Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

BAXTERS PATENT OIL COLOR PRINTING
XI, NORTHAMPTON SQUARE
CHIMBORAZO

VIEWS OF NATURE:
OR CONTEMPLATIONS ON
THE SUBLIME PHENOMENA OF CREATION;
WITH
SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS.

BY

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

BY E. C. OTTÉ, AND HENRY G. BOHN.

WITH A FRONTISPIECE FROM A SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR, A FAC-SIMILE OF HIS HAND-WRITING, AND A COMPREHENSIVE INDEX.

LONDON:

HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

1850.

PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SONS,

LONDON GAZETTE OFFICE, ST. MARTIN’s LANE.

PREFACE BY THE PUBLISHER.

Great 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; translations of the principal Latin, French, and Spanish quotations;[^[A]] 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 somewhat appalling aspect, without affording any equivalent advantage 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 reduced 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 Fahrenheit’s, as now the most generally recognised.

It here becomes necessary to say something of the translators, and the 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. Otté, 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 dilemma 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 collaborateur 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 Atures, (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 him with my then unpublished edition of Cosmos, I announced my intention of proceeding with his other works, and consulted 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 fac-simile. 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, however, 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 words 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 entertaining 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 illustration of the Author’s favourite subjects.

No intellectual reader can peruse this masterly work 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.

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 solitudes 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 æsthetic mode of treating subjects of Natural History is fraught with great difficulties in the execution, notwithstanding the marvellous 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 imagination are excited, the style is apt to stray into poetical prose. But these ideas require no amplification here, for the following pages afford but too abundant examples of such deviations and of such want of unity.

Notwithstanding these defects, which I can more easily 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 contemplation of nature. As this enjoyment is heightened by an insight into the connection of the occult forces, I have subjoined to each treatise scientific illustrations and additions.

Everywhere the reader’s attention is directed to the perpetual 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 consecrated. 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.[^[B]]

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 æsthetic treatment of the grand scenes of nature. The combination 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. Notwithstanding 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 were 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 youthful 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 imparted 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 physiological 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 completing 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 have too long prevailed in the so-called higher circles of society.

My expedition into northern Asia (to the Ural, the Altai, and the shores of the Caspian Sea) in the year 1829, with Ehrenberg and Gustavus Rose, at the command of the Emperor of Russia, took place between the second and third editions of my work. This expedition has essentially contributed to the enlargement of my views in all that concerns 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 ascertained influences of temperature. The ignorance which has so long existed respecting the two great snow-covered mountain-chains, the Thian-schan and the Kuen-lün, situated between the Altai and Himalaya, has (owing to the injudicious neglect of Chinese sources of information) obscured the geography of Central Asia, and propagated fancies instead 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 measurement (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 Kinchinjinga (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 Views of Nature, the calculations of temperature, unless where the contrary is stated, are given according to the eighty degrees thermometer of Reamur. The lineal measurement 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.

CONTENTS

FAC-SIMILE OF THE HAND-WRITING OF BARON HUMBOLDT.
EXTRACTS OF A LETTER TO THE PUBLISHER.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.

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 hypsometrical 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. Remarkable 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. Adaptability with which nature has endowed animals and plants. Jaguar, Crocodiles, Electric Fishes. Unequal contest between gymnoti and horses—pp. [13]–19.

Retrospective 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.

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 atmosphere?—pp. [28]–29.

Modern views on the mountain systems of the two American peninsulas. Chains, which have a direction from S.W. 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 watermarks between the Guaporé 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 Panamá 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. Frémont. 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. Swelling of the ground in the Great Basin. Long disputed existence of Lake Timpanogos. Coast-chain, Maritime Alps, Sierra Nevada of California. 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 somewhat 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 vegetation, 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 aggregated with the Kuen-lün. Erroneous opinion as to the existence of one immense plateau, the so-called “Plateau de la Tartarie”—pp. [53]–56.

Chinese literature a rich source of orographic knowledge. Gradations 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 Agathodæmon 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-lün, already recognized by Eratosthenes, Marinus of Tyre, Ptolemy, and Cosmas Indicopleustes, as the greatest axis of elevation in the Old World, between 35½° and 36° lat. in the direction of the diaphragm of Dicæarchus. Himalaya. The Kuen-lün may be traced, when considered as an axis of elevation, from the Chinese wall 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-lün by the Bolor, the corresponding direction of the axes of elevation (inclining from east to west in the Kuen-lün and Hindoo Cush, and on the other hand south-east and north-west in the Himalaya) proves, that the Hindoo Cush is a prolongation of the Kuen-lün, and not of the Himalaya which is associated 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-westerly direction, lies not far from 81° east long. The Djawahir 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 Dhawalagiri, is represented in the engraving to the title-page of Joseph Hooker’s splendid work, The Rhododendrons of Sikkim Himalaya, 1849. Determination 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 distribution 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 Hiongnu, whom Deguignes and John Müller 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 North 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 Orinoco, the Amazon, and La Plata rivers from each other—p. [84].

