m

'

THE DESERT WORLD.

" For I have learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; bnt hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity."

WORDSWORTH

THE DESERT WORLD.

FROM THE FRENCH OF ARTHUR MANGIN.

anb (Enlarged

THE TRANSLATOR OF "THE BIRD, BY NICHE LET.

WITH 160 ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. FREEMAN, FOULQUIER, AND VAN DARGENT.

LONDON:

T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.

1869.

|HE area of our present work would be very limited if we
understood the word Desert in its more rigorous significa-
tion ; for we should then have only to consider those
desolate wildernesses which an inclement sky and a sterile soil seem
to exclude for ever from man's dominion.

But, by a license which usage authorizes, we are able to attribute
to this term a much more extended sense : and to call Deserts not
only the sandy seas of Africa and Asia, the icy wastes of the
Poles, and the inaccessible crests of the great mountain-chains ;
but all the regions where man has not planted his regular com-
munities or permanent abodes ; where earth has never been appro-
priated, tilled, and subjected to cultivation ; where Nature has
maintained her inviolability against the encroachments of human
industry.

Thus understood, the picture we are about to trace assumes not
only vast proportions, but an infinite variety of aspects.

Here and there, it is true, our eyes will rest on the gloomy
spectacle of rugged solitudes, where the soil churlishly refuses almost
every kind of product, where the boldest traveller cannot penetrate
without a shudder, and where the very beast of prey is rather a

vi t PREFACE.

visitor than an inhabitant : lugubrious regions, on whose threshold
one might write the legend written, according to Dante, on the gates

of hell—

" Lasciato ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate."
(All hope abandon, ye who enter here.)

But, on the whole, these true Deserts offer ample material for the
admiration of the artist, the meditations of the thinker, the researches
of the natui-alist and the physician. Theirs is that kind of beauty
which borders on the sublime, and which impresses us so powerfully
in the Ocean. And, like the Ocean, they awake in the soul the
feeling of infinity. They render it forgetful of the tumultuous
regions which are perturbed by petty passions, and vexed by the
contentions of ephemeral interests, and transport it to the boundless
space and the eternal spheres, or allow it to draw back within itself
and muse upon its future destiny.

Finally, what grave problems does the Desert place before the
man of science ! And first, why do life and fertility prevail else-
where,— here, sterility and death ? Why does an irrevocable curse
seem to weigh upon certain parts of the world, while others rejoice
in Nature's fairest gifts ? It is by examining the constitution of the
soil and the character of the climate that we discover the key to this
enigma, and recognize in this apparent anomaly a necessary effect of
the harmonious laws of the universe. Then the Desert has a
geology and a meteorology of its own ; is the theatre of special
phenomena, which we do not observe in more favoured regions.
Life itself is not completely absent from it ; specimens of the organic-
kingdoms are rare, no doubt, but for this very reason are the more
interesting.

And if, from the Desert properly so called, we pass to those
countries where the genial air and the abundant waters favour the
action of the productive forces, the interest increases with the

PREFACE. vii

increasing development of life. The picture changes every moment,
and every moment grows more animated. The scenes of the savage
world unfold before our eyes like a moving panorama ; unexpected
incidents and dramatic episodes multiply one upon another. Every
region appears before us with its primitive aspect, its grand and
picturesque landscapes, its characteristic fauna and flora — frequently,
also, with its tribes of white, or tawny, or black, or copper-coloured
men, whose singular manners, brutal instincts, fierce passions, and
wretched condition offer, in all its mournful reajity, the spectacle of
that "state of nature" celebrated by a great writer as the ideal of
virtue and happiness.

To conclude : the task which I here pursue is the same which I
recently commenced by the publication of my " Mysteries of the
Ocean ;"* to invite and prepare the general reader and the young for
the study of the physical and natural sciences, by bringing before
them the most interesting results of the discoveries and the observa-
tions with which these sciences have been enriched. Only, this new
essay is entirely descriptive, and has no didactic pretensions. I
have contented myself with sketching the physiognomy of
the great regions not yet conquered by civilization, with indi-
cating the more remarkable features they present, the peoples by
whom they are inhabited, and the important plants and animals

they nourish.

THE AUTHOR.

