, entitled The Rhodian Genius , and to the third The Plateau of Caxamarca. The additions to the “ Illustrations” however in the third edition are considerable, and comprise a rapid sketch of whatever has been contributed by modern science in illustra¬ tion of the Author's favourite subjects. No intellectual reader can peruse this masterly work a 2 Till PREFACE. without intense interest and considerable instruction. After feasting on the highly wrought and, it may be said, poetical descriptions, written in the Author’s earlier years, he will turn with increased zest to the elaborate illustrations, which, in a separate form, are brought to bear on every subject of the text. This scientific portion, although not at first the most attractive, presents many delightful episodes, which will amply repay the perusal of even those who merely read for amusement. HENRY G. BOHN. York Street, January, 1850. JFAC- SMILE (Q>E TME HAJSJPWITIN© ©E BAR« fflJlffiOLBT. EXTRACTS OF A LETTER TO THE PUBLISHER. -O _ _ s/ s -v * • - 'X X yf/^^- ^,/c, ?i6*i ** m y~ — ' • a- /' ^ ^ xc Xl ->--/ ^ v^77&^ k*./.**‘A*' jSz&s»* a^rL AUTHOR’S PREFACE, TO THE FIRST EDITION. With some diffidence, I here present to the public a series of papers which originated in the presence of the noblest objects of nature, — on the Ocean, — in the forests of the Orinoco, — in the Savannahs of Venezuela, — and in the soli¬ tudes of the Peruvian and Mexican Mountains. Several detached fragments, written on the spot, have since been wrought into a whole. A survey of nature at large, — proofs of the co-operation of forces, — and a renewal of the enjoyment which the immediate aspect of the tropical countries affords to the susceptible beholder, — are the objects at which I aim. Each Essay was designed to be complete in itself; and one and the same tendency pervades the whole. This aesthetic mode of treating subjects of Natural History is fraught with great difficulties in the execution, notwithstanding the mar¬ vellous vigour and flexibility of my native language. The wonderful luxuriance of nature presents an accumulation of separate images, and accumulation disturbs the harmony and effect of a picture. When the feelings and the imagina¬ tion are excited, the style is apt to stray into poetical prose. But these ideas require no amplification here, for the fol¬ lowing pages afford but too abundant examples of such devia¬ tions and of such want of unity. Notwithstanding these defects, which I can more easily X PREFACE. perceive than amend, let me hope that these “ Views ” may afford the reader, at least some portion of that enjoyment which a sensitive mind receives from the immediate contem¬ plation of nature. As this enjoyment is heightened by an insight into the connection of the occult forces, I have sub¬ joined to each treatise scientific illustrations and additions. Everywhere the reader's attention is directed to the per¬ petual influence which physical nature exercises on the moral condition and on the destiny of man. It is to minds oppressed with care that these pages are especially con¬ secrated. He who has escaped from the stormy waves of life will joyfully follow me into the depths of the forests, over the boundless steppes and prairies, and to the lofty summits of the Andes. To him are addressed the words of the chorus who preside over the destinies of mankind : On the mountains is freedom ! the breath of decay Never sullies the fresh flowing air; Oh! nature is perfect wherever we stray; ’Tis man that deforms it with care.^ * These lines are from Schiller’s Bride of Messina, as translated by A. Lodge, Esq See Schiller’s works (Bohn’s ed.) vol. iii. p. 509. AUTHOR’S PREFACE, TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS. The twofold object of this work, — an anxious endeavour to heighten the enjoyment of nature by vivid representations, and at the same time to increase, according to the present state of science, the reader’s insight into the harmonious co-operation of forces, — was pointed out by me in the preface to the first edition, nearly half a century ago. I there alluded to the several obstacles which oppose themselves to the sesthetic treatment of the grand scenes of nature. The com¬ bination of a literary and a purely scientific aim, the desire to engage the imagination, and at the same time to enrich life with new ideas by the increase of knowledge, render the due arrangement of the separate parts, and what is required as unity of composition, difficult of attainment. Notwithstand¬ ing these disadvantages, however, the public have continued to receive with indulgent partiality, my imperfect performance. The second edition of the Views of Nature , was published by me in Paris in 1826. Two papers wrere then added, one, “An inquiry into the structure and mode of action of Volcanos in different regions of the earth;” the other, “Vital Force, or The Rhodian Genius.” Schiller, in remembrance of his youth- Xll PREFACE. ful medical studies, loved to converse with me, during my long stay at Jena, on physiological subjects. The inquiries in which I was then engaged, in preparing my work “On the condition of the fibres of muscles and nerves, when irritated by contact with substances chemically opposed,” often im¬ parted a more serious direction to our conversation. It was at this period that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force, called The Rhodian Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained for this piece, and which he admitted into his periodical, Die Horen , gave me courage to introduce it here. My brother, in a letter which has recently been published (William von Humboldt’s Letters to a Female Friend, vol. ii. p. 39), delicately alludes to the subject, but at the same time very justly adds; “ The development of a physio¬ logical idea is exclusively the object of the essay. Such semi-poetical clothings of grave truths were more in vogue at the time this was written than they are at present.” In my eightieth year I have still the gratification of com¬ pleting a third edition of my work, and entirely remoulding it to meet the demands of the age. Almost all the scientific illustrations are either enlarged or replaced by new and more comprehensive ones. I have indulged a hope of stimulating the study of nature, by compressing into the smallest possible compass, the numerous results of careful investigation on a variety of interesting subjects, with a view of shewing the importance of accurate numerical data, and the necessity of comparing them with each other, as well as to check the dogmatic smattering and fashionable scepticism which lia%e too long prevailed in the so-called higher circles of society. My expedition into northern Asia (to the Ural, the Altai, PREFACE. Xlll and the shores of the Caspian Sea) in the year 1829, with Ehrenberg and Gustavus Rose, at the command of the Em¬ peror of Russia, took place between the second and third editions of my work. This expedition has ’•essentially con¬ tributed to the enlargement of my views in all that con¬ cerns the formation of the earth's surface, the direction of mountain-chains, the connexion of the Steppes and Deserts, and the geographical distribution of plants according to ascer¬ tained influences of temperature. The ignorance which has so long existed respecting the two great snow-covered moun¬ tain-chains, the Thian-schan and the Kuen-lün, situated between the Altai and Himalaya, has (owing to the inju¬ dicious neglect of Chinese sources of information) obscured the geography of Central Asia, and propagated fancies in¬ stead of facts, in works of extensive circulation. Within the last few months the hypsometric comparisons of the culminating points of both continents have unexpectedly received important and corrective illustration, of which I am the first to avail myself in the following pages. The measure¬ ment (now divested of former errors) of the altitude of the two mountains, Sorata and Illimani, in the eastern chain of the Andes of Bolivia, has not yet, with certainty, restored the Chimborazo to its ancient pre-eminence among the snowy mountains of the new world. In the Himalaya the recent barometric measurement of the Kinchin-jinga (26,438 Parisian, or 28,178 English feet) places it next in height to the Dhawalagiri, which has also been trigonometrically measured with greater accuracy. To preserve uniformity with the two former editions of the Vieius of Nature, the calculations of temperature, unless where the contrary is stated, are given according to the XIV PREFACE. eighty degrees thermometer of Reamur. The lineal measure¬ ment is the old 'French, in which the toise is equivalent to six Parisian feet. The miles are geographical, fifteen to a degree of the equator. The longitudes are calculated from the first meridian of the Parisian Observatory. Berlin, March, 1849. - 'Jrr *"*•■■**. CONTENTS. * ^ 'X >.. \ i \ ' i> $ v s ■% r y \ .i T ft B ~ \ jt i. AJL-i • . \ TT V ( Vi s. « » N . Aw t» Publisher’s Preface ... Author’s Preface, to the First Edition Author’s Preface, to the Second and Third Editions Summary of Contents... Steppes and Deserts ... Illustrations and Additions Cataracts of the Orinoco Illustrations and Additions Nocturnal Life of Animals in the Primeval Forest Illustrations and Additions Hypsometric Addenda Ideas for a Physiognomy of Plants ... Illustrations and Additions On the Structure and Mode of Action of Volcanos in DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE EARTH Illustrations and Additions Vital Force, or The Rhodian Genius ... Illustration and Note... Pnge v ix xi xvii I 22 153 174 191 202 204 210 232 353 376- 380* 386= The Plateau of Caxamarca, the Ancient Capital of the Inca Atahuallpa, and First View of the Pacific from the Ridge of the Andes ... ... ... ... ... 390 Illustrations and Additions ... ... ... ... 421 Index ... 437 b . • SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. ON STEPPES AND DESERTS . pp. 1-21. Coast-chain and mountain-valleys of Caracas. The Lake of Tacarigua. Contrast between the luxuriant abundance of organic life and the treeless plains. Impressions of space. The steppe as the bottom of an ancient inland sea. Broken strata lying somewhat above the surface, and called Banks. Uniformity of phenomena presented by plains. Heaths of Europe, Pampas and Llanos of South America, African deserts, North Asiatic Steppes. Diversified character of the vegetable covering. Animal life. Pastoral tribes, who have convulsed the world — pp. 1-5. Description of the South American plains and savannahs. Their extent and climate, the latter dependant on the outline and hypso- metrical configuration of the New Continent. Comparison with plains and deserts of Africa — pp. 5 — 10. Original absence of pastoral life in America. Nutriment yielded by the Mauritia Palm. Pendant huts built in trees. Guaranes — pp. 10-13. The Llanos have become more habitable to man since the discovery of America. Eemarkable increase of wild Oxen, Horses, and Mules. Description of the seasons of drought and rain. Aspect of the ground and sky. Life of animals, their sufferings and combats. Adapt¬ ability with which nature has endowed animals and plants. Jaguar, Crocodiles, Electric Fishes. Unequal contest between gymnoti and horses — pp. 13-19. Petrospective view of the districts which border steppes and deserts. Wilderness of the forest- region between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers. Native tribes separated by wonderful diversity both of language and customs; a toiling and divided race. Figures graven on rocks prove that even these solitudes were once the seat of a civilization now extinct —pp. 19-21. Scientific Illustrations and Additions . . . pp. 22-152. The island-studded Lake of Tacarigua. Its relation to the mountain- chains. Geognostic tableau. Progress of civilization. Varieties of the sugar-cane. Cacao plantations. Great fertility of soil within the tropics accompanied by great atmospheric insalubrity. — pp. 22-26. Banks, or broken floetz-strata. General flatness. Land-slips — pp. 26-28. Resemblance of the distant steppe to the ocean. Naked stony crust, tabular masses of syenite ; have they a detrimental effect on the atmo¬ sphere! — pp. 28-29. XVlll SUMMARY. STEPPES AND DESERTS. Modern views on the mountain systems of the two American peninsulas. Chains, which have a direction from SAY. to N.E., in Brazil and in the Atlantic portion of the United States of North America. Depression of the Province of Chiquitos; ridges as water¬ marks between the Guapore and Aguapehi in 15° and 17° south lat., and between the fluvial districts of the Orinoco and Rio Negro in 2° and 3° north lat. — pp. 29-31. Continuation of the Andes-chain north of the isthmus of Panama through the territory of the Aztecs, (where the Popocatepetl, recently ascended by Capt. Stone, rises to an altitude of 17,720 feet,) and through the Crane and Rocky Mountains. Valuable scientific investigations of Capt. Främont. The greatest barometric levelling ever accomplished, representing a profile of the ground over 28° of longitude. Culminating point of the route from the coast of the Atlantic to the South Sea. The South Pass southward of the Wind-River Mountains. Swell¬ ing of the ground in the Great Basin. Long disputed existence of Lake Timpanogos. Coast-chain, Maritime Alps, Sierra Nevada of Cali¬ fornia. Volcanic eruptions. Cataracts of the Columbia River — pp. 31-38. General considerations on the contrast between the configuration of the territorial spaces, presented by the two diverging coast-chains, east and west of the central chain, called the Rocky Mountains. Hypsometric constitution of the Eastern Lowland, which is only from 400 to some¬ what more than 600 feet above the level of the sea, and of the arid uninhabited plateau of the Great Basin, from 5000 to more than 6000 feet high. Sources of the Mississippi in Lake Istaca according to Nicollet, whose labours are most meritorious. Native land of the. Bisons; their ancient domestication in Northern Mexico asserted by Gomara— pp. 38-42. Retrospective view of the entire Andes-chain from the cliff of Diego Ramirez to Behring’s Straits. Long prevalent errors concerning the height of the eastern Andes-chain of Bolivia, especially of the Sorata and Illimani. Four summits of the western chain, which, according to Pentland’s latest determinations, surpass the Chimborazo in height, but not the still-active volcano, Aconcagua, measured by Fitz-Roy — pp. 42-44. The African mountain range of Harudje-el-Abiad. Oases of vegeta¬ tion, abounding in springs — pp. 44-46. Westerly winds on the borders of the desert Sahara. Accumulation of sea-weed ; present and former position of the great fucus-bank, from the time of Scylax of Caryanda to that of Columbus and to the present period — pp. 46-50. Tibbos and Tuaryks. The camel and its distribution — pp. 50-53. Mountain-systems of Central Asia between Northern Siberia and India, between the Altai and the Himalaya, which latter range is aggre¬ gated with the Kuen-lün. Erroneous opinion as to the existence of one immense plateau, the so-called “ Plateau de la Tartarie” — pp. 53-56. SUMMARY. STEPPES AND DESERTS. XIX Chinese literature a rich source of orographic knowledge. Gra¬ dations of the High Lands. Gobi and its direction. Probable mean height of Thibet — pp. 56-63. General review of the mountain systems of Asia. Meridian chains : the Ural, which separates lower Europe from lower Asia or the Scythian Europe of Pherecydes of Syros and Herodotus. Bolor, Khingan, and the Chinese chains, which at the great bend of the Thibetan and Assam-Burmese river, Dzangbo-tschu, stretch from .north to south. The meridian elevations alternate between the parallels .of 66° and 77° east long, from Cape Comorin to the Frozen Ocean, like displaced veins. Thus the Ghauts, the Soliman chain, the Paralasa, .the Bolor, and the Ural follow' from south to north. The Bolor gave "rise, among the ancients, to the idea respecting the Imaus, which Aga- thodaemon considered to be prolonged northwards as far as the lowland or basin of the lower Irtysch. Parallel chains, running east and west, the Altai, Thian-schan with its active volcanos, which lie 1528 miles from the frozen ocean at the mouth of the Obi, and 1512 from the Indian Ocean at the mouth of the Ganges ; Kuen-lUn, already recognized by Eratosthenes, Marinus of Tyre, Ptolemy, and Cosmas Indicopleustcs, as the greatest axis of elevation in the Old World, between 354° and 36° lat. in the dii’ection of the diaphragm of Dicaearchus. Himalaya. The Kuen-lUn may be traced, when considered as an axis of elevation, .from the Chinese wrall near Lung-tscheu, through the somewhat more northerly chains of Nan-schan and Kilian-schan, through the mountain node of the “Starry Sea,” the Hindoo Cush (the Paropanisus and Indian Caucasus of the ancients), and, lastly, through the chain of the Demavend and Persian Elburz, as far as the Taurus in Lycia. Not far from the intersection of the Kuen-lUn by the Bolor, the corre¬ sponding direction of the axes of elevation (inclining from east to vrest in the Kuen-lUn and Hindoo Cush, and on the other hand south-east and north-w'est in the Himalaya) proves, that the Hindoo Cush is a prolongation of the Kuen-lUn, and not of the Himalaya which is asso¬ ciated to the latter in the manner of a gang or vein. The point where the Himalaya changes its direction, that is to say, where it leaves its former east-w'esterly direction, lies not far from 81° east long. The Djawrahir is not, as has hitherto been supposed, the next in altitude to the Dhawalagiri, which is the highest summit of the Himalaya ; for, according to Joseph Hooker, this rank is due to a mountain lying in the meridian of Sikhim between Butan and Nepaul, called the Kinchinjinga or Kintschin-Dschunga. This mountain (Kinchinjinga) measured by Col. Waugh, Director of the Trigonometrical Survey of India, has for its western summit an altitude of 28,178 feet, and for its eastern 27,826 feet, according to the Journal of the Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, November, 1848. The mountain, now considered higher than the Dhaw'alagiri, is represented in the engraving to the title-page of Joseph Hooker’s splendid work, The Rhododendrons of Sikhim Himalaya, 1849. Deter¬ mination of the snow-limits on the northern and southern slopes of the Himalaya; the former lies in the mean about 3620 up to 4900 feet higher. New statements of Hodgson. But for the remarkable distri- XX SUMMARY. STEPPES AND DESERTS. "bution of heat in the upper strata of the air, the table-land of western Thibet would be uninhabitable to millions of human beings — pp. 63-80. The Hiong-nu, whom Deguignes and John Muller considered to be a tribe of Huns, appear rather to be one of the widely spread Turkish races of the Altai and Tangnu mountains. The Huns, whose name was known even to Dionysius Periegetes, and who are described by Ptolemy as Chuns (hence the later territorial name of Chunigard !) are a Finnish tribe, from the Ural mountains, which separate the two continents — pp. 80-81. Representations of the sun, animals, and characters, graven on rocks at Sierra Parime, as well as in H orth America, have frequently been regarded as writing — p. 82. Description of the cold mountain regions between 11,000 and 13,000 Parisian, or 11,720 and 13,850 English feet in height, which have been designated Paramos. Character of their vegetation — p. 83. Orographic remarks on the two mountain clusters (Pacaraima and Sierra de Chiquitos) which separate the three plains of the lower Ori¬ noco, the Amazon, and La Plata rivers from each other — p. 84. Concerning the Dogs of the Hew Continent, the aboriginal as well as those from Europe, which have become wild. Sufferings of Cats at heights surpassing 13,854 feet — pp. 85-88. The Low Land of the Sahara and its relations to the Atlas range, according to the latest reports of Daumas, Carette, and Renou. The barometric measurements of Fournel render it very probable, that part of the north African desert lies below the level of the sea. Oasis of Biscara. Abundance of rock-salt in regions which extend from S.W. to H.E. Causes of nocturnal cold in the desert, according to Melloni — pp. 88-92. Information respecting the River Wadi Dra (one- sixth longer than the Rhine), which is dry during a great part of the year. Some account of the territory of the Sheikh Beirouk, who is independent of the Emperor of Morocco, according to manuscript communications of Capt. Count Bouet Villaumez, of the French Marine. The mountains north of Cape Hun (an Edrisian name, in which by a play of words a negation has been assumed since the 15th century) attain an altitude of 9186 feet — pp. 92-94. Gramineous vegetation of the American Llanos between the tropics, compared with the herbaceous vegetation of the Steppes in Horthern Asia. In these, especially in the most fertile of them, a pleasing effect is afforded in spring by the small snow-white and red flowering Rosacea?, Amygdalese, the species of Astragalus, Crown-imperial, Cypripedias, and Tulips. Contrast with the desert of the salt-steppes lull of Chenopodim, and of species of Salsola and Atriplex. Humerical considerations with respect to the pi’edominant families. The plains which skirt the Frozen Ocean (north of what Admiral Wrangel has described as the boundary of Coniferse and Amentacese), are the domain of cryptogamic plants. Physiognomy of the Tundra on an ever-frozen soil, covered with a thick coating of Sphagnum and other foliaceous mosses, or with the snow-white Cenomyce and Stercocaulon paschale — pp. 94-96. SUMMARY. STEPPES AND DESERTS. XXI Chief causes of the very unequal distribution of heat in the European and American continents. Direction and inflection of the isothermal lines (equal mean-heat of the year, in winter and summer) — pp. 96-105. Is there reason to believe that America emerged later from the ^chaotic covering of waters'? — pp. 105-107. Thermal comparison between the northern and southern hemispheres in high latitudes — pp. 107-109. Apparent connexion between the sand-seas of Africa, Persia, Kerman, Beloochistan, and Central Asia. On the western portion of the Atlas, and the connection of purely mythical ideas, with geographical legends. Indefinite allusions to fiery eruptions. Triton Lake. Crater forms, south of Hanno’s “Bay of the Gorilla Apes.” Singular description of the Hollow Atlas, from the Dialexes of Maximus Tyrius — pp. 110-11. Explanations of the Mountains of the Moon (Djebel-al-Komr) in the interior of Africa, according to Reinaud, Beke, and Ayrton. W erne’s instructive report of the second expedition, wdiich was undertaken by command of Mehemet Ali. The Abyssinian high mountain chain, which, according to Riippell, attains nearly the height of Mont Blanc. The earliest account of the snow between the tropics is contained in the inscription of Adulis, which is of a somewhat later date than Juba. Lofty mountains, which between 6° and 4°, and even more southerly, approach the Bahr-el-Abiad. A considerable rise of ground separates the White Nile from the basin of the Goschop. Line of separation between the waters which flow towards the Mediterranean and Indian seas, according to Carl Zimmermann’s map. Lupata chain, according to the instructive researches of Wilhelm Peters — pp. 114-120. Oceanic currents. In the northern part of the Atlantic the waters are agitated in a true rotatory movement. That the first impulse to the Gulf-stream is to be looked for at the southern ape*c of Africa, was a fact 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, favoured by north-west winds, have been carried, through the returning easterly inclined portion of the warm gulf-stream, to the European coasts. In¬ formation of Cornelius Nepos and Pomponius Mela respecting Indians, whom a King of the Boii sent as a present to the Gallic Proconsul Quintus Metellus Celer ; and again of others in the times of the Othos, Frederick Barbarossa, Columbus, and Cardinal Bembo. Again, in the years 1682 and 1684, natives of Greenland appeared at the Orkney Islands — pp. 120-125. Effects of lichens and other cryptogamia in the frigid and tempe¬ rate zones, in promoting the growth of the larger phanerogamia. In the tropics the preparatory ground-lichens often find substitutes in the oleaginous plants. Lactiferous animals of the New Continent; the Llama, Alpaca, and Guanaco — pp. 125-128. Culture of farinaceous grasses — pp. 128-131. On the earliest population of America — pp. 131-134. The coast-tribe the Guaranes (Warraus), and the littoral palm Mau- ritia, according to Bembo, Raleigh, Hillhouse, Robert and Richard Schomburgk — pp. 134-136. xxn SUMMARY. CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO. Phenomena produced in the Steppe by a long drought. Sand¬ spouts, hot winds, deceptive images by aerial refraction (mirage). The awaking of crocodiles and tortoises after a long summer sleep — pp. 136-142. Otomaks. General considerations respecting the earth-eating of cer¬ tain tribes. Unctuous and Infusorial earths — pp. 142-146. Carved Figures on rocks, which form a belt running east and west from the Rupunuri, Essequibo, and mountains of Pacaraima, to the solitudes of the Cassiquiare. Earliest observation (April, 1749) of such traces of an ancient civilization, in the unpublished travels of the Surgeon Nicolas Hortsmann, of Hildesheim, found among d’Anville’s papers — pp. 147-151. The vegetable poison Curare, or Urari — pp. 151-152. ON THE CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO, NEAR ATURES AND MAYPURES . pp. 153-173. The Orinoco, general view of its course. Ideas excited in the mind of Columbus on beholding its mouth. Its unknown sources lie to the east of the lofty Duida and of the thickets of Bertholletia. Cause of the principal bends of the river — pp. 153-162. The Falls. Raudal of Maypures, bounded by four streams. Former state of the region. In¬ sular form of the rocks Keri and Oco. Grand spectacle displayed on descending the hill Manimi. A foaming surface, several miles in ex¬ tent, suddenly presents itself to view. Iron-black masses of tower¬ like rocks rise precipitately from the bed of the river; the summits of the lofty palms pierce through the clouds of vapour}’ spray — pp. 162-168. Raudal of Atures, another island-world. Rock-dykes, connecting one island with the other. They are the resort of the pugnacious, golden- coloured rock manakin. Some parts of the river-bed in the cataracts are dry, in consequence of the waters having formed for themselves a channel through subterranean cavities. Visit to these parts on the approach of night, during a heavy thunder-storm. Unsuspected pro¬ pinquity of crocodiles — pp. 168-171. The celebrated cave of Ataruipe, the grave of an extinct tribe — pp. 171-173. Scientific Illustrations and Additions pp. 174-190. Abode of the river-cow ( Trichems Manat i) in the sea, at the spot where, in the Gulf of Xagua on the southern coast of the Island of Cuba, springs of fresh water gush forth — pp. 174, 175. Geographical illustration of the sources of the Orinoco — pp.175-179. J uvia ( Bertholletia ), a Lecythidea, remarkable as an instance of lofty organic development. Haulm of an Arundinaria upwards of sixteen feet from joint to joint — pp. 179-180. On the fabulous Lake Parime — pp. 180-188. The Parrot of Atures, a poem by Ernst Curtius. The bird lived in Maypures, and the natives declared that he was not understood, be¬ cause he spoke the language of the extinct Aturjan tribe — pp. 188-190. SUMMARY. NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS. XX111 NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST . pp. 191-201. Difference in the richness of languages as regards precise and definite words for characterizing natural phenomena, such as the state of vege¬ tation and the forms of plants, the contour and grouping of clouds, the appearance of the earth’s surface, and the shape of mountains. Loss which languages sustain in such expressive words. The misinterpreta¬ tion of a Spanish word has enlarged mountain-chains on maps, and created new ranges. Primeval Forest. Frequent misuse of this term. Want of uniformity in the association of the arboral species is characteristic of the forests within the tropics. Causes of their im¬ perviousness. The Climbing plants ( Lianes ) often form but a very inconsiderable portion of the underwood — pp. 191-196. Aspect of the Rio Apure in its lower course. Margin of the forest fenced like a garden by a low hedge of Sauso ( Hermesia ). The wild animals of the forest issue with their young through solitary gaps, to approach the river-side. Herds of large Capybarae, or Cavies. Fresh¬ water dolphins — pp. 196-199. The cries of wild animals resound through the forest. Cause of the nocturnal noises — pp. 199-200. Contrast to the repose which reigns at noontide on very hot days within the tropics. Description of the rocky narrows of the Orinoco at the Baraguan. Buzzing and humming of insects; in every shrub, in the cracked bark of trees, in the peiforated earth, furrowed by hymen- opterous insects, life is audible and manifest — pp. 200-201. Scientific Illustrations and Additions . . pp. 202-203. Characteristic denominations of the surface of the earth (Steppes, Savannahs, Prairies, Deserts) in the Arabic and Persian. Richness of the dialects of Old Castile for designating the forms of mountains. Fresh-water rays and fresh-water dolphins. In the giant streams of both continents some organic sea-forms are repeated. American noc¬ turnal apes with cat’s eyes; the tricoloured striped Douroucoali of the Cassiquiare — pp. 202-203. Hvpsometric Addenda. ..... pp. 204-209. Pentland's measurements in the eastern mountain-chain of Bolivia. Volcano of Aconcagua, according to Fitz-Roy and Darwin. Western mountain-chain of Bolivia — pp. 204-205. Mountain systems of North America. Rocky Mountains and snowy chain of California. Laguna de Timpanogos — pp. 205-207. Hypsometric profile of the Highland of Mexico as far as Santa Fe — pp. 207-209. IDEAS FOR A PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS . pp. 210-231. Universal profusion of life on the slopes of the highest mountain summits, in the ocean and in the atmosphere. Subterranean Flora. Siliceous-shelled polygastrica in masses of ice at the pole. Podurellae in the ice tubules of the glaciers of the Alps ; the glacier-flea (. Desoria ■glacialis). Minute organisms of the dust fogs — pp. 210-213. XXIV SUMMARY. PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. History of the vegetable covering. Gradual extension of vegeta¬ tion over the naked crust of rock. Lichens, mosses, oleaginous plants. Cause of the present absence of vegetation in certain districts. — pp. 213 -220. Each zone has its peculiar character. All animal and vegetable con¬ formation is bound to fixed and ever-recurring types. Physiognomy of Nature. Analysis of the combined effect produced by a region. The individual elements of this impression. Outline of the mountain ranges; azure of the sky; shape of the clouds. That which chiefly determines the character is the vegetable covering. Animal organiza¬ tions are deficient in mass; the mobility of individual species, and often their diminutiveness, conceals them from view — pp. 220-223. Enumeration of the forms of Plants which principally determine the physiognomy of Nature, and which increase or diminish from the equator towards the Pole, in obedience to established laws — Text. Illustrations. Palms pp. 223-224 pp. 296-304 Banana form . . p. 224 p. 305 Malvaceae . p. 224 pp. 305-307 Mimosae . . p. 225 pp. 307-308 Ericeae . p. 225 pp. 308-310 Cactus form . p. 226 pp. 310-312 Form of Orchideae . . p. 226 pp. 312-313 Casuarime . p. 226 pp. 313-314 Acicular-leaved Trees . p. 227 pp. 314-329 Pothos form, and that of the Aroideee . p. 227 pp. 329-331 Lianes and Climbing plants pp. 227-228 pp. 331-332 Aloes . p. 228 pp. 332-334 Grass form . p. 228 pp. 334-337 Ferns . p. 229 pp. 337-341 Lilies p. 229 pp. 341-343 Willow form . p. 229 p. 343 Myrtles . . p. 229 pp. 343-346 Melastomaceae . . p. 229 p. 346 Laurel form . p. 229 p. 346 Enjoyment resulting from the natural grouping and contrasts these plant-forms. Importance of the physiognomical study of plants to the landscape-painter — pp. 229-231. Scientific Illustrations and Additions . . pp. 232-352. Organisms, both animal and vegetable, in the highest A lpine regions, near the line of eternal snow, in the Andes chain, and the Alps; insects arc carried up involuntarily by the ascending current of air. The small field-mouse ( Hypudmis nivalis ) of the Swiss Alps. On the real height to which the Chinchilla laniger mounts in Chili — pp. 232-233. Lecideae, Parmeliae on rocks not entirely covered with snow; but certain phanerogamic plants also stray in the Cordilleras beyond the SUMMARY. PHYSIOGNOMY OP PLANTS. XXV boundary of perpetual snow, thus Saxifraga Boussingaulti to 15,773 feet above the level of the sea. Groups of phanerogamic Alpine plants in the Andes chain at from 13,700 to nearly 15,000 feet high. Species ofCul- citium, Espeletia, Ranunculus, and small moss-like umbellifera, Myrrhis andicola, and Fragosa arctioides — pp. 233-234. Measurement of Chim¬ borazo, and etymology of the name — p. 234-236. On the greatest absolute height to which men in both continents, in the Cordilleras and the Himalaya, — on the Chimborazo and Tarhigang — have as yet ascended — p. 236. Economy, habitat, and singular mode of capturing the Condor ( Cuntur , in the Inca language) by means of palisades — pp. 237-239. Use of the Gallinazos ( Cathartes urubit and C. aura ) in the economy of nature, for purifying of the air in the neighbourhood of human dwell¬ ings; their domestication — pp. 239-240. On the so-called revivification of the rotifera, according to Ehrenberg and Doyöre; according to Payen, germs of Cryptogamia retain their power of reproduction in the highest temperature — pp. 240-241. Diminution, if not total suspension, of organic functions in the winter-sleep of the higher classes of animals — p. 242. Summer-sleep of animals in the tropics. Drought acts like the cold of winter. Tenrecs, Crocodiles, Tortoises, and East- African Lepidosirens — pp. 242-244. Pollen, Fructification of Plants. The experience of many years concerning the Coelebogyne ; it brings forth mature seeds in England without a trace of male organs — pp. 244-245. The phosphorescence of the Ocean through luminous animals as well as organic fibres and membranes of the decomposing animalculse. Acalephm and siliceous-shelled luminous infusoria. Influence of ner¬ vous irritability on the coruscation — pp. 245-250. Pentastoma, inhabiting the lungs of the rattle-snake of Cumana — p. 251. Rock-constructing Coral animals. The structure surviving the archi¬ tects. More correct views of the present period. Coast-reefs, Reefs sur¬ rounding islands and Lagoon-islands. Atolls, Coral walls inclosing a lagoon. The royal gardens of Christopher Columbus, The Coral Islands south of Cuba. The living gelatinous coating of the calcareous fabric of the coral-stems allures fishes in quest of food, and also turtles. Singular mode of fishing with the Remora, Echeneis Naucrates (the little angling fish) — pp. 251-258. Probable depth of the coralline structures — pp. 258-260. Besides a great quantity of carbonate of lime and magnesia, the madrepores and Astreae contain also some fluoric and phosphoric acid— pp. 260-261. Oscillating state of the sea-bottom according to Darwin — pp. 261-262. Irruptions of the sea. Mediterranean Sea. Sluice-theory of Strato. Samothracian legends. The Myth of Lyctonia and the submerged Atlantis — pp. 262-266. Concerning the precipitation of clouds — XXVI SUMMARY. PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. p. 266. The indurating crust of the earth while giving out caloric. Heated currents of air, which in the primordial period, during the fre¬ quent corrugations of the mountainous strata, and the upheaval of lands, have poured into the atmosphere through temporary fissures and chasms — pp. 266-268. Colossal size and great age of certain genera of trees, e. g., the dragon-tree of Orotava of 13, the Adansonia digitata (Baobab) of 33 feet in diameter. Carved characters of the 15th century. Adanson assigns to certain Baobab-stems of Senegambia an age of from 5000 to 45 000 years — pp. 268-273. According to an estimate based on the number of the annual rings, there are yews (Taxus baccata) of from 2600 to 3000 years old. Whether in the temperate northern zone that part of a tree which faces the north has narrower rings, as Michael Montaigne asserted in 15811 Gigantic trees, of which some individuals attain a diameter of above 20 feet and an age of several centuries, belong to the most opposite natural families -pp. 273-274. Diameter of the Mexican Schubertia disticha of Santa Maria del Tule 43, of the oak near Saintes (Dep. de la Charente inf.) 30 feet. The age of this oak considered by its annual rings to be from 1S00 to 2000 years. The main stem of the rose-tree (27 feet high) at the crypt of the church of Hildesheim is 800 years old. A species of fucus, Macro- evstis pyrifera, attains a length of more than 350 feet, and therefore exceeds all the conifera in length, not excepting the Sequoia gigantea itself— pp. 274-276. Investigations into the supposed number of the phanerogamic species of plants, which have hitherto been described or are preserved in herba¬ riums. Numerical ratios of plant-forms. Discovered laws of the geogra¬ phical distribution of the families. Ratios of the great divisions : of the Cryptogamia to the Cotyledons, and of the Monocotyledons to the Dicoty¬ ledons, in the torrid, temperate, and frigid zones. Outlines of arith¬ metical botany. Number of the individuals, predominance of social plants. The forms of organic beings stand in mutual dependence on each other. If once the number of species in one of the great families of the Glumaceas, Leguminosm, or Composite, on any one point of the earth, be known, an approximative conclusion may be arrived at not only as to the number of all the phanerogamia, but also of the species of all remaining plant-families growing there. Connection of the numerical ratios here treated on in the geographical distribution of the families, with the direction of the isothermal lines. Primitive mystery in the distribution of types. Absence of Boses in the southern, and of Calceolarias in the northern zone. Why has our heath (Calluna vul¬ garis), and why have our Oaks not progressed eastwards across the Ural into Asia 1 The vegetation-cycle of each species requires a certain minimum heat for its due organic development — pp. 273-287. Analogy with the numeric laws in the distribution of animal forms. If more than 35,000 species of phanerogamia are now cultivated in SUMMARY. PIIYSIOGNOMY OR PLANTS. XXV12 Europe, and if from 160,000 to 212,000 phanerogamia are now con¬ tained, described and undescribed, in our herbariums; it is probable that the number of collected insects scarcely equals that number of phanerogamia ; whereas in individual European districts the insects collected preponderate in a threefold ratio over the phanerogamia — - pp. 287-291. Considerations on the proportion borne by the number of the phane¬ rogamia actually ascertained, to the entire number existing on the globe — pp. 291-295. Influence of the pressure of atmospheric strata on the form and life- of plants, with reference to Alpine vegetation — pp. 295-296. Specialities on the plant-forms already enumerated. Physiognomy of plants discussed from three different points of view: the absolute difference of the forms, their local preponderance in the sum total of the phanerogamic Floras, and their geographical as well as climatic dispersion — pp. 296-346. Greatest height of arboral plants; examples of 223 to 246 feet in Pinus Lambertiana and P. Douglasii, of 266 in P. Strobus, of 300 feet in Sequoia gigantea and Pinus trigona. All these examples are from the north-western part of the New Continent. The Araucaria excelsa of Norfolk Island, accurately measured, rises only from 182 to 223 feet; the Alpine palms of the Cordilleras (Ceroxylon andicola), only 190 feet — pp. 322-324. A contrast to these gigantic vegetable forms, presented not merely by the stem of the arctic willow (Salix arctica, two inches in height,) stunted by cold and exposure on the mountains, but also in the tropical plains by the Tristicha hypnoides, a phanerogamic plant which is hardly three French lines (quarter of an inch) in height, when fully developed — pp. 324-325. Bursting forth of blossoms from the rough bark of the Crescentia Cujete, of the Gustavia augusta, from the roots of the Cacao tree. The largest blossoms borne by the Rafflesia Arnoldi, Aristolochia cordata. Magnolia, Helianthus annuus — p. 348. The different forms of plants determine the scenic character of vege¬ tation in the different zones. Physiognomic classification, or distribu¬ tion of the groups according to external facies, is from its basis of arrangement entirely different from the classification according to the system of natural families. The physiognomy of plants is based principally on the so-called organs of vegetation, on which the preser¬ vation of the individual depends ; systematic botany bases the classifi¬ cation of the natural families on the consideration of the organs of reproduction, on which the preservation of the species depends — pp. 348-352. ON TFIE STRUCTURE AND MODE OF ACTION OF VOLCANOS IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE EARTH— pp. 353-375. Influence of travels in distant lands on the generalization of our ideas and on the progress of physical orology. Influence of the conformation of the Mediterranean on the earliest ideas respecting volcanic pheno- XXVni SUMMARY. VOLCANOS. RHODIAN GENIUS. mena. — Comparative Geology of Volcanos. Periodical return of certain revolutions in nature, the cause of which lies deep in the interior of the globe. Proportion of the height of volcanos to that of their cone of ashes in the Pichincha, Peak of Teneriffe, and Vesuvius. Changes in the height of volcanic mountain summits. Measurements of the margins of the crater of Vesuvius from 1773 to 1822; the author’s measurements embrace the period from 1805 to 1822 — pp. 353-365. Circumstantial description of the eruption in the night be¬ tween the 24th and 25th of October, 1822. Falling in of a cone of ashe3 more than 400 feet high, which stood in the interior of the crater. The eruption of ashes from the 24th to the 28th of October, was the most memorable among those, of which authentic accounts are possessed, since the time of the elder Pliny — pp. 365-371. Difference between volcanos that are of very diverse forms, with permanent craters, and the phenomena more rarely observed in historic times, in which trachytic mountains suddenly open, eject lava and ashes, and reclose, perhaps for ever. The latter phenomena are peculiarly instructive for geognosy, because they remind us of the earliest revolu¬ tions that occurred in the oscillating, upheaved, fissured surface of the earth. In ancient times they led to the notion of the Pyriphlegethon. Volcanos are intermittent earth-springs, the result of a permanent or transitory connection between the interior and exterior of onr planet, the result of a reaction of the still fluid interior against the crust of the earth ; hence the question is useless, as to what chemical substance burns in the volcanos, and furnishes the material for combustion— pp. 371-373. The primary cause of subterranean heat is, as in all planets, the for¬ mative process itself, the separation of the conglomerating mass from a cosmic vaporous fluid. Power and influence of the calorific radiation from numerous deep fissures, unfilled veins in the primordial world. Great independence, at that period, of the climate (atmospheric tempe¬ rature) in respect to geographical latitude, the position of the planet towards the central body, the sun. Organisms of the present tropical world buried in the icy north — pp. 373-375. Scientific Illustrations and Additions . . . pp. 376-379. Barometric measurements on Vesuvius, comparison of the two crater- margins and the Rocca del Palo — pp. 376-379. Increase of temperature with depth, being 1° of Fahrenheit for ■every 54 feet. Temperature of the Artesian well in Oeynhausen's Bath (New Salt-works near Minden), at the greatest depth yet reached below the level of the sea. As early as the third century the thermal springs near Carthage led Patricius, Bishop of Pertusa, to form correct suppositions respecting the cause of calorific increase in the interior of the earth — p. 379. VITAL FORCE, OR THE RHODIAN GENIUS; AN ALLEGORY. pp. 380-385. Illustrations and Note . pp. 386-389. The Rhodian Genius is the development of a physiological idea in a mythical garb. Difference of views concerning the necessity and non- SUMMARY. TLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA, &C. xxix necessity for the assumption of peculiar vital forces — pp. 386-387. The difficulty of satisfactorily reducing the vital phenomena of the organism to physical and chemical laws is, principally, based on the complexity of the phenomena, on the multiplicity of forces acting simultaneously, as well as on the varying conditions of their activity. Definition of the expressions, animate and inanimate matter. Criteria of the miscent state ensuing upon separation, arc the simple enunciation of a fact — pp. 387-389. THE PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAIIUALLPA, AND FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC FROM THE RIDGE OF THE ANDES. pp. 390-420. Cinchona, or Quina-woods in the valleys of Loxa. First use of the fever-bark in Europe ; the Vice-Queen Countess of Chinchon — pp. 390- 392. Alpine vegetation of the Paramos. Ruins of ancient Peruvian cause¬ ways; they rise in the Paramo del Assuay almost to the height of Mont Blanc— p. 394. Singular mode of communication, by a swimming courier — p. 399. Descent to the Amazon River. Vegetation around Chamaya and Tomependa; red groves of Bougainvillaea. Rocky ridges which cross the Amazon River. Cataracts. Narrows of thePongode Manseriche, in wffiich the mighty stream, measured by La Condamine, is hardly 160 feet broad. Fall of the rocky dam of Rentema, which for several hours, laid bare the bed of the river, to the terror of the inhabitants on its banks — p. 401. Passage across the Andes chain, where it is intersected by the mag¬ netic equator. Ammonites of nearly 15 inches, Echini and Isocardia of the chalk formation, collected between Guambos and Montan, nearly 12,800 feet above the sea. Rich silver-mines of Chota. The pictu¬ resque, tower-like Cerro de Gualgayoc. An enormous mass of filament¬ ous virgin silver in the Pampa de Navar. A treasure of virgin gold, twined round wdth filamentous silver, in the shell-field (Choropampa), so named on account of the numerous fossils. Outbursts of silver and gold ores in the chalk-formations. The little mountain-town of Micui- pampa lies 11,873 feet above the sea — pp. 402-405. Across the mountain wilderness of the Paramo de Yanaguanga the traveller descends into the beautiful embosomed valley or rather Plateau of Caxamarca (almost at an equal altitude with the city of Quito). Warm baths of the Inca. Ruins of Atahuallpa’s palace, inhabited by his indigent descendants, the family of Astorpilca. Belief entertained there, in the existence of subterranean golden gardens of the Inca; said to be situated in the lovely valley of Yucay, under the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, and at many other points. Conversation with the son of the Curaca Astorpilca. The room is still shown in which the unfortunate Atahuallpa was kept prisoner for nine months, from the November of 1532; also the wall on which he made a mark to indicate XXX SUMMARY. PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA. the height to which he would cause the room to be filled with gold, if his persecutors would set him free. Account of the prince’s execution on the 29th of August, 1533, and remarks on the so-called “indelible blood stain” on a stone slab before the altar in the chapel of the city prison — pp. 406-414. How the hope in a restoration of the Inca empire, also indulged in by Raleigh, has been maintained among the natives. Causes of this fanciful belief — p. 414. Journey from Caxamarca to the sea-coast. Passage across the Cor¬ dilleras through the Altos de Guangamarca. The often disappointed hope of enjoying the sight of the Pacific from the crest of the Andes, at last gratified, at a height of 9380 feet — pp. 415-420. Scientific Illustrations and Additions . . . pp. 421-436. On the origin of the name borne by the Andes Chain . . p. 421. Epoch of the introductiou of Cinchona (Peruvian) bark into Europe — p. 422. Ruins of the Inca’s causeways and fortified dwellings; Aposentos de Mulalo, Fortaleza del Canar, Inti-Guaycu — p. 423. On the ancient civilization of the Chibchas or Muyscas of New Granada — p. 425. Age of the culture of the potato and banana — p. 427. Etymology of the word Cundinamarca, corrupted from Cundirumarca, and which, in the first years of republican independence, designated the whole country of New Granada — p. 427. Chronometrie connection of the city of Quito with Tomependa, on the upper course of the Amazon River, and the Callao de Lima, the position of which was accurately determined by the transit of Mercury on the 9th of November, 1802 — p. 428. On the tedious court ceremonies of the Incas. Atahuallpa’s im¬ prisonment and unavailing ransom — p. 429, Free-thinking of the Inca Huayna Capac. Philosophical doubts on the official worship of the sun, and obstacles to the diffusion of know¬ ledge among the lower and poorer classes of people, according to the testimony of Padre Bias Valera — p. 431. Raleigh’s project for the restoration of the Inca dynasty under English protection, which should be granted for an annual tribute of several hundred thousand pounds — p. 432. Columbus’ earliest evidence of the existence of the Pacific. It was first seen on the 25th of September, 1513, by Vasco Nunez de Balboa, and first navigated by Alonso Martin de Don Benito — p. 432. On the possibility of constructing an Oceanic canal though the isthmus of Panama (with fewer locks than the Caledonian Canal). Points, the exploration of which has been hitherto totally neglected — p. 435. Determination of the longitude of Lima — p. 435. ON STEPPES AND DESERTS. At the foot of the lofty granitic range which, in the early age of our planet, resisted the irruption of the waters on the formation of the Caribbean Gulf, extends a vast and boundless plain. When the traveller turns from the Alpine valleys of Caracas, and the island-studded lake of Tacarigua (1), whose waters reflect the forms of the neighbouring bananas, — when he leaves the fields verdant with the light and tender green of the Tahitian sugar-cane, or the sombre shade of the cacoa groves, — his eye rests in the south on Steppes, whose seeming- elevations disappear in the distant horizon. From the rich luxuriance of organic life the astonished tra¬ veller suddenly finds himself on the dreary margin of a treeless waste. Nor hill, nor cliff rears its head, like an island in the ocean, above the boundless plain: only here and there broken strata of floetz, extending over a surface of two hundred square miles, (more than three thousand English square miles*,) appear sensibly higher than the surrounding district. The natives term them banks (2), as if the spirit of language would con ¬ vey some record of that ancient condition of the world, when these elevations formed the shoals, and the Steppes themselves the bottom, of some vast inland sea. Even now, illusion often recalls, in the obscurity of night, these images of a former age. For when the guiding con¬ stellations illumine the margin of the plain with their rapidly rising and setting beams, or when their flickering forms are * It is not intended in every instance to trouble the reader with duplicate measurements ; but they will be introduced occasionally Wherever only one measurement is given, it must be understood as English. — Ed. B VIEWS OF NATURE. 