Concerning the Dogs of the New 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 N.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 Nun (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 Northern 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 Rosaceæ, Amygdaleæ, the species of Astragalus, Crown-imperial, Cypripedias, and Tulips. Contrast with the desert of the salt-steppes full of Chenopodiæ, and of species of Salsola and Atriplex. Numerical considerations with respect to the predominant families. The plains which skirt the Frozen Ocean (north of what Admiral Wrangel has described as the boundary of Coniferæ and Amentaceæ), 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 Stereocaulon paschale—pp. [94]–96.

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. Werne’s instructive report of the second expedition, which was undertaken by command of Mehemet Ali. The Abyssinian high mountain chain, which, according to Rüppell, 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 apex of Africa, was a fact already known to Sir Humphrey 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. Information 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 temperate 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 Mauritia, according to Bembo, Raleigh, Hillhouse, Robert and Richard Schomburgk—pp. [134]–136.

Phenomena produced in the Steppe by a long drought. Sand-spouts, hot winds, deceptive images by aërial refraction (mirage). The awaking of crocodiles and tortoises after a long summer sleep—pp. [136]–142.

Otomaks. General considerations respecting the earth-eating of certain 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.

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. Insular form of the rocks Keri and Oco. Grand spectacle displayed on descending the hill Manimi. A foaming surface, several miles in extent, 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 vapoury 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 propinquity of crocodiles—pp. [168]–171. The celebrated cave of Ataruipe, the grave of an extinct tribe—pp. [171]–173.

Abode of the river-cow (Trichecus Manati) 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.

Juvia (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, because he spoke the language of the extinct Aturian tribe—pp. [188]–190.

Difference in the richness of languages as regards precise and definite words for characterizing natural phenomena, such as the state of vegetation 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 misinterpretation 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 imperviousness. 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 Capybaræ, 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 perforated earth, furrowed by hymenopterous insects, life is audible and manifest—pp. [200]–201.

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 nocturnal apes with cat’s eyes; the tricoloured striped Douroucoali of the Cassiquiare—pp. [202]–203.

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 Fé—pp. [207]–209.

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. Podurellæ in the ice tubules of the glaciers of the Alps; the glacier-flea (Desoria glacialis). Minute organisms of the dust fogs—pp. [210]–213.

History of the vegetable covering. Gradual extension of vegetation 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 conformation 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 organizations 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—

Enjoyment resulting from the natural grouping and contrasts of these plant-forms. Importance of the physiognomical study of plants to the landscape-painter—pp. [229]–231.

Organisms, both animal and vegetable, in the highest Alpine regions, near the line of eternal snow, in the Andes chain, and the Alps; insects are carried up involuntarily by the ascending current of air. The small field-mouse (Hypudæus nivalis) of the Swiss Alps. On the real height to which the Chinchilla laniger mounts in Chili—pp. [232]–233.

Lecideæ, Parmeliæ on rocks not entirely covered with snow; but certain phanerogamic plants also stray in the Cordilleras beyond the 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 of Culcitium, Espeletia, Ranunculus, and small moss-like umbellifera, Myrrhis andicola, and Fragosa arctioides—pp. [233]–234. Measurement of Chimborazo, and etymology of the name—pp. [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 urubu and C. aura) in the economy of nature, for purifying of the air in the neighbourhood of human dwellings; their domestication—pp. [239]–240.

On the so-called revivification of the rotifera, according to Ehrenberg and Doyère; 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 Cœlebogyne; 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 animalculæ. Acalephæ and siliceous-shelled luminous infusoria. Influence of nervous 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 architects. More correct views of the present period. Coast-reefs, Reefs surrounding 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 Astreæ 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—p. [266]. The indurating crust of the earth while giving out caloric. Heated currents of air, which in the primordial period, during the frequent 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 6000 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 1581? 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 1800 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, Macrocystis 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 herbariums. Numerical ratios of plant-forms. Discovered laws of the geographical distribution of the families. Ratios of the great divisions: of the Cryptogamia to the Cotyledons, and of the Monocotyledons to the Dicotyledons, in the torrid, temperate, and frigid zones. Outlines of arithmetical 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 Glumaceæ, Leguminosæ, or Compositæ, 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 Roses in the southern, and of Calceolarias in the northern zone. Why has our heath (Calluna vulgaris), and why have our Oaks not progressed eastwards across the Ural into Asia? 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 Europe, and if from 160,000 to 212,000 phanerogamia are now contained, 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 phanerogamia 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 vegetation in the different zones. Physiognomic classification, or distribution 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 preservation of the individual depends; systematic botany bases the classification of the natural families on the consideration of the organs of reproduction, on which the preservation of the species depends—pp. [348]–352.