[The TRANSLATOR has only to add, that he has made copious
additions to the original work, with the view of rendering its scope

* The " Mysteries of the Ocean," rendered into English by the Translator of " The
Bird " and of the present volume, is published, as a companion •work, by Messrs. T. Nelson
and Sons.

viii PREFACE.

more comprehensive and complete, and of adapting it specially to the
requirements of the English reader. He has also corrected and
confirmed M. Mangin's statements by reference to the best and most
recent authorities, without, he would hope, any injury to the original
scheme, or any detriment to the value of M. Mangin's agreeable and
highly interesting chapters.] A.

Cnntnxts.

BOOK I.

THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND ASIA: — THE LANDES, THE DUNES, AND THE STEPPES.

CHAFFER PACB

I. THE DESERT IX FRANCE: — THE LANDES OF BRITTANY, ... ... 13

II. THE LANDES OF GASCONY, ... ... ... ... ... ... 24

III. THE DUNES, OB SAND-HILLS, ... ... ... ... ... ... 32

IV. WILD SCENES OF ENGLAND: — DARTMOOR AND THE FEN COUNTRY, ... ... 89

v. THE STEPPES: — THE DESERT IN RUSSIA, SIBERIA, AND TARTARY, ... ... 46

VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN*TIIE STEPPES: — THE WILD HORSE AND THE CAMEL, ... .51

VII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE STEPPES : — WILD RUMINATING ANIMALS, RODENTS, CAR-

NIVORA, BIRDS, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 64

VIII. INHABITANTS OF THE STEPPES : — TARTARS. COSSACKS, KALMUCKS. KIRGHIZ.

MONGOLS, ... ... ... ... 78

BOOK II.

THE DESERTS OF SAND :— THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND AFRICA.

I. THE RAINLESS DESERT — THE BED OF A SEA — THE DEAD SEA. ... ... 95

II. ARABIA DESERTA AND ARABIA PETR^A, ... ... ... "... 106

III. THE NUBIAN DESERT — THE GREAT SAHARA — DESERTS OF AFRICA, ... ... 118

IV. PHENOMENA OF THE DESERT, ... ... ... ... ... ... 134

V. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE DESERT— THE OAKKS. ... ... ... 148

VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE DESERT, ... ... ... ... ... 102

VII. THE MEN OF THE DESERT. 171

^ CONTENTS.

BOOK III.

PRAIRIES, SAVANNAHS, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS.

CHAITKI, HA'"'

I. WILD PLAINS OF THE OLD WORLD : — THE AFRICAN INTERIOR,

II. DESERTS OF THE NEW WORLD : — PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, LLANOS.

III. THE AUSTRALIAN INTERIOR, ... ... ••• 231

IV. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE AFRICAN PLAINS, ... ... 240

V. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS OF THE NEW WORLD. 258

VI. FLORA OF THE AUSTRALIAN PLAINS, ... ... 273

VII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD :— HERBIVOROUS ANIMALS, 281

VIII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD — CONTINUED : — THE

CARNIVORA, ... ... ... .. ... ... ... 300

IX. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD — CONTINUED: — BIRDS AND

REPTILES, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 317

X. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD: — HERBIVORA, INSECT I-

VORA. AND CARNIVORA, ... ... ... ... ... ... 328

XI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD— CONTINUED :— BIRDS AND

REPTILES,... ... ... ... ... ... ^ ... ... 353

XII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE AUSTRALIAN PRAIRIES, ... ... ... 366

BOOK IV.

THE FORESTS.

I. THE VIRGIN FORESTS, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 379

II. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE OLD WORLD, ... ... ... 397

III. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE GREAT ISLANDS. ... ... 412

IV. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE NEW WORLD, ... ... ... 428

V. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS : — THE ELEPHANT — THE RHINOCEROS. 447

VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE VIRGIN FORESTS :— THE GREAT APES. ... ... 403

VII. THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC APES : — ORANGS — GIBBONS — CHIMPANZEES — GORILLAS, 472
VIII. ANIMAL LIFE IN TH£ FORESTS :— THE CEBIDjK, OR MONKEYS OF AMERICA—

THE LEMURS — THE SLOTHS — THE SQUIRRELS. ... ... ... ... 487

IX. MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS : ANTHROPOPHAGY. . f>02

CONTEXTS. Sf

X. MAX IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS: — THE SAVAGE RACES — THK

NEGROES. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 514

XI. MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS'. — THE MALAYS POLYNESIANS —

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, 520

BOOK V.