2 reflected in the lower stratum of undulating vapour, a shore¬ less ocean seems spread before us (3). Like a limitless expanse of waters, the Steppe fills the mind with a sense of the infinite, and the soul, freed from the sensuous impres¬ sions of space, expands with spiritual emotions of a higher order. But the aspect of the ocean, its bright surface diver¬ sified with rippling or gently swelling waves, is productive of pleasurable sensations, — while the Steppe lies stretched before us, cold and monotonous, like the naked stony crust of some desolate planet (4). In all latitudes nature presents the phenomenon of these vast plains, and each has some peculiar character or phy¬ siognomy, determined by diversity of soil and climate, and by elevation above the level of the sea. In northern Europe the Heaths which, covered by one sole form of vegetation, to the exclusion of all others, extend from the extremity of Jutland to the mouth of the Scheldt, may be regarded as true Steppes. They are, however, both hilly and of very inconsiderable extent when compared with the Llanos and Pampas of South America, or even with the Prairies on the Missouri (5) and Copper River, the resort of the shaggy Bison and the small Musk Ox. The plains in the interior of Africa present a grander and more imposing spectacle. Like the wide expanse of the Pacific, they have remained unexplored until recent times. They are portions of a sea of sand, which towards the east separates fruitful regions from each other, or incloses them like islands, as the desert near the basaltic mountains of Harudsch (6), where, in the Oasis of Siwah, rich in date- trees, the ruins of the temple of Ammon indicate the venerable seat of early civilization. Neither dew nor rain refreshes these barren wastes, or unfolds the germs of vegetation within the glowing depths of the earth ; for everywhere rising columns of hot air dissolve the vapours and disperse the passing clouds. Wherever the desert approaches the Atlantic Ocean, as STEPPES AND DESERTS. between Wadi Nun and the White Cape, the moist sea-air rushes in to fill the vacuum caused by these vertically ascend¬ ing currents of air. The navigator, in steering towards the mouth of the river Gambia, through a sea thickly carpeted with weeds, infers by the sudden cessation of the tropical east wind (7), that he is near the far- spreading and radiating sandy desert. Flocks of swift-looted ostriches and herds of gazelles wander over this boundless space. With the exception of the newly discovered group of Oases, rich in springs, whose verdant banks are frequented by nomadic tribes of Tibbos and Tuaricks (8), the whole of the African deserts may be regarded as uninhabitable by man. It is only periodically that the neighbouring civilized nations venture to traverse them. On tracks whose undeviating course was determined by commercial intercourse thousands of years ago, the long line of caravans passes from Tafilet to Timbuctoo. or from Mourzouk to Bornou ; daring enterprises, the practicability of which depends on the existence of the camel, the ship of the desert (9), as it is termed in the ancient legends of the East. These African plains cover an area which exceeds almost three times that of the neighbouring Mediterranean. They are situated partly within and partly near the tropics, a position on which depends their individual natural character. On the other hand, in the eastern portion of the old continent the same geognostic phenomenon is peculiar to the temperate zone. On the mountainous range of Central Asia, between the Gold or Altai Mountain and the Kouen-lien (10), from the Chinese wall to the further side of the Celestial Mountains, and towards the Sea of Aral, over a space of several thousand miles, extend, if not the highest, certainly the largest Steppes in the world. I myself enjoyed an opportunity, full thirty years after my South American travels, of visiting that por¬ tion of the Steppes which is occupied by Kalmuck-Kirghis b 2 4 VIEWS OF NATUEE. tribes, and is situated between the Don, the Volga, the Caspian Sea, and the Chinese Lake of Dsaisang, and which consequently extends over an area of nearly 2,800 geogra¬ phical miles. The vegetation of the Asiatic Steppes, which a~e sometimes hilly and interspersed with pine forests, is in its groupings far more varied than that of the Llanos and the Pampas of Caracas and Buenos Ayres. The more beautiful portions of the plains, inhabited by Asiatic pastoral tribes, are adorned with lowly shrubs of luxuriant white-blossomed Itosa- ceae, Crown Imperials (Fritillariae), Cypripedese, and Tulips. As the torrid zone is in general distinguished by a tendency in the vegetable forms to become arborescent, so we also find, that some of the Asiatic Steppes of the temperate zone are characterized by the remarkable height to which flowering plants attain ; as, for instance, Saussureae, and other Synan- thereae ; all siliquose plants, and particularly numerous species of Astragalus. On crossing the trackless portions of the herb- covered Steppes in the low carriages of the Tartars, it is necessary to stand upright in order to ascertain the direction to be pursued through the copse-like and closely crowded plants that bend under the wheels. Some of these Steppes are covered with grass; others with succulent, evergreen, articulated alkaline plants ; while many are radiant with the effulgence of lichen-like tufts of salt, scattered irregularly over the clayey soil like newly fallen snow. These Mongolian and Tartar Steppes, which are intersected by numerous mountain chains, separate the ancient and long- civilized races of Thibet and Hindostan from the rude nations of Northern Asia. They have also exerted a manifold influence on the changing destinies of mankind. They have inclined the current of population southward, impeded the intercourse of nations more than the Himalayas, or the Snowv Mountains of Sirinagur and Gorka, and placed permanent limits to the progress of civilization and refinement in a northerly direction. History cannot, however, regard the plains of Central Asia STEPPES AND DESEPTS. under the character of obstructive barriers alone. They have frequently proved the means of spreading misery and devastation over the face of the earth. Some of the pastoral tribes inhabiting this Steppe, — the Mongols, Getoc, Alani, and Usüni, — have convulsed the world. If in the course of earlier ages, the dawn of civilization spread like the vivifying light of the sun from east to west; so in subsequent ages and from the same quarter, have barbarism and rudeness threatened to overcloud Europe. A tawny tribe of herdsmen (11) of Tukiuish i. e., Turkish origin, the Hiongnu, dwelt in tents of skins on the elevated Steppe of Gobi. A portion of this race had been driven southward towards the interior of Asia, after continuing for a long time formidable to the Chinese power. This shock, (dislodgement of the tribes) was communicated uninterrupt¬ edly as far as the ancient land of the Fins, near the sources of the Ural.*' From thence poured forth bands of Huns, Avars, Chasars, and a numerous admixture of Asiatic races. War¬ like bodies of Huns first appeared on the Volga, next in Pannonia, then on the Marne and the banks of the Po, laying waste those richly cultivated tracts, where, since the age of Antenor, man’s creative art had piled monument on monument. Thus swept a pestilential breath from the Mon¬ golian deserts over the fair Cisalpine soil, stifling the tender, long-cherished blossoms of art ! From the Salt-steppes of Asia, — from the European Heaths, — smiling in summer with their scarlet, honey-yielding flowers. — and from the barren deserts of Africa, we return to the plains of South America, the picture of which I have already begun to sketch in rude outline. * The Huns, on being driven from their ancierft pastures by the Chinese, traversed Asia, 1300 leagues,) and, swelled by the numerous hordes they conquered en route, entered Europe, and gave the first impulse to the great migration of nations. Deguires traces their pro¬ gress with geographical minuteness, and Gibbon tells their story with his usual eloquence in Chap. XX VT. — Ed. G VIEWS OF NATURE. But the interest yielded by the contemplation of such a picture must arise from a pure love of nature. No Oasis here reminds the traveller of former inhabitants, no hewn stone (12), no fruit-tree once cultivated and now growing wild, bears witness to the industry of past races. As if a stranger to the destinies of mankind, and bound to the present alone, this region of the earth presents a wild domain to the free manifestation of animal and vegetable life. The Steppe extends from the littoral chain of Caracas to the forests of Guiana, and from the snow-covered mountains of Merida, on whose declivity lies the Natron lake of Urao, — the object of the religious superstition of the natives, — to the vast delta formed by the mouth of the Orinoco. To the south¬ west it stretches like an arm of the sea (13), beyond the banks of the Meta and of the Yichada, to the unexplored sources of the Guaviare, and to the solitary mountain group to which the vivid imagination of the Spanish warriors gave the name of Paramo tie la Suma Paz, as though it were the beautiful seat of eternal repose. This Steppe incloses an area of 256,000 square miles. Owing to inaccurate geographical data, it has often been described as extending in equal breadth to the Straits of Magellan, unmindful that it is intersected by the wooded plain of the Amazon, which is bounded to the north by the grassy Steppes of the Apure, and to the south by those of the Bio de la Plata. The Andes of Cochabamba and the Brazilian mountains approximate each other by means of separate transverse spurs, projecting between the province of Chiquitos and the isthmus of Villabella (14). A narrow plain unites the Hylcca of the Amazon with the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The area of the latter is three times larger than that of the Llanos of Venezuela ; indeed so vast in extent, that it is bounded on the north by palms, while its southern extremity is almost covered with perpetual ice. The Tuyu, which re¬ sembles the Cassowary, (Struthio Rhea,) is peculiar to these Pampas, as arc also those herds of wild dogs (15), which dwell STEPPES AND DESERTS. i in social community in subterranean caverns, and often fero¬ ciously attack man, for whose defence their progenitors fought. Like the greater part of the desert of Sahara (16), the Llanos, the most northern plains of South America, lie within the torrid zone* Twice in every year they change their whole aspect, during one half of it appearing waste and bar¬ ren like the Lybian desert ; during the other, covered with verdure, like many of the elevated Steppes of Central Asia (17). The attempt to compare the natural characteristics of remote regions, and to pour tray the results of this comparison in brief outline, though a gratifying, is a somewhat difficult branch of physical geography. A number of causes, many of them still but little under¬ stood (18), diminish the dryness and heat of the New World. Among these are : the narrowness of this extensively in¬ dented continent in the northern part of the tropics, where the fluid basis on which the atmosphere rests, occasions the ascent of a less warm current of air ; its wide extension towards both the icy poles ; a broad ocean swept by cool tropical winds ; the flatness of the eastern shores ; currents of cold sea-water from the antarctic region, which, at first following a direction from south-west to north-east, strike the coast of Chili below the parallel of 35° south lat., and advance as far north on the coasts of Peru as Cape Pariila, where they suddenly diverge towards the west ; the numerous mountains abounding in springs, whose snow-crowned sum¬ mits soar above the strata of clouds, and cause the descent of currents of air down their declivities ; the abundance of rivers of enormous breadth, which after many windings in¬ variably seek the most distant coast ; Steppes, devoid of sand, and therefore less readily acquiring heat ; impenetrable forests, which, protecting the earth from the sun's rays, or radiating heat from the surface of their leaves, cover the richly- watered plains of the Equator, and exhale into the in¬ terior of the country, most remote from mountains and llie 8 VIEWS OF NATURE. Ocean, prodigious quantities of moisture, partly absorbed and partly generated — all these causes produce in the flat portions of America a climate which presents a most striking contrast in point of humidity and coolness with that of Africa. On these alone depend the luxuriant and exuberant vege¬ tation and that richness of foliage which are so peculiarly characteristic of the New Continent. If, therefore, the atmosphere on one side of our planet be more humid than on the other, a consideration of the actual condition of things will be sufficient to solve the problem of this inequality. The natural philosopher need not shroud the explanation of such phenomena in the garb of geological myths. It is not necessary to assume that the destructive conflict of the elements ra«;cd at different epochs in the eastern and western hemispheres, during the early condition of our planet ; or that America emerged subsequently to the other quarters of the world from the chaotic covering of waters, as a swampy island, the abode of crocodiles and serpents (19). South America presents indeed a remarkable similarity to the south-western peninsula of the old continent, in the form of its outlines and the direction of its coast -line. But the internal structure of the soil, and its relative position with respect to the contiguous masses of land, occasion in Africa that remarkable aridity which over a vast area checks the development of organic life. Four-fifths of South America lie beyond the Equator, and therefore in a region which, on account of its abundant waters, as well as from many other causes, is cooler and moister than our northern hemisphere (20). To this, nevertheless, the most considerable portion of Africa belongs. The extent from east to west of the South American Steppes or Llanos, is only one third that of the African Desert. The former are refreshed by the tropical sea wind, while the lat¬ ter, situated in the same parallel of latitude as Arabia and Southern Persia, are visited by currents of air which have STEPPES AND DESERTS. 9 passed over heat-radiating continents. The venerable father of history, Herodotus, so long insufficiently appreciated, has in the true spirit of a comprehensive observer of nature, de¬ scribed all the deserts of Northern Africa, Yemen, Kerman, and Mekran (the Gcdrosia of the Greeks), as far even as Mooltan in Western India, as one sole connected sea of sand (21). To the action of hot land winds, may be associated in Africa, as far as we know, a deficiency of large rivers, of forests that generate cold by exhaling aqueous vapour, and of lofty mountains. The only spot covered with perpetual snow is the western portion of Mount Atlas (22), whose narrow ridge, seen laterally, appeared to the ancient navigators when coasting the shore, as one solitary and aerial pillar of heaven. This mountain range extends eastward to Dakul, where the famed Carthage, once mistress of the seas, lies in crumbling ruins. This range forms a far extended coast-line or Gcetulian rampart, which repels the cool north winds and with them the vapours rising from the Mediterranean. The Mountains of the Moon, Djebel-al-Komr (23), fabu¬ lously represented as forming a mountainous parallel between the elevated plain of Habesch — an African Quito — and the sources of the Senegal, were supposed to rise above the lower sea line. Even the Cordilleras of Lupata, which skirt the eastern coast of Mozambique and Monomotapa, in the same manner as the Andes bound the western shores of Peru, arc covered with eternal snow in the gold districts of Machinga and Mocanga. But these mountains, abundantly watered, arc situated at a considerable distance from the vast desert which extends from the southern declivity of the chain of Atlas to the Niger, whose waters flow in an easterly direction. Possibly, these combined causes of aridity and heat would have proved insufficient to convert such large portions of the African plains into a dreary waste, had not some convulsion of nature — as for instance the irruption of the ocean— -on 10 VIEWS OF NATURE. some occasion deprived these flat regions of their nutrient soil, as well as of the vegetation which it supported. The epoch when this occurred, and the nature of the forces which determined the irruption, are alike shrouded in the obscurity of the past. Perhaps it may have been the result of the great rotatory current (24), which drives the warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico over the bank of Newfoundland to the old continent, and by which the cocoa-nut of the West Indies and other tropical fruits have been borne to the shores of Ireland and Norway. One branch of this oceanic current, V after it leaves the Azores, has still, at the present time, a south-easterly course, striking the low range of the sandy coasts of Africa with a force that is frequently fraught with danger to the mariner. All sea-coasts — but I refer here more particularly to the Peruvian shore between Amotape and Coquimbo — afford evidence of the hundreds, or even thou¬ sands of years, which must pass before the moving sand can yield a firm basis for the roots of herbaceous plants, in those hot and rainless regions where neither Lecidem nor other lichens can grow (25). These considerations suffice to explain why, notwithstand¬ ing their external similarity of form, the continents of Africa and South America present the most widely differ¬ ent climatic relations and characters of vegetation. Al¬ though the South American Steppe is covered with a thin crust of fruitful earth, is periodically refreshed by rains, and adorned with luxuriant herbage, its attractions were not suffi¬ cient to induce the neighbouring nations to exchange the beautiful mountain valleys of Caracas, the sea-girt districts, and the richly watered plains of the Orinoco, for this treeless and springless desert. Hence on the arrival of the first Euro¬ pean and African settlers, the Steppe was found to be almost without inhabitants. The Llanos are, it is true, adapted for the breeding of cattle, but the primitive inhabitants of the new continent were STEPPES AND DESERTS. 11 almost wholly unacquainted with the management of animals yielding milk (26). Scarcely one of the American tribes knew how to avail themselves of the advantages which nature, in this respect, had placed before them. The American aborigines, who, from 65° north lat. to 55° south lat., con¬ stitute (with the exception, perhaps, of the Esquimaux,) but one sole race, passed directly from a hunting to an agri¬ cultural life without going through the intermediate stage of a pastoral life. Two species of indigenous horned cattle (the Buffalo and the Musk Ox) graze on the pasture lands of Western Canada and Quivira, as well as in the neighbourhood of the colossal ruins of the Aztek fortress, which rises like some American Palmyra on the desert solitudes of the river Gila. A long-horned Moußon, resembling the so-called pro¬ genitor of the sheep, roams over the parched and barren lime¬ stone rocks of California; while the camel-like Vicunas, Huanacos, Alpacas, and Llamas, are natives of the southern peninsula. But of these useful animals the two first only (viz. the Buffalo and the Musk Ox) have preserved their natural freedom for thousands of years. The use of milk and cheese, like the possession and culture of farinaceous grasses, is a distinctive characteristic of the nations of the old world (27). If some few tribes have passed through Northern Asia to the western coast of America, and preferring to keep within a temperate climate, have followed the course of the ridges of the Andes southward (28), such migrations must have been made by routes on which the settlers were unable to transport either flocks or grain. The question here arises, whether on the downfall of the long- declining empire of the Hiongnu, the consequent migration of this powerful race may not have been the means of drawing from the north-east of China and Korea, bands of settlers, by whom Asiatic civilisation was transported to the new continent ? If the primitive colonists had been natives of those Steppes in which agriculture was unknown, this bold hypothesis (which as yet is but little 12 VIEWS OF NATUEE. warranted by etymological comparisons) would at all events explain the remarkable absence of the Cereals in America. Per¬ haps contrary winds may have driven to the shores of New California one of those Asiatic Priest- colonies who were insti¬ gated by their mystic dreameries to undertake distant voyages, and of which the history of the peopling of Japan, at the time of the Thsinschihuany-ti , affords a memorable instance. (29) If a pastoral life — that beneficent intermediate stage which binds nomadic bands of hunters to fruitful pasture lands, and at the same time promotes agriculture — was unknown to the primitive races of America, it is to the very ignorance of such a mode of life that we must attribute the scantiness of population in the South American Steppes. But this circum¬ stance allowed freer scope for the forces of nature to deve¬ lop themselves in the most varied forms of animal life; a freedom only circumscribed by themselves, like vegetable life in the forests of the Orinoco, where the Ilymensea and the giant laurel, exempt from the ravages of man, are only in danger of a too luxuriant embrace of the plants which surround them. Agoutis, small spotted antelopes, the shielded Armadillo, which, rat-like, terrifies the hare in its subterranean retreat ; herds of slothful Chiguires, beautifully striped Yiverree, whose pestilential odour infects the air; the great maneless Lion; the variegated Jaguar (commonly knovm as the tiger), whose strength enables it to drag to the summit of a hill the body of the young bull it has slain — these, and many other forms of animal life (30), roam over the treeless plain. This region, which may be regarded as peculiarly the habitation of wild animals, would not have been chosen as a place of settlement by nomadic hordes, who like the Indo- Asiatics generally prefer a vegetable diet, had it not possessed some fewr fan-palms (Mauritia) scattered here and there. The beneficent qualities of this tree of life have been univer¬ sally celebrated (31.) Upon this alone subsist the unsubdued tribe of the Guaranes, at the mouth of the Orinoco northward STEPPES AND DESERTS. 13 of the Sierra de Imataca. When they increased in numbers and became over-crowded, it is said that, besides the huts which they built on horizontal platforms supported by the stumps of felled palm-trees, they also ingeniously suspended from stem to stem spreading mats or hammocks woven of the leaf-stalk of the Mauritia, which enabled them, during the rainy season, when the Delta was overflowed, to live in trees in the manner of apes. These pendent huts were partly covered with clay. The women kindled the fire necessary for their culinary occupations on the humid flooring. As the traveller passed by night along the river, his attention was attracted by a long line of flame suspended high in the air, and appa¬ rently unconnected with the earth. The Guaranes owe the preservation of their physical, and perhaps even of their moral independence, to the loose marshy soil, over which they move with fleet and buoyant foot, and to their lofty sylvan domi¬ ciles ; a sanctuary whither religious enthusiasm would hardly lead an American Stylite (32). The Mauritia not only affords a secure habitation, but likewise yields numerous articles of food. Before the tender spathe unfolds its blossoms on the male palm, and only at that peculiar period of vegetable metamorphosis, the medul¬ lary portion of the trunk is found to contain a sago-like meal, which like that of the Jatropha root, is dried in thin bread¬ like slices. The sap of the tree when fermented constitutes the sweet inebriating palm-wine of the Guaranes. The nar¬ row-scaled fruit, which resembles reddish pine-cones, yields, like the banana and almost all tropical fruits, different articles of food, according to the periods at which it is gathered, whether its saccharine properties are fully matured, or whe¬ ther it is still in a farinaceous condition. Thus in the lowest grades of man’s development, we find the existence of an entire race dependent upon almost a single tree ; like certain insects which are confined to particular portions of a flower. Since the discovery of the new continent, its plains (Llanos) 14 VIEWS OF NATUEE. have become habitable to man. Here and there towns (33) have sprung up on the shores of the Steppe-rivers, built to faci¬ litate the intercourse between the coasts and Guiana (the Ori¬ noco district). Everywhere throughout these vast districts the inhabitants have begun to rear cattle. At distances of a day s journey from each other, we see detached huts, woven together with reeds and thongs, and covered with ox-hides. Innumerable herds of oxen, horses, and mules (estimated at the peaceful period of my travels at a million and a half) roam over the Steppe in a state of wildness. The prodigious increase of these animals of the old world is the more re¬ markable, from the numerous perils with which, in these regions, they have to contend. When, beneath the vertical rays of the bright and cloudless sun of the tropics, the parched sward crumbles into dust, then the indurated soil cracks and bursts as if rent asunder by some mighty earthquake. And if, at such a time, two opposite currents of air, by conflict moving in rapid gy¬ rations, come in contact with the earth, a singular spec¬ tacle presents itself. Like funnel-shaped clouds, their apexes (34) touching the earth, the sands rise in vapoury form through the rarefied air in the electrically- charged centre of the whirling current, sweeping on like the rushing water-spout, which strikes such terror into the heart of the mariner. A dim and sallow light gleams from the lowering sky over the dreary plain. The horizon suddenly contracts, and the heart of the traveller sinks with dismay as the wide Steppe seems to close upon him on all sides. The hot and dusty earth forms a cloudy veil which shrouds the heavens from view, and in¬ creases the stifling oppression of the atmosphere (35); while the east wind, when it blows over the long-heated soil, instead of cooling, adds to the burning glow. Gradually, too, the pools of water, which had been pro¬ tected from evaporation by the now seared foliage of the fan-palm, disappear. As in the icy north animals become STEPPES AND DESEETS. 15 torpid from cold, so here the crocodile and the boa-con¬ strictor lie wrapt in unbroken sleep, deeply buried in the dried soil. Everywhere the drought announces death, yet everywhere the thirsting wanderer is deluded by the phan¬ tom of a moving, undulating, watery surface, created by the deceptive play of the reflected rays of light (the mirage, 36). A narrow stratum separates the ground from the distant palm-trees, which seem to hover aloft, owing to the contact of currents of air having different degrees of heat and therefore of density*. Shrouded in dark clouds of dust, and tortured by hunger and burning thirst, oxen and horses scour the plain, the one bellowing dismally, the other with out¬ stretched necks snuffing the wind, in the endeavour to detect, by the moisture in the air, the vicinity of some pool of water not yet wholly evaporated. The mule, more cautious and cunning, adopts another me¬ thod of allaying his thirst. There is a globular and articulated plant, the Melocactus (37), which encloses under its prickly in¬ tegument an aqueous pulp. After carefully striking away the prickles with his forefeet, the mule cautiously ventures to apply his lips to imbibe the cooling thistle juice. But the draught from this living vegetable spring is not always un¬ attended by danger, and these animals are often observed to have been lamed by the puncture of the cactus thorn. Even if the burning heat of day be succeeded by the cool freshness of the night, here always of equal length, the wearied ox and horse enjoy no repose. Huge bats now attack the animals during sleep, and vampyre-like suck their blood ;f or, fastening on their backs, raise festering wounds, in which mosquitoes, hippobosces, and a host of other stinging insects, burrow and nestle. Such is the miserable existence of these * This effect is well represented in Grindlay’s Scenery of the Western Side of India, plate 18. — Ed. ^ + Modern naturalists affirm that all bats are insectivorous. — Ed. . 16 VIEWS OF NATURE. poor animals when the heat of the sun has absorbed the waters from the surface of the earth. When, after a long drought, the genial season of rain arrives, the scene suddenly changes (38). The deep azure of the hitherto cloudless sky assumes a lighter hue. Scarcely can the dark space in the constellation of the Southern Cross be distinguished at night. The mild phosphorescence of the Magellanic clouds fades away. Even the vertical stars of the constellations Aquila and Ophiuchus shine with a flickering and less planetary light. Like some distant moun¬ tain, a single cloud is seen rising perpendicularly on the southern horizon. Misty vapours collect and gradually over¬ spread the heavens, while distant thunder proclaims the approach of the vivifying rain. Scarcely is the surface of the earth moistened before the teeming Steppe becomes covered with Kyllingiae, with the many-panicled Paspalum, and a variety of grasses. Excited by the power of light, the herbaceous Mimosa unfolds its dormant, drooping leaves, hailing, as it were, the rising sun in chorus with the matin song of the birds and the opening flowers of aquatics. Horses and oxen, buoyant with life and enjoyment, roam over and crop the plains. The luxuriant grass hides the beautifully spotted Jaguar, who, lurking in safe con¬ cealment, and carefully measuring the extent of the leap, darts, like the Asiatic tiger, with a cat-like bound on his passing prey. At times, according to the account of the natives, the humid clay on the banks of the morasses (39), is seen to rise slowly in broad flakes. Accompanied by a violent noise, as on the eruption of a small mud-volcano, the upheaved earth is hurled high into the air. Those who are familiar with the phenomenon fly from it; for a colossal water-snake or a mailed and scaly crocodile, awakened from its trance by the first fall of rain, is about to burst from his tomb. When the rivers bounding the plain to the south, as the Arauea, the Apure, and the Payara, gradually overflow their banks, nature compels those creatures to live as amphibious STEPPES AND DESERTS. 17 animals, which, during the first half of the year, were perishing with thirst on the waterless and dusty plain. A part of the steppe now presents the appearance of a vast inland sea (40). The mares retreat with their foals to the higher banks, which project, like islands, above the spreading waters. Day by day the dry surface diminishes in extent. The cattle, crowded together, and deprived of pasturage, swim for hours about the inundated plain, seeking a scanty nourishment from the flowering panicles of the grasses which rise above the lurid and bubbling waters. Many foals are drowned, many are seized by crocodiles, crushed bv their serrated tails, and devoured. Horses and oxen may not unfrequently be seen which have escaped from the fury of this bloodthirsty and gigantic lizard, bearing on their legs the marks of its pointed teeth. This spectacle involuntarily reminds the contemplative ob¬ server of the adaptability granted by an all-provident nature to certain animals and plants. Like the farinaceous fruits of Ceres, the ox and horse have followed man over the whole surface of the earth — from the Ganges to the ltio de la Plata, and from the sea-coast of Africa to the mountainous plain of Antisana, which lies higher than the Peak of Teneriffe (41). An the one region the northern birch, in the other the date- palm, protects the wearied ox from the noonday sun. The same species of animal which contends in eastern Europe with bears and wolves, is exposed, in a different latitude, to the attacks of tigers and crocodiles ! The crocodile and the jaguar are not, however, the only enemies that threaten the South American horse; for even among the fishes it has a dangerous foe. The marshy waters of Bera and Itastro (42) are filled with innumerable electric eels, who can at pleasure discharge from every part of their slimy, yellow-speckled bodies a deadening shock. This species of gymnotus is about five or six feet in length. It is power- fid enough to kill the largest animals when it discharges c 18 VIEWS OF NATURE. its nervous organs at one shock in a favourable direction. It was once found necessary to change the line of road from Uritucu across the Steppe, owing to the number of horses which, in fording a certain rivulet, annually fell a sacrifice to these gymnoti, which had accumulated there in great num¬ bers. All other species of fish shun the vicinity of these for¬ midable creatures. Even the angler, when fishing from the high bank, is in dread lest an electric shock should be conveyed to him along the moistened line. Thus, in these regions, the electric fire breaks forth from the lowest depths of the waters. The mode of capturing the gymnotus affords a picturesque spectacle. A number of mules and horses are driven into a swamp, which is closely surrounded by Indians, until the unusual noise excites the daring fish to venture on an attack. Serpent-like they are seen swimming along the sur¬ face of the water, striving cunningly to glide under the bellies of the horses. By the force of their invisible blows numbers of the poor animals are suddenly prostrated ; others, snorting and panting, their manes erect, their eyes wildly flashing with terror, rush madly from the raging storm ; but the Indians, armed with long bamboo staves, drive them back into the midst of the pool. By degrees the fury of this unequal contest begins to slacken. Like clouds that have discharged their electricity, the wearied eels disperse. They require long rest and nou¬ rishing food to repair the galvanic force which they have so lavishly expended. Their shocks gradually become weaker and weaker. Terrified by the noise of the trampling horses, they timidly approach the brink of the morass, where they are wounded by harpoons, and drawn on shore by non-conducting poles of dry wood. Such is the remarkable contest between horses and fish. That which constitutes the invisible but living weapon of these inhabitants of the water — that, which awakened by the contact of moist and dissimilar particles (43), circulates through STEPPES AND DESERTS. 19 all the organs of animals and plants — that which flashing amid the roar of thunder illuminates the wide canopy of heaven — which binds iron to iron, and directs the silent re¬ curring course of the magnetic needle — all, like the varied hues of the refracted ray of light, flow from one common source, and all blend together into one eternal all-pervading power. I might here close my bold attempt of delineating the natural picture of the Steppe; but, as on the ocean, fancy delights in dwelling on the recollections of distant shores, so will we, ere the vast plain vanishes from our view, cast a rapid glance over the regions by which the Steppe is bounded. The northern desert of Africa separates two races of men which originally belonged to the same portion of the globe, and whose inextinguishable feuds appear as old as the myth of Osiris and Typhon (44). To the north of Mount Atlas there dwells a race characterised by long and straight hair, a sallow complexion, and Caucasian features; while to the south of Senegal, in the direction of Soudan, we find hordes of Negroes occupying various grades in the scale of civilization. In Central Asia the Mongolian Steppe divides Siberian barbarism from the ancient civilization of the peninsula of Ilindostan. In like manner, the South American Steppes are the boun¬ daries of a European semi- civilization (45). To the north, between the mountain chain of Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea, lie, crowded together, industrial cities, clean and neat villages, and carefully tilled fields. Even a taste for arts, scientific culture, and a noble love of civil freedom, have long since been awakened within these regions. To the south, a drear and savage wilderness bounds the Steppe. Forests, the growth of thousands of years, in one impenetrable thicket, overspread the marshy region between the rivers Orinoco and Amazon. Huge masses of lead- coloured granite (46) contract the beds of the foaming rivers. Mountains and forests re-echo with the thunder of rushing c 2 20 VIEWS OF NATURE. waters, the roar of the tiger-like jaguar, and the dull rain- foreboding howl of the bearded ape (47). Where the shallower parts of the river disclose a sandbank, the crocodile may be seen, with open jaws, and motionless as a rock, its uncouth body often covered with birds (48); while the chequered boa-constrictor, its tail lashed round the trunk of a tree, lies coiled in ambush near the bank, ready to dart with certain aim on its prey. Rapidly uncoiling, it stretches forth its body to seize the young bull, or some feebler prey, as it fords the stream, and moistening its victim with a viscid secretion, laboriously forces it down its dilating throat (49). In this e-rand and wild condition of nature dwell numerous O races of men. Separated by a remarkable diversity of lan¬ guages, some are nomadic, unacquainted with agriculture, and living on ants, gums, and earth, mere outcasts of humanity (50), such as the Ottomaks and Jarures: others, for instance the Maquiritares and Macos, have settled habitations, live on fruits cultivated by themselves, are intelligent, and of gentler manners. Extensive tracts between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo are inhabited solely by the Tapir and social apes; not by man. Figures graven on the rocks (51) attest that even these deserts were once the seat of a higher civilization. They bear testimony, as do also the unequally developed and varying languages (which are amongst the oldest and most imperishable of the historical records of man), to the changing destinies of nations. While on the Steppe tigers and crocodiles contend with horses and cattle, so on the forest borders and in the wilds of Guiana the hand of man is ever raised against his fellow man. With revolting eagerness, some tribes drink the flowing blood of their foes, whilst others, seemingly un¬ armed, yet prepared for murder, deal certain death with a poisoned thumb-nail (52). The feebler tribes, when they tread the sandy shores, carefully efface with their hands the traces of their trembling steps. STEPPES AND DESERTS. 21 Thus does man, everywhere alike, on the lowest scale of brutish debasement, and in the false glitter of his higher cul¬ ture, perpetually create for himself a life of care. And thus, too, the traveller, wandering over the wide world by sea and land, and the historian who searches the records of bygone ages, are everywhere met by the unvarying and melancholy spectacle of man opposed to man. He, therefore, who amid the discordant strife of nations, would seek intellectual repose, turns with delight to con¬ template the silent life of plants, and to study the hidden forces of nature in her sacred sanctuaries ; or vielding to that inherent impulse, which for thousands of years has glowed in the breast of man, directs his mind, by a mysterious pre¬ sentiment of his destiny, towards the celestial orbs, which, in undisturbed harmony, pursue their ancient and eternal course.'