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 phenomena.—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 between the 24th and 25th of October, 1822. Falling in of a cone of ashes 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 revolutions 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 our 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 formative 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 temperature) 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.

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].

The Rhodian Genius is the development of a physiological idea in a mythical garb. Difference of views concerning the necessity and nonnecessity 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, are the simple enunciation of a fact—pp. [387]–389.

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 causeways; 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 Bougainvillæa. Rocky ridges which cross the Amazon River. Cataracts. Narrows of the Pongo de Manseriche, in which 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 magnetic 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 picturesque, tower-like Cerro de Gualgayoc. An enormous mass of filamentous virgin silver in the Pampa de Navar. A treasure of virgin gold, twined round with 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 Micuipampa 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 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 Cordilleras 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.

On the origin of the name borne by the Andes Chain p. [421].

Epoch of the introduction of Cinchona (Peruvian) bark into Europe—p. [422].

Ruins of the Inca’s causeways and fortified dwellings; Aposentos de Mulalo, Fortaleza del Cañar, 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].

Chronometric 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 imprisonment 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 knowledge among the lower and poorer classes of people, according to the testimony of Padre Blas 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 through 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 traveller 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[^[C]],) appear sensibly higher than the surrounding district. The natives term them banks[^[2]], as if the spirit of language would convey 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 constellations illumine the margin of the plain with their rapidly rising and setting beams, or when their flickering forms are reflected in the lower stratum of undulating vapour, a shoreless 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 impressions of space, expands with spiritual emotions of a higher order. But the aspect of the ocean, its bright surface diversified 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 physiognomy, 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 between Wadi Nun and the White Cape, the moist sea-air rushes in to fill the vacuum caused by these vertically ascending 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 Tuarycks[^[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 portion of the Steppes which is occupied by Kalmuck-Kirghis 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 geographical miles. The vegetation of the Asiatic Steppes, which are 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 Rosaceæ, Crown Imperials (Fritillariæ), Cypripedeæ, 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, Saussureæ, and other Synanthereæ; 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 Snowy 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 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, Getæ, 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 uninterruptedly as far as the ancient land of the Fins, near the sources of the Ural.[^[D]] From thence poured forth bands of Huns, Avars, Chasars, and a numerous admixture of Asiatic races. Warlike 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 Mongolian 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.

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 Vichada, 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 de 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 Rio 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 Hylæa 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 resembles the Cassowary, (Struthio Rhea,) is peculiar to these Pampas, as are also those herds of wild dogs[^[15]], which dwell in social community in subterranean caverns, and often ferociously 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 barren 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 pourtray 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 understood[^[18]], diminish the dryness and heat of the New World. Among these are: the narrowness of this extensively indented 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 Pariña, where they suddenly diverge towards the west; the numerous mountains abounding in springs, whose snow-crowned summits 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 invariably 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 interior of the country, most remote from mountains and the 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 vegetation 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 raged 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 latter, situated in the same parallel of latitude as Arabia and Southern Persia, are visited by currents of air which have 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, described all the deserts of Northern Africa, Yemen, Kerman, and Mekran (the Gedrosia 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 aërial 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 Gætulian 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]], fabulously 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, are covered with eternal snow in the gold districts of Machinga and Mocanga. But these mountains, abundantly watered, are 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 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, 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 thousands 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 Lecideæ nor other lichens can grow[^[25]].