THE POLAR DESERTS— THE MOUNTAINS.

I. THE POLAH DESERTS. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 543

II. ANIMAL LIFE AND VEGETABLE LIKE IN THE POLAK DESERTS, ... ... 555

III. THK INHABITANTS OF THE ARCTIC WILDERNESSES: — THE LAPLANDERS.

SAMOIEDES. OSTIAKS, KAMTSCHATDALES, ESKIMOS (OR ESQUIMAUX). ... 5C9

IV. THE MOUNTAINS. ... ... ... ... ... . . ... 579

V. VEGETABLE LIFE AND ANIMAL LIFE IN THE MOUNTAINS. ... 5Q«

THE DESERT WORLD.

BOOK I.

DESERTS OF EUROPE AND ASIA: THE LANDES. THE DUNES,
AND THE STEPPES.

CHAPTER I.

THE DESERT IX" FRANCE : THE LANDES OF BRITTANY.

[0 those whose imaginations have been kindled by glowing
pictures of the African Sahara and the Arabian wilderness,
it will be, perhaps, a matter of surprise to learn that even
fertile and civilized Europe includes within her boundaries regions
which are scarcely less cheerless or desolate, though, happily, of far
inferior extent.

Thus, it would be possible for a Frenchman whom the engage-
ments of business, the pressure of limited means, or the ties of home,
prevented from undertaking any distant voyages, to obtain a vivid
conception of the great Deserts of the World without crossing the
confines of his own country.

In France, so richly cultivated, so laborious, and so blessed by
genial Nature, there are, nevertheless, a few districts where her sons
may wholly forget — may almost disbelieve in the existence of — her

14 SOME UXTKODDEX SOLITUDES.

cities stirring with the " hum of men," her vineyards and her garden*,
her grassy pastures, her prolific meadows, her well-ordered highways,
and those " iron roads " which are the incessant channels of such
restless energy, movement, and vigorous life.

Bare and desolate enough, and as yet unconquered by advancing
civilization, are the mountains of France : among its gigantic ranges
of the Jura, the Yosges, and the Cevennes,* the traveller may still
ascend precipitous rocks, may hearken to the deafening roar of foamy
torrents, may contemplate with astonished gaze the masses of stone
upheaved in some convulsion of the ancient world, may listen to the
hoarse cry of the eagle, as

" Close to the sun iu lonely lands,
Kinged with the azure world he stands."

In the Alps, profaned as they now-a-days are by noisy tourists ; in the
Pyrenees, whither Alpine clubs have not yet extended their encroach-
ments, he who ascSnds some 8000 or 9000 feet may still wander
among ice and snow which the sun's rays never loosen, and gather in
his mind's eye a picture of the colossal peaks of Asia and the Xev*
World, of the virgin summits of the Himalaya and the Cordilleras.
There you may follow with entranced vision the swooping wing of
the lammergeyer ; or trace the nimble feet of the shy chamois ; or,
like Manfred, muse and wonder, while

•• The sunbow's rays still arch
The torrent with the many hues of heaven,
And roll the sheeted silver's waving column
O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular."

Mayhap, if favoured by Fortune, you may even find yourself face to
face, in the abrupt bend of some obscure ravine, with a bear, which,
calm and unsuspicious, looks on as you pass by, as if he were ignorant
of men, and had never heard the ringing echoes of the hunter's rifle.

* The Jura chain is an outlier of the great Alpine system, and situated on the border of
Switzerland ; the Vosges separate the valley of the Rhine from that of the Moselle (greatest
elevation, 4G9 feet) ; and the Cevennes that of the Loire from the basin of the Rhone
(greatest elevation, 5794 feet).