*' * ip a suce meminit stirpis, scseque Dcisque Mens iruitur fclix, et novit in astra reverti. Barclaii Argents, lib. v. Ed. t ILLUSTRATIONS AND ADDITIONS. (1) p. 1 — “ The Lake of Tacarigua.” On advancing through the interior of South America, from the coast of Caracas or of Venezuela towards the Brazilian frontier (from the 10th degree of north latitude to the equator), the traveller first passes a lofty chain of mountains (the littoral chain of Caracas) inclining from west to east; next vast tree¬ less Steppes or plains ( Los Llanos ), which extend from the foot of the littoral chain to the left bank of the Orinoco; and, lastly, the mountain range which gives rise to the cata¬ racts of Atures and Maypure. This mountain chain, which I have named the Sierra Parime, passes in an easterly direction between the sources of the Rio Branco and Rio Esquibo, in the direction of Dutch and French Guiana. This region, which is the seat of the marvellous myths of the Dorado, and is composed of a mountain mass, divided into numerous gridiron-like ridges, is bounded on the south by the woody plain through which the Rio Negro and the Amazon have formed themselves a channel. Those who would seek further instruction regarding these geographical relations, may com¬ pare the large chart of La Cruz Olmedilla (1775), which has served as the basis of nearly all the more modern maps of South America, with that of Columbia, which I drew up in accordance with my own astronomical determinations of place, and pub¬ lished in the year 1825. The littoral chain of Venezuela is, geographically considered, a portion of the Peruvian Andes. These are divided at the great mountain node of the sources of the Magdalena (lat. i° 551 to 2° 20f) into three chains, running to the south of PopayjUb the easternmost of which extends into the snowy mountains cf Merida. These mountains gradually decline towards the PaiPmo de his Rosas into the hilly district of Quibor and Tocuyo, which connects the littoral chain of Ve¬ nezuela with the Cordilleras of Cundinamarca. This littoral chain extends morally and uninterruptedly from Portocabello to the promontory of Varia. Its mean elevation is scarcely 750 toises, or 4796 English feCf j but some few sum¬ mits, like the Silla de Caracas (also called tht>' Cerro de Avila)* ILLUSTRATIONS (1). LAKE OF TACARIGUA. 23 which is adorned with the purple-flowering Befaria (the red- blossomed American Alpine rose), rise 1350 toises, or 8633 English feet above the level of the sea. The coast of the Terra Firma everywhere bears traces of devastation, giving evidence of the action of the great current which runs from east to west, and which, after the disintegration of the Caribbean Islands, formed the present Sea of the Antilles. The tongues of land of Araya and Chuparipari, and more especially the coasts of Cumana and New Barcelona, present to the geologist a re¬ markable aspect. The rocky islands of Boracha, Caracas, and Chimanas rise like beacon-towers from the sea, affording evidence of the fearful irruption of the waters against the shattered mountain chain. The Sea of the Antilles may once have been an inland sea, like the Mediterranean, which lias suddenly been connected with the ocean. The islands of Cuba, Hayti, and Jamaica still exhibit the remains of the mountains of micaceous schist which formed the northern boundary of this lake. It is a remarkable fact that the highest peaks are situated at the very point where these islands approach one another the closest. It may be conjectured that the principal nucleus of the chain was situated between Cape Tiburon and Morant Point. The height of the copper moun¬ tains (montanas de cobre) near Saint Iago de Cuba has not yet been measured, but this range is probably higher than the Blue Mountains of Jamaica (1138 toises, or 7277 English feet), whose elevation somewhat exceeds that of the Pass of St. Gothard. I have already expressed my conjectures more fully regarding the valley-like form of the Atlantic Ocean, and the ancient connection of the continents, in a treatise written at Cumana, entitled Fragment d'un Tableau geologique de T Amerique meridionale , which appeared in the Journal de Physique , Messidor, an IX. It is remarkable that Columbus himself makes mention, in his official report, of the connection between the course of the equinoctial current and the form of the coast-line of the Greater Antilles.*1 The northern and more cultivated portion of the province of Caracas is a mountainous region. The marginal chain is divided, like that of the Swiss Alps, into many ranges, enclosing longitudinal valleys. The most remarkable among these is * Examen critique de VHist, de la Geographie, t. iii., pp. 104 — 108. 24 YIEAVS OF NATURE. the charming valley of Aragua, which produces an abundance of indigo, sugar, and cotton, and, what is perhaps the most singular of all, even European wheat. The southern margin of this valley is bounded by the beautiful Lake of Valencia, the ancient Indian name of which was Tacarigua. The con¬ trast presented by its opposite shores gives it a striking re¬ semblance to the Lake of Geneva. The barren mountains of Guigue and Guiripa have indeed less grandeur and solemnity of character than the Savoy Alps; but, on the other hand, the opposite shore, which is covered with bananas, mimosa?, and triplaris, far surpasses in picturesque beauty the vineyards of the Pays de Vaud. The lake is 10 leagues, (of which 20 form a degree of the Equator), i.e., about 30 geographical miles, in length, and is thickly studded with small islands, which continually increase in size, owing to the evaporation being greater than the influx of fresh water. Within the last few years several sandbanks have even become true islands, and have acquired the significant name of Las Aparecidas, or the “ Newly Appeared.’’' On the island of Cura the remarkable species of solanum is cultivated, which has edible fruit, and has been described by Willdenow (in his Hortus Berolinensis , 1816, Tab. xxvii.). The elevation of the Lake of Tacarigua above the level of the sea is almost 1400 French feet (according to my measurement, exactly 230 toises, ?.e., 1471 English feet) less than the mean height of the valley of Caracas. This lake has several species of fish peculiar to itself,'*'“1 and ranks among the most beautiful and attractive natural scenes that I am acquainted with in any part of the earth. When bathing, Bonpland and myself were often terrified by the appearance of the Lava, a species of crocodile-lizard (Dragonne?), hitherto undescribed, from three to four feet in length, of repulsive aspect, but harmless to man. We found in the Lake of Va¬ lencia a Tt/pha, perfectly identical with the European bulrush, the Typha angustifolia — a singular and highly important fact in reference to the geography of plants. In the valleys of Aragua, skirting the lake, both varieties of the sugar-cane are cultivated, viz., the common Cana criolla , and the sp cies newly introduced from the South Sea, the Cana de Otaheiti. The latter variety is of a far lighter and * See my Observations de Zoologie et df Anatomie compares, t. ii., pp. 179—181. ILLUSTRATIONS (1). LAKE OF TACAIIIGUA. more beautiful green, and a field of it may be distinguished from the common sugar-cane at a great distance. Cook and George Forster were the first to describe it; but it would appear, from Forster's treatise on the edible plants of the South Sea Islands, that they were but little acquainted with the true value of this important product. Bougainville brought it to the Isle of France, whence it passed to Cayenne and (subsequently to the year 1792) to Martinique, Saint Domingo or Haiti, and many of the Lesser Antilles. The enterprising but unfortunate Captain Bligli transported it, together with the bread-fruit tree, to Jamaica. From Trini¬ dad, an island contiguous to the continent, the new sugar¬ cane of the South Sea passed to the neighbouring coasts of Caracas. Here it has become of greater importance than the bread-fruit tree, which will probably never supersede so valuable and nutritious a plant as the banana. The Tahitian sugar-cane is more succulent than the common species, which is generally supposed to be a native of Eastern Asia. It likewise yields one-third more sugar on the same area than the Caiia criolla, which is thinner in its stalk, and more crowded with joints. As, moreover, the West Indian Islands are beginning to suffer great scarcity of fuel (on the island of Cuba the sugar-pans are heated with orange-wood), the new plant acquires additional value from the fact of its yielding a thicker and more ligneous cane ( bagciso ). If the introduction of this new product had not been nearly simultaneous with the outbreak of the sanguinarv Negro war in St. Domingo, the prices of sugar in Europe would have risen even higher than they did, owing to the interruption occasioned to agriculture and trade. The important question which here arises, whether the sugar-cane of Otaheiti, when removed from its indigenous soil, will not gradually dege¬ nerate and merge into the common sugar-cane, has been decided in the negative, from the experience hitherto ob¬ tained on this subject. In the island of Cuba a cabaUerin , that is to say, an area of 34,969 square toises (nearly 33 English acres), produces 870 cwt. of sugar, if it be planted with the Tahitian sugar-cane. It is remarkable enough that this important product of the South Sea Islands should be cultivated precisely in that portion of the Spanish colonies •which is most remote from the South Sea. The voyage 26 VIEWS OF NATURE. from the Peruvian shore to Otaheiti may be made in twenty- five days, and yet, at the period of my travels in Peru and Chili, the Tahitian sugar-cane was not yet known in those provinces. The natives of Easter Island, who suffer great distress from want of fresh water, drink the juice of the sugar¬ cane, and, what is very remarkable in a physiological point of view, likewise sea- water. On the Society, Friendly, and Sandwich Islands, the light green and thick stemmed sugar¬ cane is everywhere cultivated. In addition to the Cana de Otaheiti and the Cana criolla , a reddish African sugar-cane is cultivated in the West Indies, which is known as the Cana de Guinea. It is less succulent than the common Asiatic variety, but its juice is esteemed especially well adapted for the preparation of rum. In the province of Caracas the light green of the Tahitian sugar-cane forms a beautiful contrast with the dark shade of the cacao plantations. Few tropical trees have so thick a foliage as the Theobroma Cacao. This noble tree thrives best in hot and humid valleys. Extreme fertility of soil and insalubrity of atmosphere are as inseparably connected in South America as in Southern Asia. Nay, it has even been observed that in proportion as the cultivation of the land increases, and the woods are removed, the soil and the climate become less humid, and the cacao plantations thrive less luxuriantly. But while they diminish in numbers in the province of Caracas, they spread rapidly in the eastern provinces of New Barcelona and Cumana, more especially in the humid woody region lying between Cariaco and the Golfo Triste. (2) p. 1 — “ The natives term this 'phenomenon ‘ banks' ” The Llanos of Caracas are covered with a widely-extended formation of ancient conglomerate. On passing from the valleys of Aragua over the most southern range of the coast chain of Guigue and Villa de Cura, descending towards Para- para, the traveller meets successively with strata of gneiss and micaceous schist, a probably Silurian transition rock of argil¬ laceous schist and black limestone ; serpentine and greenstone in detached spheroidal masses; and lastly, on the margin of the great plain, small elevations of augitic amygdaloid and porphyritic schist. These hills between Parapara and Ortiz appear to me to be produced by volcanic eruptions on the ILLUSTRATION S (2). BANKS. 27 old sea-shore of the Llanos. Further to the north, rise the far- famed cavernous and grotesquely-shaped elevations known as the Morros de San Juan, which form a species of devil's dyke, the grain of which is crystalline, like upheaved dolo¬ mite. They are, therefore, to be regarded rather as portions of the shore than as islands in the ancient gulf. I consider the Llanos to have been a gulf, for when their inconsiderable elevation above the present sea level, the adaptation of their form to the rotation current, running from east to west, and the lowness of the eastern shore between the mouth of the Orinoco and the Essequibo are taken into account, it can scarcely be doubted that the sea once overflowed the whole of this basin between the coast chain and the Sierra de la Parime, extending westward to the mountains of Merida and Pamplona (in the same manner as it probably passed through the plains of Lombardy to the Cottian and Pennine Alps). Moreover, the inclination or line of strike of these Llanos is directed from west to east. Their elevation at Calabozo, a distance of 100 geographical (400 English) miles from the sea, scarcely amounts to 30 toises, or 1 92 English feet ; consequently 15toises (96 English feet) less than the elevation of Pavia, and 45 toises (288 English feet) less than that of Milan in the plain of Lombardy between the Swiss Lepontine Alps and the Ligu¬ rian Apennines. This conformation of the land reminds us of Claudian’s expression, “ curvata tumore parvo planities.” The surface of the Llanos is so perfectly horizontal that in many parts over an area of some 480 English square miles, not a single point appears elevated one foot above the surrounding level. When it is further borne in mind that there is a total absence of all shrubs, and that in some parts, as in the Mesa de Pavones, there is not even a solitary palm-tree to be seen, it may easily be supposed that this sea-like and dreary plain presents a most singular aspect. Far as the eye can range, it scarcely rests on any object elevated many inches above the general level. If the boundary of the horizon did not con¬ tinually present an undefined flickering and undulating out¬ line, owing to the condition of the lower strata of air, and the refraction of light, solar elevations might be determined by the sextant above the margin of the plain as above the horizon of the sea. This perfect flatness of the ancient sea- bottom renders the banks even more striking. They are- 28 VIEWS OF NATURE. composed of broken floetz-strata, which rise abruptly about two or three feet above the surrounding level, and extend uniformly over a length of from 10 to 12 geographical («.<?., 40 to 48 English) miles. It is here that the small rivers of the Steppe take their origin. On our return from the Rio Negro, we frequently met with traces of landslips in passing over the Llanos of Barcelona. We here found in the place of elevated banks, isolated strata of gypsum lying from 3 to 4 toises, or 19 to 25 English feet, below the contiguous rock. Further westward, near the con¬ fluence of the River Caura and the Orinoco, a large tract of thickly grown forest land to the east of the Mission of San Pedro do Alcantara, fell in after an earthquake in the year 1790. A lake was immediately formed in the plain, which measured upwards of 300 toises (1919 feet) in diameter. The lofty trees, as the Desmanthus, Hymencea, and Malpi- ghia, retained their verdure and foliage for a long time after their submersion. (3)p. 2 — ('A shoreless ocean seems spread before us." The distant aspect of the Steppe is the more striking when the traveller emerges from dense forests, where his eye has been familiarised to a limited prospect and luxuriant natural scenery. I shall ever retain an indelible impression of the effect produced on my mind by the Llanos, when, on our return from the Upper Orinoco, they first broke on our view from a distant mountain, opposite the mouth of the Rio Apure, near the Ilato del Capuchino. The last rays of the setting sun illumined the Steppe, which seemed to swell before us like some vast hemisphere, while the rising stars were refracted by the lower stratum of the atmosphere. When tire plain has been excessively heated by the vertical rays of the sun, the evolution of the radiating heat, the ascent of currents of air, and the contact of atmospheric strata of unequal density, continue throughout the night. (4) p. 2 — “ The vahed stony crust." The deserts of Africa and Asia acquire a peculiar cha¬ racter from the frequent occurrence of immense tracts of land, covered by one flat uniform surface of naked rock. In the Schamo, which separates Mongolia and the mountain .chain of LTangom and Malakha-Oola from the north-west ILLUSTRATIONS (4). THE LLANOS. 29 part of China, such rocky banks are termed Tsy. In the woody plains of the Orinoco they are found to be surrounded with the most luxuriant vegetation.* In the midst of these fiat, tabular masses of granite and syenite, several thousands of feet in diameter, presenting merely a few scattered lichens, we find in the forests, or on their margins, little islands of light soil, covered with low and ever-flowering plants, having the appearance of small gardens. The monks settled on the Upper Orinoco, singularly enough regard the whole of these horizontal naked stony plains, when extending over a consi¬ derable area, as conducive to fevers and other diseases. Many of the villages belonging to the mission have been transferred to other spots on account of the general prevalence of this opinion. Do these stony flats ( laxas ) act chemically on the atmosphere or influence it only by means of a greater radiation of heat ? (5) p. 2 — “ Compared with the Llanos and Pampas of South America, or even with the Prairies on the Missouri.” Our physical and geognostic knowledge of the western mountain region of North America has recentlv been enriched by the acquisition of many accurate data yielded by the admirable labours of the enterprising traveller Major Long, and his companion Edwin James, but more especially by the comprehensive investigations of Captain Fremont. The knowledge thus established clearly corroborates the accuracy of the different facts which in my work on New Spain I could merely advance as hypothetical conjectures regarding the northern plains and mountains of America. In natural his¬ tory, as well as in historical research, facts remain isolated until by long- continued investigation they are brought into connection with each other. The eastern shore of the United States of North America inclines from south-west to north-east, as does the Brazilian coast south of the equator from the Bio de la Plata to Olinda. on both these regions there rise, at a short distance from the coast line, two ranges of mountains more nearly parallel to each other than to the western Andes, (the Cordilleras If Chili and Peru), or to the North Mexican chain of the Rocky Mountains. The South American or Brazilian moun- * Relation Hist., t. iivp. 279. 30 VIEWS OF NATURE. tain system, forms an isolated group, the highest points of which, Itacolumi and Itambe, do not rise above an elevation of 900 toises, or 5755 English feet. The eastern portion of the ridge most contiguous to the sea is the only part that follows a regular inclination from S.S.W. to N.N.E., increas¬ ing in breadth and diminishing in general elevation as it approaches further westward. The chain of the Parecis hills approximates to the rivers Itenes and Guapore, in the same manner as the mountains of Aguapehi and San Fernando (south of Villabella) approach the lofty Andes of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra. There is no direct connection between the two mountain systems of the Atlantic and South-sea coasts (the Bra¬ zilian and the Peruvian Cordilleras); Western Brazil being separated from Eastern or Upper Peru by the low lands of the province of Chiquitos, which is a longitudinal valley that inclines from north to south, and communicates both with the plains of the Amazon and of the Rio de la Plata. In these regions, as in Poland and Russia, a ridge of land, sometimes imperceptible (termed in Slavonic Uwaly ), forms the line of separation between different rivers ; as for instance, between the Pilcomayo and Madeira, between the Aguapehi and Gua¬ pore, and between the Paraguay and the Rio Topayos. The ridge [senil) extends from Chayanta and Pomabamba (19° — 20° lat.,) in a south-easterly direction, and after intersecting the depressed tracts of the province of Chiquitos, (which has become almost unknown to geographers since the expulsion of the Jesuits,) forms to the north-east, where some scattered mountains are again to bo met with, the divortia aqucirum at the sources of the Baures and near Villabella (15° — 17° lat.) This water-line of separation which is so important to the general intercourse and growing civilization of different nations corresponds in the northern hemisphere of South America with a second line of demarcation (2° — 3° lat.) which separates the district of the Orinoco from that of the Rio Negro and the Amazon. These elevations or risings in the midst of the plains ( terra hmiores , according to Frontinus) may almost be regarded as undeveloped mountain-systems, designed to connect two apparently isolated groups, the Sierra Parimc and the Brazilian highlands, to the Andes chain of 31 ILLUSTRATIONS (5). THE ANDES. Pimana and Cochabamba. These relations, to which very little attention has hitherto been directed, form the basis of my division of South America into three depressions or basins, viz., those of the Orinoco in its lower course, of the Amazon, and of the Rio de la Plata. Of these three basins, the exterior ones, as I have already observed, are Steppes or Prairies; but the central one between the Sierra Parime and the Brazilian chain of mountains must be regarded as a wooded plain or Hylcea. In endeavouring by a few equally brief touches to give a sketch of the natural features of North America, we must first glance at the chain of the Andes, which, narrow at its origin, soon increases in height and breadth as it follows an inclina¬ tion from south-east to north-west, passing through Panama, Yeragua, Guatimala, and New Spain. This range of moun¬ tains, formerly the seat of an ancient civilization, presents a like barrier to the general current of the sea between the tropics, and to a more rapid intercommunication between Europe, Western Africa, and Eastern Asia. From the 17th degree of latitude at the celebrated Isthmus of Tehuan¬ tepec, the chain deflects from the shores of the Pacific, and inclining from south to north becomes an inland Cordillera. In Northern Mexico, the Crane Mountains (Sierra de las Grullas) constitute a portion of the Rocky Mountains. On their western declivity rise the Columbia and the Rio Colorado of California; on the eastern side the Rio Roxo of Natchitoches, the Canadian river, the Arkansas, and the shallow river Platte, which latter has recently been converted by some ignorant geographers, into a Rio de la Plata , or a river yielding silver. Between the sources of these rivers rise in the parallels of 37° 20' and 40° 13' lat., three huge peaks composed of granite, containing little mica, but a large pro¬ portion of hornblende. These have been respectively named Spanish Peak, James or Pike's Peak, and Big Horn or Long's Peak.* Their elevation exceeds that of the highest summits of the North Mexican Andes, which indeed nowhere attain the height of the line of perpetual snow from the parallels of 18° and 19° lat., or from the group of Orizaba, (2717 toises, or 17,374 English feet), and of Popocatepetl (2771 toises, or 17,720 English feet) to Santa Fe and Taos in New Mexico. * See my Essai Politique sur la Pour eile Espagne. 2mc edit., t. i., pp. 82 and 109. VIEWS OE NATURE. 32 James’ Peak (38° 48' lat.) is said to have an elevation of 11,497 English feet. Of this only 8537 feet have been deter¬ mined by trigonometrical measurement, the remainder being deduced in the absence of barometrical observations, from uncertain calculations of the declivity or fall of rivers. As it is scarcely ever possible, even at the level of the sea, to conduct a purely trigonometrical measurement, determinations of impracticable heights are always in part barometrical. Measurements 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, more especially near those sum¬ mits mentioned in the text, was, before the important expe¬ dition of Captain Fremont, estimated sometimes at 8000 and sometimes at 3000 feet above the level of the sea.* From a similar deficiency of barometrical measurements, the true height of the Himalaya remained for a long time uncertain ; now, however, science has made such advances in India, that when Captain Gerard had ascended on the Tarhigang, near the Sutledge, north of Shipke, to the height of 19,411 feet, he still had, after having broken three barometers, four equally correct ones remaining. f Fremont, in the expedition which he made between the years 1842 and 1844, at the command of the United States Government, discovered and measured barometrically the highest peak of the whole chain of the Rocky Mountains to the north-north- west of Spanish, James', Long's, and Laramie's Peaks. This snow-covered summit, which belongs to the group of the Wind River Mountains, bears the name of Fremont's Peak on the great chart published under the di¬ rection of Colonel Abort, chief of the topographical depart¬ ment at Washington. This point is situated in the parallel of 43° 10' north lat.. and 110° V west long., and therefore nearly 5° 30' north of Spanish Peak. The elevation of Fre¬ mont's Peak, which according to direct measurement is 13.568 feet, must therefore exceed by 2072 feet that given by Long to James’ Peak, which would appear from its position to be iden¬ tical with Pike s Peak, as given in the map above referred to. The Wind River Mountains constitute the dividing ridge (divortici aquanmi) between the two seas. From the summit,” * See Long's Expeditions, vol. ii., pp. 36, 362, 3S2. Ap. p. xxxvii. t Critical Researches on Philology and Geography, 1824, p. 144. FLEESTE. ATI ON S (5). GEOGNOSTIC EEOFILES. 33 says Captain Fremont in his official report/*4 “ we saw on the one side numerous lakes and streams, the sources of the Rio Colo¬ rado, which carries its waters through the Californian Gulf to the South Sea ; on the other, the deep valley of the Wind River, where lie the sources of the Yellowstone River, one of the main branches of the Missouri which unites with the Mississippi at St. Louis. Far to the north-west we could just discover the snowy heads of the Trois Tetons, which give rise to the true sources of the Missouri not far from the primitive stream of the Oregon or Columbia river, which is known under the name of Snake River, or Lewis Fork.” To the surprise of the adventurous travellers, the summit of Fremont’s Peak was found to be visited by bees. It is probable that these insects, like the butterflies which I found at far higher elevations in the chain of the Andes, and also within the limits of' perpetual snow, had been involuntarily drawn thither by ascending currents of air. I have even seen large winged lepidoptera, which had been carried far out to sea by land-winds, drop on the ship deck at a consider¬ able distance from land in the South Sea. Fremont’s map and geographical researches embrace the immense tract of land extending from the confluence of Ivanzas River with the Missouri, to the cataracts of the Columbia and the Missions of Santa Barbara and Pueblo de los Angeles in New California, presenting a space amount¬ ing to 28 degrees of longitude (about 1360 miles) between the 34th and 45th parallels of north latitude. Four hundred points have been hypsometrically determined by barometrical measurements, and for the most part, astronomically: so that it has been rendered possible to delineate the profile above the sea’s level of a tract of land measuring 3,600 miles with all its inflections, extending from the north of Ivanzas River to Fort Vancouver and to the coasts of the South Sea (almost 720 miles more than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk). As I believe I was the first who attempted to represent, in geognostic profile, the configuration of entire countries, as the Spanish Peninsula, the highland of Mexico, and the Cordilleras of South America (for the half-perspec- * Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and North California, in the years 1843-1844, p. 78. D 34 TI EWS OF NATURE. tire projections of the Siberian traveller, the Abbe Chappe,* were based on mere and for the most part on very inac¬ curate estimates of the tails of rivers) ; it has afforded me special satisfaction to find the graphical method of represent¬ ing the earth's configuration in a vertical direction, that is, the elevation of solid over fluid parts, achieved on so vast a scale. In the mean latitudes of 37° to 43° the Rocky Mountains present, besides the great snow-crowned summits, whose height may be compared to that of the Peak of Teneriffe, elevated plateaux of an extent scarcely to be met with in any other part of the world, and whose breadth from east to west is almost twice that of the Mexican highlands. From the range of the mountains, which begin a little westward of Fort Lara¬ mie, to the further side of the Wahsatch Mountains, the eleva¬ tion of the soil is uninterruptedly maintained from five to upwards of seven thousand feet above the sea’s level ; nay, this elevated portion occupies the whole space between the true Rocky Mountains and the Californian snowy coast range from 34° to 45° north latitude. This district, which is a kind of broad longitudinal valley, like that of the lake of Titi- caca, has been named The Great Basin by Joseph 'Walker and Captain Fremont, travellers well acquainted with these west¬ ern regions. It is a terra incognita of at least 8000 geo¬ graphical (or 128,000 English) square miles, arid, almost uninhabited, and full of salt lakes, the largest of which is 3940 Parisian (or 4200 English) feet above the level of the sea, and is connected with the narrow Lake Utah,f into which the “ Rock River*’ ( Timpan Ogo in the Utah language) pours its copious stream. Father Escalante, in his wanderings from Santa Fe del Nuevo Mexico to Monterey in New California, discovered Fremont’s “Great Salt Lake” in 1776, and con¬ founding together the river and the lake, called it Laguna de Timpanogo. Under this name I inserted it in my map of Mexico, which gave rise to much uncritical discussion regard¬ ing the assumed non-existence of a large inland salt lake,;*; — a * Cbappe d’Auteroche, Voyage en Sibirie, fait en 1761. 4 vols., 4to., Paris, 1768. t Fremont, Report of the Exploring Expedition, pp. 154, and 273-276. + Humboldt, Atlas Mexicain, plcb. 2; Essai politique sur la Nouv. Esp>., t. i. p. 231 ; t. ii. pp. 243, 313, and 420. Fremont, Upper Cali¬ fornia, 1848, p. 9. See also Duflot de Mofras, Exploration de V Oregon, 1844, t. ii. p. 140. ILLUSTRATIONS (5). THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 35 question previously mooted by the learned American traveller Tanner. Gallatin expressly says in his memoir on the abori¬ ginal races** — “ 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 purposely dwelt at length on these considerations regarding the remarkable elevation of the soil in the region of the Rocky Mountains, since by its extension and height it undoubtedly exercises a great, although hitherto unappre¬ ciated influence on the climate of the northern half of the new continent, both in its southern and eastern iiortioiis. On this vast and uniformly elevated plateau Fremont found the water covered with ice every night in the month of August. Nor is the configuration of the land les3 important when considered in reference to the social condition and progress of the great North American United States. Although the mountain range which divides the waters attains a height nearly equal to that of the passes of Mount Simplon (6170 Parisian or 6576 English feet), Mount Gothard (6440 Parisian or 6863 English feet), and the great St. Bernard (7476 Parisian or 7957 English feet), the ascent is so prolonged and gradual that no impediments oppose a general intercourse by means of vehicles and carriages of every kind between the Missouri and Oregon territories, between the Atlantic States, and the new settlements on the Oregon (or Columbia) river, or between the coast-lands lying opposite to Europe on the one side of the continent, and to China on the other. The distance from Boston to the old settlement of Astoria on the Pacific at the mouth of the Oregon when measured in a direct line, and taking into account the difference of longi¬ tude, is 550 geographical, i.e., 2200 English miles, or ‘one- sixth less than the distance between Lisbon and Katherinen- burg in the Ural district. On account of this gentle ascent of the elevated plains leading from the Missouri to California and the Oregon territory (all the resting-places measured between the Fort and River Lamarie on the northern branch of the Platte river to Fort Hall on the Lewis Fork of the Columbia, being situated at an elevation of from five to up¬ wards of seven thousand feet, and that in Old Park even at the height of 9760 Parisian or 10,402 English feet !), consi- * In the Archceologia Americana , vol. ii. p. 140. 36 VIEWS OF NATURE. derable difficulty lias been experienced in determining the culminating point, or that of the divortia aqucirum. It is south of the Wind River Mountains, about midway between the Mississippi and the coast line of the Southern Ocean, and is situated at an elevation of 7490 feet, or only 480 feet lower than the pass of the Great Bernard. The emigrants call this culminating point the South Pass.1* It is situated in a pleasant region, embellished by a profusion of artemisite, especially A. tridentata (Nuttall), and varieties of asters and cactuses, which cover the micaceous slate and gneiss rocks. Astronomical determinations place its latitude in the parallel of 42° 24', and its longitude in that of 109° 24' W. Adolf Erman has already drawn attention to the fact, that the line of strike of the great east- Asiatic Aldanian mountain-chain, which separates the basin of the Lena from the rivers flowing towards the Great Southern Ocean, if extended in the form of a great circle on the surface of the globe, passes through many of the summits of the Rocky Mountains between 40° and 55° north lat. “ An American and an Asiatic mountain- chain,” he remarks, “ appear therefore to be only portions of one and the same fissure erupted by the shortest channels.”! The western high mountain coast chain of the Cali¬ fornian maritime Alps, the Sierra Nevada de California , is wholly distinct from the Rocky Mountains, which sink towards the Mackenzie River (that remains covered with ice for a great portion of the year), and from the high table land on which rise individual snow-covered peaks. However inju¬ dicious the choice of the appellation of Rocky Mountains may be, when applied to the most northerly prolongation of the Mexican central chain, I do not deem it expedient to sub¬ stitute for it the denomination of the Oregon Chain, as has frequently been attempted. These mountains do indeed give rise to the sources of three main branches constituting the great Oregon or Columbia river (viz., Lewis’, Clarke’s, and North Fork); but this mighty stream also intersects the chain of the ever snow-crowned maritime Alps of California. The name of Oregon Territory is also employed, politically and officially, to designate the lesser territory of land west of the * Fremont’s Report, pp. 3, 60, 70, 100, and 129. + Compare Erman’s Reise um die Erde, Abtk. i. Bd. 3, s. 8, xYbth. ii. Bd. 1. s. 386, with his Archiv für Wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland. Bd. vi. e. 671, ILLUSTRATIONS (5). CALIFORNIAN COAST RANGE. 37 coast chain, where Fort Vancouver and the Walahmutti settlements are situated ; and it would therefore seem better to abstain from applying the name of Oregon either to the central or to the coast chain. This denomination, moreover, led the celebrated geographer Malte- Brun into a misconcep¬ tion of the most remarkable kind. He read in an old Spanish chart the following passage : — “ And it is still unknown (y aim se ignora ) where the source of this river” (now called the Columbia) “is situated,” and he believed that the word ig nor a signified the name of the Oregon.* The rocks which give rise to the cataracts of the Columbia at the point where the river breaks through the chain, mark the prolongation of the Sierra Nevada of California from the 44th to the 47th degree of latitude. f In this northern pro¬ longation of the chain lie the three colossal elevations of Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, and Mount St. Helen’s, which rise 14,540 Parisian (or 15,500 English) feet above the sea- level. The height of this coast chain or range far exceeds therefore that of the Rocky Mountains. “ During an eight months’ journey along these maritime Alps,” says Captain Fremont,;]; “ we were constantly within sight of snow-covered summits ; and while we were able to cross the Rocky Moun¬ tains through the South Pass at an elevation of 7027 feet, we found that the passes in the maritime range, which is divided into several parallel chains, were more than 2000 feet higher” — and therefore only 1170 (English) feet below the summit of Mount Etna. It is also a very remarkable fact, and one which reminds us of the relations of the eastern and western Cordilleras of Chili, that volcanoes still active are only found in the Californian chain which lies in the closest proximity to the sea. The conical mountains of Regnier and of St. Helen’s are almost invariably observed to emit smoke; and on the 23rd of November, 1843, the latter of these volcanoes erupted a mass of ashes which covered the shores of the Columbia for a distance of forty miles, like a fall of snow. To the volcanic Californian chain belong also in the far north of Russian America, Mount Elias (according to La Perouse 1980 toises, or 12,660 feet, and according to Mala- spina 2792 toises, or 17,850 feet in height), and Mount Fair * See my Essai polit. sur la Nouv. Espagne, t. ii. p. 314. + Fremont, Geographical Memoir upon Upper California, 1848, p. 0. X Report, p. 274 (or Narrative, p. 300). 38 VIEWS OF NATURE. Weather (Cerro de Buen Tiempo, 2304 toises, or 14,733 feet high). Both these conical mountains are regarded as still active volcanoes. Fremont’s expedition, which has proved alike useful in reference to botany and geognosy, like¬ wise collected volcanic products in the Bocky Mountains (as scoriaceous basalt, trachyte, and true obsidian), and discovered an old extinct crater somewhat to the east of Fort Hall (43° 2' north lat., and 112° 28' west long.), but no traces of any still active volcanoes emitting lava and ashes, were to be met with. We must not confound with these the hitherto unexplained phenomenon termed smoking hills , cotes brulees , and terrains ardens , in the language of the English settlers and the natives who speak French. “ Bows of low conical hills,” says the accurate observer M. Nicollet, “ are almost periodi¬ cally, and sometimes for two or three years continually, covered with dense black smoke, unaccompanied by any visible flames. This phenomenon is more particularly noticed in the territory of the Upper Missouri, and still nearer to the eastern declivity of the Bocky Mountains, where there is a river named by the natives Mankizitah-watpa, or the river of smoking earth. Scorified pseudo-volcanic products, a kind of porcelain jasper, are found in the vicinity of the smoking hills.” Since the expedition of Lewis and Clarke an opinion has generally prevailed that the Missouri deposits a true pumice on its banks ; but here white masses of a delicate cellular texture have been mistaken for that substance. Professor Ducatel was of opinion that the phenomenon which is chiefly observed in the chalk formation, was owing to “the decomposition of water by sulphur pyrites and to a re-action on the brown coal floetzes.”^ If before we close these general remarks regarding the configuration of North America we once more cast a glance at those regions which separate the two diverging coast chains from the central chain, we shall find in strong con- trast, on the West, between that central chain and the Cali¬ fornian Alps of the Pacific, an arid and uninhabited elevated plateau nearly six thousand feet above the sea ; and in the East, between the Bocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, (whose highest points, Mount Washington and Mount Marcy, rise, * Compare Fremont’s Bcport, pp. 164, 184, 187, 193, and 299, with Nicollet’s Illustration of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi Hirer, 1843, pp. 39-41. ILLUSTRATIONS (5). MOUNTAIN-CHAIN. 39 according to Lyell, to the respective heights, of 6652 and -5400 feet,) we see the richly watered, fruitful, and thickly- inhabited basin of the Mississippi, at an elevation of from four to six hundred feet, or more than twice that of the plains of Lombardy. The liypsometrical character of this eastern valley, or in other words, its relation to the sea’s level, has only very recently been explained by the ad¬ mirable labours of the talented French astronomer Nicollet, unhappily lost to science by a premature death. His great chart of the Upper Mississippi, executed between the years 1836 and 1840, was based on two hundred and forty astrono¬ mical determinations of latitude, and one hundred and seventy barometrical determinations of elevation. The plain which encloses the valley of the Mississippi is identical with that of northern Canada, and forms part of one and the same depressed basin, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic SeaA Wherever the low land falls in undulations, and slight elevations which still retain their un-English appellation of coteaux des prairies, coteaux des bois, occur in connected rows between the parallels of 47° and 48° north lat., these rows and gentle undulations of the ground separate the waters between Hudson’s Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Such a line of sepa¬ ration between the waters is formed, north of Lake Superior or Kichi Gummi, by the Missabay Heights, and further west by the elevations known as Hauteurs des Terres , in which are situated the true sources of the Mississippi, one of the largest rivers in the world, and which were not discovered till the year 1832. The highest of these chains of hills hardly attains an elevation of from 1500 to 1600 feet. From its mouth (the old French Balize) to St. Louis, somewhat to the south of its confluence with the Missouri, the Missis¬ sippi has a fall of only 380 feet, notwithstanding that the itinerary distance between these two points exceeds 1280 miles. The surface of Lake Superior lies at an elevation of 618 feet, and as its depth in the neighbourhood of the island of Magdalena is fully 790 feet, its bottom must be 172 feet below the surface of the ocean. f Beltrami, who in 1825 separated himself from Major Long’s * Compare my Relation Historique, t. iii. p. 234, and Nicollet, Report to the Senate of the United States, 1843, pp. 7, 57. t Nicollet, op. cit. pp. 99, 125, 128. 40 VIEWS OF NATURE, expedition, boasted that he had found the sources of the Mississippi in Lake Cass. The river passes, in its upper course, through four lakes, the second of which is the one referred to, while the outermost one, Lake Istaca (47° 13f north lat., and 95° west long.), was first recognised as the true source of the Mississippi, in 1832, in the expedition of Schoolcraft and Lieutenant Allen. This stream, which sub¬ sequently becomes so mighty, is only 17 feet in width, and 15 inches deep, when it issues from the singular horse-shoe¬ shaped Lake Istaca. The local relations of this river were first fully established on a basis of astronomical observations of position by the scientific expedition of Nicollet, in the year 1836. The height of the sources, that is to say, of the last access of water received by Lake Istaca from the ridge of separation, called Hauteur de Terre , is 1680 feet above the level of the sea. Near this point, and at the southern declivity of the same separating ridge, lies Elbow Lake, the source of the small llecl River of the north, which empties itself, after many windings, into Hudson's Bay. The Car¬ pathian Mountains exhibit similar relations in reference to the origin of the rivers which empty themselves into the Baltic and the Black Sea. M. Nicollet gave the names of celebrated astronomers, opponents as well as friends, with whom he had become acquainted in Europe, to the twenty small lakes which combine together to form narrow groups in the southern and western regions of Lake Istaca. His atlas is thus converted into a geographical album, remind¬ ing one of the botanical album of the Flora Peruviana of Iluiz and Pavon, in which the names of new families of plants were made to accord with the Court Calendar, and the various alterations made in the Oficiales de la Secre- taria. The east of the Mississippi is still occupied by dense forests; the west by prairies only, on which the buffalo {Bos Americanus ) and the musk ox {Bos moschatus ) pasture. These two species of animals, the largest of the new world, furnish the nomadic tribes of the Apaches- Llaneros and Apaches- Lipanos with the means of nourishment. The Assiniboins occasionally slay from seven to eight hundred bisons in the course of a few days in the artificial enclosures constructed for the purpose of driving together the wild ILLUSTRATIONS (5). MOUNTAIN-CHAIN. 41 herds, and known as bison parks.