These considerations suffice to explain why, notwithstanding their external similarity of form, the continents of Africa and South America present the most widely different climatic relations and characters of vegetation. Although 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 sufficient 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 European 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 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., constitute (with the exception, perhaps, of the Esquimaux,) but one sole race, passed directly from a hunting to an agricultural life without going through the intermediate stage of a pastoral life. Two species of indigenous homed 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 Mouflon, resembling the so-called progenitor of the sheep, roams over the parched and barren limestone 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 warranted by etymological comparisons) would at all events explain the remarkable absence of the Cereals in America. Perhaps contrary winds may have driven to the shores of New California one of those Asiatic Priest-colonies who were instigated by their mystic dreameries to undertake distant voyages, and of which the history of the peopling of Japan, at the time of the Thsinschihuang-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 circumstance allowed freer scope for the forces of nature to develop 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 Hymenæa 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 Viverræ, whose pestilential odour infects the air; the great maneless Lion; the variegated Jaguar (commonly known 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 few fan-palms (Mauritia) scattered here and there. The beneficent qualities of this tree of life have been universally celebrated.[^[31]] Upon this alone subsist the unsubdued tribe of the Guaranes, at the mouth of the Orinoco northward 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 apparently 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 domiciles; 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 medullary portion of the trunk is found to contain a sago-like meal, which like that of the Jatropha root, is dried in thin breadlike slices. The sap of the tree when fermented constitutes the sweet inebriating palm-wine of the Guaranes. The narrow-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 whether 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) have become habitable to man. Here and there towns[^[33]] have sprung up on the shores of the Steppe-rivers, built to facilitate the intercourse between the coasts and Guiana (the Orinoco 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 remarkable, 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 gyrations, come in contact with the earth, a singular spectacle presents itself. Like funnel-shaped clouds,[^[34]] their apexes 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 increases 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 protected from evaporation by the now seared foliage of the fan-palm, disappear. As in the icy north animals become torpid from cold, so here the crocodile and the boa-constrictor 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 phantom 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[^[E]]. 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 outstretched 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 method of allaying his thirst. There is a globular and articulated plant, the Melocactus[^[37]], which encloses under its prickly integument 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 unattended 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 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 mountain, a single cloud is seen rising perpendicularly on the southern horizon. Misty vapours collect and gradually overspread 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 Kyllingiæ, 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 concealment, 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 Arauca, the Apure, and the Payara, gradually overflow their banks, nature compels those creatures to live as amphibious 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 by their serrated tails, and devoured. Horses and oxen may not unfrequently be seen which have escaped from the fury of this blood-thirsty and gigantic lizard, bearing on their legs the marks of its pointed teeth.

This spectacle involuntarily reminds the contemplative observer 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 Rio 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]]. In 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 Rastro[^[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 powerful enough to kill the largest animals when it discharges 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 numbers. All other species of fish shun the vicinity of these formidable 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 surface 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 nourishing 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 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 recurring 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 Hindostan.

In like manner, the South American Steppes are the boundaries 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 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 grand and wild condition of nature dwell numerous races of men. Separated by a remarkable diversity of languages, 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 unarmed, 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.

Thus does man, everywhere alike, on the lowest scale of brutish debasement, and in the false glitter of his higher culture, 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 contemplate the silent life of plants, and to study the hidden forces of nature in her sacred sanctuaries; or yielding to that inherent impulse, which for thousands of years has glowed in the breast of man, directs his mind, by a mysterious presentiment of his destiny, towards the celestial orbs, which, in undisturbed harmony, pursue their ancient and eternal course.[^[G]]

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 treeless 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 cataracts 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 compare 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 published 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. 1° 55′ to 2° 20′) into three chains, running to the south of Popayan, the easternmost of which extends into the snowy mountains of Merida. These mountains gradually decline towards the Paramo de las Rosas into the hilly district of Quibor and Tocuyo, which connects the littoral chain of Venezuela with the Cordilleras of Cundinamarca.

This littoral chain extends murally and uninterruptedly from Portocabello to the promontory of Paria. Its mean elevation is scarcely 750 toises, or 4796 English feet; but some few summits, like the Silla de Caracas (also called the Cerro de Avila), 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 remarkable 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 has 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 mountains (montañas 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 géologique de l’Amérique méridionale, 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.[^[H]]

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 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 contrast presented by its opposite shores gives it a striking resemblance 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, mimosæ, 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, i.e., 1471 English feet) less than the mean height of the valley of Caracas. This lake has several species of fish peculiar to itself,[^[I]] 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 Bava, 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 Valencia a Typha, 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 Caña criolla, and the species newly introduced from the South Sea, the Caña de Otaheiti. The latter variety is of a far lighter and 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 Bligh transported it, together with the bread-fruit tree, to Jamaica. From Trinidad, 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 Caña 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 (bagaso). If the introduction of this new product had not been nearly simultaneous with the outbreak of the sanguinary 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 degenerate and merge into the common sugar-cane, has been decided in the negative, from the experience hitherto obtained on this subject. In the island of Cuba a caballeria, 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 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 Caña de Otaheiti and the Caña criolla, a reddish African sugar-cane is cultivated in the West Indies, which is known as the Caña 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 Parapara, the traveller meets successively with strata of gneiss and micaceous schist, a probably Silurian transition rock of argillaceous 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 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 dolomite. 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 192 English feet; consequently 15 toises (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 Ligurian 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 continually present an undefined flickering and undulating outline, 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 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 (i.e., 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 confluence of the River Caura and the Orinoco, a large tract of thickly grown forest land to the east of the Mission of San Pedro de 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, Hymenæa, and Malpighia, 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 Hato 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 the 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 naked stony crust.”