•HH

UNCULTIVATED FRANCE. 17

It is less easy — in France, at least — to discover the old shadowy,
leafy, almost impervious forest. The most celebrated — that of Fon-
tainebleau — despite its enormous trees, its rudely broken surface, its
stags and roebucks reserved for imperial sport, despite its few adders
and problematical vipers, is now little better than a rendezvous for
amateur artists and listless idlers. Its well-kept avenues resound
with rapid wheels, and you can scarcely stir a step without finding
the associations of the place interrupted by the stalls of vendors of
cakes or the apparatus of itinerant gamblers. This profanation is
surely to be regretted, for the Forest exhibits many landscapes of
surpassing interest, as the rocks of Franchart, the glens of Apremont,
and, above all, that Sahara in miniature, the sands of Arbonne. Nor
would one willingly forget the historical memories which immortalize
the famous palace where Francis I. received his after-time conqueror,
Charles V.; where the wayward and half-insane Christina of Sweden
listened with cruel delight to the groans of the murdered Monaldeschi;
where Madame Du Barry lavished her shameless graces ; where Pope
Pius VII. lingered through two years of gilded captivity ; and where
Napoleon bade farewell to his dreams of universal empire.*

Among the uncultivated regions of France we may mention the
marshes of the Bresse, of Forez, of the Sologne, of Upper Brittany, and
of Picardy. The greater portion of these marshes, owing to the peat
which forms their bed, is vigorously and not unsuccessfully worked.
They are traversed by trenches dug at right angles, and on whose
border are placed the turf-cutter's little hut, and the furnace in which
the peat is baked. Their lagoons, and the canals which connect them,
swarm with flat-bottomed boats. Man, in a word, has taken posses-
sion of them ; braving the unhealthy vapours which enfeeble his
frame and shorten his life, he builds his squalid abode on the rising
ground left uncovered by the waters. The largest of these peat-bogs
are those of Montoir and the Grand Briere, near Savenay, in the
department of the Loire Infe'rieure. They occupy a considerable area

* The forest covers an area of about sixty-four square miles. The chateau, originally
founded by Robert the Pious in 975-990, was rebuilt in the twelfth century by Louis VII.

9

18 THE LANDSCAPES OF BKITTANY.

of a vast desolate plain, where a few lean sheep crop an insufficient
food from the scanty herbage, and whose sole product is turf. " This
country," says Jules Janin,* " has no other harvest, no other wealth
than its peat ; neither fruit, nor flowers, nor corn, nor pastures, nor
repose, nor well-being ; the earth is wild, the sky one of iron. It is
a region of stagnant waters, pestiferous exhalations, decrepit men,
famished animals."

The swampy levels of Montoir form the natural vestibule to the
Armorican Peninsula, which of all the French provinces has the
longest ajid the most vigorously withstood the advance of civilization,
its ideas, and its modern institutions, and has the most rigidly preserved
its primitive character. There are many nooks and corners in Brit-
tany scarcely changed in outward aspect or inner life since the remote
days when it was a valued appanage of the English crown. They seem
to have been plunged in a sleep of centuries, from which the shrill
whistle of the steam-engine is only just awakening them. The
country is undulating and broken ; in the central districts it assumes
quite a mountainous character. It is true that its heights are only
of moderate elevation, the loftiest not exceeding 2000 feet ; but they
are barren, rude, and sombre in appearance. The coast is picturesque
enough to delight the most zealous artist, bordered with high and
abrupt cliffs, and lined, as it were, with a beach where the waters of
the Channel ever break in floods of spray and foam, and where masses
of rock lie scattered of immense size and the most fantastic forms.

Geologically speaking, Brittany may be regarded as a prolongation
of our English mountains, to which, like all the north-west coast of
France, they were anciently united. In some remote era a vast
convulsion opened in the solid land a chasm through which the
oceans poured their meeting waters, and separated our beloved island
from the European continent ; the sole condition under which, per-
haps, it was possible for the English people to have accomplished
their destiny. Anchored amid the protecting seas, we are able to
regard from afar, like a watchman from a tower, the convulsions that
* Jules Janin, " La Bretagne" (ed. Paris, 1845), c. xvii.

MEMORIALS OF ANTIQUITY. 19

sweep across the face of Europe. Like the watchman, we cannot
refuse to be moved by the spectacle, by the stir and the tumult ; but
it is only considerations of duty that can induce us to descend from
our security, and mingle in the fray.