* The American bison, called by the Mexicans Cibolo , is killed chiefly on account of the tongue, which is regarded as a special delicacy. This animal is not a mere variety of the aurochs of the old world ; although, like other species of animals, as for instance the elk ( C er mis alecs) and the reindeer ( Cervns tarandus ), no less than the stunted inhabitants of the polar regions, it may be regarded as common to the northern portions of all continents, and as affording a proof of their former long existing connec¬ tion. The Mexicans apply to the European ox the Aztec term quaquahue , or horned animal, from quaquahuitl , a horn. The huge ox-horns which have been found in ancient Mexican buildings near Cuernavaca, south-west of the capital of Mexico, appear to me to belong to the bison. The Canadian bison can be used for agricultural labour, and will breed with the European cattle, although it is uncertain whether the hybrid thus engendered is capable of propagating its species. Albert Gallatin, who, before his appearance in Europe as a distin¬ guished diplomatist, had acquired by personal observation a considerable amount of information regarding the uncultivated parts of the United States, assures us that the fruitfulness of the mixed breed of the American buffalo and European cattle is an undoubted fact: “ the mixed breed,” he writes, “ was quite common fifty years ago in some of the north-western counties of Virginia, and the cows, the issue of that mixture, propa¬ gated like all others.” “I do not remember,” he further adds, “ that full-grown buffaloes were tamed ; but dogs would at that time occasionally bring in the young bison-calves, which were reared and bred with European cows. At Monongahela all the cattle for a long time were of this mixed breed. It was said, however, that the cows yielded but little milk.” The favourite food of the buffalo is the Tripsacum dacty loides (known as buffalo-grass in North Carolina) and a hitherto undescribed species of clover allied to the Trifolium repens , and designated by Barton as Trifolium bisonicum. I have elsewheref drawn attention to the fact, that ac¬ cording to a passage of the trustworthy Gomaraj', there * Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord- Amerika, bd. i., 1839, s. 443. t See Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 674 (Bohn’s edition). X Historia general de las Indios, cap. 214. 42 VIEWS OF NATURE. lived, as late as the sixteenth century, an Indian tribe in the north-west of Mexico, in 40° north lat., whose greatest wealth consisted in hordes of tamed buffaloes (bueyes con una giba ). Yet, notwithstanding the possibility of taming the buffalo, and the abundance of milk it yields, and notwith- V standing the herds of Lamas in the Peruvian Cordilleras, no pastoral tribes were met with on the discovery of America. Nor does history afford any evidence of the existence, at any period, of this intermediate stage of national development. It is also a remarkable fact that the North American bison or buffalo has exerted an influence on geographical dis¬ coveries in pathless mountain districts. These animals ad¬ vance in herds of many thousands in search of a milder climate, during winter, in the countries south of the Arkansas river. Their size and cumbrous forms render it difficult for them to cross high mountains on these migratory courses, and a well-trodden buffalo-path is therefore followed wherever it is met with, as it invariably indicates the most convenient passage across the mountains. Thus buffalo-paths have indi¬ cated the best tracks for passing over the Cumberland Moun¬ tains in the south-western parts of Virginia and Kentucky, and over the Rocky Mountains, between the sources of the Y ellow- stone and Plate rivers, and between the southern branch of the Columbia and the Californian Rio Colorado. European settlements have gradually driven the buffalo from the eastern portions of the United States. Formerly these migratory animals passed the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, advancing far beyond Pittsburgh.* From the granitic rocks of Diego Ramirez and the deeply- intersected district of Terra del Fuego (which in the east contains silurian schist, and in the west, the same schist metamorphosed into granite by the action of subterranean Rre,)f to the North Polar Sea, the Cordilleras extend over a distance of more than 8000 miles. Although not the loftiest, they are the longest mountain chain in the world, being upheaved from one fissure, which runs in the direction of a meridian from pole to pole, and exceeding in linear * Archceologia Americana, vol. ii., 1S36, p. 139. + Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Countries visited 1832 — 1836 by the '/Ships Adventure and Beagle, p. 2 66. ILLUSTRATIONS (5). MOUNTAIN-CHAIN. 43 extent the distance which, in the old continent, separates the Pillars of Hercules from the Icy Cape of the Tschnktches, in the north-east of Asia. Where the Andes are divided into several parallel chains, those lying nearest the sea are found to be the seat of the most active volcanoes ; and it has more¬ over been repeatedly observed that when the phenomenon of an eruption of subterranean fire ceases in one mountain chain, it breaks forth in some other parallel range. The cones of eruption usually follow the direction of the axis of the chain; but in the Mexican table-land, the active vol¬ canoes are situated on a transverse fissure, running from sea to sea, in a direction from east and west A Wherever the upheaval of mountain masses in the folding of the ancient crust of the earth has opened a communication with the fused interior, volcanic activity continued to be exhibited on the murally upheaved mass by means of the ramification of fissures. That which we call a mountain chain has not been raised to its present elevation, or manifested as it now ap¬ pears, at one definite period; for we find that rocks, varying considerably in age, have been superimposed on one another, and have penetrated towards the surface through early formed channels. The diversity observable in rocks is owing to the outpouring and upheaval of rocks of eruption, as well as to the complicated and slow process of metamorphism going on in fissures filled with vapour, and conducive to the conduction of heat. The following have for a long time, viz., from 1830 to 1848, been regarded as the highest or culminating points of the Cordilleras of the new continent : — The Nevado de Sorata, also called Ancohuma or Tusubaya (15° 52' south lat.), somewhat to the south of the village of Sorata or Esquibel, in the eastern chain of Bolivia : elevation, 25,222 feet. The Nevado de Illimani , west of the mission of Yrupana (16° 38 south lat.), also in the eastern chain of Bolivia: ele¬ vation, 24,000 feet. The Chimborazo (1° 27' south lat.), in the province of Quito: elevation, 21,422 feet. The Sorata and Illimani were first measured by the dis¬ tinguished geologist, Pentland, in the years 1827 and 1838; * Humboldt, Essai politique, t. ii. p. 173. 44 VIEWS OF NATURE. and since the publication of his large map of the basin of the Laguna de Titicaca, in June, 1848, we learn that the above elevations given for the Sorata and Illimani are 3960 feet and 2851 feet too high. His map gives only 21,286 feet for the Sorata, and 21.149 feet for the Illimani. A more exact calculation of the trigonometrical operations of 1838 led Mr. Pentland to these new results. He ascribes an elevation of from 21,700 to 22,350 feet to four summits of the western Cordilleras; and, according to his data, the Peak of Sahama would thus be 926 feet higher than the Chim¬ borazo, but 850 feet lower than the Peak of Aconcagua. (6) p. 2 — “ The desert near the basaltic mountains of Ilarudsch." Near the Egyptian Natron Lakes, which in Strabo's time had not yet been divided into the six reservoirs by which they are now characterized, there rises abruptly to the north a chain of hills, running from east to west past Fezzan, where it at length appears to form one connected range with the Atlas chain. It divides in north-eastern, as Mount Atlas does in north-western Africa the Lybia, described by Herodotus as inhabited and situated near the sea, from the land of the Berbirs, or Biledulgerid, famed for the abundance of its wild animals. On the borders of Middle Egypt the whole region, south of the 30tli degree of latitude, is an ocean of sand, studded here and there with islands or oases abounding in springs and rich in vegetation. Owing to the discoveries of recent travellers, a vast addition has been made to the number of the Oases formerly known, and which the ancients limited to three, compared by Strabo to spots upon a panther's skin. The third Oasis of the ancients, now called Siwah, was the nomos of Ammon, a hierarchical seat and a resting-place for the caravans, which inclosed within its precincts the temple of the horned Ammon and the spring of the Sun, whose waters were supposed to become cool at certain periods. The ruins of Ummibida ( Omm-Beydah ) incontestably belong to the fortified caravanserai at the Temple of Ammon, and therefore constitute one of the most ancient monuments which have come down to us from the dawn of human civilization.* * Caillaud, Voyage ciSyouah , p. 14 ; Ideler , Fundgruben des Orients bd. iv. s. 399—411. ILLUSTRATIONS (6). MOUNTAINS OF THE HARUDSCH. 45 The word Oasis is Egyptian, and is synonymous with Auasis and Hyasis.* Abulfeda calls the Oases el-Wah. In the latter time of the Caesars, malefactors were sent to the Oases, being banished to these islands in the sandy ocean, as the Spaniards and English transported their malefactors to the Falkland islands and New Holland. The ocean affords almost a better chance of escape than the desert surrounding the Oases; which, moreover, diminish in fruitfulness in propor¬ tion to the greater quantity of sand incorporated in the soil. The small mountain range of Harudsch {Harudje f) consists of grotesquely-shaped basaltic hills. It is the Mons Ater of Pliny, and its western extremity, known as the Soudah mountain, has been recently explored by my unfortunate friend, the enterprising traveller Ritchie. These basaltic eruptions in the tertiary limestone, and rows of hills rising abruptly from fissures, appear to be analogous to the basaltic eruptions in the Vicentine territory. Nature repeats the same phenomena in the most distant regions of the earth. Hornemann found an immense quantity of petrified fishes’ heads in the limestone formations of the White Harudsch ( Harudje el-Abiad ), belonging probably to the old chalk. Ritchie and Lyon remarked that the basalt of the Soudah mountain was in many places intimately mingled with carbonate of lime, as is the case in Monte Berico ; a phenomenon that is probably connected with eruptions through limestone strata. Lyon’s chart even indi¬ cates dolomite in the neighbourhood. Modern mineralogists have found syenite and greenstone, but not basalt, in Egypt. Is it possible that the true basalt, from which many of the ancient vases found in various parts of the country were made, can have been derived from a mountain lying so far to the west ? Can the obsidins lapis have come from there, or are we to seek basalt and obsidian on the coast of the Red Sea ? The strip of the volcanic eruptions of Harudsch, on the borders of the African desert, moreover reminds the geologist of augitic vesicular amygdaloid, phonolite, and greenstone porphyry, which are only found on the northern and western limits of the steppes of Venezuela * Strabo, lib. ii. p. 130, lib. xvii. p. S13, Cas. ; Herod, lib. iii. cap. 26. p. 207, Wessel. t See Ritter’s Afrika , 1822, s. 885, 988, 993, and 1003. 46 VIEWS OF NATURE. and of the plains of the Arkansas, and therefore, as it were, on the ancient coast chains.* * * § (7) p. 3—“ When suddenly deserted by the tropical east wind , and the sea is covered with weeds.” It is a remarkable phenomenon, although one generally known to mariners, that in the neighbourhood of the African coast, (between the Canaries and the Cape de Verde islands, and more especially between Cape Bojador and the mouth of the Senegal,) a westerly wind often prevails instead of the usual east or trade wind of the tropics. The cause of this phenomenon is to be ascribed to the far-extending desert of Zahara, and arises from the rarefaction, and consequent vertical ascent of the air over the heated sandy surface. To fill up the vacuum thus occasioned, the cool sea-air rushes in, producing a westerly breeze, adverse to vessels sailing to America ; and the mariner, long before he perceives any con¬ tinent, is made sensible of the effects of its heat-radiating sands. As is well known, a similar cause produces that alternation of sea and land breezes, which prevails at certain hours of the day and night on all sea- coasts. The accumulation of sea- weed in the neighbourhood of the western coasts of Africa has been often referred to by ancient writers. The local position of this accumulation is a problem which is intimately connected with the conjec¬ tures regarding the extent of Phoenician navigation. The Periplus, which has been ascribed to Scylax of Caryanda, and which, according to the investigations of Niebuhr and Letronne, was very probably compiled in the time of Philip of Macedon, contains a description of a kind of fucus sea. Mar de Sargasso , beyond Cerne ; but the locality indicated appears to me very different from that assigned to it in the work “ De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus,” which for a long time, but incorrectly, bore the great name of Aristotle, f “ Driven by the east wind,” says the pseudo- Aristotle, “ Phoenician * Humboldt, lielat. hist., t. ii. p. 142, and Long’s Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, v. ii. pp. 91 and 405. f Compare Scyl. Caryand. Peripl., in Hudson, vqI. ii. p. 53, with Aristot. de Mirab. Auscidt. in Op. omnia, ex rec. Bekkeri, p. 884, § 136. , ILLUSTRATIONS (7). MEADOWS OF SEA-WEED. 47 mariners came in a four days’ voyage from Gades to a place where the sea was found covered with rushes and sea-weed (Opvov ml cfrvKos). The sea- weed is uncovered at ebb, and overflowed at flood tide.” Does he not here refer to a shoal lying between the 34th and 36th degrees of latitude? Has a shoal disappeared there in consequence of volcanic revo¬ lution? Vobonne refers to rocks north of Madeira.* In Scylax it is stated that ‘ ‘ the sea beyond Cerne ceases to be navigable in consequence of its great shallowness, its mud¬ diness, and its sea-grass. The sea-grass lies a span thick, and it is pointed at its upper extremity, so that it pricks.” The sea-weed which is found between Cerne (the Phoenician station for merchant vessels, Gaulea; or, according to Gosse- lin, the small estuary of Fedallah, on the north-west coast of Mauritania,) and Cape Verde, at the present time by no means forms a great meadow or connected group, “ mare herbidum ,” such as exists on the other side of the Azores. Moreover, in the poetic description of the coast given by Festus Avienus, f in which, as Avienus himself very distinctly acknowledges, he availed himself of the journals of Phoenician ships, the impediments presented by the sea- weed are described with great minuteness ; but Avienus places the site of this obstacle much further north, towards lerne, the Holy Isle. Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem. Sic segnis humor aequoris pigri stupet. Adjicit et illud, pluriniiim inter gurgites Exstare fucum, et saspe virgulti vice Retinere puppim .... Haec inter undas multa CEespitem jacet, Eamque late gens Hibernorum colit. When we consider that the sea- weed ( facus ) the mud or slime (7777X0$), the shallowness of the sea, and the perpetual calms, are always regarded by the ancients as characteristic of the Western Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, we feel inclined, especially on account of the reference to the calms , to ascribe this to Punic cunning, to the tendency of a great trading people to hinder others, by terrific descriptions, from competing with them in maritime trading westwards. But even * See also Edrisi, Geogr. Nub., 1619, p. 157. t Ora Maritima, v. 109, 122, 388, and 408. 48 VIEWS OF NATURE. in the genuine writings of the Stagyrite,* the same opinion is retained regarding the absence of wind, and Aristotle attempts to explain a false notion, or, as it seems to me, more correctly speaking, a fabulous mariner's story, by an hypo¬ thesis regarding the depth of the sea. The stormy sea be¬ tween Gades and the Islands of the Blest (Cadiz and the Canaries) can in truth in no way be compared with the sea, which lies between the tropics, ruffled only by the gentle trade-winds ( vents alises ), and which has been very charac¬ teristically named by the Spaniards! El Golfo de las Damas. From very careful personal researches and from compari¬ son of the logs of many English and French vessels, I am led to believe that the old and very indefinite expression Mar de Sargasso, refers to two fucus banks, the larger of which is of an elongated form, and is the easternmost one, lying between the parallels of 19° and 34°, in a meridian 7° westward of the Island of Corvo, one of the Azores ; while the smaller and westernmost bank is of a roundish form, and is found between Bermuda and the Bahama Islands (lat. 25° — 31°, long. 66° — 74°). The principal diameter of the small bank, which is traversed by ships sailing from Baxo de Plata (Caye d' Argent,) northward of St. Domingo to the Bermudas, appears to me to have a N. 60° E. direction. A transverse band of fucus natans, extending in an east-westerly direction between the latitudes of 25° and 30°, connects the greater with the smaller bank. I have had the pleasure of seeing thess' views adopted by my lamented friend Major Pennell, and confirmed, in his great work on Currents, by many new observations.'! The two groups of sea-weed, together with the transverse band uniting them, constitute the Sargasso Sea of the older writers, and collectively occupy an area equal to six or seven times that of Germany. The vegetation of the ocean thus offers the most remark¬ able example of social plants of a single species. On the main land the Savannahs or grass plains of America, the heaths ( ericeta ), and the forests of Northern Europe and Asia, * Aristot. Meteorol., ii. 1, 14. •f Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, lib. iii. cap. 4. + Compare Humboldt, Relation historigue, t. i. p. 202, and Examen Critique, t. iii. pp. 68-69, with Rennell’s Investigation of the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean, 1832, p. 184. ILLUSTRATIONS (7). FOCUS BANKS. 49 in which are associated coniferous trees, birches, and willows, produce a less striking uniformity than do these thalassophytes. Our heaths present in the north not only the predominating Calluna vulgaris, but also Erica tetralix, E. ciliaris, and E. cinerea; and in the south, Erica arborea, E. scoparia, and E. Mediterranea. The uniformity of the view presented by the Fucus natans is incomparably greater than that of any other assemblage of social plants. Oviedo calls the fucus banks “meadows,” praderias de yerva. If we consider that Pedro Velasco, a native of the Spanish harbour of Palos, by following the flight of certain birds from Eayal, discovered the Island of Flores as early as 1452, it seems almost impos¬ sible, considering the proximity of the great fucus bank of Corvo and Flores, that no part of these oceanic meadows should have been seen before the time of Columbus by Por¬ tuguese ships driven westward by storms. We learn, however, from the astonishment of the com¬ panions of the admiral, when they were continuously sur¬ rounded by sea- grass from the 16tli of September to the 8th of October, 1492, that the magnitude of the phenomenon was at that period unknown to mariners. In the extracts from the ship's journal given by Las Casas, Columbus cer¬ tainly does not mention the apprehensions which the accumu¬ lation of sea- weed excited, or the grumbling of his companions. He merely speaks of the complaints and murmurs regarding the danger of the very weak but constant east winds. It was only his son, Fernando Colon, who in the history of his father’s life, endeavoured to give a somewhat dramatic delinea¬ tion of the anxieties of the sailors. According to my researches, Columbus made his way through the great fucus bank in the year 1492, in latitude 28^°, and in 1493, in latitude 37°, and both times in the longitude of 38°-41°. This can be established with tolerable certainty from the estimation of the velocity recorded by Columbus, and “the distance daily sailed over;” not indeed by dropping the log, but by the information afforded by the running out of half-hour sand-glasses ( ampolletas ). The first certain and distinct account of the log, ( catena della poppa,) which I have found, is in the year 1521, in Pigafetta’s Journal of Magellan’s Circumnavigation of the World.* The deter- * See Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 631, and note; Bohn’s edition. 50 VIEWS OF NATURE. mination of the ship's place during the days in which Colum¬ bus was crossing the great bank is the more important, because it shews us that for three centuries and a half the total accumulation of these socially- living thalassophytes, (whether consequent on the local character of the sea's bottom or on the direction of the recurrent Gulf stream,) has re¬ mained at the same point. Such evidences of the persistence of great natural phenomena doubly arrest the attention of the natural philosopher, when they occur in the ever-moving oceanic element. Although the limits of the fucus banks oscillate considerably, in accordance with the strength and direction of long predominating winds, yet we may still, in the middle of the nineteenth century, take the meridian of 41° west of Paris (or 8° 38' west of Greenwich) as the principal axis of the great bank. Columbus, with his vivid imaginative force, associated the idea of the position of this bank with the great physical line of demarcation, which according to him, “ separated the globe into two parts, and was intimately con¬ nected with the changes of magnetic deviation and of climatic erlations.” Columbus when he was uncertain regarding the longitude, attempted to determine his place (February, 1493,) by the appearance of the first floating masses of tangled weed (de la 'primer a yerva) on the eastern border of the great Corvo bank. The physical line of demarcation was, by the pow¬ erful influence of the Admiral, converted on the 4th of May, 1493, into a political one, in the celebrated line of demar¬ cation between the Spanish and Portuguese rights of pos¬ session*. (8) p. 3 — “ The Nomadic Tribes of Tibbos and Tuaryks.” These two nations, which inhabit the desert between Bornou, Fezzan, and Lower Egypt, were first made more accurately known to us by the travels of Hornemann and Lyon. The Tibbos or Tibbous occupy the eastern, and the Tuaryks (Tueregs) the western portion of the great sandy ocean. The former, from their habits of constant moving, were named by the other tribes “birds.” The Tuaryks are subdivided into two tribes — the Aghadez and the Tagazi. These are often caravan leaders and merchants. They speak * See my Examen Critique, t. iii. pp. 64 — 99 ; and Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 655. Bohn’s edition. ILLUSTRATIONS (9). THE CAMEL. 51 tlie same language as the Berbers, and undoubtedly belong to the primitive Lybian races. They present the remarkable physiological phenomenon that, according to the character of the climate, the different tribes vary in complexion from a white to a yellow, or even almost black hue ; but they never have woolly hair or negro features.*' (9) p. 3 — “ The ship of the desert.1' In the poetry of the East, the camel is designated as the land-ship , or the ship of the desert ( Sefxjnet-el-bad\jet\ ). The camel is, however, not only the carrier in the desert, and the medium for maintaining communication between different countries, but is also, as Carl Ritter has shown in his admirable treatise on the sphere of distribution of this animal, “ the main requirement of a nomadic mode of life in the patriarchal stage of national development, in the torrid regions of our planet, where rain is either wholly or in a areat decree absent. No animal's life is so closelv associated O O # .... by natural bonds with a certain primitive stage of the deve¬ lopment of the life of man, as that of the camel among the Bedouin tribes, nor has any other been established in like manner by a continuous historical evidence of several thousand years. “The camel was entirely unknown to the culti¬ vated people of Carthage through all the centuries of their flourishing existence, until the destruction of the city. It was first brought into use for armies by the Marusians, in Western Lybia, in the times of the Caesars ; perhaps in con¬ sequence of its employment in commercial undertakings by the Ptolemies, in the valley of the Nile. The Guanches, inhabiting the Canary Islands, who were probably related to the Berber race, were not acquainted with the camel before the fifteenth century, when it was introduced by Norman conquerors and settlers. In the probably very limited com¬ munication of the Guanches with the coast of Africa, the smallness of their boats must necessarily have impeded the transport of large animals. The true Berber race, which wras diffused throughout the interior of Northern Africa, and to which the Tibbos and Tuaryks, as already observed, belong, * Exploration ecientifique de V Alger ie, t. ii. p. 343. + Chardin, Voyages, nouv. ed. par Langtes, 1811. t. iii. p. 376. J Asien , Bd. viii., Abth. 1, 1847, s. 610, 758. E 2 52 YIEWS OE NATURE. is probably indebted to the use of the camel throughout the Lybian desert and its oases, not only for the advantages of internal communication, but also for its escape from com¬ plete annihilation and for the maintenance of its national ex¬ istence to the present day. The use of the camel continued, on the other hand, to be unknown to the negro races, and it was only in company with the conquering expeditions and proselyting missions of the Bedouins through the whole of Northern Africa, that the useful animal of the Nedschd, of the Nabatheans, and of all the districts occupied by Aramean races, spread here, as elsewhere, to the westward. The Goths brought camels as early as the fourth century to the Lower Istros (the Danube), and the Ghaznevides transported them in much larger numbers to India as far as the banks of the Ganges.” We must distinguish two epochs in the distri¬ bution of the camel throughout the northern part of the African continent; the first under the Ptolemies, which operated through Cyrene on the whole of the north-west of Africa, and the second under the Mahommedan epoch of the conquering Arabs. It has long been a matter of discussion, whether those domestic animals which were the earliest companions of mankind, as oxen, sheep, dogs, and camels, are still to be met with in a state of original wildness. The Hiongnu, in Eastern Asia, are among the nations who earliest trained wild camels as domestic animals. The compiler of the great Chinese work, Si-yu-wen-kien-lo* , states that in the middle of the eighteenth century, wild camels, as well as wild horses and wild asses, still roamed over Eastern Turkestan. Hadji Chalfa, in his Turkish Geography, written in the seventeenth century, speaks of the very frequent hunting of the wild camel in the high plains of Kashgar, Turfan, and Khotan. Schott finds in the writings of a Chinese author, Ma-dschi, that wild camels exist in the countries north of China and west of the basin of the Hoang-ho, in Ho-si or Tangut. Cuvier \ alone doubts the present existence of wild camels in the inte¬ rior of Asia. He believes that they have merely “ become wild;” since Calmucks, and others professing kindred Bud- * Historici Regionum Occidentalium, quee Si-yu vocantur, vim et auditu cognitcirum. t Regne animal , t. i. p. 257. ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE PLATEAUX OF ASIA. 53 dhist doctrines, set camels and other animals at liberty, in order “ to acquire to themselves merit for the other world.” The Ailanitic Gulf of the Nabatheans was the home of the wild Arabian camel, according to Greek witnesses of the times of Artemidorus and Agatharchides of Cnidus.* The discovery of fossil camel-bones of the ancient world in the Sewalik hills (which are projecting spurs of the Himalaya range), by Cap¬ tain Cautley and Dr. Falconer, in 1834, is especially worthy of notice. These remains were found with antediluvian bones of mastodons, true elephants, giraffes, and a gigantic land tortoise ( Colossochelys ), twelve feet in length and six feet in height. f This camel of the ancient world has been named Camelus sivcilensis , although it does not show any great difference from the still living Egyptian and Bactrian camels with one and two humps. Forty camels have very recently been introduced into Java, from Teneriffe^. The first experiment has been made in Samarang. In like manner, reindeer were only introduced into Iceland from Norway in the course of the last century. They were not found there when the island was first colonised, notwithstanding its proximity to East Green¬ land, and the existence of floating masses of ice.§ (10) p. 3 — “ Between the Altai and the Kuen-liin .” The great highland, or, as it is commonly called, the mountain plateau of Asia, which comprises the lesser Bucharia, Songaria, Thibet, Tangut, and the Mogul country of the Chalcas and Olotes, is situated between the 36th and 48th degrees of north latitude and the meridians of 81° and 118° E. long. It is an erroneous idea to represent this part of the interior of Asia as a single, undivided mountainous swelling, continuous like the plateaux of Quito and Mexico, and situated from seven to upwards of nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. I have already shown in my “Researches respecting the Mountains of Northern India, ||” that there is not in this sense any con¬ tinuous mountain plateau in the interior of Asia. * Eitter, Asien, Bd. viii. s. 670, 672, and 746. •f- Humboldt, Cosmos, Bohn’s ed., vol. i. p. 281. 7 Singapore Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1847, p. 286. § Sartorius von Waltershausen, Physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, s. 41. || Humboldt, Premier Memoire sur les Montagnes de l'Inde, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, t. iii. 1816, p. 303; Second Me¬ moire, t. xiv. 1820, pp. 5 — 55. 54 VIEWS OF NATURE. My views concerning the geographical distribution of plants, and the mean degree of temperature requisite for certain kinds of cultivation, had early led me to entertain considerable doubts regarding the continuity of a great Tartarian plateau be¬ tween the Himalaya and the chain of the Altai. This plateau continued to be characterized, as it had been described by Hippocrates, as “ the high and naked plains of Scythia, which, without being crowned with mountains, rise and extend to beneath the constellation of the Bear.’'1* Klaproth has the un¬ deniable merit of having been the first to make us acquainted with the true position and prolongation of two great and entirely distinct chains of mountains, — the Kuen-lün and the Thian-schan, in a part of Asia which better deserves to be termed “ 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 conscious of their volcanic character ; but this highly- gifted investigator of nature, led astray by the hypotheses of the dog¬ matic and fantastic geology prevalent in his time, and 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, whence all the other Asiatic mountain chains diverge in rays, and which dominates over all the rest of the continent!” The erroneous idea of a single boundless and elevated plain, occupying the whole of Central Asia, the “ Plateau de la Tartaric A originated in France, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It was the result of historical combina¬ tions, and of a not sufficiently attentive study of the writings of the celebrated Venetian traveller, as well as of the naive relations of those diplomatic monks who, in the thirteenth and fourteenth 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 east coast of China, washed by the great ocean. If a more exact acquaintance with the language and ancient literature of India were of an older date among us than half a century, the hypothesis of this central plateau, occupying the wide space between the Himalaya and @ Dc A (ire et Aquis, § xevi. p. 7 f. ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE PLATEAUX OF INDIA. 5*5 the south of Siberia, would no doubt have sought support from some ancient and venerable authority. The poem of the Mahabharata appears, in the geographical fragment Bhisch- makanda, to describe “ Meru” not so much as a mountain as an enormous swelling of the land, which supplies with water the sources of the Ganges, those of the Bhadrasoma (Irtysch), and those of the forked Oxus. These physico-geographical views were intermingled in Europe with ideas of other kinds, and with mythical reveries on the origin of mankind. The lofty regions from which the waters were supposed to have first retreated (for geologists in general were long averse to the theories of elevation) must also have received the first germs of civilization. Hebraic systems of geology, based on ideas of a deluge, and supported by local traditions, favoured these assumptions. The intimate connexion between time and space, between the beginning of social order and the plastic condition of the surface of the earth, lent a peculiar import¬ ance and an almost moral interest to the Plateau of Tartary, which was supposed to be characterized by uninterrupted continuity. Acquisitions of positive knowledge, — the late matured fruit of scientific travels and direct measurements, — with a fundamental study of the languages and literature of Asia, and more especially of China, have gradually demon¬ strated the inaccuracy and exaggeration of those wild hypo¬ theses. The mountain plains (dpo7reöta) of Central Asia are no longer regarded as the cradle of human civilization, and the primitive seat of all arts and sciences. The ancient nation of Bailly's Atlantis, which d’Alembert has happily described as “ having taught us everything but its own name and existence,” has vanished. The inhabitants of the Oceanic Atlantis were already treated, in the time of Posidonius, as having a merely apocryphal existence.*1 A plateau of considerable but very unequal elevation runs with little interruption, in a S.S.W.-N.N.E. direction, from Eastern Thibet towards the mountain node of Kentei, south of Lake Baikal, and is known by the names of Gobi, Scha-mo, (sand desert,) Scha-ho, (sand river,) and Ilanhai. This swell¬ ing of the ground, which is probably more ancient than the elevation of the mountain-chains by which it is intersected, is situated, as we have already remarked, between 81° and 118° * Strabo, lib. ii. p. 102; and lib. xiii. p. 598, Casaub. 56 VIEWS OE NATURE. east longitude from Greenwich. Measured at right angles to its longitudinal axis, its breadth in the south, between Ladak, Gertop, and ITlassa (the seat of the great Lama), is 720 miles: between Hami in the Celestial Mountains, and the great curve of the Iloang-ho, near the In-schan chain, it is scarcely 480; but in the north, between the Khanggai, where the great city of Karakhorum once stood, and the chain of Khin-gan-Petscha, which runs in a meridian line (in the part of Gobi traversed in going from Kiachta to Pekin by way of Urga), it is 760 miles. The whole extent of this elevated ground, which must be care¬ fully distinguished from the more eastern and higher mountain- range, may be approximately estimated, including its deflec¬ tions, at about three times the area of France. The map of the mountain-ranges and volcanoes of Central Asia, which I constructed in 1839, but did not publish 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 many of the very rich and copious orographic descriptions in which Chinese literature abounds, and which were examined at my request by Klaproth and Sta¬ nislaus Julien. My map marks in prominent characters the mean direction and the height of the mountain-chains, toge¬ ther with the chief features of the interior of the continent of Asia from 30 to CO degrees of latitude, between the meridians of Pekin and Cherson. It differs essentially from any map hitherto published. The Chinese enjoyed a triple advantage, by means of which they were enabled to enrich their earliest literature with so considerable an amount of orographic knowledge re¬ garding Upper Asia, and more especially those regions situated between the In-schan, the alpine lake of Khuku-noor, and the shores of the Hi and Tarim, lying north and south of the Celestial Mountains, and which were so little known to 'Western Europe. These three advantages were, besides the peaceful conquests of the Buddhist pilgrims, the warlike expeditions towards the west (as early as the dynasties of Han and Thang, one hundred and twenty-two years before our era, and again in the ninth century, when conquerors ad¬ vanced as far as Ferghana and the shores of the Caspian Sea); the religious interest attached to certain high mountain sum- ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE PLATEAUX OF ASIA. 57 mits, on account of the periodical performance of sacrifices, in accordance with pre-existing enactments; and lastly, the early and generally known use of the compass for determining the direction of mountains and rivers. This use, and the know¬ ledge of the south-pointing of the magnetic needle, twelve centuries before the Christian era, gave a great superiority to the orographic and hydrographic descriptions of the Chinese over those of Greek and Roman authors, who treated less fre¬ quently of subjects of this nature. The acute observer Strabo was alike ignorant of the direction of the Pyrenees and of that of the Alps and Apennines.'1' To the lowlands belong almost the whole of Northern Asia to the north-west of the volcanic Celestial Mountains (Thian-schan) ; the steppes to the north of the Altai and the Sayanic chain; and the countries which extend from the mountains of Bolor, or Bulyt-tagh (Cloud Mountains in the Uigurian dialect), which run in a north and south direction, and from the upper Oxus, whose sources were dis¬ covered in the Pamershian Lake, Sir-i-kol (Lake Victoria), by the Buddhist pilgrims Hiuen-thsang and Song-yun in 518 and 629, by Marco Polo in 1277, and by Lieutenant Wood in 1838, towards the Caspian Sea; and from Lake Tenghiz or Balkasch, through the Kirghis Steppe, towards the Aral and the southern extremity of the Ural Mountains. In the vicinity of mountainous plains, whose elevation varies from 6000 to more than 10,000 feet above the sea’s level, we may assuredly be allowed to apply the term lowlands to districts which are only elevated from 200 to 1200 feet. The first of these heights correspond with that of the city of Mannheim, and the second with that of Geneva and Tübingen. If we extend the application of the word plateau, which has so frequently been misused.' by modern geographers, to elevations of the soil which scarcely present any sensible difference in the cha¬ racter of the vegetation and climate, physical geography, owing to the indefiniteness of the merely relatively important terms of high and low land, will be unable to distinguish the connexion between elevation above the sea’s level and climate, between the decrease of the temperature and the increase in elevation. When I was in Chinese Dzungarei, * Compare Strabo, lib. ii. pp. 71, 128; lib. iii. p. 137; lib. iv. pp. 199, 202; lib. v. p. 211, Casaub. 58 VIEWS OF NATURE. between the boundaries of Siberia and Lake Saysan (Dsai- sang), at an equal distance from the Icy Sea and the mouth of the Ganges, I might assuredly consider myself to be in Central Asia. The barometer, however, soon showed me that the elevation of the plains watered by the Upper Irtysch between Ustkamenogorsk and the Chinese Dzungarian post of Choni- mailachu (the sheep- bleating) was scarcely as much as from 850 to 1170 feet. Pansner's earlier barometric determinations of height, which were first made known after my expedition, have been confirmed by my own observations. Both afford a refutation of the hypotheses of Chappe D’Auteroche (based on calculations of the fall of rivers) regarding the elevated position of the shores of the Irtysch, in Southern Siberia. Even further eastward, the Lake of Baikal is only 1420 feet above the level of the sea. In order to associate the idea of the relation between low¬ lands and highlands , and of the successive gradations in the elevation of the soil, with actual data based on accurate mea¬ surements, I subjoin a table, in which the heights of the ele¬ vated plains of Europe, Africa, and America are given in an ascending scale. With these numbers we may then further compare all that has as yet been made known regarding the mean height of the Asiatic plains, or true lowlands. Toises. Feet. Plateau of Auvergne .... 170 1,087 yy of Bavaria ... 260 1,663 yy of Castille ..... 350 2,238 of Mysore ..... 460 2,942 yy of Caracas ..... 480 3,070 yy of Popayan ..... 900 5,755 » of the vicinity of the Lake of Tzana, in Abyssinia .... 950 6,075 yy of the Orange River (in South Africa) 1000 6,395 yy of Axum (in Abyssinia) 1100 7,034 yy of Mexico ..... 1170 7,482 yy of Quito ..... 1490 9,528 yy of the Province de los Pastös . 1600 10,231 yy of the vicinity of the Lake of Titicaca 2010 12,853 No portion of the so-called Desert of Gobi, which con. sists in part of fine pasture lands, has been so thoroughly investigated in relation to its differences of elevations as the zone which extends over an area of nearly 600 miles, be- ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE PLATEAUX OE ASIA. 59 tween the sources of the Selenga and the Chinese wall. A very accurate barometrical levelling was executed, under the auspices of the Academy of St. Petersburgh, by two distin¬ guished savans — the astronomer George Fuss, and the bota¬ nist Bunge. They accompanied a mission of Greek monks to Pekin, in the year 1832, in order to establish there one of those magnetic stations whose construction I had recom¬ mended. The mean height of this portion of the Desert of Gobi amounts hardly to 4263 feet, and not to 8000 or 8500 feet, as had been too hastily concluded from the measure¬ ments of contiguous mountain summits by the Jesuits Ger- billon and Yerbiest. The surface of the Desert of Gobi is not more than 2558 feet above the level of the sea between Erghi, Durma, and Scharaburguna ; and scarcely more than 320 feet higher than the plateau of Madrid. Erghi is situated midway, in 45° 3 P north lat., and 1110 26' east long., in a depression of the land extending in a direction from south¬ west to north-east over a breadth of more than 240 miles. An ancient Mongolian saga designates this spot as the former site of a large inland sea. Heeds and saline plants, generally of the same species as those found on the low shores of the Caspian Sea, are here met with; while there are in this central part of the desert several small saline lakes, the salt of which is carried to China. According to a singular opinion prevalent among the Mongols, the ocean will at some period return, and again establish its dominion in Gobi. Such geo¬ logical reveries remind us of the Chinese traditions of the bitter lake , in the interior of Siberia, of which I have else¬ where spoken.^ The basin of Kashmir, which has been so enthusiasti¬ cally praised by Bernier, and too moderately estimated by Victor Jacquemont, has also given occasion to great hyp¬ sometric exaggerations. Jacquemont found by an accu¬ rate barometric measurement that the height of the Wulur Lake, in the valley of Kashmir, near the capital Sirinagur, was 5346 feet. Uncertain determinations by the boiling- point of water gave Baron Carl von Hügel 5819 feet, and Lieutenant Cunningham only 5052 feet.f The mountainous * Humboldt, Asie centrale, t. ii. p. 141; Klaproth, A sie polyglotta, p. 232. 4 Compare my Asie centrale, t. iii. p. 310, with the Journal of the Asiatic Soc.of Bengal, vol. x. 1841, p. 114. 60 VIEWS OF NATURE. districts of Kashmir, which has excited so great an interest in Germany, and whose climatic advantages have lost some¬ what of their reputation since Carl von Hügel's account of the four months of winter snow in the streets of Sirinagur,* does not lie on the high crests of the Himalaya, as has com¬ monly been supposed, but constitutes a true cauldron-like valley on their southern declivity. On the south-west, where the rampart-like Pir Panjal separates it from the Indian Pun- jaub, the snow-crowned summits are covered, according to Vigne, by basaltic and amygdaloid formations. The latter are very characteristically termed by the natives schischak deyu, or devil's pock-marks. j* The charms of the vegetation have also been very differently described, according as tra¬ vellers passed into Kashmir from the south, and left behind them the luxuriant and varied vegetation of India; or from the northern regions of Turkestan, Samarkand, and Ferghana. Moreover, it is only very recently that we have obtained a clearer view regarding the elevation of Thibet, the level of the plateau having long been uncritically confounded with the mountain tops rising from it. Thibet occupies the space between the two great chains of the Himalaya and the Kuen- liin, and forms the elevated ground of the valley between them. The land is divided from east to west, both by the inhabitants and by Chinese geographers, into three parts. We distinguish Upper Thibet, with its capital, H'lassa (pro¬ bably 9592 feet high) ; Middle Thibet, with the town of Leh or Ladak (9995 feet); and Little Thibet, or Baltistan, called the Thibet of Apricots (Sari-Butan), in which lie Iskardo (6300 feet), Gilgit, and south of Iskardo, but on the left bank uf the Indus, the plateau Deotsuh, whose elevation wras deter¬ mined by Vigne (1 1,977 feet). On carefully examining all the notices we have hitherto possessed regarding the three Thi- bets, and which will have been abundantly augmented during the present year by the brilliant boundary surveying expedi¬ tion under the auspices of the Governor-general, Lord Dal- housie, we soon become convinced that the region between the Himalaya and the Kuen-lün is no unbroken table-land, but that it is intersected by mountain groups, which un¬ doubtedly belong to perfectly distinct systems of elevation. * See Ins Kashmir , Bd. ii. s. 196. T Yigne, Travels in Kashmir , 1842, vol. i. pp. 237 — 293. ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE PLATEAUX OE ASIA. 61 Actual plains are very few in number : the most considerable are those between Gertop, Daba, Schang-thung (the Shep¬ herd’s Plain), the native country of the shawl-goat, and Schipke (10,449 feet); those round Ladak, which attain an elevation of 13,429 feet, and must not be confounded with the depressed land in which the town lies; and finally, the plateau of the Sacred Lakes, Manasa and Ravanahrada (pro¬ bably 14,965 feet), which was visited by Father Antonio do Andrada as early as the year 1625. Other parts are entirely filled with compressed mountain masses, “ rising,” as a recent traveller observes, “ like the waves of a vast ocean.” Along the rivers, the Indus, the Sutledge, and the Yaru-dzangbo- tschu, which was formerly regarded as identical with the Buramputer (or correctly the Brahma-putra), points have been measured which are only between 6714 and 8952 feet above the sea; and the same is the case with the Thibetian villages Pangi, Kunawur, Kelu, and Murung.* From many carefully collected determinations of heights, I think that we are justified in assuming that the plateau of Thibet between 73° and 85° east long, does not attain a mean elevation of 11,510 feet: this is hardly the elevation of the fruitful plain of Caxamarca in Peru, and is 1349 and 2155 feet less than the plateau of Titicaca, and of the street pave¬ ment of the Upper Town of Potosi (13,665 feet). That beyond the Thibetian highlands and the Gobi, whose outline has been already defined, Asia presents considerable depressions, and indeed true lowlands, between the parallels of 37° and 48°, where once an immeasurable continuous plateau was fabulously supposed to exist, is proved by the cultivation of plants which cannot flourish without a cer¬ tain degree of temperature. An attentive study of the travels of Marco Polo, in which mention is made of the cultivation of the vine, and of the production of cotton in northern lati¬ tudes, had long ago directed the attention of the acute Klaproth to this point. In a Chinese work, bearing the title Information respecting the recently conquered Barbarians (Sin- kiang-wai-tan-ki-lio), it is stated that “ the country of Aksu, somewhat to the south of the Celestial Mountains, near the rivers which form the great Tarim-gol, produces grapes, pomegranates, and numberless other fruits of singular excel- * Humboldt, A sie Centrale , t. iii. pp. 281—325. 62 VIEWS OF NATURE. lence ; also cotton (Gossypium religiosum), which covers the fields like yellow clouds. In summer the heat is extremely great, and in winter there is here, as at Turfan, neither intense cold nor heavv snow.” The neighbourhood of Khotan. Kaschgar, and Yarkand still, as in the time of Marco Polo,* * * §“' pays its tribute in home-grown cotton. In the oasis of Hami (Khamil), above 200 miles east of Aksu, orange trees, pome¬ granates, and the finer vines are found to flourish. The products of cultivation which are here noticed lead to the belief that over extensive districts the elevation of the soil is very slight. At so great a distance from the sea side, and in the easterly situation which so much increases the degree of winter cold, a plateau, as high as Madrid or Munich, might indeed have a very hot summer, but would hardly have, in 43° and 44° latitude, an extremely mild and almost snowless winter. I have seen a high summer heat favour the cultivation of the vine, as at the Caspian Sea, 83 feet below the level of the Black Sea (at Astrachan, latitude 46° 21/); but the winter cold is there from — 4° to — 13°. Moreover, the vine is sunk to a greater depth in the ground after the month of November. We can understand that cul¬ tivated plants, which, as it were, live only in the summer, as the vine, the cotton plant, rice, and melons, may be cultivated with success between the latitudes of 40° and 44°, on plateaux at an elevation of more than 3000f feet, and may be favoured by the action of radiant heat ; but how could the pomegranate trees of Aksu, and the orange trees of Hami, whose fruit Father Grosier extolled as excellent, endure a long and severe winter (the necessary consequence of a great elevation+)? Carl Zimmerman § has shown it to be extremely probable that the Tarim depression, or the desert between the moun¬ tain chain of Thian-schan and Kuen-liin, where the steppe river Tarimgol discharges itself into the Lake of Lop, formerly described as an alpine lake, is hardly 1280 feet above the level of the sea, or only twice the elevation of Prague. Sir Alexander Burnes also ascribes to Bokhara only * II Milione di Marco Polo, pubbl. dal Conte Baldelli, t. i. pp. 32 and 87. + 500 toises in the German, accurately 3197 feet. Tk. + Asie centrale, t. ii. pp. 48 — 52 and 429. § In the learned Analyses of his Karte von Inner Asien, 1841, s. 99. THE MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. 63 an elevation of 1188 feet. It is most earnestly to be desired that all doubt regarding the elevation of the plateaux of Central Asia, south of 45° north latitude, should finally be re¬ moved by direct barometrical measurements, or by determi¬ nations of the boiling point of water, conducted with greater care than is usual in these cases. All our calculations of 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 as briefly as possible to rectify that which has been advanced in the former edition of the present work, regard¬ ing the great mountain systems which intersect the interior of Asia, I subjoin the following general review: — We begin with the four ‘parallel chains , which run, with tolerable regu¬ larity, from east to west, and are connected together by means of a few detached transverse lines. 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-lwi, and the Himalaya ) we must consider as following the direction of meridian, the Ural, the Bolor, the Khingan, and the Chinese chains, which, with the great inflection of the Thibetian and Assam- Birmese Dzangbo- tschu incline from north to south. The Ural divides a de¬ pressed portion of Europe from a similarly low portion of Asia. The latter was called bv Herodotus,-*'1 and even earlier by Pherecydes of Syros, Scythian or Siberian Europe, and comprised all the countries to the north of the Caspian and of the Iaxartes, which flows front east to west, and may therefore be regarded as a continuation of our Europe, “as it now exists, extending lengthwise across the continent of Asia.” 1. The great mountain system of the Altai (the “gold mountains” of Menander of Byzantium, an historical writer of the seventh century ; the Altai-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^° north latitude, extends from the rich silver mines of the Snake Mountains, and the confluence of the Uba and the Irtysch, to the meridian of Lake Baikal. The divisions and names of the “ Great” and the “ Little Altai,” taken from an obscure passage of Abulghasi, should be wholly avoided.f * Ed. Schweighaiiser, t. v. p. 204. f A sie centrale, t. i. p. 247. 64 VIEWS OF NATURE. The mountain system of the Altai comprehends — ( a ) the Altai proper, or Kolywanski Altai, which is entirely imder the Russian sceptre : it lies to the west of the intersecting fissures of the Telezki Lake, which follow the direction of the meri¬ dian ; and in ante-historic times probably constituted the eastern shore of the great arm of the sea, by which, in the direction of the still existing lakes, Aksakal-Barbi and Sary- Kupa,* the Aralo-Caspian basin was connected with the Icy sea ; — (b) East of the Telezki chains, which follow the direction of the meridian, the Sayani, Tangnu, and Ulangom, or Malakha ranges, all tolerably parallel with each other, and following an east and west direction. The Tangnu, which merges in the basin of the Selenga, has, from very remote times, constituted the national boundary between the Turkish race, to the south, and the Kirghis (Hakas, identical with 2aKai), to the north. f It is the original seat of the Samoieds or Soyotes. who wandered as far as the Icy Sea, and were long regarded in Europe as a race inhabiting ex¬ clusively the coasts of the Polar Sea. The highest snow- covered summits of the Kolywan Altai are the Bielucha and the Katunia Pillars. The latter attain only a height of about 11,000 feet, or about the height of Etna. The Daurian high¬ land, to which the mountain node of Kemtei belongs, and on whose eastern margin lies the Jablonoi Chrebet, divides the depressions of the Baikal and the Amur. 2. The mountain system of the Thian-schan, or the chair, of the Celestial Mountains, the Tcngri-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, that is to say, to the west of its intersection with the meridian chain of the Bolor and Kosuyrt, the Thian-schan bears the names of Asferah and Aktagh, is rich in metals, and is intersected with open fissures, which emit hot vapours lumi¬ nous at night, and which are used for obtaining sal-ammoniac. £ 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 * A sie centrale, t. ii. p. 138. + Jacob Grimm, Gesch. der deutschen Sprache, 1848, Th. i. s. 227. + Asie centrale, t. ii. pp. 18 — 20. ILLUSTRATIONS (1( ). MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. 65 erupted fire and streams of lava at least as late as the middle of the seventh century ; the great snow-covered massive ele¬ vation of Bogdo-Oola; the Solfatara of Urumtsi, which fur¬ nishes sulphur and sal-ammoniac (nao-scha), and lies in a coal district ; the volcano of Turfan (or volcano of Ho-tscheu or Bischbalik), almost midway between the meridians of Turfan (Kune Turpan), and of Pidjan, and which is still in a state of activity. The volcanic eruptions of the Thian-schan chain reach, according to Chinese historians, as far back as the year 89, a.d., when the Hiongnu were pursued by the Chinese from the sources of the Irtysch as far as Kutcli and Kharaschar*. The Chinese General, Teu-hian, crossed the Thian-schan, and saw “ the Fire Mountains, which sent out masses of molten rock that flow to the distance of many Li” The great distance of the volcanoes of the interior of Asia from the sea coast is a remarkable and isolated phenomenon. Abel Remusat, in a letter to Cordierf , first directed the atten¬ tion of geologists to this fact. This distance, for instance, in the case of the volcano of Pe-schan, from the north or the Icy Sea at the mouth of the Obi, is 1528 miles; and from the south or the mouths of the Indus and the Ganges, 1512 miles; so central is the position of fire-emitting volcanoes in the Asiatic continent. To the west its distance from the Caspian at the Gulf of Karuboghaz, is 1360 miles, and from the east shores of the Lake of Aral, 1020 miles. The active volcanoes of the New World had hitherto offered the most remarkable examples of great distance from the sea coast, but in the case of the volcano of Popocateptl, in Mexico, this distance is only one hundred and thirty-two miles, and only ninety-two, one hundred and four, and one hundred and fifty-six, respectively in the South American volca¬ noes Sangai, Tolima, and de la Fragua. All extinct vol¬ canoes, and all trachytic mountains, which have no perma¬ nent connexion with the interior of the earth, have been excluded from these statements J. East of the volcano of Turfat, and of the fruitful Oasis of Hami, the chain of the Thian-schan merges into the great elevated tract of Gobi, which runs in a S.W. and N.E. direction. This interruption * Klaproth, Tableau hist, de VAsie, p. 108. + Annales des Mines, t. v. 1820, p. 137. t Asie centrale , t. ii. pp. 16 — 55, 69 — 77, 341, 356. F 66 VIEWS OE NATU EE. of the mountain chain continues for more than 9^ degrees of longitude ; it is caused by the transversal intersection of the Gobi, but beyond the latter, the more southern chain of In- schan (Silver Mountains), proceeding from west to east, to the shores of the Pacific near Pekin (north of the Pe-tscheli), forms a continuation of the Thian-schan. As we may regard the In-schan as an eastern prolongation of the fissure from which the Thian-schan is upheaved, so we may also be inclined to consider the Caucasus as a western prolongation of the same range, beyond the Great Aralo-Caspian basin or of the low¬ lands of Turan. The mean parallel or axis of elevation of the Thian-schan oscillates between 40° 40; and 43° north latitude; that of the Caucasus (inclining, according to the map of the Russian Staff, fromE.S.E. to W.N.W.) between 41° and 44°.* Of the four parallel chains that traverse Asia, the Thian-schan is the only one of which no summit has as yet been mea¬ sured. 3. The mountain system of the Kuen-lün (Kurkun or Kul- kun), including the Hindoo-Coosh, with its western prolon¬ gation in the Persian Elburz and Demavend, and the American chain of the Andes, constitute the longest lines of elevation on our planet. At the point where the meridian chain of the Bolor intersects the Kuen-lün at right angles, the latter receives the name of Onion Mountains (Tclisung-ling), a term also applied to a portion of the Bolor at the inner eastern angle of. intersection. Bounding Thibet in the north, the Kuen-lün runs in a regular direction from east to west, in the parallel of 36° north latitude ; until the chain is broken in the meridian of H'lassa, by the vast mountain node which surrounds the Sea of Stars, Sing ■ so-hai (so celebrated in the mythical geography of the Chinese), and the Alpine lake of Khuku-noor. The chains of Nan-sehan and Kilian-schan, lying somewhat further north, and extending to the Chinese wall near Liang-tsheu, may almost be regarded as the eastern prolongation of the Kuen-lün. To the west of the inter¬ section of the Bolor and the Kuen-lün (Tclisung-ling), the regular direction of the axes of elevation (inclining from east to west in the Kuen-lün and Hindoo-Coosh, and from south- * Baron von Meyendorff in the Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France , t. ix. 1837 — 1838, p, 230. ILLUSTRATIONS (10). MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. 67 east to north-west in the Himalaya) proves, as I have else¬ where attempted to show, that the Hindoo-Coosh is a pro¬ longation of the Kuen-lün and not of the Himalaya.*1 From the Taurus in Lycia to the Kafiristan, the chain follows the parallel of Rhodes (the diaphragm of Dicocarchus) over a dis¬ tance of 45 degrees of longitude. The grand geological views of Eratosthenes,! which were further developed by Marinus of Tyre, and by Ptolemy, and according to which “ the prolongation of the Taurus in Lycia was continued, in the same direction, through all Asia as far as India,” appear in part to be based on representations derived by the Persians and Indians from the Punjaub. “ The Brahmins maintain,” says Cosmas Indicopleustes, in his Christian Topography!, “ that a line drawn from Tzinitza (Thinse) across Persia and Romania, would exactly pass over the centre of the inhabited earth.” It is remarkable, as Era¬ tosthenes observes, that this greatest axis of elevation in the old world passes directly through the basin (the depression) of the Mediterranean, in the parallels of 35^° and 36° north lati¬ tude, to the Pillars of Hercules. § The most eastern portion of Hindoo-Coosh is the Paropanisus of the ancients, the Indian Caucasus of the companions of the great Macedonian. The name of Hindoo- Coosh, which is so frequently used by geo¬ graphers, does not in reality apply to more than one single mountain pass, where the climate is so severe, as we learn from the travels of the Arabian writer, Ibn Batuta, that many Indian slaves frequently perish from the cold. || The Kuen-lün still exhibits active fire-emitting eruptions at the distance of several hundred miles from the sea-coast. Flames, visible at a great distance, burst from the cavern of the mountain of Scliin- khieu, as I learn from a translation of the Yuen-thong-ki, made by my friend Stanislaus Julien. The loftiest summit in the Hindoo-Coosh, north-west of Jellalabad, is 20,232 feet above the level of the sea ; to the west, towards Herat, the * Asie centrale, t. i. pp. xxiii et 118 — 159; t. ii. pp. 431 — 434, 465. + Strabo, lib. ii. p. 68 ; lib. xi. pp. 490, 511 ; lib. xv. p. 6S9. £ Montfaucon, Collectio nova Patrum, t. ii. p. 137. § Compare Asie centrale, t. i. pp. xxiii et 122 — 138 ; t. ii. pp. 430 — 434, with Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 543, Bohn’s ed. II Travels, p. 97. U Asie centrale, t. ii. pp. 427, 483. f 2 68 VIEWS OF NATURE. chain sinks to 2558 feet, rising again north of Teheran, in the volcano of Demavend, to the height of 14,675 feet. 4. The mountain system of the Himalaya lias a normal direction from east to west, running more than 15 degrees of longitude (from 81* to 97°), or from the colossal moun¬ tain Dhawalagiri (28,072 feet) to the intersection of the Dzangbo-tscheu (the Irawaddy of Dalrymple and Klaproth), whose existence was long regarded as problematical, and to the meridian chains, which cover the whole of Western China, and form the great mountain group, from which spring the sources of the Kiang, in the provinces of Sse-tschuan, Hu-kuang, and Kuang-si. Next to the Dhawalagiri, the Kinchinjinga, and not the more eastern peak of Schamalari, as has hitherto been supposed, is the highest point of this portion of the Himalaya, which inclines from east to west. The Kinchinjinga, in the meridian of Sikhim, between Butan and Nepal, between the Schamalari (23,980 feet) and the Dhawalagiri, is 28,174 feet in height. It is only within the present year that it has been trigo¬ nometrically measured with exactness, and as I learn from India through the same channel, “ that a new measure¬ ment of the Dhawalagiri still leaves it the first place among all the snow-crowned summits of the Himalaya,” this moun¬ tain must necessarily have a greater elevation than the 28,072 feet hitherto ascribed to it.* The point of deflection in the direction of the chain is, near the Dhawalagiri, in 81° 22^ cast longitude. From thence the Himalaya no longer follows a due west direction, but runs from S.E. to N.W., as a vast connecting system of veins between Mozufer-abad and Gilgit, merging into a part of the Hindoo-Coosli chain in the south of Kafiristan. Such a turn and alteration in the line of the axis of elevation of the Himalaya (from E. — W. to S.E — N.W.) certainly indicates, as in the western region of our European Alpine mountains, a different age or period of elevation. The course of the Upper Indus, from the sacred lakes of Manasa and llavana-hrada, (at an elevation of 14,965 feet,) in the vicinity of which this great river takes its origin, to Iskardo, and to the plateau of Deotsuh (at an elevation of 12,994 feet), measured by Vigne, follows in the Thi- * From a letter of Dr. Joseph Hooker, the learned botanist to the last Antarctic expedition, dated Darjeeling, 25th of July, 1848. ILLUSTRATIONS (10). MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. 69 betian highlands the same north-westerly direction as the Himalaya. Here are situated the Djawahir, whose height was long since accurately determined at 26,902 feet, and the Alpine valley of Caschmere (never visited by winds or storms), where, at an elevation of only 5346 feet, lies the lake of Wulur, which freezes every winter, and whose surface is never broken by a single ripple. After considering the four great mountain systems of Asia, which, in their normal geognostic character, are true parallel chains, we must turn to the long series of alternating eleva¬ tions following a direction from north to south, and which extend from Cape Comorin, opposite to the island of Ceylon, to the Icy Sea, alternating between the parallels of 66° and 77° east longitude, from S.S.E. to N.N.W. To this system of meridian chains, whose alternations remind us of faults in veins, belong the Ghauts, the Soliman chain, the Paralasa, the Bolor, and the Ural range. This interruption of the profile of the elevation is so constituted, that each new chain begins in a degree of latitude beyond that to which the preceding one had attained, all alternating successively in an opposite direction. The importance which the Greeks (pro¬ bably not earlier than the second century of our era) attached to these chains running from north to south, induced Agatho- deemon and Ptolemy {Tab. vii. et viii.) to regard the Bolor under the name of Imaus as an axis of elevation, which extended as far as 62° north latitude into the basin of the lower Irtyscli and Obi.*4 As the vertical height of mountain summits above the sea's level (however unimportant the phenomenon of the more or less extensive folding of the crust of a planetary sphere may be in the eyes of geognosists) will always continue, like all that is difficult of attainment, to be an object of general curiosity, the present would appear to furnish a fitting place for the introduction of an historical notice relative to the gra¬ dual advance of hypsometric knowledge. When I returned to Europe in 1804, after an absence of four years, not one of the high snow-crowned summits of Asia (in the Himalaya, the Hindoo-Coosh, or the Caucasus) had been yet measured with any degree of accuracy. I was unable, therefore, to * Asie centrale, t. i. pp. 138, 151, 198; t. ii. p. 367. 70 VIEWS OF KATUF-E. compare my determinations of the heights of perpetual snow in the Cordilleras of Quito or the mountains of Mexico, with any results obtained in India. The important travels of Turner, Davis, and Saunders to the highlands of Thibet, were indeed accomplished in the year 1783; but the intelligent Colebrooke justly observed that the height of the Schamalari (28° 51 north latitude, 89° 30' east longitude, somewhat north of Tassisudan), as given by Turner, rested on a foundation quite as slight as the assumed measurements of the heights seen from Patna and Kafiristan by Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant. Macartney.* The admirable labours of Webb, Hodgson. Herbert, and the brothers Gerard, have indeed thrown con¬ siderable light on the question concerning the heights of the colossal summits of the Himalaya; but yet, in 1808, the hypsometric knowledge of the East Indian mountain chains was still so uncertain, that Webb wrote to Colebrooke, “ The height of the Himalaya still remains undetermined. It is true that I have ascertained that the summits visible from the elevated plains of Rohilkand are 21,000 feet higher than that plateau, but we are ignorant of their absolute height above the sea.” In the year 1820 it first began to be currently reported in Europe that there were not only much higher summits in the Himalaya than in the Cordilleras, but that Webb had seen in the pass of Niti, and Moorcroft in the Thibetian plateau of Daba, and the sacred lakes, fine corn-fields and fertile pasture- lands at elevations far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. This announcement was received in England with great incre¬ dulity, and opposed by doubts regarding the influence of the refraction of light. I have shown the unsoundness of such doubts in two printed treatises on the mountains of India, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique. The Tyro¬ lese Jesuit, Father Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 penetrated as far as the provinces of Kemaun and Nepal, had already divined the importance of the Dhawalagiri. We read on his map: “ Montes Albi, qui Indis Doing hi?', nive ohsiti Captain Webb always employs the same name. Until the measure¬ ments of the Djawahir (30° 22/ north latitude, and 79° 58/ * Compare Turner in the Asiatic Researches, vol. xii. p. 234, with Elphinstone, Accoxmt of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1815, p. 95, and Francis Hamilton, Account of Nepal, 1S19, p. 92. ILLUSTRATIONS (10). MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. 71 east longitude, 26,902 feet in elevation), and of the Dha¬ walagiri (28° 40 north latitude, and 83° 2P east longitude, 28,072 feet in elevation), were made known in Europe, the Chimborazo, which, according to my trigonometrical mea¬ surement, was 21,422 feet, in height,* * * § was still every¬ where regarded as the loftiest summit on the earth. The Himalaya appeared, therefore, at that time, to be 4323 feet or 6620 feet higher than the Cordilleras, according as the comparison was made with the Djawahir or the Dhawalagiri. Pentland’s South American travels, in the years 1827 and 1838, directed attention to two snow-crowned summits of Upper Peru, east of the lake of Titicaca, which were conjectured to be respectively 3824 and 2578 feet higher than the Chimborazo. f It has been already observed, | that the most recent computations in the measurements of the Sorata and Illimani have shown the error of this hypsometric assertion. The Dhawalagiri, therefore, on whose declivity in the river-valley of Ghandaki, the Salagrana Ammonites, so cele¬ brated in the Brahminical ritual as symbols of the testaceous incarnation of Vishnu, are collected, still indicates a differ¬ ence of elevation between both continents of more than 6600 feet. The question has been asked, whether there may not be still greater heights in the rear of the southernmost chain, which has been as yet measured with more or less exactitude. Colonel George Lloyd, who in 1840 edited the important observations of Captain Alexander Gerard and his brother, entertains the opinion, that in that part of the Himalaya, which he somewhat indefinitely names the “Tartaric Chain” %/ (and consequently in Northern Thibet, in the direction of the Ivuen-liin, perhaps in the Kailasa of the sacred lakes or beyond Leh) there are mountain-summits which attain an elevation of from 29,000 to 30,000 feet, one or two thousand feet higher, therefore, than the Dhawalagiri. § No definite opinion cau be formed on the subject until we are in the possession * Recueil d' Observations astronomiques, t. i. p. 73. + Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes pour 1830, pp. 320, 323. X See Illustration (5), p. 44. § See Lloyd and Gerard, Tour in the Himalaya, 1840, vol. i., pp. 143, 312, and Asie centrale , t. iii., p. 324. VIEWS OF NATURE. of actual measurements, since the indication which led the natives of Quito, long before the arrival of Bouguer and La Condamine, to regard the summit of the Chimborazo as the culminating point — or the highest point within the region of perpetual snow — is rendered very deceptive in the temperate zone of Thibet, where the radiation of the table-land is so effective, and where the lower limit of perpetual snow does not constitute a regular line of equal level as in the tropics. The greatest elevation above the level of the sea that has been reached by man on the sides of the Himalaya is 19,488 feet. This elevation was gained by Captain Gerard, with seven barometers, as we have already observed, on the moun¬ tain of Tarhigang, somewhat to the north-west of Schipke.* This happens to be almost the same height as that to which I myself ascended up on the Chimborazo (on the 23rd of June, 1802), and which was reached thirty years later (16th of December, 1831) by my friend Boussingault. The un- attained summit of the Tarhigang is, moreover, 1255 feet higher than the Chimborazo. The passes across the Himalaya from Hindostan to Chinese Tartary, or rather to Western Thibet, especially between the rivers Buspa and Scliipke, or Langzing Khampa, are from 15,347 to 18,544 feet in height. In the chain of the Andes I found that the pass of Assuay, between Quito and Cuenca, at the Ladera de Cadlud, was also fully 15,566 feet above the level of the sea. A great part of the Alpine plains of the interior of Asia would lie buried throughout, the whole year in snow and ice, if the limits of perpetual snow were not singularly elevated, probably to about 16,626 feet, by the force of the heat radiated from the Thibetian plain, the constant serenity of the sky, the rarity of the for¬ mation of snow in the dry atmosphere, and by the power¬ ful solar heat peculiar to the eastern continental climate, which characterizes the northern declivity of the Himalaya. V * Fields of barley (of Hordeum hexcistichon) have been seen in Kunawur at an elevation of 14,700 feet and another varitey of barley, called Ooa, and allied to Hordeum cocleste , even * Colebrookc, in the Transactions of the Geological Society, vol. vi. p. 411. ILLUSTRATIONS (10). MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. 73 much higher. Wheat thrives admirably well in the Thibetian highlands, up to an elevation of 12,000 feet. On the northern declivity of the Himalaya, Captain Gerard found that the upper limits of the birch woods ascend to 14,069 feet; and small brushwood used bv the natives for fuel in their huts is even found within the parallels of 30° 45' and 31° north latitude, at an elevation of 16,946 feet, and therefore nearly 1280 feet higher than the lower snow-limit in the equatorial regions. It follows from the data hitherto collected that on the northern declivity of the Himalaya the mean of the lower snow-line is at least 16,626 feet, whilst on the southern declivity it falls to 12.980 feet. But for this remarkable distribution of heat in the upper strata of the atmosphere, the mountain plain of Western Thibet would be rendered uninhabitable for the millions of men who now occupy it.* In a letter which I have lately received from India from Dr. Joseph Hooker, who is engaged in meteorological and geological observations, as well as in the study of the geo¬ graphy of plants, he says, “ Mr. Hodgson, whom we here- consider more thoroughly conversant than any other geo¬ grapher with the hypsometric relations of the snow ranges, recognises the correctness of the opinions you have advanced in the third part of your Asie centrale , regarding the cause of the unequal height of the limit of perpetual snow on the northern and the southern declivity of the Himalaya range. In the trans-Sutledge region (in 36 J north latitude) we often observed the snow limit as high as 20,000 feet, whilst in the passes south of Brahmaputra, between Assam and Birmah (in 27° north latitude), where the most southern snow-capped mountains of Asia are situated, the snow limit sinks to 15,000 feet.” I believe we ought to distinguish between the extreme and the mean elevations, but in both we find the formerly disputed difference between the Thi¬ betian and the Indian declivities manifested in the clearest manner. * Compare my investigation regarding the snow-limit on both declivi¬ ties of the Himalaya in my Asie centrale, t. ii., pp. 435 — 437; t. iii^ pp. 281 — 326; and in Cosmos, vol. i.; p. 337, Bohn’s ed. 74 VIEWS OF NATURE. My results for the mean height of the snow line as given in A sie centrale, t. iii., p. 326. Feet. Northern declivity . 16,626 Southern „ . 12,981 Extremes according to Dr. Hooker’s Letter. Feet. Northern declivity . 20,000 Southern „ . 15,000 Difference . 3,645 Difference . 5,000 The local differences vary still more, as may be seen from the series of extremes given in Aste centrale , t. iii., p. 295. Alexander Gerard saw the snow-limit ascend to 20,463 feet on the Thibetian declivity of the Himalaya; and Jacquemont found it as low as 11.500 feet on the south-Indian declivity, north of Cursali on the Jumnautri. [The recent investigations of Lieutenant Strachey show that M. Humboldt has been led astray, when treating of the Himalaya, by the very authorities on whom he placed the most reliance. The results of his inquiries on this point are given in the first volume of the Cosmos (Bohn's Ed.), pp. 9 and 338. As the subject is one of considerable interest we give a brief sketch of Lieutenant Strachey’s* recent labours, confining ourselves to his own views, and omitting (for want of space) his somewhat lengthy exposition of the errors committed by the authorities quoted by Humboldt. The following are his personal observations regarding the southern limit of the belt of ’perpetual snow. “ In this part of the Himalaya it is not, on an average of years, till the beginning of December, that the snow line appears decidedly to descend for the winter. After the end of September, indeed, when the rains are quite over, light falls of snow are not of very uncommon occurrence on the higher mountains, even down to 12,000 feet; but their effects usually disappear very quickly, often in a few hours. The latter part of October, the whole of November, and the begin¬ ning of December, are here generally characterised by the beautiful serenity of the sky; and it is at this season, on the southern edge of the belt, that the line of perpetual snow is seen to attain its greatest elevation. “ The following are the results of trigonometrical measure- * Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. New Series. No. xxviii. p. 287. ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE SNOIV-LINE. 75 ments of the elevation of the inferior edge of snow on spurs of the Treslü and Nandadevi groups of peaks, made, before the winter snow had begun, in November, 1848. Point observed. Height as observed on face exposed to the East. Height on face exposed to West. Observed from Almorah. From Almorah, (height, 5586 ft.) From Binsar, (height, 7969 ft.) Mean. No. Feet. Feet. et. Feet. 1 16,599 16,767 16,683 15,872 2 16,969 17,005 16,987 • • • • 3 17,186 17,185 17,185 14,878 4 15,293 15,361 15,327 . . The points 1, 2 and 3 are in ridges that run in a south¬ westerly direction. The dip of the strata being to the north¬ east, the faces exposed to view from the south are for the most part very abrupt, and snow never accumulates on them to any great extent. This in some measure will account for the height to which the snow is seen to have receded on the eastern exposures, that is, upwards of 17,000 feet. On the western exposures the ground is less steep, and the snow is seen to have been observed at a considerable less elevation; but it was in very small quantities, and had probably fallen lately, so that I am inclined to think that its height, viz., about 15,000 feet, rather indicates the elevation below which the light autumnal falls of snow were incapable of lying, than that of the inferior edge of the perpetual snow. It is further to be understood, that below this level of 15,000 feet the mountains were absolutely without snow, excepting those small isolated patches that are seen in ravines, or at the head of glaciers, which, of course, do not affect such calculations as these. On the whole, therefore, I consider that the height of the snow-line on the more prominent points of the southern edge of the belt may be fairly reckoned at 16,000 feet at the very least. “ The point No. 4 was selected as being in a much more retired position than the others. It is situate not far from the head of the Pindur river. It was quite free from snow at 15,300 feet, and I shall therefore consider 15,000 feet as the 76 VIEWS OF NATURE. elevation of the snow-line in the re-entering angles of the chain. “ I conclude, then, that 15,500 feet, the mean of the heights at the most and least prominent points, should be assigned as the mean elevation of the snow-line at the southern limit of the belt of perpetual snow in Kumaon; and I conceive that whatever error there may be in this estimate will be found to lie on the side of diminution rather than of exaggeration. “ This result appears to accord well with what has been observed in the Bissehir range. The account given by Dr. Gerard of his visit to the Shatul Pass on this range, which he undertook expressly for the purpose of determining the height of the snow-line, contains the only definite information as to the limit of the perpetual snow at the southern edge of the belt that is to be found in the whole of the published writings of the Gerards; and the following is a/short abstract of his observations. Dr. Gerard reached tliG summit of the Shatul Pass, the elevation of which is 15,500 feet, on the 9th of August, 1822, and remained there till the 15th of the same month. He found the southern slope of the range generally free from snow, and he states that it is sometimes left without any whatever. On the top of the pass itself there was no snow ; but on the northern slope of the mountain it lay as far down as about 14,000 feet. On his arrival rain was falling, and out of the four days of his stay on this pass it either rained or snowed for the greater part of three. The fresh snow that fell during this time did not lie below 16,000 feet, and some of the more precipitous rocks remained clear even up to 1 7,000 feet. “ The conclusion to which Dr. Gerard comes from these facts is, that the snow-line on the southern face of the Bissehir range is at 15,000 feet above the sea. But I should myself be more inclined, from his account, to consider that 15,500 feet was nearer the truth; and in this view I am confirmed by verbal accounts of the state of the passes on this range, which I have obtained from persons of my acquaintance, who have crossed them somewhat later in the year. The differ- cnce, however, is after all trifling. “ Such is the direct evidence that can be offered on the height of the snow-line at the southern limit of the belt of perpetual snow: some additional light, may, however, be ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE SNOW-LINE. 77 thrown on the subject generally by my shortly explaining the state in which I have found the higher parts of the mountains at the different seasons during which I have visited them. “ In the beginning of May, on the mountains to the east of the Ramganga river, near Namik, I found the ground on the summit of the ridge, called Champ wa, not only perfectly free from snow at an elevation of 12,000 feet, but covered with flowers, in some places golden with calsha and ranunculus polypetalus, in others purple with primulus. The snow had in fact already receded to upwards of 12,500 feet, behind which even a few little gentians proclaimed the advent of spring. “ Towards the end of the same month, at the end of the Pindur, near the glacier from which that river rises, an open spot on which I could pitch my tent could not be found above 12,000 feet. But here the accumulation of snow, which was considerable in all ravines even below 11,000 feet, is mani¬ festly the result of avalanches and drift. The surface of the glacier, clear ice as well as moraines, was quite free from snow up to nearly 13,000 feet; but the effect of the more retired position of the place in retarding the melting of the snow, was manifest from the less advanced state of the vege¬ tation. During my stay at Pinduri the weather was very bad, and several inches of snow fell; but, excepting where it had fallen on the old snow, it all melted off again in a few hours, even without the assistance of the sun’s direct rays. On the glacier, at 13,000 feet, it had all disappeared twelve hours after it fell. “ On revisiting Pinduri about the middle of October, the change that had taken place was very striking. Now not a sign of snow was to be seen on any part of the road up to the very head of the glacier; a luxuriant vegetation had sprung up, but had already almost entirely perished, and its remains covered the ground as far as I went. From this elevation, about 13.000 feet, evident signs of vegetation could be seen to extend far up the less precipitous mountains. The place is not one at which the height of the perpetual snow can be easily estimated, for on all sides are glaciers, and the vast accumulations of snow from which they are supplied, and these cannot always be readily distinguished from snow in situ ; but as far as I could judge, those places 'which might be 78 VIEWS OF NATURE. considered as offering a fair criterion were free from snow up to 15,000, or even 16,000 feet. “ Towards the end of August I crossed the Barjikang Pass, between Ralam and Juhar, the elevation of which is about 15,300 feet. There was here no vestige of snow on the ascent to the pass from the south-east, and only a very small patch remained on the north-western face. The 'shew of the continuation of the ridge in a southerly direction was cut off by a prominent point, but no snow lay on that side within 500 feet of the pass, while to the north I estimated that there wras no snow in considerable quantity within 1500 feet or more, that is, nearly up to 17,000 feet. The vegetation on the very summit of the pass was far from scanty, though it had already begun to break up into tufts, and had lost that character of continuity "which it had maintained to within a height of 500 or 600 feet. Species of Potentilla, Sedum, Saxifraga, Corydalis, Aconitum, Delphinium, Thalictrum, Ranunculus Saussurea, Gentiana, Pedicularis, Primula, Rheum, and Polygonum, all evidently flourishing in a congenial cli¬ mate, showed that the limits of vegetation and region of perpetual snow were still far distant. “ In addition to these facts, it may not be out of place to mention that there are two mountains visible from Almorah, Rigoli-gudri, in Garhwal between the lvailganga and Nan- däkni, and Chipula, in Kumaon, between the Gori and Dauli (of Darina), both upwards of 13,000 feet in elevation, from the summits of which the snow disappears long before the end of the summer months, and which do not usually again become covered for the winter till late in December.” These remarks are followed by an exposition of the errors into which Webb, Colebrooke, Hodgson, A. Gerard, and Jacquemont, have fallen. The heights assigned by these tra¬ vellers must all be rejected; nor can it be considered at all surprising that any amount of mistake, as to the height of the snow-line, should be made, so long as travellers cannot dis¬ tinguish snow from glacier ice, or look for the boundary of perpetual snow at the beginning of the spring.” With regard to the northern limit of the belt of perpetual snow , Lieutenant Stracliey's observations were made in Sep¬ tember, 1848, on his way from Milam into Hundes, via Unta- dliura, Kyungar-gbat, and Balch-dhura, at the beginning of ILLUSTRATIONS (10), THE SNOAV-LINE. 79 the month; and on his road back again, vid Lakhur-ghät, at the end of the month. “ Of the three passes that we crossed on our way from Milam, all of them being about 17,000 feet in elevation, the first is Wata-dhara, and we saw no snow on any part of the way up to its top, which was reached in a very disagreeable drizzle of rain and snow. The final ascent to the pass from the south is about 1000 feet. The path leads up the side of a ravine, down which a small stream trickles, the ground having a generally even and rounded surface. Neither on any part of this nor on the summit of the pass itself, which is tolerably level, were there any remains of snow whatever. On the ridge to the right and left there were patches of snow a few hundred feet above ; and on the northern face of the pass an accumulation remained that extended about 200 feet down, apparently the effect of the drift through the gap in which the pass lies. Below this again the ground was every¬ where quite free from snow. On the ascent to Wata-dliara, at perhaps 17,000 feet, a few blades of grass were seen, but on the whole it may be said to have been utterly devoid of vegetation. On the north side of the pass, 300 or 400 feet below the summit, a cruciferous plant w'as the first met with. “ The Kyungar pass, which is four or six miles north of Wata-dhara, was found equally free from snow on its southern face and summit, which latter is particularly open and level . The mountains on either side were also free from snow to some height; but on the north a large bed lay a little way down the slope, and extended to about 500 feet from the top. On this pass a boragineous plant in flowrer wras found above 17,000 feet; a species of Urtica wras also got about the same altitude, and we afterwards saw it again nearly as high up on the Lakhur pass. “ In our ascent to the Balch pass no snow wras observed on any of the southern spires of the range, and only one or twro very small patches' could be seen from the summit on the north side. The average height of the top of this range can hardly be more than 500 feet greater than that of the pass; and as a whole it certainly does not enter the region of perpetual snow. As viewed from the plains of Handes, it cannot be said to appear snowy, a few only of the peaks being tipped. 