The deserts of Africa and Asia acquire a peculiar character from the frequent occurrence of immense tracts of land, covered by one flat uniform surface of naked rock. In the Scha-mo, which separates Mongolia and the mountain chain of Ulangom and Malakha-Oola from the north-west 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.[^[J]] In the midst of these flat, 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 considerable 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 recently 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 Frémont. 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 history, 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 Rio 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 of Chili and Peru), or to the North Mexican chain of the Rocky Mountains. The South American or Brazilian mountain 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., increasing in breadth and diminishing in general elevation as it approaches further westward. The chain of the Parecis hills approximates to the rivers Itenes and Guaporé, 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 Brazilian 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 Guaporé, and between the Paraguay and the Rio Topayos. The ridge (seuil) 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 be met with, the divortia aquarum 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 (terræ tumores, according to Frontinus) may almost be regarded as undeveloped mountain-systems, designed to connect two apparently isolated groups, the Sierra Parime and the Brazilian highlands, to the Andes chain of Timana 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 Hylæa.

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 inclination from south-east to north-west, passing through Panama, Veragua, Guatimala, and New Spain. This range of mountains, 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 Tehuantepec, 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 proportion of hornblende. These have been respectively named Spanish Peak, James or Pike’s Peak, and Big Horn or Long’s Peak.[^[K]] 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 Fé and Taos in New Mexico. James’ Peak (38° 48′ lat.) is said to have an elevation of 11,497 English feet. Of this only 8537 feet have been determined 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 summits mentioned in the text, was, before the important expedition of Captain Frémont, estimated sometimes at 8000 and sometimes at 3000 feet above the level of the sea.[^[L]] 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.[^[M]]

Frémont, 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 Frémont’s Peak on the great chart published under the direction of Colonel Abert, chief of the topographical department at Washington. This point is situated in the parallel of 43° 10′ north lat., and 110° 7′ west long., and therefore nearly 5° 30′ north of Spanish Peak. The elevation of Frémont’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 identical with Pike’s Peak, as given in the map above referred to. The Wind River Mountains constitute the dividing ridge (divortia aquarum) between the two seas. “From the summit,” says Captain Frémont in his official report,[^[N]] “we saw on the one side numerous lakes and streams, the sources of the Rio Colorado, 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 Frémont’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 considerable distance from land in the South Sea.

Frémont’s map and geographical researches embrace the immense tract of land extending from the confluence of Kanzas 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 amounting 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 Kanzas 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-perspective projections of the Siberian traveller, the Abbé Chappe,[^[O]] were based on mere and for the most part on very inaccurate estimates of the falls of rivers); it has afforded me special satisfaction to find the graphical method of representing 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 Laramie, to the further side of the Wahsatch Mountains, the elevation 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 Titicaca, has been named The Great Basin by Joseph Walker and Captain Frémont, travellers well acquainted with these western regions. It is a terra incognita of at least 8000 geographical (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,[^[P]] into which the “Rock River” (Timpan Ogo in the Utah language) pours its copious stream. Father Escalante, in his wanderings from Santa Fé del Nuevo Mexico to Monterey in New California, discovered Frémont’s “Great Salt Lake” in 1776, and confounding 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 regarding the assumed non-existence of a large inland salt lake,[^[Q]]—a question previously mooted by the learned American traveller Tanner. Gallatin expressly says in his memoir on the aboriginal races[^[R]]—“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 unappreciated influence on the climate of the northern half of the new continent, both in its southern and eastern portions. On this vast and uniformly elevated plateau Frémont found the water covered with ice every night in the month of August. Nor is the configuration of the land less 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 longitude, is 550 geographical, i.e., 2200 English miles, or one-sixth less than the distance between Lisbon and Katherinenburg 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 upwards of seven thousand feet, and that in Old Park even at the height of 9760 Parisian or 10,402 English feet!), considerable difficulty has been experienced in determining the culminating point, or that of the divortia aquarum. 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.[^[S]] It is situated in a pleasant region, embellished by a profusion of artemisiæ, 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.”[^[T]]

The western high mountain coast chain of the Californian 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 injudicious 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 substitute 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 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 misconception of the most remarkable kind. He read in an old Spanish chart the following passage:—“And it is still unknown (y aun se ignora) where the source of this river” (now called the Columbia) “is situated,” and he believed that the word ignora signified the name of the Oregon.[^[U]]

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.[^[V]] In this northern prolongation 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 Frémont,[^[W]] “we were constantly within sight of snow-covered summits; and while we were able to cross the Rocky Mountains 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 Pérouse 1980 toises, or 12,660 feet, and according to Malaspina 2792 toises, or 17,850 feet in height), and Mount Fair Weather (Cerro de Buen Tiempo, 2304 toises, or 14,733 feet high). Both these conical mountains are regarded as still active volcanoes. Frémont’s expedition, which has proved alike useful in reference to botany and geognosy, likewise collected volcanic products in the Rocky 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, côtes brûlées, and terrains ardens, in the language of the English settlers and the natives who speak French. “Rows of low conical hills,” says the accurate observer M. Nicollet, “are almost periodically, 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 Rocky 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 reaction on the brown coal floetzes.”[^[X]]