Brittany belongs to what geologists call the primitive and inter-
mediary formations. It is divided into three belts or longitudinal
trenches : those of the north and south consist of primitive rocks,
granite and porphyry ; the central appertains to a more recent forma-
tion, to the group of intermediary or secondary rocks, cojnposed in
the main of schists and mica-schists, quartz, and gneiss. Schist pre-
vails over a considerable area, and is prolonged to the very extremity
of the peninsula. These hard, compact, impervious rocks, are entirely
bare in many places ; elsewhere, and over a great extent, they are
covered but by a thin layer of clayey and sandy earth, where the
sudden slopes of the soil do not allow the rains to settle.

Here are the plains, often of considerable dimensions, which,
bristling with rocks, and broken up by ravines, water-courses, and
marshes, constitute the Landes of Brittany. True deserts these,
relieved at distant points by an isolated hut, or by a wandering herd
of swine, lean cows, and meagre-looking horses, which obtain a scanty
subsistence from the heathery soil, sown here and there with tufts of
furze, broom, and fern.

Under a sky of almost continual sombreness, like that which
impends over the pottery districts of England, these landes present a
sufficiently sinister and uninviting aspect. The traveller, as he crosses
their sepulchral wastes, will hardly marvel that they were anciently
a chosen seat of Druidical worship. Like Dartmoor, they would
seem to have offered a peculiarly fitting arena for the rites and
ceremonies of a creed which we know to have been mysterious in
character and sanguinary in spirit. They are covered with its gray
memorials : the masses of granite of different shapes known as Maen
hirs, or " long stones," and peulvcns, which appear to have been
employed as sepulchral monuments; dolmens, or "table-stones;" and
cromlechs (crom, bowed or bending, and lech, a stone), which anti-

20 HAUNTS OF SUPERSTITION.

quaries are now agreed to regard as the remains of the ancient
cemeteries or burial places. At Camae, near Quiberon Bay, may be
seen a truly remarkable example of the Parallelitha, or avenues of
upright stones, forming five parallel rows, which extend for miles
over the dreary moorland. What were their uses it is impossible to
determine, for there seems little ground to believe, as some writers
would have us believe, that they were " serpent temples," where the
old Ophite worship was celebrated. We can only gaze at them in
wonder : imile upon mile of gray lichen-stained stones, some twenty
feet high, laboriously fashioned and raised in their present places by
the hand of man some twenty centuries agone.*

On these very dolmens, where the priests of the Tentates were
wont to immolate their human victims to their unknown god, the
mediaeval sorcerers and sorceresses celebrated the Black Mass, or Mass
of Satan, in terrible burlesque of the Roman Catholic sacrament, con-
cocted their abominable philtres, and performed their dreary incanta-
tions. Alas for human nature ! In every age it is a prey to the
wildest credulity. Even in the present day more than one super-
stition hovers around the monuments of the Celtic epoch. The
Bretons believe them haunted by demons called poulpiquets, who
love to make sport of the passing stranger, but will sometimes give
both counsel and encouragement to those who know how to address
them in the prescribed formulas ; who, like the Ladye in the " Lay
of the Last Minstrel," at their bidding can bow

" The viewless forms of air."

For, in the Breton mind, the superstitions of Druidism have not been
wholly uprooted by the teachings of Christianity, still less by those
of science and reason. Many a dark and dismal legend flourishes in
the lonely recesses of the landes.-f-

Brittany, like England, has its Cornouaille, or Cornwall, and it

* Deane, " Archseologia," vol. xxv.

t See Mr. Jephson's " Walking Tour in Brittany," and Tom Taylor's recent book of
" Translations of Breton Songs and Ballads."