80 YIEWS OF NATÜEE. “ We returned to Milam via Chirchun. The whole of the ascent to the Lakhur pass was perfectly free from snow to the very top, i.e. 18,300 feet, and many of the neighbouring moun¬ tains were bare still higher. The next ridge on this route is Jainti-dhara, which is passed at an elevation of 18,500 feet, but still without crossing the least portion of snow. The line of perpetual snow is however evidently near; for though the Jainti ridge was quite free, and some of the peaks near us were clear probably to upwards of 19,000 feet, yet in more sheltered situations unbroken snow could be seen considerably below us; and on the whole I think that 18,500 feet must be near the average height of the snow-line at this place.” A brief recapitulation of the principal results of Lieutenant Strachey's inquiries shows us that “ the snow-line or the southern edge of the belt of perpetual snow in this portion of the Himalaya is at an elevation of 15,000 feet, while on the northern edge it reaches 18,500 feet; and that on the mountains to the north of the Sutlej, or still further, it recedes even beyond 19,000 feet. The greater elevation which the snow-line attains on the northern edge of the belt of perpetual snow is a phenomenon not confined to the Thibetan declivity alone, but extending far into the interior of the chain ; and it appears to be caused by the quantity of snow that foils on the the northern portion of the mountains being much less than that which falls farther to the south along the line where the peaks, covered with perpetual snow, first rise above the less elevated ranges of the Himalaya.” The letters of Dr. Joseph Hooker published during the present year (1849) in the Athenäum (pp. 431 and 1039) may also be consulted with advantage.] (11) p. 5 — “A tawny tribe of Herdsmen.” The Hiongnu (Hioung-nou), whom Deguignes and with him many other historians long believed to be identical with the Huns, inhabited the vast Tartarian tract of land which is bordered on the east by Uo-lcang-lio, the present territory of the Mant-schn, on the south by the Chinese wall, on the west by the U-siün, and on the north by the land of the Eleuthes But the Hiongnu belong to the Turkish, and the Huns to the Finnish or Uralian race. The northern Huns, a rude people of herdsmen, unacquainted with agriculture, were of a blackish ILLUSTRATIONS (11). THE HUNS. 81 brown complexion. The southern Huns, or Ilajatehah, called by the Byzantines Euthalites or Nephthalites, and inhabiting the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, had fairer skins. These pursued agriculture, and dwelt in towns. They are frequently termed White Huns , and d’Herbelot even regards them as Indo-Scythians. In Deguignes* an account will be found of the Punu, the leader or Tanju of the Huns, and of the great drought and famine which led to the migration of a portion of the nation northwards about the year 46 a.d. All the details, given in his celebrated work regarding the Hiongnu, have been recently submitted by Klaproth to a rigid and learned scrutiny. From the result of his investigations it wovdd appear, that the Hiongnu belong to the widely dif¬ fused Turkish races of the Altai and Tangnu mountain dis¬ tricts. The name of Hiongnu was a general name for the Ti, Thu-kiu or Turks, in the north and north-west of China, even in the third century before the Christian era. The southern Hiongnu submitted themselves to the Chinese, and in con¬ junction with the latter destroyed the empire of the northern Hiongnu, who were in consequence compelled to flee to the west, and thus appear to have given the first impulse to the migration of nations in Central Asia. The Huns, who were long confounded with the Hiongnu (as the Uigures were with the Ugures and Hungarians) belonged, according to Klaproth, f to the Finnish race of the Uralian mountains, which race has been variously intermixed with Germans, Turks, and Samoiedes. The Huns (O vwoC) are first mentioned by Dionysius Peri- egetes, a writer who was able to obtain more accurate informa¬ tion than others regarding the interior of Asia, because, as a learned man and a native of Charax on the Arabian Gulf, he was sent back to the East by Augustus, to accompany thither his adopted son, Caius Agrippa. Ptolemy, a century later, writes the word Xovvoi with a strong aspiration, which, as St. Martin observes, is agan met with in the geographical name of Chunigard. * Hist. gen. des Huns, des Turcs, etc., 17 56, t. i. P. 1, p. 217, P. 2, pp. Ill, 125, 223, 447. t See Klaproth, Asia Poiyglotta, pp. IS 3, 211; Tableaux Historiques de VAsie, pp. 102, 109. G 82 VIEWS OF NATURE. (12) p. G — “ No hewn stone.” Representations of the sun and figures of animals have cer¬ tainly been found graven in rocks on the banks of the Orinoco, near Caicara, where the woody region borders on the plain, but in the Llanos themselves not a trace of these rough memo¬ rials of earlier inhabitants has ever been discovered. It is to be regretted that no accurate account has reached us of a monument which was sent to Count Maurepas, in France, and which, according to Kalm, was discovered in the prairies of Canada, 900 French leagues (about 2700 English miles) west of Montreal, by M. de Veran drier, while engaged on an expedition to the coast of the Pacific Ocean. * This tra¬ veller met in the plains with huge masses of stone erected by the hand of man, on one of which there was an inscription believed to be in the Tartar languagef . How can so important a monument have remained uninvestigated? Can it actually have borne an alphabetical inscription, or are we not rather to believe that it must have been an historical picture, like the so-called Phoenician inscription, which has been discovered on the bank of the Taunton river, and whose authenticity has been questioned by Court de Gebelin? I indeed regard it as highly probable that these plains were once traversed by civil¬ ised nations, and it seems to me that this fact is proved by the existence of pyramidal grave-works or burrows and bulwarks of extraordinary length, between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanys, on which Squier and Davis have now thrown new light in their account of the ancient monuments of the Missis¬ sippi valley 4 M. de Verandrier was despatched, about the year 1746, on this expedition by the Chevalier de Beauharnois, Governor-General of Canada; and several Jesuits in Quebec assured Kalm that they had actually had this so-called inscrip¬ tion in their hands, and that it was graven on a small tablet which was found inlaid in a hewn pillar. I have in vain requested several of my friends in France to make inquiries regarding this monument, in the event of its being in the Collection of Count Maurepas. I have also found equally uncertain ac- * See Kalm’s Reise, Tli. iii. p. 416. t Archceologia, or Miscellaneous Tracts published by the Society of A ntiquarians of London, vol. viii. 1787, p. 304. 7 Relat. hist. t. iii. p. 155. 83 ILLUSTRATIONS (13). THE PARAMOS. counts of the alphabetical writing of the American aboriginal races, in a work of Pedro de Cieqa de Leon,*4 in Garcia, f and in Columbus’s^ journal of his first voyage. M. de Verandrier maintained also that traces of the ploughshare were observed for days together in travelling over the grassy plains of Western Canada; a circumstance that other travellers, prior to him, likewise profess to have noticed. But the utter ignorance of the primitive nations of North America regarding this implement of agriculture, the want of beasts of draught, and the vast extent of surface over which these tracks extend through the prairie, tend rather to make me adopt the opinion that this singular appearance of furrows is owing to some movement of water over the earth's surface. (13) p. 6 — “It spreads like an arm of the seal The great steppe, which extends from the mouth of the Orinoco to the snowy mountains of Merida, from east to west, deflects towards the south in the parallel of 8° north latitude, and occupies the whole space between the eastern declivity of the elevated mountains of New Granada and the Orinoco, which here flows in a northerly direction. That portion of the Llanos, which is watered by the Meta, Vichada, Zama, and Guaviare, connects as it were the valley of the Amazon with that of the Lower Orinoco. The word Paramo , which I have frequently employed in this work, signifies in the Spanish colonies all alpine regions which are situated from 11,000 to 14,000 feet above the level of the sea, and whose climate is rude, ungenial, and misty. In the higher Paramos hail and snow fall daily for many hours continuously, and yield a beneficial supply of humidity to the alpine plants, not from the absolute quantity of vapour in the higher strata of the air, but by the frequency of the aqueous deposits occasioned by the rapidly changing currents of air, and the variations of the electric tension. The trees found in these regions are low, and spread out in an umbrella-like form, have gnarled branches, which are constantly covered with fresh and evergreen foliage. They are * Chronica del Peru, P. 1, cap. 87. (Losacon letras en los edificioa de Yinaque.) ■f Origen de los Indios, 1607, lib. iii. cap. 5, p. 258. 7 Navarrete, Viages de los Pspa.ioles, t. i. p. 67. G 2 84 VIEWS OF NATURE. mostly large-flowering laurel and myrtle-leaved alpine shrubs, Escallonia tubar, Escallonia myrtilloides , Chuquirciga insignis , Ar alien, Weinmannice, Frezierce, Gualtherice, and Andromeda reticulata , may be regarded as the representatives of the physiognomy of this vegetation.* To the south of the town of Santa Fe de Bogota lies the celebrated Paramo de la Suma Paz, an isolated mountain group, in which, according to Indian legends, great treasures are concealed; and hence issues a small stream or brook, which pours its foaming waters through a remarkable natural bridge in the rocky ravine of Icononzo. In my Latin treatise, De Distributione geographica Planta¬ rum secundum cceli temperiem et altitudinem montium, 1817, p. 104, I have thus endeavoured to characterise these Alpine regions: “ Altitudine 1700 — 1900 hexapod: asperrimte so- litudines, quae a colonis hispanis uno nomine Paramos appel- lantur, tempestatum vicissitudinibus mire obnoxiae, ad quas solutm et emollitec defluunt nives ; ventorum flatibus ac mm- borum grandinisque jactu tumultuosa regio, quae aeque per diem et per noctes riget, solis nubila et tristi luce fere nun- quam calefacta. Habitantur in hac ipsa altitudine sat magnac civitates, ut Micuipampa Peruvianorum, ubi thermometrum centes. meridie inter 5° et 8°, noctu — 0°.4 consistere vidi; Huancavelica, propter cinnabaris venas celebrata, ubi altitu¬ dine 1835 hexap. fere totum per annum temperies mensis Martii Parisiis.” (14) p. 0 — “ The Cordilleras of Cochabamba and the Brazilian mountains approximate to one another by means of separate transverse chains The immense space between the eastern coasts of South America and the eastern declivity of the chain of the Andes is contracted by two mountain masses, which partially separate from one another the three valleys or plains of the Lower Orinoco, the Amazon, and the ltio de la Plata. The more northern mountain mass, called the group of the Parime, is opposite to the Andes of Cundinamarca, which, after extending far towards the east, assume the form of one elevated mountain, between the parallels of 66° and 68° west longitude. It is connected by the narrow mountain ridge of Pacaraima with the granitic hills of French Guiana, as I have clearly indi¬ cated in the map of Columbia vdiich I drew up from my own * Humboldt et Bonpland, Planten ceqxdnoctiales, fasc. ii. WILD DOG. 85 ILLUSTRATIONS (15). astronomical observations. The Caribs, in their long expedi¬ tions from the missions of Carony to the plains of Rio Branco, and even to the Brazilian frontier, are obliged to traverse the crests of Pacaraima and Quimiropaca. The second group of mountains, which separates the valley of the Amazon from that of La Plata, is the Brazilian, which approximates to the promontory of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in the province of Chiquitos, west of the Parecis hills. As neither the group of the Parime, which gives rise to the cataracts of the Orinoco, nor the Brazilian group, is directly connected with the chain of the Andes, the plains of Venezuela and those of Patagonia are directly connected with one another.* (15) 6 — Herds of wild dogs In the Pampas of Buenos Ayres the traveller meets with European dogs, which have become wild. They live grega¬ riously in holes and excavations, in which they conceal their young. When the horde becomes too numerous, several families go forth, and form new settlements elsewhere. The Euixqiean dog barks as loudly after it has become wild, as ■dues the indigenous American hairy s2>ecies. Garcilaso asserts that, prior to the arrival of the Sjianiards, the Peru¬ vians had a race of dogs called Ferros gozgues; and he calls the indigenous dog Allco. In order to distinguish this animal from the European variety, it is called in the Qquichua language Runa-allco, Indian dog, or dog of the natives. The hairy Runa-allco ap2)ears to be a mere variety of the she2)herd’s dog. It is, however, smaller, has long ycllow- ochry coloured hair, is marked with white and brown spots, and has erect and 2>ointed ears. It barks continually, but seldom bites the natives, however it may attack the whites. When the Inca Pachacutec, in his religious wars, conquered the Indians of Xauxa and Huanca (the 2)rcsent valley of Huancaya and Jauja), and compelled them by force to submit to the worship of the sun, he found that dogs were made the objects of their adoration, and that the priests used the skulls of these animals as wind instruments. It would also appear that the flesh of this canine divinity was eaten by the belie vers, f The veneration of dogs in the valley of the * See Humboldt’s geognostic view of South America, in his Relation historique, t. iii. pp. 188 — 244. + Garcilaso de la Vega, Commentarios Reales, P. i., p. 184. 86 VIEWS OF NATURE. Huancaya is probably the reason why the skulls, and even whole mummies, of these animals are sometimes found in the Huacas, or Peruvian graves of the most ancient period. Von Tschudi, the author of an admirable treatise on the Fauna Peruana, has examined these skulls, and believes them to belong to a peculiar species, which he calls Canis ingce, and which is different from the European dog. The Huancas are still, in derision, called ;t dog- eaters” by the inhabitants of other provinces. Among the natives of the Rocky Moun¬ tains of North America, cooked dog's flesh is placed before the stranger guest, as a feast of honour. Captain Fremont was present at such a dog-feast in the neighbourhood of Fort Laramie, which is one of the stations of the Hudson's Bay Com¬ pany for trading in skins and peltries with the Sioux Indians/* * * §' The Peruvian dogs were made to play a singular part during eclipses of the moon, being beaten as long as the darkness continued. The Mexican Techichi , a variety of the common dog, which was called in Anahuac Chichi, was the only com¬ pletely dumb dog. The literal signification of the word Techichi is “ stone-dog,” from the Aztec, teil, a stone. This dog was eaten according to the ancient Chinese custom, and the Spaniards found this food so indispensable before the introduction of horned cattle, that the race was gradually almost entirely extirpated. f Buffon confounds the Techichi with the Koupara of Guiana, j which is, however, identical with the Procyon or Ursus cancrivorus, the Raton crabier, or the crab-eating Aguara-guaza of the coasts of Patagonia. § Linnaeus, on the other hand, confounds the dumb dog with the Mexican Itzcuintepotzotli, a canine species which has not hitherto been perfectly described, and which is said to be characterised by a short tail, a very small head, and a large hump on the back. The name signifies a hump-backed dog, and is derived from the Aztec itzcuintli, another word for dog, and tepotzotli, humped or a humpback. I was much struck in America, especially in Quito and Peru, with the great num¬ ber of black hairless dogs. They are termed Chiens tares by Buffon, and are the Canis a> gyp tius of Linnaeus. This species is common amongst the Indians, who, however, * Fremont’s Exploring Expedition, IS 45. p. 42. + Clavigero, Storia antica del Messico, 1780, t. i. p. 73. J Buffon, t. xv., p. 155. § Azara, Ear les Quadruples du Paraguay, t. i. p. 315. ILLUSTRATIONS (15). WILD DOG. 87 generally despise them, and treat them ill. All European dogs multiply rapidly in South America; and if no species are to be met Avith equal to those of Europe, it is partly owing to want of care, and partly to the circumstance that the finest Ararieties (as the elegant greyhound and the Danish tiger breed) haA'e never been introduced. Von Tschudi makes the singular remark, that on the Cor¬ dilleras, at elevations of more than 12,000 feet, delicate breeds of dogs and the European domestic cat are exposed to a particular kind of mortal disease. “ Innumerable at¬ tempts have been made to keep cats as domestic animals in the toA\m of Cerro de Pasco (lying at an elevation of 14,100 feet above the sea’s le\Tel); but such endeaArours have invariably been frustrated, as both cats and dogs have died in convulsions at the end of a feAV days. The cats, after being attacked by convulsive fits, attempt to climb the walls, but soon fall to the ground exhausted and motion¬ less. I frequently obseiwed instances in Yauli of this chorea¬ like disease ; and it seems to arise from insufficient atmospheric pressure.” In the Spanish colonies, the hairless dog, AArhich is called Perro chinesco , or chino, is supposed to be of Chinese origin, and to have been brought from Canton, or from Manila. According to Klaproth, the race has been \Tery common in the Chinese Empire from the earliest ages of its culture. Among the animals indigenous to Mexico, there was a A’ery large, totally hairless, and dog-like Avolf, named Xoloitzcuintli, from the Mexican xolo or xolotl, a servant or slave.* The result of Tschudi’s observations regarding the American indigenous races of dogs are as follows: — There are two varieties almost specifically different — 1. The Canis cciraibicus of Lesson, totally hairless, with the exception of a small tuft of Avhite hair on the forehead and at the tip of the tail ; of a slate-gray colour, and without Aroice. This variety Avas found by Columbus in the Antilles, by Cortes in Mexico, and by Pizarro in Peru (where it suffers from the cold of the Cordil¬ leras) ; and it is still ATery frequently met Avith in the warmer districts of Peru, under the name of Perros chinos. 2. The Canis ingce, A\diich belongs to the barking species, and has a pointed nose and pointed ears; it is hoav used for Avatching sheep and cattle; it exhibits many variations of colour, in- * On the dogs of America, see Smith Barton’s Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, p. i., p. 34. 88 VIEWS OF NATURE. cluced by being crossed with European breeds. The Cams ingce follows man up the heights of the Cordilleras. In the old Peruvian graves, the skeleton of this dog is sometimes found resting at the feet of the human mummy, presenting an emblem of fidelity frequently employed by the mediaeval sculptors.* * * §' European dogs, that had become wild, were found in the island of St. Domingo, and in Cuba, in the early periods of the Spanish conquest.! In the savannahs between the Meta, Arauca, and Apure, dumb dogs (perros mudos ) were used as food as late as the sixteenth century. The natives called them Majos or Auries, says Alonzo de Herrera, who under¬ took an expedition to the Orinoco, in 1535. The highly intel¬ ligent traveller Gisecke found this variety of non-barking dogs in Greenland. The dogs of the Esquimaux live entirely in the open air, scraping for themselves at night holes in the snow, and howling like wolves, in concert with one of the troop, who sits in the middle, and takes the lead in the chorus. The Mexican dogs were castrated, in order that their flesh might become more fat and delicate. On the borders of the province of Durango, and further north, near the Slave Lake, the natives load the larger dogs with their buffalo-skin tents, (at all events they did so formerly,) when, on the change of seasons, they seek a different place of abode. These various details may all be regarded as characteristic of the mode of life led by the nations of Eastern Asia.']; (16) p. 7 — Like the greater part of the Desert of Sahara , the Llanos lie within the Torrid Zone." Significant denominations, particularly such as refer to the form of the earth's surface, and which arose at a period when there was only very uncertain information respecting different regions and their hypsometric relations, have led to various and long-continued geographical errors. The ancient Ptolemaic denomination of the “ Greater and Lesser Atlas’ '§ has exercised the injurious influence here indicated. There is no doubt that the snow-covered western summits of the Atlas of Morocco may * J. J. von Tschudi, Untersuchungen Hier die Fauna Peruana, s. 247—251. t Garcilaso, P. i. 1723, p. 326. J Humboldt, Essai polit., t. ii. p. 44S, and Fetation hist., t. ii. p. 625. § Geogr., lib. iii. cap 1. 89 ILLUSTRATIONS (16). THE SAHARA. be regarded as the Great Atlas of Ptolemy; but where is the limit of the Little Atlas ? Are we still to maintain the divi¬ sion into two Atlas chains (which the conservative tendency of geographers has retained for 1700 years) in the territory of A1 giers, and even between Tunis and Tlemse? Are we to seek a Greater and a Lesser Atlas between the coast and the parallel chains of the interior? All travellers familiar with geognostic views, who have visited Algeria since it has been in the possession of the French, contest the meaning con¬ veyed by the generally adopted 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 (who was long Ingenieur en chef des Mines de V Algerie') affirms that the mountain range of Aures, near Batnah, which even at the end of March was found covered with snow, has a greater elevation. Fournel con¬ tests the existence of a Little and a Great Atlas, as I do that of a Little and a Great Altai*. There is but one Atlas, for¬ merly called Dyris by the Mauritanians, “ a name that must be applied to the foldings (rides, suites de cretes ), which form the division between the waters flowing to the Mediter¬ ranean and towards the lowland of the Sahara.” The lofty Atlas chain of Morocco inclines from north-east to south-west, and not, like the Eastern Mauritanian portion of the Atlas, from east to west. It rises into summits which, according to Renou, attain an elevation of 11,400 feet, exceeding, there¬ fore, the height of Etnaf . A singularly formed highland, of an almost square shape (Sahab el-Marga), is situated in 33° north lat., and is bounded to the south by high elevations. From thence the Atlas declines in height in a westerly direc¬ tion towards the sea, about a degree south of Mogador. This south-western portion bears the name of Idrar-N-Deren. The northern boundaries of the extended low region of the Sahara in Mauritania, as well as its southern limits towards the fertile Sudan, have hitherto been but imperfectly inves¬ tigated. If we take the parallels of 16^° and 32-4-° north lat. as the outer limits, we obtain for the Desert, includ¬ ing its oases, an area of more than 1,896,000 square miles; * Humboldt, Asie centrale, t. i. pp. 247, 252. + Exploration scientifique de V Algerie, de 1840 a 1842, publiee par ordre du Gouvernement ; Sciences hist, et geogr., t. viii., 1846, pp. 3Ö4, 373. 90 YIEWS OF NATURE. or between nine and ten times the extent of Germany, and almost three times that of the Mediterranean, exclusive of the Black Sea. The best and most recent intelligence, for which we are indebted to the French observers, Colonel Daumas, and MM. Fournel, Renou, and Carette, shows us 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 country between Insalah and Timbuctoo, and the road 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 lowlands. A similar opinion had been previously advanced by my Siberian travelling companion, the acute observer Ehren¬ berg, from what he had himself seen-*. Of larger wild animals, only gazelles, wild asses, and ostriches are to be met with. “ That lions exist in the desert,” says M. Carette, “is a myth popularised by the dreams of artists and poets, and has no foundation but in their imagination. This animal does not cpiit the mountains where it finds shelter, food, and drink. When the traveller questions the natives concerning these wild beasts, which Europeans suppose to be their com¬ panions in the desert, they reply, with imperturbable sang froid , ‘ Have you, then, lions in your country which can drink air and eat leaves? With us lions require running water and living flesh ; and therefore they only appear where there are wooded hills and water. We fear only the viper ( lefa ), and, in humid spots, the innumerable swarms of mosquitoes which abound there j\’ ” While Dr. Oudney, in his long journey from Tripoli to Lake Tschad, estimated the elevation of the Southern Sahara at 1637 feet, and German geographers even ventured to add an additional thousand feet, Fournel, the engineer, has, by careful barometric measurements, based on corresponding observations, made it tolerably probable that a part of the northern desert is below the sea's level. The portion of the desert which is now called “ Le Zaliara d'Algerie,” advances to the chains of hills of Metlili and el-Gaous, where lies the most northern of all the Oases, el-Kantara, fruitful in dates. This low basin, which reaches the parallel of 34° lat., receives * Exploration scientif. de VAlgerie, Hist, et geogr.. t. ii. p. 332. t Ibid. t. ii. pp. 126— 120, and. t. vii. pp. 94, 97. ILLUSTRATIONS (16). THE SAHARA. 91 the radiant heat of a stratum of chalk, inclined at an angle of 65° towards the south, and which is full of the shells of Inoceramus*. “Arrived at Biscara (Biskra),” says Fournel, “ an indefinite horizon, like that of the sea, lay spread before us.” Between Biscara and Sidi Ocba the land is only 243 feet above the seas level. The inclination increases considerably towards the south. In another workf, where I have brought together all the points that refer to the depres¬ sion of some portions of continents below the level of the sea, I have already noticed that, according toLe Pere, the bitter lakes {lacs amers ) on the isthmus of Suez, when they have but little water, and, according to General Andreossy, the Natron lakes of Fayoum, are also lower than the level of the Mediterranean. Among other manuscript notices of M. Fournel, I possess a geognostic vertical profile, with all the inflexions and inclina¬ tions of the strata, representing the surface the whole way from the coast near Philippeville to a spot near the Oasis of Biscara in the Desert of Sahara. The direction of the line on which the barometric measurements were taken is south 20° west; but the points of elevation determined are pro¬ jected, as in my Mexican profiles, on a different plane, one from N. to S. Ascending uninterruptedly from Constantine, whose elevation is 2123 feet, the highest point is found be¬ tween Batnah and Tizur, at only 3581 feet. In the part of the desert which lies between Biscara and Tuggurt, Fournel has succeeded in digging a series of artesian wells j‘. We learn from the old accounts of Shaw, that the inhabitants of the country were acquainted with a subterranean supply of water, and related fabulous tales of a “ sea under the earth (bahr tohl el-erd).” Fresh waters, which flow between clay and marl strata of the old chalk and other sedimentary for¬ mations, under the action of hydrostatic pressure, form gushing fountains when the strata are pierced§. The phenomenon of fresh water being often found near beds of rock salt, need not surprise the geognosist, acquainted with mining operations, since Europe offers many analogous phenomena. * Fournel, Sur les Gisemens de Muriate de Soude en A Igerie, p. 6, in the Annales des Mines, 4me serie, t. ix. 1846, p. 546. 4 A sie centrale, t. ii. p. 320. X Comptes rendus de l' Academie des Sciences, t. xx. 1845, pp. 170, 882, 1305. § See Shaw, Voyages dans plusieurs parties de la Berlerie, t. i. p. 169, and Kennel, Africa, Append, p. lxxxv. 92 VIEWS OF NATURE. The riches of the desert in rock-salt, and its employment for purposes of building, have been known since the time of Herodotus. The salt zone of the Sahara (zone salifere du desert) is the most southern of the three zones which pass through Northern Africa from south-west to north-east, and is believed to be connected with the beds of rock-salt in Sicily and Palestine described by Friedlich Hoffman, and by Ro¬ binson*. The trade in salt with Sudan, and the possibility of culti¬ vating the date-tree in the many Oasis-like depressions, caused probably by earth-slips in the beds of tertiary chalk or Keuper-gypsum, have equally contributed to animate the desert, at various parts, by human intercourse. The high •temperature of the air, which renders the day’s march so oppressive across the Sahara, makes the coolness of the night (of which Denham and Sir Alexander Burnes frequently com¬ plained in the African and Asiatic deserts) so much the more remarkable. Mellonif ascribes this coolness (which is proba¬ bly produced by the radiation of heat from the ground), not to the great purity of the heavens (irraggiamento calorifico per la grande serenitä di cielo nell’ immensa e deserta pianura dell’ Africa centrale), but to the extreme calm, and the ab¬ sence of all movement in the air throughout the whole nightj. The river Quad-Dra (Wadi Dra), which is almost dry the greater part of the year, and which, according to Renou§, is one- sixth longer than the Rhine, flows into the Sahara in 32° north latitude, from the southern declivity of the Atlas of Morocco. It runs at first from north to south, until in 29° north lat., and 5° 8' west long., it deflects at right angles to the west, and traversing the great fresh-water lake of Debaid, flows into the sea at Cape Nun, in lat. 28° 46', and long. 11° 8'. This re¬ gion, which was first rendered celebrated by the Portuguese discoveries of the fifteenth century, and whose geography has subsequently been shrouded in the deepest obscurity, is now known on the coast as the country of the Scheik of Beirouk * Fournel, Sur les Gisemens de Muriate de Soude en Algerie, pp. 08-41 ; and Karsten, Ueher das Vorkommen des Kochsalzes auf der Oberfläche der Erde, 1846, s. 497, 648, 741. f Memoria sulV abbassamento di temperatura durante le notti placide e serene , 1847, p. 55. t Consult, also, on African Meteorology, Aime, in the Exp1 or. de l' Algerie, Phys. Gener. t. ii., 1846, p. 147. § Explor. de I’Alg., Hist, et Geogr. t. viii. pp. 65 —78. ILLUSTRATIONS (16). DESERT OF SAHARA. 93 (whose dominions are independent of the Emperor of Mo¬ rocco). It was explored, in the months of July and August, 1840, by the French Count, Captain de Bouet-Yillaumez, under the orders of his government. From manuscript and official reports it would appear that the mouth of the Quad-Dra is at present so much blocked up by sand as to have an open chan¬ nel of only about 190 feet. The Saguiel-el-Hamra, — still very little known, — which comes from the south, and is supposed to have a course of at least 600 miles, flows into the same mouth at a point somewhat farther eastward. The length of these deep, but generally dry, river-beds is astonishing. They are ancient furrow's, similar to those which I observed in the Peruvian desert at the foot of the Cordilleras, between the latter and the shores of the Pacific. In Bouet's manuscript narrative*, the mountains which rise to the north of Cape Nun are esti¬ mated at the great height of 9,186 feet. It is generally supposed that Cape Nun was discovered in 1 433 by the Knight Gilianez, despatched under the order of the ce¬ lebrated Infante, Henry, Duke of Viseo, and founder of the Academy of Sagres, which was presided over by the pilot and cosmographer, Mestre Jacome, of Majorca; but the Portulano Mediceo , — the work of a Genoese navigator of the year 1351, — already contains the name of “ Cavo di Non.” The doubling of this Cape was as much dreaded as has been since then the passage round Cape Horn ; although it is only 23' north of the parallel of Teneritfe, and might be reached by a few days’ sail from Cadiz. The Portuguese adage, “ Quern passa o Cabo de Num, ou tornara ou nao,” could not intimidate the Infante, whose heraldic French motto of “ Talent de bien faire,” well expressed his noble, enterprising, and vigorous character. The name of this Cape, which has long been supposed to originate in a play of words on the negative particle, does not appear to me to be of Portuguese origin. Ptolemy placed on the north-west coast of Africa a river JSfuius, in the Latin version Nunii ostia. Edrisi refers to a town, Nul, or Wadi Nun, somewhat further south, and about three days’ journey in the interior, named by Leo Afri- canus Belad de Non. Several European navigators had pene¬ trated far to the south of Cape Nun before the Portuguese squadron under Gilianez. The Catalan, Don Jayme Ferrer, in 1346, as we learn from the Atlas Catalan , published at * Relation de V Expedition de la Malouine. 94 VIEWS OF NATURE. Paris by Buchon, had advanced as far as the Gold River (Rio do Ouro ), in 23° 56' north lat. ; while the Normans, at the close of the fourteenth century, reached Sierra Leone in 8° 30' north latitude. The merit of having been the first to cross the equator in the Western Ocean incontrovertibly belongs, like so many other great achievements, to the Portuguese. (17) p. 7. — “ As a grassy plain , resembling many of the Steppes of Central Asia." The Llanos of Caracas, of the Rio Apure and the Meta, which are the abode of numerous herds of cattle, are, in the strictest sense of the word, grassy plains. The two families of the Cyperacem and the Gramineae, which are the principal representatives of the vegetation, yield numerous forms of Paspalum ( Rasp alum leptostachyum, P. lenticular e), of Kyllingia ( Kyllingia monocephala ( Rottb .) K. oclorata ), of Pa- nicum ( Panicum granuliferum , P. micranthum ), of Antepliora, Aristida, Yilfa, and Anthisteria ( Anthisteria reflexa , A. foliosa ). It is only here and there that any herbaceous dicotyledon, as the low-growing species of Mimosa intermedia and M. dormiens, which are so grateful to the wild horses and cattle, are found interspersed among the Graminese. The natives very characteristically apply to this group the name of “ Dormideras,” or sleepy plants, because the delicate and feathery leaves close on being touched. For many square miles not a tree is to be seen ; but where a few solitary trees are found, they are, in humid districts, the Mauritia Palm, and, in arid spots, a Proteacea described by Bon- pland and myself, the Rhopala complicata ( Chaparro hobo ), which Willdenow regarded as an Embothrium; also the useful Palma de Covija or de Sombrero ; and our Corypha inermis, an umbrella palm allied to Chamserops, and used by the natives for the covering of their huts. How much more varied and rich is the aspect of the Asiatic plains! In a great portion of the Kirghis and Kalmuck Steppes which I have traversed (extending over a space of 40 degrees of longitude), from the Don, the Caspian Sea and the Orenburg-Ural river Jaik, to the Obi and the Upper Irtysch, near the Lake Dsai- sang, the extreme range of view is never bounded by a hori¬ zon in which the vault of heaven appears to rest on an un¬ broken sea-like plain, as is so frequently the case in the Llanos, Pampas, and Prairies of America. I have, indeed. ILLUSTRATIONS (17). VEGETATION OF THE STEPPES. 95 never observed anything approaching to this phenomenon, excepting, perhaps, where I have looked only towards one quarter of the heavens, for the Asiatic plains are frequently intersected by chains of hills, or clothed with coniferous woods. The Asiatic vegetation, too, in the most fruitful pasture lands, is by no means limited to the family of the Cyperaceae, but is enriched by a great variety of herbaceous plants and shrubs. In the season of spring, small snowy white and red flowering Rosaceae and Amygdaleae ( Spiraea , Crataegus, Prunus spinosa, Amygdalus nana), present a pleasing appearance. I have elsewhere spoken of the tall and luxuriant Synan- thereae (Saussurea amara, S. salsa, Artemisice, and Centaurece ), and of leguminous plants, (species of the Astragalus, Cytisus and Caragana). Crown Imperials ( Fritillaria ruthenica and F. meleagroides), Cypripediae and tulips gladden the eye with their varied and bright hues. A contrast is presented to this charming vegetation of the Asiatic plains by the dreary Salt Steppes, especially by that portion of the Barabinski Steppe which lies at the base of the Altai Mountains, between Barnaul and the Serpent Mountain, and by the country to the east of the Caspian. Here the social Chenopodiae, species of Salsola, Atriplex, Salicornias, and Halimocnemis crassifolia*, cover the clayey soil with patches of verdure. Among the five hundred phanerogamic species which Claus and Göbel collected on the Steppes, Synantherece, Chenopodiae, and Cruciferae were more numerous than the grasses ; the latter constituting only TxTth of the whole, and the two former yth and yth. In Germany, owing to the alternation of hills and plains, the Glumaceae (comprising the Gramineac, Cyperaceae, and Juncaceae) constitute yth, the Synanthereae (Compositae) -|-th, and the Cruciferae y¥tli of all the German Phanerogamic species. In the most northern part of the flat land of Siberia, the extreme limit of tree and shrub vegetation {Coniferce and Amentacece) is, according to Admiral Wran¬ gell's fine map, 67° 15* north lat., in the districts contiguous to Behring's Straits, while more to the west, towards the banks of the Lena, it is 71°, which is the parallel of the North Cape of Lapland. The plains bordering on the Polar Sea are the domain of Cryptogamic plants. They are called Tundra (Tuntur in Finnish), and are vast swampy districts, covered * Göbel, Reise in die Steppe des südlichen Russlands , 1838, tk. ii. s. 244, 301. 96 VIEWS OF NATURE. partly with a thick mantle of Sphagnum palustre and other Liverworts, and partly with a dry snowy-white carpet of Cenomyce rangiferina (Reindeer-moss), Stereocaulon paschale, and other lichens. “ These Tundra ,” says Admiral Wrangell, in his perilous expedition to the Islands of New Siberia, so rich in fossil wood, “•accompanied me to the extremest Arctic coast. Their soil is composed of earth that has been frozen for thousands of years. Jn the dreary uniformity of the landscape, and surrounded by reindeer, the eye of the travel¬ ler rests with pleasure on the smallest patch of green turf that shows itself on a moist spot.” (18) p. 7. — A diversity of causes diminishes the dryness and heat of the New Continent. I have endeavoured to compress the various causes of the humidity and lesser heat of America into one general cate¬ gory. It will of course be understood, that I can only have reference here to the general hygroscopic condition of the atmosphere, and the temperature of the whole continent; for in considering individual regions, as for instance, the island of Margarita, or the coasts of Cumana and Coro, it will be found that these exhibit an equal degree of dryness and heat with any portion of Africa. The maximum of heat, at certain hours of a summer’s day, considered with reference to a long series of years, has been found to be almost the same in all regions of the earth, whether on the Neva, the Senegal, the Ganges, or the Orinoco, namely, between 93° and 104° Fahr., and on the whole not higher ; provided that the observation be made in the shade, far from solid radiating bodies, and not in an atmosphere filled with heated dust or granules of sand, and not with spirit-ther¬ mometers, which absorb light. The fine grains of sand (form¬ ing centres of radiant heat) which float in the air, were proba¬ bly the cause of the fearful heat (122° to 133° Fahr, in the shade) in the Oasis of Mourzouk to which my unhappy friend Ritclrc, who perished there, and Captain Lyon, were exposed, for weeks. The most remarkable instance of a high temperature, in an air probably free from dust, is mentioned by an observer ■who well knew how to arrange and correct all his instruments with the greatest accuracy. Riippel found the temperature 110°. 6 Fahr, at Ambukol, in Abyssinia, with a cloudy sky, a strong south-west wind, and an approaching thunder-storm. ILLUSTRATIONS (18). CLIMATE OF AMERICA. 97 The mean annual temperature of the tropics, or the actual cli¬ mate of the region of palms, is on the main land between 78°. 2 and 85°. 5 Fahr., without any sensible difference between the observations made in Senegal, Pondichery, and Surinam*. The great coolness, one might almost say coldness , which prevails during a great portion of the year in the tropics, on the coast of Peru, and which causes the mercury to fall to 59° Fahr., is, as I hope to show in another place, not to be «attributed to the effect of neighbouring mountains covered with snow, but rather to the mist ( cjarua ) which obscures the sun's disk, and to a current of cold sea-water commencing in the antarctic regions, and which coming from the south-west, strikes the coast of Chili near Valdivia and Concepcion, and is thence propelled with violence, in a northerly direction, to Cape Parina. On the coast of Lima, the temperature of the Pacific is 60°. 2 Fahr., whilst it is 79°. 2 Fahr, under the same parallel of latitude when outside the current. It is singular, that so remarkable a fact should have remained unnoticed, until my residence on the coast of the Pacific, in October, 1802. The variations of temperature, of many parts of the earth, depend principally on the character of the bottom of the aerial ocean, or in other words, on the nature of the solid or fluid (continental or oceanic) base on which the atmosphere rests. Seas, traversed in various directions by currents of warm and cold water (oceanic rivers), exert a different action from articulated or inarticulated continental masses or islands, which may be regarded as the shoals in the aerial ocean, and which, notwithstanding their small dimensions, exercise, even to great distances, a remarkable degree of influence on the climate of the sea. In continental masses, we must dis¬ tinguish between barren sandy deserts, savannahs, (grassy plains,) and forest districts. In Upper Egypt and in South America, Nouet and myself found, at noon, the temperature of the ground, which was composed of granitic sand, 154° and 141° Fahr. Numerous careful observations instituted at Paris, have given, according to Arago, 122° and 126°. 5 Fahr.f The Savannahs, which, between the Missouri and the Missis¬ sippi, are called Prairies, and which appear in the south at * Humboldt, Memoire sur les Lignes Isothennes, 1817, p. 54. A sic, centrale, t. iii. Mahlmann, Table IV. t A sie centrale, t. iii. p. 176. H 98 VIEWS OF NATUEE. the Llanos of Venezuela and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, are covered with small monocotyledons, belonging to the family of the Cyperaceae, and with grasses, whose dry pointed stalks, and whose delicate, lanceolate leaves radiate towards the unclouded sky, and possess an extraordinary power of emission. Wells and Daniell* have even seen in our latitude, where the atmosphere has a much less considerable degree of transparency, the thermometer fall to 14°. 5, or 18° Fahr, on being placed on the grass. Melloni has most ably shownf that in a calm, which is a necessary condition of a powerful radiation, and of the formation of dew, the cooling of the stratum of grass is promoted by the falling to the ground of the cooler particles of air, as being the heavier. In the vicinity of the equator, under the cloudy sky of the Upper Orinoco, the Rio Negro and the Amazon, the plains are covered with dense primeval forests ; but to the north and south of this woody district, there extend, from the zone of palms and of tall dicotyledonous trees in the northern hemi¬ sphere, the Llanos of the Lower Orinoco, the Meta, and Guaviare; and in the south, the Pampas of the Rio de la Plata and of Patagonia. The area thus covered by grassy plains, or Savannahs, in South America, is at least nine times greater than that of France. The forest region acts in a threefold manner, by the coolness induced by its shade, by evaporation, and by the cooling pro¬ cess of radiation. Forests uniformly composed in our tem¬ perate zone of“ social ” plants, belongingto the families of the Coniferm or Amentaceog (the oak, beech, and birch), and under the tropics composed of plants not living socially, protect the ground from direct insolation, evaporate the fluids they have themselves produced, and cool the contiguous strata of air by the radiation of heat from their leafy appendicular organs. The leaves are by no means all parallel to one another, and pre¬ sent different inclinations towards the horizon ; and according to the laws established by Leslie and Fourier, the influence of this inclination on the quantity of heat emitted by radiation is such, that the radiating power of a given measured surface a, having a given oblique direction, is equal to the radiating power of a leaf of the size of a projected on a horizontal * Meteor. Essays, 1827, pp. 230, 278. + SulV Abbassamento di Temperatur a durante le Notti placide e serene, 1847, pp. 47, 53. ILLUSTKATIONS (18). CLIMATE OF AMEKICA. 99 plane. In tlie initial condition of radiation of all the leaves which form the summit of a tree, and which partially cover each other, those which are directly presented towards the unclouded sky, will be first cooled. This production of cold (or the exhaustion of heat by emission) will be the more considerable in proportion to the thinness of the leaves. A second stratum of leaves has its up¬ per surface turned to the under surface of the former, and will give out more heat by radiation towards that stratum than it can receive from it. The result of this unequal exchange will then be a diminution of temperature for the second stratum also. A similar action will extend from stratum to stratum, till all the leaves of the tree, by their greater or less radiation, as modified by their difference of position, have passed into a condition of stable equilibrium, of which the law may be deduced by mathematical analysis. In this manner, in the serene and long nights of the equinoctial zone, the forest air, which is contained in the interstices between the strata of leaves, becomes cooled by the process of radia¬ tion ; for a tree, a horizontal section of whose summit would hardly measure 2000 square feet, would, in consequence of the great number of its appendicular organs (the leaves), produce as great a diminution in the temperature of the air as a space of bare land or turf many thousand times greater than 2000 square feet.* I have thus sought to develope somewhat fully the complicated relations which the action of great forest regions exerts on the atmosphere, because they have so often been touched upon in connection with the im¬ portant question of the climate of ancient Germany and Gaul. As in the old continent, European civilization has had its principal seat on the western coast, it could not fail to be early remarked that under equal degrees of latitude the oppo¬ site eastern littoral region of the United States of North America was several degrees colder, in mean annual tempe¬ rature, than Europe, which is, as it were, a western peninsula of Asia, and bears much the same relation to it as Brittany does to the rest of France. The fact, however, escaped notice that these differences decrease from the higher to the lower latitudes, and that they are hardly perceptible below 30°. For the west coast of the New Continent exact observations * Asie centrale, t. iii. pp. 195 — 205. H 2 100 VIEWS OF NATURE. of the temperature are still almost entirely wanting ; but the mildness of the winter in New California shows that in reference to their mean annual temperature, the west coasts of America and Europe under the same parallels, scarcely present any differences. The annexed table gives the mean annual temperatures, which correspond to the same geogra¬ phical latitudes, on the eastern coast of the New Continent and the western coast of Europe : — Similar Degrees of Latitude. Eastern Coast of America. Western Coast of Europe. Mean Temperature of tlie Year, of Winter, and Summer. Difference be¬ tween the annual Temperature of Eastern Ame¬ rica and WesternEurope. — 0°.4 57° 10' Nain . , . 