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 contrast, on the West, between that central chain and the Californian Alps of the Pacific, an arid and uninhabited elevated plateau nearly six thousand feet above the sea; and in the East, between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. (whose highest points, Mount Washington and Mount Marcy, rise, 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 hypsometrical character of this eastern valley, or in other words, its relation to the sea’s level, has only very recently been explained by the admirable 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 astronomical 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 Sea.[^[Y]] Wherever the low land falls in undulations, and slight elevations which still retain their un-English appellation of côteaux des prairies, côteaux 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 separation 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 Mississippi 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.[^[Z]]

Beltrami, who in 1825 separated himself from Major Long’s 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° 13′ 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 subsequently 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 Red River of the north, which empties itself, after many windings, into Hudson’s Bay. The Carpathian 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, reminding one of the botanical album of the Flora Peruviana of Ruiz 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 Secretaria.

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 herds, and known as bison parks.[^[AA]] 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 (Cervus alces) and the reindeer (Cervus 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 connection. 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 distinguished 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, propagated 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 dactyloides (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 elsewhere[^[AB]] drawn attention to the fact, that according to a passage of the trustworthy Gomara[^[AC]], there 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 notwithstanding 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 discoveries in pathless mountain districts. These animals advance 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 indicated the best tracks for passing over the Cumberland Mountains in the south-western parts of Virginia and Kentucky, and over the Rocky Mountains, between the sources of the Yellowstone 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.[^[AD]]

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 fire,)[^[AE]] 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 extent the distance which, in the old continent, separates the Pillars of Hercules from the Icy Cape of the Tschuktches, 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 moreover 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 volcanoes are situated on a transverse fissure, running from sea to sea, in a direction from east and west.[^[AF]] 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 appears, 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: elevation, 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 distinguished geologist, Pentland, in the years 1827 and 1838; 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 Chimborazo, but 850 feet lower than the Peak of Aconcagua.

[6]. p. 2—“The desert near the basaltic mountains of Harudsch.”

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 30th 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.[^[AG]]

The word Oasis is Egyptian, and is synonymous with Auasis and Hyasis.[^[AH]] Abulfeda calls the Oases el-Wah. In the latter time of the Cæsars, 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 proportion to the greater quantity of sand incorporated in the soil.

The small mountain range of Harudsch (Harudje[^[AI]]) 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 indicates 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 obsidius 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 and of the plains of the Arkansas, and therefore, as it were, on the ancient coast chains.[^[AJ]]

[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 continent, 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 conjectures regarding the extent of Phœnician 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.[^[AK]] “Driven by the east wind,” says the pseudo-Aristotle, “Phœnician mariners came in a four days’ voyage from Gades to a place where the sea was found covered with rushes and sea-weed (θρύον καὶ φῦκος). 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 revolution? Vobonne refers to rocks north of Madeira.[^[AL]] In Scylax it is stated that “the sea beyond Cerne ceases to be navigable in consequence of its great shallowness, its muddiness, 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 Phœnician station for merchant vessels, Gaulea; or, according to Gosselin, 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,[^[AM]] in which, as Avienus himself very distinctly acknowledges, he availed himself of the journals of Phœnician 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 Ierne, the Holy Isle.

Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,

Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.

Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites

Exstare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice

Retinere puppim ...

Hæc inter undas multa cæspitem jacet,

Eamque late gens Hibemorum colit.

When we consider that the sea-weed (fucus), the mud or slime (πηλὸς), 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 in the genuine writings of the Stagyrite,[^[AN]] 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 hypothesis regarding the depth of the sea. The stormy sea between 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 alisés), and which has been very characteristically named by the Spaniards[^[AO]] El Golfo de las Damas.

From very careful personal researches and from comparison 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 these views adopted by my lamented friend Major Rennell, and confirmed, in his great work on Currents, by many new observations.[^[AP]] 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 remarkable 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, 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 Fayal, discovered the Island of Flores as early as 1452, it seems almost impossible, 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 Portuguese ships driven westward by storms.