THE BEETON CHARACTER. 23

is here, particularly in North Cornwall, that we see it under its most
desolate aspect, with its chains of black treeless hills covered with
heath and furze ; with its deserts of broom and fern, its ruins scat-
tered along the winding roads, its attenuated herds wandering at their
will across the moors, and its savage, ignorant, and scanty population.
The Bretons of Cornwall, according to a French writer, are elevated
but a little above the true savage life. Those who dwell upon the
coast live on the products of their fishing, except when the fortunate
occurrence of a wreck provides them with temporary abundance. At
bottom, they possess the qualities and defects of characters strongly
tempered, but absolutely uncultivated. They are as hard and bare
as their own granite rocks. Persevering, courageous, resolute, they
make excellent sailors, the best which France can find ; the sea is
for them a second country. Progress, which they do not understand,
inspires them with a sort of terror, a gloomy mistrust. When the
railway surveyors first intruded upon their solitudes, these rigid
conservatives assailed them with volleys of stones, and when the
railroads were laid down flung beams across the lines to overthrow
the hissing, whirring trains which threatened to disturb their pre-
scriptive barbarism. They asked but to be let alone — to be suffered
to live as their forefathers lived— to be spared the ingenuities, suc-
cesses, vices, and virtues of the New World. But modern civilization,
like Thor's hammer, or Siegfried's magic sword Balmung, will break
down the last barriers raised by ignorance and superstition. It will
shed its light upon the wilds and wastes of Brittany, and compel
their inhabitants in the course of years to acknowledge its value and
accept its benefits.

24 DESERTS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE.

CHAPTER II

THE LANDES OF GASCON Y..

THE Breton " Cornwall " has been called by a popular French
writer, "the Arabia Petrea of Brittany." But we might, perhaps,
with greater justice apply to this sombre region, peopled as it is with
fantastic visions, the name of "Land of Fear," which the Arabs
bestow on the Great Desert. Less vivid, it may be, but graver
and more profound is the impression produced by the Landes and
Dunes of Gascony. These deserts of the south, which Michelet terms
" the vestibule and threshold of the Ocean," appeal less powerfully to
the imagination. They are haunted by no historical memories, no
traditions or marvellous legends in which man has rudely embodied
his dim conceptions of the mysteries of nature ; they are crowded
with no monuments of antiquity to revive the shadows of the heroes
and priests of ancient Gaul ; and when these are wanting, what shall
supply their place ? But ample scope exists for the assiduous
labours of the naturalist, who here may see at work those unresting
forces which have inspired every revolution of the globe's surface ;
who may contemplate here the phenomena that occur with the same
regularity as in the days when man had not been fashioned after his
Maker's image —

" Him framing like himself, all shining bright ;
A little living sun, son of the living light." *

These despoiled plains, these inhospitable wilds, alternately dry and
marshy; these sullen pools, these mountains of shifting sand, speak
forcibly to his mind of their past history, which is not one of the least
curious episodes of the history of the physical world.

The department which borrows its name from the Landes of
Gascony is divided by the Adour into two wholly dissimilar parts.
* P. Fletcher, " The Purple Island," canto i. 45.

2 a

SHEPHERDS ON STILTS. 27

To the south of the river lies a rich, undulating, vine-bearing country,
rich in pasturage and harvest, sown with pleasant villages and smiling
country houses, and watered by full streams and little rivers. To
the north, the appearance of the country changes abruptly. When
the traveller has crossed the alluvial zone of the Adour he sees before
him a thin, dry, sandy level of a comparatively recent marine forma-
tion. Its only products are rye, millet, and maize ; its only vegeta-
tion, forests of pines and scattered coppices of oaks ; beyond these,
and they do not extend far, all cultivation ceases, and the soil is
stripped of verdure ; you enter upon the Landes — seemingly vast as
a sea — occupied by permanent or periodical swamps ; and where,
over a space of several square leagues, in an horizon apparently
boundless, you perceive nothing but heaths, sheepfolds or steadings
for the flocks of sheep that traverse these deserts, and shepherds
keeping mute watch over their animals, living wholly among them,
and having no intercourse with the rest of humanity, except when
once a week they seek their masters' houses to procure their supply
of provisions. It is these shepherds only (Landescots and Aouillys),
and not, as is generally supposed, all the peasants of the Landes, who
are perched upon stilts, so as to survey from afar their wandering
flocks, and to traverse more safely the marshes which frequently lie
across their path.