25°. 7 - 45°. 7 31°. 5 20°. 7 57° 4P ... ••• Gottcnburg 46°.4 62°. 4 47° 34' 47° 30' 48° 50' St. John's Biula , Paris 23° 38°. 1 50°. 5 51°.7 31°. 1 69°.8 O O Q O i .o 64°. 6 13°.6 44° 39' Halifax . . 24°.l 43°. 5 - 44° 50' ... Bordeaux 63°.0 42°.8 57°. 2 - 71°.l 13°.7 ( continued ) ILLUSTRATIONS (18). CLIMATE OF AMERICA. 101 Similar Degrees of Latitude. Eastern Coast of America. Western Coast of Europe. Mean Temperature of the Year, of Winter, and Summer. Difference be¬ tween the annual Temperature of Eastern Ame¬ rica and WesternEurope. o o CO ■x New York . . ••• 32°.2 52°.5 72°. 9 39° 57' Philadelphia . ... 32°.2 52°.2 - 72°. 7 38° 53' Washington . . 36°.0 54°.9 - 7l°.l 9°. 3 r-H iO o O • • • ■ » * Naples . . 49°. 5 61°. 0 - 74°. 9 38° 52' • • • • Lisbon . . 52°. 2 61°. 5 - - 71°.l 29° 48' 30° 2' St. Augustin . • • • • Cairo . . 59°. 5 72°. 3 - 81°.5 58°. 5 71°.8 84°.6 o * o In the preceding table the number placed before the frac¬ tion represents the mean annual temperature, the numerator of the fraction, the mean winter temperature, and the deno¬ minator the mean summer temperature. Besides the more marked difference between the mean annual temperatures, there is also a very striking contrast between the opposite coasts in respect to the distribution of heat over the different seasons of the year ; and it is indeed this distribution which exerts the greatest influence on our bodily feelings and on the process of vegetation. Dove* makes the general remark, that * Temperatur -tafeln nebst Bemerkungen über die Verbreitung der Wärme auf der Oberfläche der Erde, 1848, s. 95. 102 VIEWS OF NATURE. tlie summer temperature of America is lower under equal de¬ grees of latitude than that of Europe. The climate of St. Pe- tersburgh (lat. 59° 56,), or to speak more correctly, the mean annual temperature of that city, is found on the eastern coast of America, in lat. 47° 30', or 12° 30' more to the south; and in like manner we find the climate of Königsberg (lat. 54° 43;) at Halifax in lat. 44° 39'. Toulouse (lat. 43° 36') corresponds in its thermic relations to Washington. It is very hazardous to attempt to obtain any general results respecting the distribution of heat in the United States of North America, since there are three regions to be dis¬ tinguished — 1, the region of the Atlantic States, east of the Alleghany s ; 2, the Western States, in the wide basin between the Alleghanys and the Ilocky Mountains, watered by the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Arkansas, and the Missouri ; and 3, the elevated plains between the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range of New California, through which the Oregon or Columbia river wends its course. Since the com¬ mendable establishment by John Calhoun of uninterrupted observations of temperature, made on a uniform plan, at thirty-five military stations, and reduced to diurnal, mensal, and annual means, we have attained more correct climatic views than were generally held in the time of Jefferson, Rarton, and Volney. These meteorological stations extend from the point of Florida and Thompson's Island (West Key), lat. 24° 33;, to the Council Bluffs on the Missouri; and if we reckon Fort Vancouver (lat. 45° 37'), among them, they in¬ clude a space extending over forty degrees of longitude. It cannot be affirmed that on the whole the second region has a higher mean annual temperature than the first, or Atlantic. The further advance towards the north of cer¬ tain plants on the western side of the Alleghanys, depends partly on the nature of those plants and partly on the differ¬ ent distribution through the seasons of the year of the same annual amount of heat. The broad valley of the Mississippi enjoys, at its northern extremity, the warming influence of the Canadian lakes, and at the south, that of the Mexican Gulf-Stream. These five lakes (Lakes Superior, Michigan, Hu¬ ron, Erie, and Ontario,) cover an area of 92,000 square miles. The climate is so much milder and more uniform in the vicinity of the lakes, that at Niagara, for instance (in 43° 15 ILLUSTRATIONS (18). CLIMATE OF AMERICA. 103 north lat.), the mean annual winter temperature is only half a degree below the freezing-point, whilst, at a distance from the lakes, in 44° 53' north lat. at Fort Snelling, near the conflu¬ ence of the river St. Peter with the Mississippi, the mean winter temperature is 15°. 8 Fahr.* At this distance from the Canadian lakes, whose surface is from five to upwards of six hundred feet above the sea's level, whilst the bottom of Lakes Michigan and Huron is five hundred feet beloio it, recent observations have shown that the climate of the country possesses the actual continental character of 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 on the Atlantic side.” At Fort Gibson, on the Arkansas river, which falls into the Mis¬ sissippi, in lat. 35° 47', where the mean annual temperature hardly equals that of Gibraltar, the thermometer was observed, in August, 1834, to rise to 117° Fahr, when in the shade, and without any reflected heat from the ground. The statements so frequently advanced, although unsup¬ ported by measurements, that since the first European settle¬ ments in New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the de¬ struction of many forests on both sides of the Alleglianys, has rendered the climate more equable, — making the winters milder and the summers cooler, — are now generally discredited. No series of thermometric observations worthy of confidence extend further back in the United States than seventy-eight years. We find from the Philadelphia observations that from 1771 to 1824, the mean annual heat has hardly risen 2°. 7 Fahr.; — an increase that may fairly be ascribed to the exten¬ sion of the town, its greater population, and to the numerous steam-engines. This annual increase of temperature may also be owing to accident, for in the same period I find that there was an increase of the mean winter temperature of 2° Fahr. ; but with this exception the seasons had all become somewhat warmer. Thirty-three years’ observations at Salem in Massa¬ chusetts show scarcely any difference, the mean of each one oscillating within 1° of Fahrenheit, about the mean of the whole number ; and the winters of Salem, instead of having been rendered more mild, as conjectured, from the eradication * See the admirable treatise by Samuel Forry, oil The Climate of the United States, 1842, pp. 37, 39, 102. 104 VIEWS OF NATURE. of the forests, have become colder by 4° Fahr, during the last thirty-three years.* As the east coast of the United States may be compared, in equal latitudes, with the Siberian and Chinese eastern coasts of Europe, in respect to mean annual temperature, so the western coasts of Europe and America have also very justly been compared together. I will here only adduce a few in¬ stances from the western region of the Pacific, for two of which, viz., Sitka, (New Archangel,) in Russian America, and Fort George, (having the same latitudes respectively as Got- tenburg and Geneva,) we are indebted to Admiral Lütke’s voyage of circumnavigation. Iluluk and Danzig are situated in about the same parallel of latitude, and although the mean temperature of Iluluk, owing to its insular climate and the cold sea current contiguous to it, is lower than that of Danzig, the winters of the former are milder than those of the Baltic city. Sitka . . . Lat. 57° 3' Long. 135° 16' W. 33°. 3 44°. 6 55°.0 Gottenburg . Lat. 57° 41' Long. 11° 59' E. 31°. 6 46°. 4 62°. 4 Fort George . Lat. 46° 18' Long. 123° 58' W. 37°. 8 50°. 2 60. °0 Geneva . . Lat. 46° 12' Altitude 129S feet 33°. 6 49°. 8 63°. 5 Cherson . . Lat. 46° 3S' Long. 32° 39' E. 25°. 0 53°.l 71°.0 Snow is hardly ever seen on the banks of the Oregon or Columbia river, and ice on the river lasts only a few days. The lowest temperature which Mr. Ball ever observed there (in 1838) was 18°. 4 Falir.f A cursory glance at the summer and * Forry, Op. Cit., pp. 97, 101, 107. + Message from the President of the United States to Congress, 1844, p. 160, and Forry, Op. Cit., pp. 49, 67, 73. ILLUSTRATIONS (18). CLIMATE OF AMERICA. 105 winter temperatures given above, suffices to show that a true- insular climate prevails on and near the western coasts ; whilst the winter cold is less considerable than in the western part of the old continent, the summers are much cooler. This contrast is made most apparent when we compare the mouth of the Oregon with Forts Snclling and Howard, and the Coun¬ cil Bluffs in the interior of the Mississippi and Missouri basin. (44° — 46° north lat.,) where, to speak with Buffon, we find an excessive or true continental climate, — a winter cold, which on some days is — 32° or even — 37° Fahr., followed by a mean summer's heat, which rises to 69° and 71°.4 Fahr. (19) p. 8. — “As if America had emerged later from the chaotic covering of waters A The acute natural inquirer Benjamin Smith Barton, ex¬ presses himself thus accurately :* — “ 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.” I have already elsewhere treated of this subject in a memoir on the primitive nations of America :f — “The remark has been too frequently made by authors of general and well-attested merit that America was in every sense of the word a new continent. The luxuriance of vegetation, the vast mass of waters in the rivers, and the continued activity of great volcanoes, confirm the fact (say these writers,) that the still agitated and humid earth is in a condition approximating more closely to the chaotic primordial state of our planet than the old continent. Such ideas appeared to me, long before my travels in those regions, no less unphilosophical than at variance with gene¬ rally acknowledged physical laws. These imaginary repre¬ sentations of an earlier age and a want of repose, and of the increase of dryness and inertia with the increased age of our globe, could only have been framed by those who seek to discover striking contrasts between the two hemispheres, and who do not endeavour to consider the construction of our ter¬ restrial planet from one grand and general point of view. Are we to regard the southern as more recent than the northern part of Italy, simply because the former is almost constantly disturbed by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? How * Fragments of the Nat. Hist, of Pennsylvania, P. I., p. 4. + See Neue Berlinische Monatschrift , Bd. xv., 1806, § 190. 106 VIEWS OF NATURE. inconsiderable, moreover, are tlie phenomena presented by our volcanoes and earthquakes, when compared with the convul¬ sions of nature which the geognosist must conjecture to have occurred in the chaotic condition of our globe, when mountain masses were upheaved, solidified, or cleft asunder ? Different causes must also occasion a diversity of effects in the forces of nature in parts of the earth remote from one another. The volcanoes in the new continent,” (of which I still count about twenty-eight.) “ may probably have continued longer active, because the high mountain ridges on which they are erupted in rows upon long fissures are nearer to the sea, and because this vicinity appears to modify the energy of the subterranean fire, in a manner which, with few exceptions, has not yet been explained. Besides, both earthquakes and fire-erupting moun¬ tains act periodically. At present” (this I wrote forty-two years ago,) “physical disquietude and political repose prevail in the new continent, whilst in the old continent the calm repose of nature is contrasted with the dissensions of different nations. The time may however come, when this strange contrast between physical and moral forces may change its theatre of action from one quarter of the world to another. Volca¬ noes enjoy centuries of repose between their manifestations of activity ; and the idea that in the older countries nature must be characterized by a certain repose and quietude, has no other foundation than in the mere caprice of the imagination. There exists no reason for assuming that one side of our planet is older or more recent than the other. Islands, as the Azores and many flat islands of the Pacific, which have been upheaved by volcanoes, or been gradually formed by coral animals, are indeed more recent than many plutonic formations of the European central chain. Small tracts of land, as Bohemia and Kashmeer, and many of the valleys in the moon, inclosed by a ring of mountains, may continue for a long time under the form of a sea, owing to partial inunda¬ tions, and after the flowing off of these inland waters, the bottom, on which plants would gradually manifest themselves, might indeed be figuratively regarded as of more recent origin. Islands have been connected together into continen¬ tal masses by upheaval, whilst other parts of the previously existing land have disappeared in consequence of the subsidence of the oscillating ground; but general submersions can, from hydrostatic laws, only be imagined as embracing simultane- ILLUSTRATIONS (20). SOUTHERN TEMPERATURE. 107 ously all parts of the earth. The sea cannot permanently submerge the vast lowlands of the Orinoco and the Amazon, without at the same time destroying our Baltic lands. More¬ over the succession and identity of the floetz strata, and of the organic remains of plants and animals belonging to the primitive world, inclosed in those strata, show that several great depositions have occurred almost simultaneously over the whole earth.”* (20) p. 8. — “ The Southern Hemisphere is cooler and more humid than the Northern .” Chili, Buenos Ayres, the southern part of Brazil, and Peru, enjoy the cool summers and mild winters of a true insular climate , owing to the narrowness and contraction of the continent towards the south. This advantage of the Southern Hemisphere is manifested as far as 48° or 50° south lat., but beyond that point, and nearer the Antarctic Pole, South America is an inhospitable waste. The different degrees of latitude at which the southern extremities of Australia, including Van Diemen's Island, of Africa, and America, ter¬ minate, give to each of these continents its peculiar character. The Straits of Magellan lie between the parallels of 53° and 54° south lat. ; and notwithstanding this, the thermometer falls to 41° Fahr, in the months of December and January, when the the sun is eighteen hours above the horizon. Snow falls almost daily in the lowlands, and the maximum of atmo¬ spheric heat observed by Churruca in 1788, during the month of December, and consequently in the summer of that region, did not exceed 52°.2 Fahr. The Cabo Pilar, whose turret-like rock is only 1394 feet in height, and which forms the south¬ ern extremity of the chain of the Andes, is situated in nearly the same latitude as Berlin. f Whilst in the Northern Hemisphere all continents fall, in their prolongation towards the Pole, within a mean limit, which corresponds tolerably accurately with 70°, the southern extremities of America, (in Tierra del Fuego, which is so * On the vegetable remains found in the lignite formations of the north of America and of Europe, compare Adolph Brongniart, Pro¬ drome d'une Hist, des Vegetaux Fossiles , p. 179, and Charles L jell’s Travels in North America, vol. ii., p. 20. + lielacion del Viage al Estrecho de Magallanes (Apendice, 1793), p. 70. VIEWS OF NATURE. 108 deeply indented by intersecting arms of the sea,) of Aus¬ tralia, and of Africa, are respectively 34°, 46°30' and 56° distant from the South Pole. The temperature of the unequal extents of ocean which separate these southern extremities from the icy Pole contributes essentially towards the modifica¬ tion of the climate. The areas of the dry land of the two hemispheres separated by the equator are as 3 to 1 . But this deficiency of continental masses in the Southern Hemisphere is greater in the temperate than in the torrid zone, the ratio being in the former at 13 to 1, and in the latter as 5 to 4. This great inequality in the distribution of dry land exerts a perceptible influence on the strength of the ascending atmospheric current, which turns towards the South Pole, and on the temperature of the Southern Hemisphere generali)’. Some of the noblest forms of tropical vegetation, as for instance tree-ferns, advance south of the equator to the parallels of from 46° to 53°, whilst to the north of the equator they do not occur beyond the tropic of Cancer.* Tree-ferns thrive admirably well at Hobart Town in Van Diemen’s Land (42° 53' lat.), with a mean annual temperature of 52°. 2 Fahr., and therefore on an iso¬ thermal line less by 3°. 6 Fahr, than that of Toulon. Rome, which is almost one degree of latitude further from the equator than Hobart Town, has an annual temperature of 59°. 7 Fahr. ; a winter temperature of 46°. 6 Fahr., and a summer tempera¬ ture of 86° Fahr. ; whilst in Hobart Town these three means are respectively 52°, 42°. 1, and 63° Fahr. In Dusky Bay, New Zealand, tree-ferns thrive in 46° 8' lat., and in the Auck¬ land and Campbell Islands in 53° lat.f In the Archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, having a mean winter temperature of 33° Fahr., and a mean summer tem¬ perature of only 50° Fahr., in the same latitude as Dublin, Captain King found “ vegetation thriving most luxuriantly in large woody-stemmed trees of Fuchsia and Veronica;” whilst this vigorous vegetation, which, especially on the western coast of America (in 38° and 40° south lat.), has been so picturesquely described by Charles Darwin, suddenly dis¬ appears south of Cape Horn, on the rocks of the Southern Orkney and Shetland Islands, and of the Sandwich Archipelago. Uhese islands, but scantily covered with grass, moss, and * See Robert Brown, Appendix to Flinders ’ Voyage, pp. 57 5, 584 ; and Humboldt, De Distributions Geographica Plantarum, pp. 81 — 85. t Jos. Hooker, Flora Antarct., 1844, p. 107. ILLUSTRATIONS (20). SOUTHERN TEMPERATURE. 109 Hebens, Terres de Desolation , as they have been called by French navigators, lie far to the north of the Antarctic Polar Circle; whilst in the Northern Hemisphere, in 70° lat., on the extremest verge of Scandinavia, fir-trees reach a height of more than 60 feet A' If we compare Tierra del Fuego, and more particularly Port Famine, in the Straits of Magellan, 53 0 38' lat., with Berlin, which is situated one degree nearer 38°. 9 the equator, we shall find for Berlin, 47°. 3 co0‘ ; and for 34°. 7 , bl 0 Port Famine, 42°. 6 ^qcTq Fahr. I subjoin the few certain data of temperature which we at present possess of the tempe¬ rate zones of the Southern Hemisphere, and which may be compared with the temperatures of northern regions in which the distribution of summer heat and winter cold is so unequal. I make use of the convenient mode of notation already explained in which the number standing before the fraction indicates the mean annual temperature, the numerator the winter, and the denominator the summer temperature. Places. South Mean Annual, Winter, and Latitude. Summer Temperatures. Sydney and Paramatta (New Holland) . . 33° 50' 64°. 6 54°. 5 77°. 5 58°.5 Cape Town (Africa) . 33° 55' 65°. 7 — 73°. 2 52°. 5 Buenos Ayres . . . 34° 17' 62°. 4 — 73°. 0 Monte Video . . . 34° 54/ 67° 57°.4 77°. 5 Plobart Town (Van 42°. 1 Diemen’s Land) 42° 45' 52°. 5 — 63°. 0 Port Famine (Straits of 34°. 7 Magellan) .... oo CO o CO 42°. 6 — 50°. 0 * Compare Darwin in the Journal of Researches, 1845, p. 244, with Kinginvol. i. of the Narr, of the Voyages of the Adventure and the Beagle , p. 577. 110 VIEWS OF NATURE. (21) p. 9. — “ One connected sea of sandy As we may regard the social Erica as furnishing one con¬ tinuous vegetable covering spread over the earth’s surface, from the mouth of the Scheldt to the Elbe, and from the ex¬ tremity of Jutland to the Harz mountains, so may we likewise trace the sea of sand continuously through Africa and Asia, from Cape Blanco to the further side of the Indus, over an extent of 5,600 miles. The sandy region mentioned by Herodotus, which the Arabs call the Desert of Sahara, and which is interrupted by oases, traverses the whole of Africa like a dried arm of the sea. The valley of the Nile is the eastern boundary of the Lybian desert. Beyond the Isthmus of Suez and the porphyritic, syenitic, and greenstone rocks of Sinai begins the Desert mountain plateau of Nedschd, which occupies the whole interior of the Arabian Peninsula, and is bounded to the west and south by the fruitful and more highly favoured coast-lands of Hedschaz and Hadhramaut. The Euphrates forms the eastern boundary of the Arabian and Syrian desert. The whole of Persia, from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean, is intersected by immense tracts of sand ( bcjaban ), among which we may reckon the soda and potash Deserts of Kerman, Seistan, Beludschistan, and Mekran. The last of these barren wastes is separated by the Indus from the Desert of Moultan. (22) p. 9. — “ The western portion of Mount Atlas T The question of the position of the Atlas of the ancients has often been agitated in our own day. In making this inquiry, ancient Phoenician traditions are confounded with the state¬ ments of the Creeks and Romans regarding Mount Atlas at a less remote period. The elderProfessor Ideler, who combined a profound knowledge of languages with that of astronomy and mathematics, was the first to throw light on this obscure sub¬ ject; and I trust I may be pardoned if I insert the communi¬ cations with which I have been favoured by this enlightened observer. “ The Phoenicians ventured at a very early period in the world’s history to penetrate beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. They founded Gades and Tartessuson the Spanish, and Lixus, together with many other cities on the Mauritanian coasts of the Atlantic Ocean. They sailed northward along these shores ILLUSTRATIONS (22). MOUNT ATLAS. m to the Cassiterides, from whence they obtained tin, and to the Prussian coasts where they procured amber found there; whilst southward they penetrated as far as Madeira and the Cape de Yerd Islands. Amongst other regions they visited the Archipelago of the Canary Isles, where their attention was arrested by the Peak of Teneriffe, whose great height appears to be even more considerable than it actually is from the circumstance of the mountain projecting directly from the sea. Through their colonies established in Greece, especially under Cadmus in Boeotia, the Greeks were made acquainted with the existence of this mountain which soared high above the region of clouds, and with the ‘Fortunate Islands’ on which this mountain was situated, and which were adorned ■with fruits of all kinds, and particularly with the golden orange. By the transmission of this tradition through the songs of the bards, Homer became acquainted with these remote regions, and he speaks of an Atlas to whom all the depths of ocean are known, and who bears upon his shoulders the great columns which separate from one another the hea¬ vens and the earth,' * * * § and of the Elysian Plains , described as a wondrously beautiful land in the west.’‘f Hesiod expresses himself in a similar manner regarding Atlas, whom he repre¬ sents as the neighbour of the Hesperides.j The Elysian Plains, which he places at the western limits of the earth, he terms the ‘ Islands of the Blessed. ’§ Later poets have still further embellished these myths of Atlas, the Hesperides, their golden apples, and the Islands of the Blessed, which are destined to be the abode of good men after death, and have connected them with the expeditions of the Tyrian God of Commerce, Melicertes, the Hercules of the Greeks. “ The Greeks did not enter into rivalship with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians in the art of navigation until a com¬ paratively late period. They indeed visited the shores of the Atlantic, but they never appear to have advanced very far. It is doubtful whether they had penetrated as far as the Canary Isles and the Peak of Teneriffe ; but be this as it may, they were aware that Mount Atlas, which their poets had described * OcL, i. 52, + II., iv. 561. X Theog., v. 517. § Op. et Dies ; v. 167. 112 VIEWS OF NATURE. as a very high mountain situated on the western limits of the earth, must be sought on the western coast of Africa. This too was the locality assigned to it by their later geographers Strabo, Ptolemy, and others. As however no mountain of any great elevation was to be met with in the north-west of Africa, much perplexity was entertained regarding the actual position of Mount Atlas, which was sought sometimes on the coast, sometimes in the interior of the country, and sometimes in the vicinity of the Mediterranean, or further southward, fn the first century of the Christian era, when the armies of Rome had penetrated to the interior of Mauritania and Numidia, it was usual to give the name of Atlas to the mountain chain which traverses Africa from west to east in a parallel direction with the Mediterranean. Pliny and Solinus were both, how¬ ever, fully aware that the description of Atlas given by the Gi •cek and Roman poets did not apply to this mountain range, and they therefore deemed it expedient to transfer the site of Mount Atlas, which they described in picturesque terms, in accordance with poetic legends, to the terra incognita of Cen¬ tral Africa. The Atlas of Homer and Hesiod can, therefore, be none other than the Peak of Teneriffe, while the Atlas of Greek and Roman geographers must be sought in the north of Africa. ” I will only venture to add the following remarks to the learned explanations of Professor Ideler. According to Pliny and Solinus, Atlas rises from the midst of a sandy plain (c medio arenarum ), and its declivity affords pasture to ele¬ phants, which have undoubtedly never been known in Tene- riffe. That which we now term Atlas is a long mountain ridge. How could the Romans have recognised one isolated conical elevation in this mountain range of Herodotus? May the cause not be ascribed to the optical illusion by which every mountain chain, when seen laterally from an oblique point of view, appears to be of a narrow and conical form ? I have often, when at sea, mistaken long mountain ranges for isolated mountains. According to Höst, Mount Atlas is covered with perpetual snow near Morocco. Its elevation must therefore be upwards of 11,500 feet at that particular spot. It seems to me very remarkable that the barbarians, the ancient Mauritanians, if we are to believe the testimony of Pliny, called Mount Atlas Dgris. This mountain chain ILLUSTRATIONS (22). MOUNT ATLAS. 113 is still called by the Arabs Daran , a word that is almost identical in its consonants with Dyris. Hornius,* on the other hand, thinks that he recognises the term Dyris in the word Ayadyrma , the name applied by the Guanches to the Peak of Teneriffe.f As our present geological knowledge of the mountainous parts of North Africa, which, however, must be admitted to be very limited, does not make us acquainted with any traces of volcanic eruptions within historic times, it seems the more remarkable that so many indications should be found in the writings of the Ancients of a belief in the existence of such phenomena in the Western Atlas and the contiguous west coast of the continent. The streams of fire so often mentioned in Hanno' s Ship's Journal might indeed have been tracks of burning grass, or beacon fires lighted by the wild inhabitants of the coasts as a signal to warn each other of threatening danger on the first appearance of hostile vessels. The high summit of the “ Chariot of the Gods,” of which Hanno speaks (the Qeu>v bxvpa), may also have had some faint reference to the Peak of Teneriffe; but farther on he describes a singular configuration of the land. He finds in the gulf, near the Western Horn, a large island, in which there is a salt lake, which again contains a smaller island. South of the Bay of the Gorilla Apes the same conformation is re¬ peated. Does he refer to coral structures, lagoon islands (Atolls), and to volcanic crater lakes, in the middle of which a conical mountain has been upheaved ? The Triton Lake was not in the neighbourhood of the lesser Syrtis, but on the western shores of the Atlantic.! The lake disappeared in an earth¬ quake, which was attended with great fire-eruptions. Dio¬ dorus § says expressly irvpbg er^vriiyaTa yeydXa. But the most wonderful configuration is ascribed to the hollow Atlas, in a passage hitherto but little noticed in one of the philosophical * De Originibus A mericanornm, p. 195. f On the connexion of purely mythical ideas and geographical tra¬ ditions, and on the manner in which the Titan Atlas gave occasion to the image of a mountain beyond the Pillars of Hercules supporting the heavens, see Letronne, Essai sur les Ide.es cosmographiqv.es qui se rattachent au norn d’ Atlas, in Ferussac’s Bulletin universel des Sciences, Mars 1831, p. 10. J A sie centrale, t. i., p. 179. § Lib. iii., 53, 55. I 114 VIEWS OF NATURE. Dialexes of Maximus Tyrius, a Platonic philosopher who lived in Rome under Commodus. His Atlas is situated “ on the continent where the Western Lybians inhabit a projecting peninsula.” The mountain has a deep semi-circular abyss on the side nearest the sea ; and its declivities are so steep that they cannot be descended. The abyss is filled with trees, and “ one looks down upon their summits and the fruits they bear as if one were looking into a well.”* * * § The description is so minute and graphic that it no doubt sprung from the recollection of some actual view. (23) p. 9. — “ The Mountains of the Moon , Djebel-al-Komr The Mountains of the Moon described by Ptolemy ,f otXrivqQ opor, form on our older maps a vast uninterrupted mountain chain, traversing the whole of Africa from east to west. The existence of these mountains seems certain ; but their extent, their distance from the equator, and their mean direction, still remain problematical. I have indicated in another work | the manner in which a more intimate acquaintance with Indian idioms and the ancient Persian or Zend teaches us that a part of the geographical nomenclature of Ptolemy con¬ stitutes an historical memorial of the commercial relations that existed between the West and the remotest regions of Southern Asia and Eastern Africa. The same direction of ideas is apparent in relation to a subject that has very recently become a matter of investigation. It is asked, whether the great geographer and astronomer of Pelusium merely meant in the denomination of Mountains of the Moon (as in that of “ Island of Barley,” (Jabadiu, Java) to give the Greek translation of the native name of those mountains; whether, as is most probable, El-Istachri, Edrisi, Ibn-al- Vardi, and other early Arabian geographers, simply trans¬ ferred the Ptolemaic nomenclature into their own language; or whether similarity in the sound of the word and the manner in which it was written misled them ? In the notes to the translation of Abd-Allatif’s celebrated description of Egypt, my great teacher, Silvestre de Sacy,§ expressly says, The * Maximus Tyrius, viii., 7, ed. Markland. 4 Lib. iv., cap. 9. Z Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 559. Bolm’s ed.. § Edition de 1S10, pp. 7, 353. ILLUSTRATIONS (23). MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON. 115 name of the mountains regarded by Leo Africanus as furnish¬ ing the sources of the Nile, has generally been rendered ‘ Mountains of the Moon,’ and I have adhered to the same practice. I do not know whether the Arabs originally bor¬ rowed this denomination from Ptolemy. It may indeed be inferred that at the present day they understand the word in the sense of moon , pronouncing it kamar; I do not think however, that such was the practice of the older Arabs, who pronounced it komr, as has been proved by Makrizi. Aboul- feda positively rejects the opinion of those who would adopt the pronunciation kamar, and derive the word from the name of the moon. As, according to the author of Kamous, the word komr , considered as the plural of , signifies an object of a greenish or dirty white colour, it would appear that some authors have supposed that this mountain derived its name from its colour.” The learned Reinaud, in his recent excellent translation of Abulfeda (t. ii., p. i., pp. 81, 82), regards it as probable that the Ptolemaic interpretation of the name of Mountains of the Moon (op?? <jt\>]vala) was that originally adopted by the Arabs. He observes that in the Moschtarek of Yakut, and in Ibn-Said, the mountain is written al-Komr, and that Yakut writes in a similar manner the name of the Island of Zendj (Zanguebar). The Abyssinian traveller Beke, in his learned and critical treatise on the Nile and its tributaries,*' endea¬ vours to prove that Ptolemy, in his (rtXnvtjg öpog, merely fol¬ lowed the native name, for the knowledge of which he was indebted to the extensive commercial intercourse which then existed. He says, “ Ptolemy knew that the Nile rises in the mountainous district of Moezi, and in the languages which are spoken over a great part of Southern Africa (as, for in¬ stance, in Congo, Monjou, and Mozambique), the word moezi signifies the moon. A large tract of country situated in the south-west was called Mono-Muezi, or Mani-Moezi, i.e., ■ the land of the King of Moezi (or Moon-land); for in the same family of languages in which moezi or muezi signifies the moon, mono or mani signifies a king. Alvarezf speaks * See Journal of the Royal Geographical Society cf London, vol. xvii., 1847, pp. 74 — 7G. t Viaggio nella Etlnovia (Ramusio, vol. i., p. 249). i 2 116 VIEWS OF NATURE. of the ‘ regno di Manicongo,’ or territory of the king of Congo.” Beke’s opponent, Ayrton, seeks the sources of the White Nile (Bahr el-Abiad), not as do Arnaud, Werne, and Beke, near the equator, or south of it (in 31° 22' E. long, from Greenwich), but far to the north-east, as does Antoine d’Abbadie, in the Godjeb and Gibbe of Eneara (Iniara), therefore in the high mountains of Habesch, in 7° 20' north lat., and 35° 221 east long, from Greenwich. He is of opinion that the Arabs, from a similarity of sound, may have inter^ preted the native name Gamaro, which was applied to the Abyssinian mountains lving south-west of Gaka, and in which, the Godjeb (or White Nile) takes its rise, to signify a moun¬ tain of the moon (Djebel al-Ivamar); so that Ptolemy himself, who was familiar with the intercourse existing; between Abys- sinia and the Indian Ocean, may have adopted the Semitic interpretation, as given by the descendants of the early Arab immigrants. ^ The lively interest which has recently been felt in England for the discovery of the most southern sources of the Nile in¬ duced the Abyssinian traveller above referred to, (Charles Beke) at a recent meeting of the “ British Association for the advancement of Science,” held at Swansea, more fully to develope his ideas respecting the connection between the Mountains of the Moon and those of Habesch. “ The Abys¬ sinian elevated plain,” he says, “generally above 8000 feet high, extends towards the south to nearly 9° or 10° north lati¬ tude. The eastern declivity of the highlands has, to the in¬ habitants of the coast, the appearance of a mountain chain. The plateau, which diminishes considerably in height towards its southern extremity, passes into the Mountains of the Moon, which run not east and west, but parallel to the coast, or from N.N.E. to S.S.W., extending from 10° north to 5° south latitude. The sources of the White Nile are situated in the Mono-Moezi country,, probably in 2° 30' south latitude, 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 Dr. Krapf * Compare Ayrton, in the Journal of the Royal Geog. Soc., vol. xviii., 1848, pp. 53, 55, 59—63, with Ferd. Werne’s instructive Exped. zur Entd. der Nil-Quellen, 1848, s. 534—536. ILLUSTRATIONS (23). SOURCES OF THE NILE. 117 were still on the coast of Mombaza. They have established in the vicinity, among the Wakamba tribe, a missionary station, called Rabbay Empie, which seems likely to be very useful for geographical discoveries. Families of the Wakamba tribe have advanced westward 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° south lat.?), and the vicinal sources of the Nile. The expedition to these sources, which Friedrich Bialloblotzky, of Hanover, is preparing to undertake” (by the advice of Ecke), “is to start 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 9U north lat., above the mouth of the Godjeb or Sobat.” Russegger's scientific expedition — undertaken in 1837 and 1838, in consequence of Mehemed Ali's eager desire to parti¬ cipate in the gold washings of Fazokl on the Blue (Green) Nile, Bahr el-Azrek — has rendered the existence of a Mountain of the Moon very doubtful. The Blue Nile, the Astapus of Ptolemy, rising from Lake Coloe (now called Lake Tzana), winds through the colossal Abyssinian range of mountains; while to the south-west there appears a far extended tract of low land. The three exploring expeditions which the Egyptian Government sent from Chartum to the confluence of the Blue and the White Nile (the first under the command of Selim Bimbaschi, in November, 1839; the next, which was attended by the French engineers Arnaud, Sabatier, and Thibaut, in the autumn of 1840; and the third, in the month of August, 1841), first removed some of the obscurity which had hitherto shrouded our knowledge of the high mountains, which between the parallels of 6" — 4°, and probably still further southward, extend first from west to east, and subsequently from north-west to south-east, towards 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 11° 20' north lat., where Gebel Abul and Gcbel Kutak rise to the height of 3623 feet. The high land continued to approach the river more to the south from 4° 4-7 north lat. to the parallel of the Island of Tchenker in 4° 4!, near the point at which terminated the expedition commanded by Selim and Feizulla Effendi. The shallow river breaks its way through v O 118 VIEWS OF NATURE. the rocks, and separate mountains again rise in the land of Bari to the height of more than 3200 feet. These are pro¬ bably a part of the Mountains of the Moon, as they are given in our most recent maps, although they are not covered with perpetual snow, as asserted by Ptolemy.* * * § The line of per¬ petual snow would assuredly not be found in these parallels of latitude below an elevation of nearly 15,500 feet above the sea's level. It is not improbable that Ptolemy extended the knowledge he may have possessed of the high mountains of Habesch, near Upper Egypt and the Red Sea, to the country of the sources of the White Nile. In Godjam, Kaffa, Miecha, and Sami, the Abyssinian mountains rise from 10,000 to nearly 15,000 feet, as we learn from exact measurements; (not according to those of Bruce, who gives to Chartum an elevation of 5041 feet, instead of the true height, 1524 feet!) Riippell, who ranks amongst the most accurate observers of the present day, found Abba Jarat (in 13° 10* north lat.) onlv 70 feet below the elevation of Mont Blanc. + The same %> i observer states that a plain, elevated 13,940 feet above the Red Sea, was barely covered with a thin layer of freshly killen snow.t The celebrated inscription of Adulis, which, according to Niebuhr, is of somewhat later date than the age of Juba and Augustus, speaks of “Abyssinian snow that reaches to the knee,” and affords, I believe, the most ancient record in antiquity of snow within the tropics, § as the Paro- panisus is 12° lat. north of that limit. Zimmermann’s map of the district of the Upper Nile shows the dividing line where the basin of the great river termi¬ nates in the south-east, and which separates it from the domain of the rivers belonging to the Indian Ocean, viz. ; from the Doara which empties itself north of Magadoxo ; from the Teb on the amber coast of Ogda; from the Goschop whose abundant waters are derived from the confluence of the Gibu and the Zebi, and which must be distinguished from the Godjeb, rendered celebrated since 1839 by Antoine d’Abba- die, Beke, and the Missionary Krapf. In a letter to Carl Ritter I hailed with the most lively joy the appearance of the * Lib. iv., cap. 9. 4 See Riippell, Beisein Abyssinien, bd. i., s. 414; bd. ii., s. 443. 4 Humboldt, A sie centrale, t. iii., p. 272. § Op. cit., t. iii., p. 235. ILLUSTRATIONS (23). SOURCES OF TITE ]S ILE. 119 combined results of tlie recent travels of Beke, Krapf, Isen- berg, Russegger, Rüppel, Abbadie, and Werne, as ably and comprehensively brought together in 1843 by Zimmermann. “ If a prolonged span of life,” I wrote to him, “ bring with it many inconveniences to the individual himself, and some to those about him, it yields a compensation in the mental enjoy¬ ment, afforded by comparing the earlier state of our knowledge with its more recent condition, and of seeing the growth and development of many branches of science that had long con¬ tinued torpid, or whose actual fruits hypercriticism may even have attempted to set aside. This genial enjoyment has from time to time fallen to our lot in our geographical studies, and more especially in reference to those portions of which we could hitherto only speak with a certain timid hesitation. The internal configuration and articulation of a continent depends in its leading characters on several plastic relations which are usually among the latest to be elucidated. A new and excellent work of our friend, Carl Zimmermann, on the district of the Upper Nile and of the eastern portions of Central Africa, has made me more vividly sensible of these considerations. This new map indicates, in the clearest man¬ ner, by means of a special mode of shading, all that still remains unknown, and all that by the courage and per¬ severance of travellers of all nations (among which our own countrymen happily play an important part), has already been disclosed to us. We may regard it as alike im¬ portant and useful that the actual condition of our know¬ ledge, should, at different periods, be graphically represented by men well acquainted with the existing and often widely scattered materials of knowledge, and who not merely de¬ lineate and compile, but who know how to compare, select, and, where it is practicable, test the routes of travellers by astronomical determinations of place. Those who have con¬ tributed as much to the general stock of knowledge as you have done, have indeed an especial right to expect much, since their combinations have greatly increased the number of con¬ necting points ; yet I scarcely think that when, in the year 1822, you executed your great work on Africa, you could have anticipated so many additions as we have received.” It must be admitted that, in some cases, we have only' acquired a knowledge of rivers, their direction, their branches, and 120 VIEWS OE NATURE. their numerous synonymes according to various languages and dialects; but the courses of rivers indicate the configura¬ tion of the surface of the earth, and exert a threefold influence' they promote vegetation, facilitate general intercourse, and are pregnant with the future destiny of man. The northern course of the White Nile, and the south¬ eastern course of the great Goschop, show that both rivers are separated by an elevation of the surface of the earth: although we are as yet but imperfectly acquainted with the manner in which such an elevation is connected with the highlands of Iiabesch, or how it may be prolonged in a southerly direction beyond the equator. Probably, and this is also the opinion of my friend Carl Hitter, the Lupata Mountains, which, according to the excellent Wilhelm Peters, extend to 26° south lat., are connected by means of the Mountains of the Moon with this northern swelling of the earth’s surface (the Abyssinian Highlands). Lupata , according to the last-named African traveller, signifies, in the language of Tette, closed , when used as an adjective. This mountain- range which is only intersected by some few rivers would thus be the closed or barred. “The Lupata chain of the Portuguese writers,” says Peters, “is situated about 90 leagues from the mouth of the Zambeze, and has an elevation of little more than 2000 feet. This mural chain has a direction due north and south, although it frequently deflects to the east or the west. It is sometimes interrupted by plains. Along the coast of Zanzibar the traders in the interior appear to be acquainted with this long, but not very high range, which extends between 6° and 26° south lat. to the Factory of Lourenzo- Marques on the Rio de Espirito Santo (in the Delagoa Bay of the English). The further the Lupata chain extends to the south, the nearer it approaches the coast, until at Lourenzo- Marques it is only 15 leagues distant from it.” (24) p. 10 — “ The consequence of the great rotatory movement of the ivatersT The waters of the northern part of the Atlantic between Europe, Northern Africa, and the New Continent, are agitated by a continually recurring gyratory movement. Under the tropics the general current to which the term rotation -stream might appropriately be given in consideration of the cause ILLUSTRATIONS (24). THE GULF STREAM. 