We learn, however, from the astonishment of the companions of the admiral, when they were continuously surrounded by sea-grass from the 16th 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 certainly does not mention the apprehensions which the accumulation 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 delineation 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 28½°, 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.[^[AQ]] The determination of the ship’s place during the days in which Columbus 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 remained 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 connected with the changes of magnetic deviation and of climatic relations.” 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 primera yerva) on the eastern border of the great Corvo bank. The physical line of demarcation was, by the powerful influence of the Admiral, converted on the 4th of May, 1493, into a political one, in the celebrated line of demarcation between the Spanish and Portuguese rights of possession[^[AR]].

[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 the 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.[^[AS]]

[9]. p. 3—“The ship of the desert.”

In the poetry of the East, the camel is designated as the land-ship, or the ship of the desert (Sefynet-el-badyet[^[AT]]).

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 Bitter 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 great degree absent. No animal’s life is so closely associated by natural bonds with a certain primitive stage of the development 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.”[^[AU]] “The camel was entirely unknown to the cultivated 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 Cæsars; perhaps in consequence 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 communication 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 was diffused throughout the interior of Northern Africa, and to which the Tibbos and Tuaryks, as already observed, belong, 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 complete annihilation and for the maintenance of its national existence 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 distribution 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[^[AV]], 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[^[AW]] alone doubts the present existence of wild camels in the interior of Asia. He believes that they have merely “become wild;” since Calmucks, and others professing kindred Buddhist 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.[^[AX]] The discovery of fossil camel-bones of the ancient world in the Sewalik hills (which are projecting spurs of the Himalaya range), by Captain 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.[^[AY]] This camel of the ancient world has been named Camelus sivalensis, 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[^[AZ]]. 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 Greenland, and the existence of floating masses of ice.[^[BA]]

[10]. p. 3—“Between the Altai and the Kuen-lün.”

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,[^[BB]]” that there is not in this sense any continuous mountain plateau in the interior of Asia.

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 between 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.”[^[BC]] Klaproth has the undeniable 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 dogmatic 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 Tartarie,” originated in France, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It was the result of historical combinations, and of a not sufficiently attentive study of the writings of the celebrated Venetian traveller, as well as of the naïve relations of those diplomatic monks who, in the 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 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 Bhischmakanda, 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 importance 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 demonstrated the inaccuracy and exaggeration of those wild hypotheses. The mountain plains (ὀροπέδια) 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.[^[BD]]

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 Han-hai. This swelling 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° east longitude from Greenwich. Measured at right angles to its longitudinal axis, its breadth in the south, between Ladak, Gertop, and H’lassa (the seat of the great Lama), is 720 miles; between Hami in the Celestial Mountains, and the great curve of the Hoang-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 carefully distinguished from the more eastern and higher mountain-range, may be approximately estimated, including its deflections, 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 Stanislaus Julien. My map marks in prominent characters the mean direction and the height of the mountain-chains, together with the chief features of the interior of the continent of Asia from 30 to 60 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 regarding Upper Asia, and more especially those regions situated between the In-schan, the alpine lake of Khuku-noor, and the shores of the Ili 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 advanced as far as Ferghana and the shores of the Caspian Sea); the religious interest attached to certain high mountain summits, 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 knowledge 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 frequently 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.[^[BE]]

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 discovered 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 character 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, between the boundaries of Siberia and Lake Saysan (Dsaisang), 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 Chonimailachu (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 lowlands and highlands, and of the successive gradations in the elevation of the soil, with actual data based on accurate measurements, I subjoin a table, in which the heights of the elevated 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.

No portion of the so-called Desert of Gobi, which consists 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, between 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 distinguished savans—the astronomer George Fuss, and the botanist 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 recommended. 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 measurements of contiguous mountain summits by the Jesuits Gerbillon and Verbiest. 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° 31′ north lat., and 111° 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. Reeds 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 geological reveries remind us of the Chinese traditions of the bitter lake, in the interior of Siberia, of which I have elsewhere spoken.[^[BF]]