Wild and uncouth are the figures which these stilt-walkers
present, as they move rapidly over the country, often at the rate of
six or seven miles an hour ; occasionally indulging in an interval of
rest, by the aid of a third wooden support at the back (curved at
the top, so as to fit the hollow of the body), while they pursue their
favourite pastime of knitting. The dress of the Landescot is singu-
larly rude. His coat or paletot is a fleece ; cuisses and greaves of the
same material protect his legs and thighs ; his feet are thrust into
sabots and coarse woollen socks, which cover only the heels and instep.
Over his shoulder hangs the gourd which contains his week's store of
provisions : some mouldy rye-bread, a few sardines, some onions and
cloves of garlic, and a flask of thin sour wine. From sunrise to sun-

28 A DREARY PLAIN.

set he lives upon the stilts, never touching the ground. Sometimes
he drives his flock home at eventide ; sometimes he bivouacs sub jove
frigido, under the cold heaven of night. Unbuckling his stilts, and
producing his flint and steel, he soon kindles a cheery fire of fir-
branches, and gathering his sheepskins round him, composes himself
to sleep ; his only annoyances being the musquitoes, and his fears of
the evil tricks of wizard or witch, who may perad venture catch a
glimpse of him in the moonlight, as they ride past on their besom to
some unholy gathering or demon-dance.

An English traveller has sketched in vivid colours the landscape
of the Landes. Over all its gloom and barrenness, he remarks, over
all its " blasted heaths," its monotonous pine-woods, its sudden
morasses, its glaring sand-heaps, prevails a strong sense of loneliness,
a grandeur and intensity of desolation, which invests the scene with
a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself. Emerging from the black-
shadows of the forest, the pilgrim treads a plain, " flat as a billiard-
table," apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in one unvaried,
unbi'oken garb of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and ridges, or
great ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine ; some-
times belts of scraggy young fir trees appear rising from the horizon
on the right, and sinking into it again on the left. Occasionally a
brighter shade of green, with jungles of willows and water weeds,
giant rushes, and " clustered marish mosses," will tell of the " black-
ened waters " beneath —

" Hard by a poplar shook alway.

All silver-green with gnarled bark ;

For leagues no other tree doth mark

The level waste, the rounding gray." *

The dwellings which stud this dreary, yet not wholly unpoetic
landscape, are generally mere isolated huts, separated oftentimes by
many miles. Round them spreads a miserable field or two, planted
with such crops as might be expected on a poor soil and from
deficient cultivation. The cottages are mouldering heaps of sod and
* Tennyson, Poems: "Mariana."

THE GREAT AND LITTLE LANDES. 29

unhewn and unmortared stones, clustered round with ragged sheds
composed of masses of tangled bushes, pine-stakes and broad-leaved
reeds, beneath which the meagrest looking cattle conceivable find a
precarious shelter.*

The Landes are divided into the Little Landes, near Mont-de-
Marsan ; and the Great Landes, stretching to the north and west of
the department of which that town is the capital, and uniting unin-
terruptedly with those that occupy the vast country situated south of
the Gironde. The total superficial area of these plains is estimated at
upwards of 2,400,000 acres, of which two-thirds belong to the de-
partment of the Landes, and the remainder to that of the Gironde.

Yet the reader must not believe this 'country to be a desert in the
popular acceptation of the word ; it has its forests of pines, where the
extraction and prepai-ation of resinous matter are carried on with con-
siderable activity. It has its small towns, its pretty villages, its
factories, and even its handsome villas. Finally, modern industry
has cut the Landes in two by the Bordeaux railway, which traverses
them from north to south, and bifurcates at Morans to throw off a
line to Bayonne, and another to Tarbes.

In shape, the Great Landes may be compared to an immense rec-
tangular triangle, having for its base the coast, which, from the mouth
of the Gironde to Bayonne, or for a length of more than sixty leagues,
is almost rectilineal. But they are separated from the sea by a long
parallel chain of lakes and water-courses — a waste of shallow pools —
a labyrinth of gulfs and morasses, and then by the continuous chain
of the Dunes, of which we shall speak in the following chapter.

That which is commonly called the Great Lande is bounded on
the north by the tiang, or lake, of Cazau. It is *a sandy, treeless
plain, and upon which, for a traject of several leagues from east to
west, not one habitation worthy of the name is perceptible until the
traveller arrives at Mimizan, near the southern point of the lake of
Aureilhan. This lake on the south-west pours its waters into the
sea. To the north it communicates, through the canal of St. Eulalie,
* Angus Reach, " Claret and Olives.''

80 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE LANDES.

with the lake of Biscarosse, which is itself connected with that of
Cazau. East of this chain of lakes lies the Lande ; west of it
stretches the range of Dunes, or sandhills.