121 from which it arises, moves, as is well known, like the trade wind from east to west. It accelerates the navigation of vessels sailing from the Canary Isles to South America ; while it is nearly impossible to pursue a straight course against the current from Carthagena de Indias to Cumana. This bend to the west, attributed to the trade winds, is accelerated in the Caribbean Sea by a much stronger movement, which originates in a very remote cause, discovered as early as 1560 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and confirmed in 1832 by llen- nell. The Mozambique current, flowing from north to south between Madagascar and the eastern coast of Africa, sets on the Lagullas Bank, and bends to the north of it round the southern point of Africa. After advancing with much violence along the western coast of Africa beyond the equator to the island of St. Thomas, it gives a north-westerly direction to a portion of the waters of the South Atlantic, causing them to strike Cape St. Augustin, and follow the shores of Guiana beyond the mouth of the Orinoco, the Boca del Drago, and the coast of Paria. f The New Continent from the Isthmus of Panama to the northern part of Mexico forms a dam or barrier against the movements of the sea. Owing to this obstruc¬ tion the current is necessarily deflected in a northerly direc¬ tion at Yeragua, and made to follow the sinuosities of the coast-line from Costa Ilica, Mosquitos, Campeche, and Tabasco. The waters which enter the Mexican Gulf between Cape Catoclie of Yucatan, and Cape San Antonio de Cuba, force their way back into the open ocean north of the Straits of Bahama, after they have been agitated by a great rota¬ tory movement between Vera Cruz, Tamiagna, the mouth of the Bio Bravo del Norte, and the Mississippi. Here they form a warm, rapid current, known to mariners as the Gulf Stream, which deflects in a diagonal direction further and further from the shores of North America. Ships bound for this coast from Europe, and uncertain of their geographical longitude, are enabled by this oblique direction of the current to regulate their course as soon as they reach the Gulf Stream by observations of latitude only. The bearings of this current were first accurately determined by Franklin, Wil¬ liams, and Pownall. * Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. iii. p. 14. + Rennell, Investigation of the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean , 1832, pp. 96, 136. 122 VIEWS OF NATURE. From the parallel of 41° north lat. this stream of warm water follows an easterly direction, gradually diminishing in rapidity as it increases in breadth. It almost touches the southern edge of the Great Newfoundland Bank, where I found the greatest amount of difference between the temperature of the waters of the Gulf Stream and those exposed to the cooling action of the banks. Before the warm current reaches the Western Azores it separates into two branches, one of which turns at certain seasons of the year towards Ireland and Norway, while the other flows in the direction of the Canary Isles and the western coast of Northern Africa. The course of this Atlantic current, which I have described more fully in the first volume of my travels in the regions of the tropics, affords an explanation of the manner in which, notwithstanding the action of the trade winds, stems of the South American and West Indian dicotyledons have been found on the coasts of the Canary Islands. I made many observations on the temperature of the Gulf Stream in the vicinity of the Newfoundland Bank. This current bears the warmer water of lower latitudes with great rapidity into more northern regions. The temperature of the stream is therefore from about 4°^ to 7° Fahr, higher than that of the contiguous and unmoved water which constitutes the shore as it were of the warm oceanic current. The flying-fish of the equinoctial zone ( Exocetus volitans ), is borne by its predilection for the warmth of the water of the Gulf Stream far to the north of the temperate zone. Floating sea-weed ( Fucus natans ), chiefly taken up by the stream in the Mexican Gulf, makes it easy for the navigator to recognize when he has entered the Gulf Stream, whilst the position of the branches of the sea¬ weed indicate the direction of the current. The mainmast of the English ship of war, the Tilbury, which was destroyed by fire in the seven years’ war on the coasts of Saint Domingo, was carried by the Gulf Stream to the northern coasts of Scotland: and casks filled with palm-oil, the remains of the cargo of an English ship wrecked on a rock off Cape Lopez in Africa, were in like manner carried to Scotland, after having twice traversed the Atlantic Ocean, once from east to west between 2° and 12® north lat., following the course of the equinoctial current, and once from west to east between 45° and 55° north lat. by help of the Gulf Stream. Itennell, in ILLUSTRATIONS (24). THE GULP STREAM. 123 the work already referred to, p. 347, relates the voyage of a bottle inclosing a written paper which had been thrown from the English ship Newcastle in 38° 52' north lat., and 63° 58' wrest long., on the 20tli of January, 1819, and which was first seen on the 2nd of June, 1820, at the Rosses in the north-west of Ireland, near the Island of Arran. Shortly before my arrival at Teneriffe a stem of South American cedar-wood ( Cedrela odorata ), thickly covered with lichens, was cast ashore near the harbour of Santa Cruz. The effects of the Gulf Stream in stranding on the Azorean Islands of Fayal, Flores, and Corvo, bamboos, artificially cut pieces of wood, trunks of an unknown species of pine from Mexico or the West Indies, and corpses of men of a peculiar race, having very broad faces, have mainly contributed to the discovery of America, as they confirmed Columbus in his belief of the existence of Asiatic countries and islands situated in the west. The great discoverer even heard from a settler on the Cap de la Yerga in the Azores “ that persons in sailing west¬ ward had met vTith covered barks, which were managed by men of foreign appearance, and appeared to be constructed in such a manner that they could not sink, almadias con casa moveclha qne nunca se Kunden .” There are well authenticated proofs, however much the facts may have been called in question, that natives of America (probably Esquimaux from Greenland or Labrador), were carried by currents or streams from the north- wrest to our own continent. James Wallace*1 relates that in the year 1682 a Greenlander in his canoe wras seen on the southern extremity of the Island of Eda by many persons, who could not, however, succeed in reaching him. In 1684a Greenland fisherman appeared near the Island of Westram. In the church at Burra there was suspended an Esquimaux boat, which had been driven on shore by currents and storms. The inhabitants of the Orkneys call the Green¬ landers who have appeared amongst them Finnmen. In Cardinal Bembo’s History of Venice I find it stated, that in the year 1508 a small boat, manned by seven persons of a foreign aspect, was captured near the English coast by a French ship. The description given of them applies perfectly to the form of the Esquimaux ( homines erant septem mediocri statura, colore subobscuro , lato et patente vidtu , cicatriceque unci * Account of the Islands of Orkney (1700), p. 60. 124 VIEWS OF NATURE. violacea signato). No one understood their language. Their clothing was made of fish skins sewn together. On their heads they wore coronam e culmo pictam, septem quasi auricuhs intextam. They ate raw flesh, and drank blood as we would wine. Six of these men perished during the voyage, and the seventh, a youth, was presented to the King of France, who was then at Orleans.* * * § The appearance of men called Indians on the coasts of Germany under the Othos and Frederic Barbarossa in the tenth and twelfth centuries, and as Cornelius Nepos (in his Frag¬ ments ),f Pomponius Mela,;}; and Pliny§ relate, when Quintus Metcllus Celer was Proconsul in Gaul, may be explained by similar effects of oceanic currents and by the long continuance of north-westerly winds. A king: of the Boii, or, as others say, of the Suevi, gave these stranded dark-coloured men to JMetellus Celer. Gomara|| regards these Indian subjects of the King of the Boii as natives of Labrador, lie writes, Si ya no fliesen de Tierra del Labrador, y los tuviesen los Romanos por Indianos enganados cn el color. It may be inferred that the appearance of Esquimaux on the northern shores of Europe was more frequent in earlier times, for we learn from the investigations of Bask and Finn Magnusen, that this race had spread in the eleventh and twelfth century in considerable numbers, under the name of Skrälingers, from Labrador as far south as the Good Vinland, i.e. the shore of Massachussets and Connecticut.^! As the winter cold of the most northern part of Scandinavia is ameliorated by the action of the Gulf Stream, which carries American tropical fruits (as cocoa-nuts, seeds of Mimosa scandens and Anacardium occidental) beyond G2° north lat. ; so also Iceland enjoys from time to time the genial influence of the diffusion of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream far to the northward. The sea coasts of Iceland, like those of the Faroe Isles, receive a large number of trunks of * Bembo, Historien Venetce, ed. 1718, lib. vii. p. 257. + Ed. Van. Staveren, cur. Bardili, t. ii. 1820, p. 356. X Lib. iii, cap. 5, § 8. § Hist. Hat. ii. 67. II Historia Gen. de las Indicts. Saragossa, 1553, fol. vii. H See Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 604 (Bohn’s ed.) and Examen critique de MI ist. de la G eographie, t. ii. pp. 247 — 278. ILLUSTRATIONS (26), ANIMALS YIELDING MILK. 125 trees, driven thither from America; and this drift-wood, which formerly came in greater abundance, was used for the purposes of building, and cut into boards and laths. The fruits of tropical plants collected on the Icelandic shores, especially between Raufarhaven and Vapnafiord, show that the movement of the water is from a southerly direction.^ (25) p. 10. — “ Lecidece and other Lichens.'' In northern regions, the absence of plants is compensated for by the covering of Bceomyces rose us. Cenomyce rangiferi- nus, Lecidea muscorum , Lecidea icmadophila , and other cryp- togamia which are spread over the earth, and which may be said to prepare the way for the growth of grasses and other herbaceous plants. In the tropical world, where mosses and lichens are only observed to abound in shady places, some few oily plants supply the place of the lowly lichen. (26) p. 11. — “ The Care of Animals yielding milk. — Buins of the Aztek fortress." The two oxen already named, Bos americanus and Bos moschatus , are peculiar to the northern part of the American continent. But the natives — Queis neque mos, neque cultus erat, nee. jüngere tauros Yirg. iEn. i. 316. drank the fresh blood, and not the milk, of these animals. Some few exceptions have indeed been met with, but only among tribes who at the same time cultivated maize. I have already observed that Gomara speaks of a people in the north-west of Mexico who possessed herds of tame bisons, and derived their clothing, food, and drink from these animals. This drink was probably the blood, f for, as I have frequently remarked, a dislike of milk, or at least the absence of its use, appears before the arrival of Europeans to have been common to all the natives of the New Continent, as well as to the inhabitants of China and Cochin China, notwith¬ standing their great vicinity to true pastoral tribes. The herds of tame lamas which were found in the highlands of Quito, Peru, and Chili, belonged to a settled and agricultural * Sartorius von Waltershausen, Physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, s. 22—35. T Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. iii. p. 416. 126 VIEWS OE NATURE. population. Pedro de Ciecja de Leon* seems to imply, although assuredly as a very rare exception to the general mode of life, that lamas were employed on the Peruvian moun¬ tain plain of Callao for drawing the plough, f Ploughing was, however, generally conducted in Peru by men only.j Barton has made it appear probable that the American buffalo had from an early period been reared among some West Canada tribes on account of its flesh and hide.§ In Peru gnd Quito the lama is nowhere found in its original wild condition. According to the statements made to me by the natives, the lamas on the western declivity of the Chimborazo became wild at the time when Lican. the ancient residence of the rulers of Quito, was laid in ashes. In Central Peru, in the Ceja de la Montana, cattle have in like manner become completely wild ; a small but daring race that often attacks the Indians. The natives call them “ Yacas del Monte ” or“Vacas Cimarronas.”|| Cuvier's assertion that the lama had descended from the guanaco, still in a wild state, which had unfortunately been extensively propagated by the admir¬ able observer, Meyen,^ has now been completely refuted by Tschudi. The Lama, the Paco or Alpaca, and the Guanaco are three originally distinct species of animals.** The Guanaco (Hua- nacu in the Qquichua 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 height. Herds of Llamas, when as numerous as I have seen them on the elevated plateaux between Quito and Itiobamba, are a great ornament to the landscape. The Moromoro of Chili appears to be a mere variety of the lama. The different species of camel-like sheep found still wild at elevations of from 13,000 to upwards of 16,000 feet above the level of the sea, are the Yicufia, the Guanaco, and the Alpaca ; of these the two latter species are also found tame, although this is but rarely the * Chronica del Peru, Sevilla, 1553, cap. 110, p. 264. + See Gay, Zoologia de Chili, M ami f er os, 1847, p. 154. t See the Inca Garcilaso, Commentaries reales, P. 1, lib. v. cap. 2, p. 133; and Prescott, Hist, of the Conquest of Pern, 1847, vol. i. p. 136. § Fragments of the Nat. Hist, of Pennsylvania, P. 1, p. 4. II Tschudi, Fauna Peruana, s. 256. "II Pieise um die Erde, th. iii. s. 64. ** Tschudi, s. 22*. 237. ILLUSTRATIONS (26). RUINS OF THE AZTEK FORTRESS. 127 case with the Guanaco. The alpaca does not bear a warm climate as well as the lama. Since the introduction of the more useful horse, mule, and ass (the latter of which exhibits great animation and beauty in tropical regions), the lama and alpaca have been less generally reared and employed as beasts of burden in the mining districts. But their wool, which varies so much in fineness, is still an important branch of industry among the inhabitants of the mountains. In Chili the wild and the tame guanaco are distinguished by sjiecial names, the former being called ‘‘Luan” and the latter “ Chilihueque.” The wide dissemination of the wild Guanacos from the Peruvian Cordilleras to Tierra del Fuego, sometimes in herds of 500 heads of cattle, has been facilitated by the circumstance that these animals can swim with great facility from island to island, and are not therefore impeded in their passage across the Patagonian channels or fiords.* South of the river Gyla, which together with the llio Colorado pours itself into the Californian Gulf (Mar de Cortes), lie in the midst of the dreary steppe the mysterious ruins of the Aztek Palace, called by the Spaniards “ las Casas Grandes."’ When, about the year 1160, the Azteks first appeared in Anahuac, having migrated from the unknown land of Aztlan, they remained for a time on the borders of the Gyla river. The Franciscan monks, Garces and Font, who saw the “ Casas Grandes ” in 1773, are the last travellers who have visited these remains. According to their state¬ ment, the ruins extended over an area exceeding sixteen square miles. The whole plain w as covered with the broken frag¬ ments of ingeniously painted earthenware vessels. The principal palace, if the word can be applied to a house formed of unburnt clay, is 447 feet in length and 277 feet in breadth, f The Taye of California, a delineation of which is given by the Padre Venegas, appears to differ but inconsiderably from the Ovis musimon of the Old Continent. The same animal has also been seen in the Stony Mountains near the source of the River of Peace, and differs entirely from * See the pleasing descriptions in Darwin’s Journal, 1845, p. G6. ■f See a rare work printed at Mexico, in 1792, and entitled Cronica serdfica y Apostölica del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Queretaro, por Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita. 128 VIEWS OF NATURE. the small white and black spotted goat-like animal found on the Missouri and Arkansas. The synonyme of Antilope furcifer, A. tememazama, (Smith,) and Ovis montana is still very uncertain. (27) p. 11. — “ The culture of farinaceous grasses .” The original habitat of the farinaceous grasses, like that of the domestic animals which have followed man since his earliest migrations, is shrouded in obscurity. Jacob Grimm has ingeniously derived the German name for corn. Getraide , from the old German “ gitragidi,” “ getregede.” “It is as it were the tame fruit ( f rug es , frumentum ) that has fallen into the hands of man, as we speak of tame animals in opposition to those that are ■wild.”* “ It is a most striking fact that on one half of our planet there should be nations who are wholly unacquainted with the use of milk and of the meal yielded by narrow-eared grasses, ( Tlordeacece and Avenacece) whilst in the other hemisphere nations may be found in almost every region who cultivate cereals and rear milch cattle. The culture of different cereals is common to both hemispheres; but while in the New Conti¬ nent we meet with only one species, maize, which is cultivated from 52° north to 46° south lat., we find that in the Old World the fruits of Ceres, (wheat, barley, spelt, and oats.) have been everywhere cultivated from the earliest ages recorded in history. The belief that wheat grew wild in the Leontine plains as well as in other parts of Sicily was common to several ancient nations, and is mentioned as early as Diodorus Siculus. f Cereals were also found in the alpine meadow of Enna. Diodorus says expressly, “ The inhabitants of the Atlantis were unacquainted with the fruits of Ceres , owing to their having separated from the rest of mankind before those fruits were made known to mortals.” Sprengel has collected several interesting facts from which he is led to conjecture that the greater number of our European cereals originally grew wild in Northern Persia and India. He supposes for in¬ stance that summer wheat was indigenous in the land of the Musicani, a province of Northern India barley, antiquissi- * Jacob Grimm, Gesch. der Deutschen Sprache, 1848, th. i. s. 62 t lib. v. pp. 199, 232. Wessel. + Strabo, xv. 1017. ILLUSTRATION S (27). CEREALS. 129 mum frumentum, as Pliny terms it, and which was also the only cereal known to the Guansches of the Canaries, originated, according to Moses of Chorene,* * * §' on the banks of the Araxes or Kur in Georgia, and according to Marco Polo in Balascham, in Northern India ;f and Spelt originated in Hamadan. My intelligent friend and teacher. Link, has however shown in a comprehensive and critical treatise, | that these passages are open to much doubt. In a former essay of my own.§ I expressed doubts regarding the existence of wild cereals in Asia, and considered them to have become wild. Reinhold Forster, who before his voyage with Captain Cook made an expedition for purposes of natural history into the south of Russia by order of the Empress Catherine, reported that the two-lined summer barley ( Hordeum distichon) grew wild near the confluence of the Samara and the Volga. At the end of September in the year 1829, Ehrenberg and myself also herborised on the Samara, during our journey from Orenburg and Uralsk to Saratow and the Caspian Sea. The quantity of wheat and rye plants growing wild on uncultivated ground in this district was certainly very remarkable; but the plants did not appear to us to differ from the ordinary kinds. Ehrenberg received from M. Carelin a species of rye, Secale fragile , that had been gathered on the Ivirghis Steppe, and which Marshal Bieberstein for some time conjectured to be the mother plant of our cultivated rye, Secale cereale. Michaux's herbarium does not show (according to Achill Richard’s testimony), that Spelt ( Triticum spelta ) grows wild at Hamadan in Persia, as Olivier and Michaux have been sup¬ posed to maintain. More confidence is due to the recent accounts obtained through the unwearied zeal of the intelligent traveller, Professor Carl Koch. He found a large quantity of rye ( Secede cereale var. ß. pectinated) in the Pontic Moun¬ tains, at heights of more than 5000 or 6000 feet above the level of the sea, on spots where this species of grain had not within the memory of the inhabitants been previously cultivated. “ Its appearance here is the more important,” he remarks, “ because with us this grain never propagates * Geogr. Armen., ed. "Winston, 1736, p. 3G0. + Ramusio, vol. ii. p. 10. Z Abhandl. der Bert. Alcad. 1816, s. 123. § Essai sur la Geographie des Plantes, 1805, p. 28. K 130 "VIEWS OF NATURE. itself spontaneously.” Koch collected in the Schirwan part of the Caucasus a kind of grain which he calls Hordeum spontaneum , and regards as the originally wild Hordeum zeocriton. (Linn.)^ A negro slave of the great Cortes was the first who cultiva¬ ted wheat in New Spain, from three seeds which he found amongst some rice brought from Spain for the use of the troops. In the Franciscan convent at Quito I saw, pre¬ served as a relic, the earthen vessel which had contained the first wheat sowed in Quito bv the Franciscan monk. Fray Jodoco Bixi de Gante, a native of Ghent in Flanders. The first crop was raised in front of the convent, on the “ Plazuela de S. Francisco,” after the wood which then ex¬ tended from the foot of the Volcano of Pichincha had been cleared. The monks, whom I frequently visited during my stay at Quito, begged me to explain the inscription on the cup, which according to their conjecture contained some hidden allusion to wheat. On examining the vessel, I read in old German the words “ Let him who drinks from me, ne’er forget his God.” This old German drinking cup excited in me feelings of veneration! Would that everywhere in the New Continent the names of those were preserved who, instead of devastating the soil by bloody conquests, confided to it the first fruits of Ceres ! There are “ fewer examples of a general affinity of names in terms relating to the different species of corn and objects of agriculture than to the rearing of cattle. Herdsmen when they migrated to other regions had still much in common, while the subsequent cultivators of the soil had to invent special words. But the fact that in comparison with the Sanscrit, Homans and Greeks seem to stand on the same footing with Germans and Slavonians, speaks in favour of the very early contemporaneous emigra¬ tion of the two latter. Yet the Indian java ( frumentum hordeum ), when compared with the Lithuanian jawai, and the Finnish jywa, affords a striking exception. ”f (28) p. 11. — ■“ Preferring to keep within a cooler climate.'' Throughout the whole of Mexico and Peru we find the trace of human civilisation confined to the elevated table- * Carl Koch, Beiträge zur Flora des Orients. Heft. 1, s. 139, 142. + Jacob Grimm, Gfesch. der deutschen Sprache, th. i. s. 09, ILLUSTRATIONS (29). PEOPLING OF JAPAN. 131 lands. We saw the ruins of palaces and baths on the sides of the Andes, at an elevation of from 10.230 to 11,510 feet. None but northern tribes migrating from the north towards the equatOx could have remained from preference in such a climate. (29) p. 12. — “The history of the peopling of Japan.” I believe I have succeeded in showing, in my work on the monuments of the American primitive races A by an examination of the Mexican and Thibetian- Japanese calen¬ dars, by a correct determination of the position of the Scansile Pyramids, and by the ancient myths which record four revolutions of the world and the dispersion of mankind after a great deluge, that the 'western nations of the New Continent maintained relations of intercourse with those of Eastern Asia, long before the arrival of the Spaniards. These observations have derived additional weight, since the appearance of my work, from the facts recently published in England, France, and the United States, regarding the remarkable pieces of sculpture carved in the Indian style, which have been discovered in the ruins of Guatimala and Yucatan. f The ancient architectural remains found in the peninsula of Yucatan testify more than those of Palen que, to an astonishing degree of civilization. They are situated between Valladolid, Merida, and Campeche, chiefly in the western portion of the country. But the monuments on the island of Cozumel, (properly Cuzamil,) east of Yuca¬ tan, were the first which were seen by the Spaniards in the expedition of Juan de Grijalva in 1518. and in that of Cortes in 1519. Their discovery tended to diffuse throughout Europe an exalted idea of the advanced condition of ancient * Vues des CorclilUres et Monuments des peuples indigenes de VAmerique, 2 tomes. Compare the work of D. Antonio del Rio, entitled Description of the Ruins of an Ancient City discovered near Palenque, 1822, trans¬ lated from the orig. manuscr. report by Cabrera, p. 9, tab. 12 — 14 (Rio's researches were made in the year 1787); with Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 1843, vol. i. pp. 391, 429 — 434, and vol. ii. pp. 21, 54, 56, 317- 323; with the magnificent work of Catherwood, Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 1844; and lastly with Prescott, The Conquest of Mexico, vol. iii. Append, p. 360. 132 VIEWS OF NATURE. Mexican civilization. The most important ruins of the peninsula of Yucatan (unfortunately not yet thoroughly measured and drawn by architects) are those of the “ Casa del Gobernador ” of Uxmal, the Teocallis and vaulted con¬ structions at Kabah, the ruins of Labnan with its domed pillars, those of Zayi which exhibit columns of an order of architecture nearly approaching the Doric, and those of Chiche with large ornamented pilasters. An old manuscript written in the Maya language by a Christian Indian, which is still in the hands of the “ Gefe politico of Peto, Don Juan Rio Perez, gives the different epochs ( Kahmes of 52 years) at which the Toltecs settled in different parts of the peninsula. Perez would infer from these data that the architectural remains of Chiche go back as far as the fourth century of our era, whilst those of Uxmal belong to the middle of the tenth century; but the accuracy of these historical deductions is open to great doubt.* I regard the existence of a former intercourse between the people of Western America and those of Eastern Asia as more than probable, although it is impossible at the present time to say by what route and with which of the tribes of Asia this intercourse was established. A small number of individuals of the cultivated hierarchical castes may perhaps have sufficed to effect great changes in the social condition of Western America. The fabulous accounts formerly current regarding Chinese expeditions to the New Continent refer merely to expeditions to Fusang or Japan. It is, however, possible that Japanese and Sian-Pi may have been driven by storms from the Corea to the American coasts. We know as matters of history that Bonzes and other adventurers navigated the Eastern Chinese seas in search of a remedial agent capable of making man immortal. Thus under Tschin-chi-liuang-ti three hundred young couples were dispatched to Japan in the year 209 before our era, who, instead of returning to China, settled on the Island of Nipon.f May not accident have led to similar expeditions to * Stephens, Incid. of Travel in Yucatan, vol. i. p. 439, and vol. ii. p. 273. + Klaproth, Tableaux historiques de V Arie, 1824, p. 79; Nouveau Journal asiatique, t. x. 1832, p. 335; and Humboldt, Examen cri¬ tique, t. ii. pp. 62 — 67. ILLUSTRATIONS (29). PEOPLING OF JAPAN. 133 the Fcx Islands, to Alaschka, or New California? As the western coasts of the American continent incline from north¬ west to south-east, and the eastern coasts of Asia from north east to south-west, the distance between the two continents in the milder zone, which is most conducive to mental deve¬ lopment (45° lat.), would appear too considerable to admit of an accidental settlement having been made in this lati¬ tude. We must therefore assume that the first landin«: took place in the ungenial climate of 55 and 65°, and that cultivation, like the general advance of population in America, progressed by gradual stations from north to south.’" It was even believed in the beginning of the sixteenth century that the fragments of ships from Catayo, i.c. from Japan or China, had been found on the coasts of the Northern Dorado, called also Quivira and Cibora.f We know as yet too little of the languages of America entirely to renounce the hope that, amid their many varieties, some idiom may be discovered, that has been spoken with certain modifications in the interior of South America and Central Asia, or that might at least indicate an ancient affinity. Such a discovery would undoubtedly be one of the most brilliant to which the history of the human race can hope to attain! But analogies of language are only deserving of confidence where mere resemblances of sound in the roots are not alone the object of research, but attention is also directed to the organic structure, the grammatical forms, and those elements of language which manifest themselves as the pro¬ duct of the intellectual power of man. (30) p. 12 — “ Many other forms of animal life." The Steppes of Caracas abound in flocks of the so-called Cervas mexicanus. This stag when young is spotted, and re¬ sembles the roe. We have frequently met with perfectly white varieties, which is a very striking fact when the high tempe¬ rature of this zone is taken into consideration. The Cervas mexicanus is not found on the declivities of the Andes in the equatorial region, at an elevation exceeding from 4476 to 5115 feet, but another white deer, which I could scarcely distinguish by any one specific characteristic from the * Relat. hist. t. iii. pp. 155 — 160. 4 Gomara, Hist, general de las Lidias, p. 117. 134 VIEWS OF NATUEE. European species, ascends to an elevation of nearly 13,000 feet. The Cavia capybara is known in the province of Caracas by the name of Chiguire. This unfortunate animal is pursued in the water by the crocodile, and on land by the tiger or jaguar. It runs so badly that we were often able to catch it with our hands. The extremities are smoked and eaten as hams, but have a most unpleasant taste, owing to the flavour and smell of musk by which they are impregnated; and on the Orinoco we gladly ate monkey-hams in preference. These beautifully striped animals — the Vwerra mapurito , Vioerra zorilla, and Viverra vittata — exhale a fetid odour. (31.) p. 12 — “ The Guaranes and the fan-palm Mauritia .” The small coast tribe of the Guaranes (called in British Guiana, the Warraws, or Guaranos, and by the Caribs U-ara-u) inhabit not only the swampy delta and the river network of the Orinoco (more particularly the banks of the Manamo grande and the Cano Macareo), but also extend, with very slight differences in their mode of living, along the sea¬ shore, between the mouths of the Essequibo and the Boca de Navios of the Orinoco.* According to the testimony of Schorn- burgk, the admirable observer referred to in the note, there are still about 1700 AVarraus or Guaranos living in the vicinity of Cumaca, and along the banks of the Barime river, which empties itself into the gulf of the Boca de Navios. The social habits of the tribes settled in the delta of the Orinoco were known to the great historian Cardinal Bembo, the cotemporary of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Arespucci, and Alonzo de Hojeda. lie saysf quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolee domns in arboribus cedijicant. It is hardly probable that instead of the Guaranos at the mouth of the Orinoco, Bembo should here allude to the natives of the country near the mouth of the gulf of Maracaibo, where Alonzo de Hojeda, in August, 1499, (when accompanied by Arespucci and Juan de la Cosa) found a population having their dwellings fondata sopra lacqua come Venezia (“k built like A7enice on the water ”).| Vespucci, in the account of his * Compare my Relation historique, t. i. p. 492, t. ii. pp. 653, 703, 6ith Richard Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch Guiana, th. i. 1847, s. 2, 120, 173, 194. t Historice Venetce, 1551, p. 88. 7 See text of Riccardi in my Examen crit. t. iv. p. 496. ILLUSTRATIONS (31). MAURITIA PALM. 135 travels, in which we meet with the first traces of the etymo¬ logy of the name of the province of Venezuela (Little Venice) as used for the province of Caracas, speaks only of houses built on a foundation of piles, and makes no mention of habi¬ tations in trees. Sir Walter Raleigh bears a subsequent and incontrovertible evidence to the same fact, for he says expressly in his description of Guiana, that on his second voyage in 1 595, when in the mouth of the Orinoco, “ he saw the fire of the Tivitites and Qua-raw- etes” (so he calls the Guaranes), “ high up in the trees.”* * * § There is a drawing of the fire in the Latin edition of this work,f and Raleigh was the first who brought to England the fruit of the Mauritia palm, which he very justly compared, on account of its scales, to fir-cones. Father Jose Gumilla, who twice visited the Guaranes as a missionary, says, indeed, that this tribe have their dwelling in the Palmares (palm groves) of the morasses; but while he speaks more definitely of pendent habitations supported by high pillars, makes no mention of platforms attached to still growing trees 4 Hillhouse and Sir Robert Schomburgk§ are of opinion that Bembo, through the relations of others, and Raleigh, by his own observation, were deceived into this belief in consequence of the high tops of the palm trees being lighted up in such a manner by the fires below them, that those sailing by thought the habitations of the Guaranes were attached to the trees themselves. “ We do not deny,'’ says Schomburgk, “ that in order to escape the attacks of the mosquitos, the Indian sometimes suspends his hammock from the tops of trees, but on such occasions no fires are made under the hammock.” || According to Martius, the beautiful Palm, Moricke, Mau- * Raleigh, Discovery of Guiana, 1596, p. 90. f Brevis ct adrniranda Descriptio regni Guiance (Norib. 1599), tab. 4. X Gumilla, Ilistoria natural, civil y geografica de las Naciones situadas en las riveras del Rio Orinoco, nueva impr., 1791, pp. 143, 145, 163. § See Journal of the Royal Geogr. Society, vol. xii. 1842, p. 175, and Description of the Murichi, or Ita Palm, read in the meeting of the British Association held at Cambridge, June 1845 ( published in Simond's Colonial Magazine). || See also Sir Robert Schomburgk’s new edition of Raleigh's Dis¬ covery of Guiana (1848), p. 50. VIEWS OF HAT U RE. ; 36 ritia flexuosa, Quieteva, or It a Palm.'1' belongs, together with Calamus, to the family of the Lepidocaryse or Coryphese. Linnaeus has described it very imperfectly, as he erroneously considered it to be devoid of leaves. The trunk is 26 feet nigh, but it probably does not attain this height in less than 120 or even 150 years. The Mauritia extends high up the declivity of the Duida, north of the Esmeralda mission, where I found it in great beauty. It forms, in moist places, fine groups of a fresh and shining verdure, reminding us of that of our alders. The trees preserve the moisture of the ground by their shade, and hence the Indians believe that the Mauritia draws water around its roots by some mysterious attraction. In conformity with an analogous theory they advise, that serpents should not be killed, because the de¬ struction of these animals is followed by the drying up of the lagoons. Thus do the rude children of nature confound cause and effect! Gumilla calls the Mauritia flexuosa of the Gua- ranes the tree of life (“ arbol de la vida”). It is found on the mountains of Ronaima, east of the sources of the Orinoco, as high as 4263 feet. On the unfrequented banks of the Rio Atabapo, in the interior of Guiana, we discovered a new species of Mauritia having a prickly stem; our Mauritia aculeata .f (32) p. 13. — “ An American Stylit e A The founder of the sect of Stylites, the fanatical Pillar- saint, Simeon Sisanites of Syria, the son of a Syrian herdsman, is said to have passed thirty-seven years in holy contempla¬ tion, elevated on five columns, each higher than the preceding. He died in the year 461. The last of the pillars which he occupied was 40 ells in height. For seven hundred years there continued to be followers of this mode of life, who were called Sancti Columnar es , or Pillar-saints. Even in Germany, in the see of Treves, attempts were made to found similar aerial cloisters ; but the dangerous practice met with the con¬ stant opposition of the bishops.^ * 15 email, Missionary Labours in British Guiana, 1S47, pp. 34, 44. + Humboldt, Bonpland, et Ivuntk, Nova genera et species Plan - tarum, t. i. p. 310. J Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles., 1755, p. 215. ILLUSTRATIONS (36). THE MIRAGE. 137 (33) p. 14. — “ Towns on the banks of the Steppe-rivers .” Families wlio live by raising cattle and do not take part in agricultural pursuits have congregated together in the middle of the Steppe, in small towns, which, in the cultivated parts- of Europe, would scarcely be regarded as villages. Among these are Calabozo, which, according to my astronomical observations, is situated in 8° 56' 14" north lat., and 67° 43A west long. ; Villa del Pao (8° 38' 1" north lat., and 66° 57' west long.); Saint Sebastian, and others. (34) p. 14. — “ Funnel-shaped clouds .” \ The singular phenomenon of these sand-spouts, of which we see something analogous on the cross roads of Europe, is especially characteristic of the Peruvian sandy desert between Amotape and Coquimbo. Such dense clouds of sand may endanger the safety of the traveller who does not cautiously avoid them. It is remarkable that these partial and opposing currents of air should arise only when there is a general calm. The aerial ocean resembles the sea in this respect; for here, too, we find that the small currents ( filets de courant ) in which the water may frequently be heard to flow with a splashing sound, occur only in a dead calm (calme plat). (35) p. 14. — “ Increases the stifling oppression .” I have observed in the Llanos de Apure, at the cattle farm of Guadalupe, that the thermometer rose from 92°. 7 to 9 7°. 2 Fahr, whenever the hot wind began to blow from the desert, which was covered either with sand or short withered grass. In the middle of the sand-cloud the thermometer stood for several minutes together at 111° Fahr. The dry sand in the village of San Fernando dc Apure had a tempera¬ ture of 126° Fahr. (36) p. 15. — “ The phantom, of a moving undulating surfaced The well known phenomenon of the mirage is called in Sanscrit “ the thirst of the gazelle.”* All objects appear to, float in the air, while their forms are reflected in the lower stratum of the atmosphere. At such times the whole desert * See my Relat. hist., t. i. pp. 29G, G25; t. ii. p. 161. 138 VIEWS OF NATURE. resembles a vast lake, whose surface undulates like waves, Palm trees, cattle, and camels sometimes appear inverted in the horizon. In the French expedition to Egypt, this optical illusion often nearly drove the faint and parched soldiers to dis¬ traction. This phenomenon has been observed in all quarters of the world. The ancients were alsoacquainted with the re^ markable refraction of the rays of light in the Lybian Desert. We find mention made in Diodorus Siculus of strange illusive appearances, an African Fata Morgana , together with still more extravagant explanations of the conglomeration of the particles of air A (37) p. 15. — “ The Melocactus The Cactus melocactus is frequently from 10 to 12 inches in diameter, and has generally 14 ribs: The natural group of the Cactaceoe, the whole family of the Nopalese of Jussieu, belongs exclusively to the New Continent. The Cactus assumes a variety of shapes, being ribbed and melon- like {JMelocacti) ; articulated (Opuntice) ; upright-like columns ( Cerei) ; of a serpentine or creeping form (lihipsalides) ; or provided with leaves ( Pereskice ). Many extend high up the slopes of the mountains. Near the foot of the Chimborazo, in the sandy table-land around Riobamba, I found a new species of Pitahaya ( Cactus sepium ), even at an elevation of 10,660 feet.f (38) p. 16. — “ The scene suddenly! changes in the Steppe .” I have endeavoured to describe the approach of the rainy .season, and the signs by which it is announced. The deep blue of the heavens in the tropics is occasioned by the imperfect solution of vapour. The cyanometer indicates a lighter shade of blue as soon as the vapours begin to fall. The dark spot in the constellation of the Southern Cross becomes indistinct in proportion as the transparency of the atmosphere decreases, and this change announces the approach of rain. The bright radiance of the Magellanic clouds ( Nubecula major and JSubecula minor ) then gradually hides away. The fixed stars which had before been shining with a calm, steady, planet- * Lib. iii. p. 184, Rhod., p. 219, Wessel. + Humboldt, Bonpland, efc Kunth, Synopsis Plantarum cequinoct. Oibis Novi, t. iii. p. 370. ILLUSTRATIONS (41). PLAIN OF ANTISANA. 139 like light, are now seen to scintillate in the zenith.* All these phenomena are the result of the increased quantity of aqueous vapour floating in the atmosphere. (39) p. 16. — “ The humid day soil is seen to rise slowly in a broad fake." Drought produces the same phenomena in animals and plants as the abstraction of heat. During the dry season many tropical plants lose their leaves. The crocodile and other amphibious animals conceal themselves in the mud and lie apparently dead, like animals in cold regions who are thrown into a state of hybernation. f (40) p. 17. — “ A vast inland sea." Nowhere are these inundations on a larger scale than in the network of streams formed by the Apure, the Arachuna, the Pajara, the Arauca, and the Cabuliare. Large vessels sail across the country over the Steppe for 40 or 50 miles. (41) p. 17. — “ To the mountainous plain of Antis ana." The great mountain plateau which surrounds the volcano of Antisana is 13,473 feet above the level of the sea. The pressure of the atmosphere is so inconsiderable at this height, that blood will flow from the nostrils and mouth of the wild bull when hunted with dogs. (42) p. 17. — “ The marshy waters of B era and Rastro." I have elsewhere more circumstantially described the capture of the gymnotus. J Mons. Gay Lussac and myself were perfectly successful in the experiments we conducted without a chain on a living gymnotus, which was still very vigorous when it reached Paris. The discharge of electricity is entirely dependent on the will of the animal. We did not observe any electric sparks, but other physicists have done so on numerous occasions. (43) p. 18. — “ Awahened by the contact of moist and dissimidar particles." In all organic bodies dissimilar substances come into * Compare Arago in my Relation hist., t. i. p. 623. 4 See my Relat. histor., t. ii. pp. 196, 626. X Observations de Zoologie et d' Anatomie cornparee, t. i. pp. S3— 87, and Rilat. hist., t. ii. pp. 173-190. 140 VIEWS OF NATURE. contact with each other, and solids are associated with fluids. Wherever there is organization and life, there must be electric tension, or, in other words, a voltaic pile must be brought into play, as the experments of Nobili and Mat- teucci, and more especially the late most admirable labours of Emil Dubois, teach us. The last-named physicist has suc¬ ceeded in “ manifesting the presence of the electric muscular current in living and wholly uninjured animal bodies he shows that “the human body, through the medium of a cop¬ per wire, can at will cause the magnetic needle at a distance to deflect first in one direction and then in another.”'* I have myself witnessed these movements produced at will, and have thus unexpectedly seen much light thrown on phenomena, to which I had laboriously and ardently devoted so many years of my earlier life. (44) p. 19. — “ The myth of Osiris and Typhon .” Respecting the struggle of two human races, the Arabian shepherd tribes of Lower Egypt and the cultivated agri¬ cultural races of Upper Egypt; on the subject of the fair¬ haired Prince Baby or Typhon , who founded Pelusium ; and on the dark-complexioned Dionysos or Osiris; I would refer to Zoega’s older and almost universally discarded views as set forth at p. 5 77 of his masterly work “ Be origine et asu obeliscoram.” (45) p. 19 — “ The boundaries of European semi-civilization .” In the Capitania General de Caracas, as well as in all the eastern part of America, the civilization formerly introduced by Europeans is limited to the narrow strip of land which skirts the shore. In Mexico, New Granada, and Quito on the other hand, European civilization has penetrated far into the interior of the country and advanced up to the ridges of the Cordilleras. There existed already in the fifteenth century an earlier stage of civilization among the inhabitants of the last-named region. Wherever the Spaniards perceived this culture they pursued its track, regardless whether the seat of it was at a distance from the sea, or in its vicinity. The * ancient cities were enlarged and their former significant * Untersuchungen über thierische Electricität , von Emil du Bois- Raymond, 1S48, bd. i. s. xv. ILLUSTRATIONS (47). THE BEARDED APE. 141 Indian names mutilated, or exchanged for those of Christian saints. (46) p. 19 — Huge masses of leaden-coloured granite .” In the Orinoco, and more especially at the cataracts of Maypures and Atures (not in the Black River or Rio Negro), all blocks of granite, even pieces of white quartz, wherever they come in contact with the water, acquire a grayish black coating, which does not penetrate beyond O'Ol of a line into the interior of the rock. The traveller might almost suppose that he was looking at basalt, or fossils coloured with graphite. Indeed, the crust does actually appear to contain manganese and carbon. I say appears” to do so, because the phenomenon has not yet been thoroughly investigated. Something per¬ fectly analogous to this was observed by Rozier in the syenitic rocks of the Nile (near Syene and Philse) ; by the unfortu¬ nate Captain Tuckey on the rocky banks of the Zaire; and by Sir Robert Scliomburgk at BerbiceA On the Orinoco these leaden-coloured rocks are supposed when wet to give forth noxious exhalations, and their vicinity is believed to be con¬ ducive to the generation of fevers. f It is also remarkable that the South American rivers generally, which have black waters ( aguas negras ), or waters of a coffee brown or wine yellow tint, do not darken the granite rocks ; that is