The basin of Kashmir, which has been so enthusiastically praised by Bernier, and too moderately estimated by Victor Jacquemont, has also given occasion to great hypsometric exaggerations. Jacquemont found by an accurate 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.[^[BG]] The mountainous districts of Kashmir, which has excited so great an interest in Germany, and whose climatic advantages have lost somewhat of their reputation since Carl von Hügel’s account of the four months of winter snow in the streets of Sirinagur,[^[BH]] does not lie on the high crests of the Himalaya, as has commonly 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 Punjaub, 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.[^[BI]] The charms of the vegetation have also been very differently described, according as travellers 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-lün, 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 (probably 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 of the Indus, the plateau Deotsuh, whose elevation was determined by Vigne (11,977 feet). On carefully examining all the notices we have hitherto possessed regarding the three Thibets, and which will have been abundantly augmented during the present year by the brilliant boundary surveying expedition under the auspices of the Governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, we soon become convinced that the region between the Himalaya and the Kuen-lün is no unbroken table-land, but that it is intersected by mountain groups, which undoubtedly belong to perfectly distinct systems of elevation. Actual plains are very few in number: the most considerable are those between Gertop, Daba, Schang-thung (the Shepherd’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 (probably 14,965 feet), which was visited by Father Antonio de 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-dzangbotschu, which was formerly regarded as identical with the Buramputer (or correctly the Brahmaputra), 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.[^[BJ]] 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 pavement 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 certain 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 latitudes, 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 (Sinkiang-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 excellence; 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 heavy snow.” The neighbourhood of Khotan, Kaschgar, and Yarkand still, as in the time of Marco Polo,[^[BK]] pays its tribute in home-grown cotton. In the oasis of Hami (Khamil), above 200 miles east of Aksu, orange trees, pomegranates, 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 Astrakhan, 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 cultivated 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 3000[^[BL]] 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[^[BM]])? Carl Zimmerman[^[BN]] has shown it to be extremely probable that the Tarim depression, or the desert between the mountain chain of Thian-schan and Kuen-lün, where the steppe river Tarim-gol 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 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 removed by direct barometrical measurements, or by determinations 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, regarding 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 regularity, 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-lün, 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 depressed portion of Europe from a similarly low portion of Asia. The latter was called by Herodotus,[^[BO]] 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 from 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 Altaï-alin of the Moguls, and the Kin-schan of the Chinese) forms the southern boundary of the great Siberian lowlands, and running between 50° and 52½° 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.[^[BP]] The mountain system of the Altai comprehends—(a) the Altai proper, or Kolywanski Altai, which is entirely under the Russian sceptre: it lies to the west of the intersecting fissures of the Telezki Lake, which follow the direction of the meridian; 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,[^[BQ]] 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 Σάκαι), to the north.[^[BR]] 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 exclusively 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 highland, to which the mountain node of Kentei 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 chain of the Celestial Mountains, the Tengri-tagh of the Turks (Tukiu), and of the kindred race of the Hiongnu, is eight times as long, in an east and west direction, as the Pyrenees. Beyond, 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 luminous at night, and which are used for obtaining sal-ammoniac.[^[BS]] 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 erupted fire and streams of lava at least as late as the middle of the seventh century; the great snow-covered massive elevation of Bogdo-Oola; the Solfatara of Urumtsi, which furnishes 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 Kutch and Kharaschar[^[BT]]. 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 Rémusat, in a letter to Cordier[^[BU]], first directed the attention 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 Popocatepetl, 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 volcanoes Sangai, Tolima, and de la Fragua. All extinct volcanoes, and all trachytic mountains, which have no permanent connexion with the interior of the earth, have been excluded from these statements[^[BV]]. 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 of the mountain chain continues for more than 9½ 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 lowlands 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, from E.S.E. to W.N.W.) between 41° and 44°.[^[BW]] Of the four parallel chains that traverse Asia, the Thian-schan is the only one of which no summit has as yet been measured.

3. The mountain system of the Kuen-lün (Kurkun or Kulkun), including the Hindoo-Coosh, with its western prolongation 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 (Tchsung-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-schan 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 intersection of the Bolor and the Kuen-lün (Tchsung-ling), the regular direction of the axes of elevation (inclining from east to west in the Kuen-lün and Hindoo-Coosh, and from south-east to north-west in the Himalaya) proves, as I have elsewhere attempted to show, that the Hindoo-Coosh is a prolongation of the Kuen-lün and not of the Himalaya.[^[BX]] From the Taurus in Lycia to the Kafiristan, the chain follows the parallel of Rhodes (the diaphragm of Dicæarchus) over a distance of 45 degrees of longitude. The grand geological views of Eratosthenes,[^[BY]] 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[^[BZ]], “that a line drawn from Tzinitza (Thinæ) across Persia and Romania, would exactly pass over the centre of the inhabited earth.” It is remarkable, as Eratosthenes 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 35½° and 36° north latitude, to the Pillars of Hercules.[^[CA]] 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 geographers, 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.[^[CB]] 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 Schinkhieu, as I learn from a translation of the Yuen-thong-ki, made by my friend Stanislaus Julien.[^[CC]] 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 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 has a normal direction from east to west, running more than 15 degrees of longitude (from 81° to 97°), or from the colossal mountain 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 trigonometrically measured with exactness, and as I learn from India through the same channel, “that a new measurement of the Dhawalagiri still leaves it the first place among all the snow-crowned summits of the Himalaya,” this mountain must necessarily have a greater elevation than the 28,072 feet hitherto ascribed to it.[^[CD]] The point of deflection in the direction of the chain is, near the Dhawalagiri, in 81° 22′, east 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-Coosh 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 Itavana-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 Thibetian 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.