The lake or pool of Cazau is a small sea of fresh water, perfectly
clear, profoundly deep, and fourteen to fifteen thousand acres in
extent. It has its whirlwinds arid its tempests, so that in certain
seasons it is perilous to embark on its surface. And were its banks
clothed with rich woods, or raised aloft in irregular or precipitous
cliffs, it would surely attract as great a throng of tourists as the
mountain-tarns an4 lochs of Scotland or Cumberland, or the Arcadian
waters of Northern Italy. The lake of Biscarosse, in form a triangle,
with one side formed by the Dunes, covers about twelve thousand
acres. It derives its name from a village situated at its northern
angle, on the bank of the canal which connects it with the lake of
Cazau. The lake of Aureilhan is the smallest of the three ; the
St. Eulalie canal, which links it to the preceding, traverses a series
of peat-bogs bounded eastward by gloomy pine-forests, and westward
by the interminable Dunes, which, by arresting the flow of the rain-
waters, have really created these so-called lakes and extensive swamps.
Enormous quantities of rain fall every year in the Landes, — which
district the Romans would certainly have dedicated to Jupiter
Pluvius, — and find beneath the thin superficial stratum or crust of
sand and earth, a sub-soil of tufa and allios — in other words, of com-
pact chalk and sand agglutinated by a ferruginous sediment. Fre-
quently this tufa possesses all the hardness of stone, and its impervi-
ousness is its fundamental property. Hence it follows, that a portion
of the heavy annual rainfall remains in the receptacles provided by the
hollows and depressions of the soil, and in due time accumulates into
marshes and lagoons, until gradually evaporated by the heat of spring.

When of old the scared peasants beheld the irresistible advance
of these strange ministers of destruction, they had no other resource
than to fell their woods, abandon their dwellings, and surrender their
" little all " to the pitiless sand and devouring sea. What could
avail against such a scourge ? Efforts were made to repel it. It is

MAN'S WAR AGAINST NATURE. 31

said that Charlemagne, during a brief residence in the Landes, on his
return from his expedition against the Saracens, employed his
veterans, and expended large sums of money in preserving the cities
of the coast from imminent ruin ; but whether the means employed
were insufficient, or whether the imperial resources failed, and other
urgent needs diverted the population and their leaders from this
struggle against nature, the works were wholly abandoned.

Of late years they have been resumed, and with greater success,
by a skilful agriculturist, M. Desbiey, of Bordeaux, and an able
engineer, M. Bremontier, who have called in nature herself to assist
man in his war against nature. Their system consists of sowing in
the driest sand the seeds of the sea-pine, mixed with those of the
broom (genista scoparici), and the psamma arenaria. The spaces
thus sown are then closely covered with branches to protect them
from the action of the winds. These seeds germinate spontaneously.
The brooms, which spring up rapidly, restrain the sand, while shelter-
ing the young pines, and thenceforth the Dune ceases to move,
because the wind can no longer unsettle its substance, and the grains
are held together by the roots of the young plants. The work is
always begun on the inland side, in order to protect the farmer and
the peasant, and to withdraw the infant forest from the unwholesome
influence of the ocean-winds. And, in order that the sown spaces
shall not themselves be buried under the sands blown up from the
shore, a palisade of wicker-work is raised at a suitable distance,
which, reinforced by young plants of sandwort (psamma arenaria),
check the moving sands for a sufficiently long time to favour the
development of the seeds. Finally, the work is completed by the
construction of a substantial wall, or rather an artificial cliff, which
effectually prevents the further progress of the flood, or directs it
seaward, to be arrested on its course by the barrier of the sand-hills.
Unable to force a passage through these natural ramparts, they
have excavated certain basins, more or less extensive, more or less
deep, which have formed into inland seas, communicating with the
Atlantic by one narrow issue.

32 EMBANKMENT OF THE DUNES.

It is a noteworthy fact that, owing to the encroachment of the
Dunes, these lakes have been constantly forced back upon the inland
country. Fortunately, this menacing invasion of the sands has been
checked by the great engineering works executed a few years ago ;
which, on the one hand, have fixed, and, as it were, solidified the
Dunes, and, on the other, have provided for the regular outflow of the
waters. The Landes have thus been opened to the persevering labours
of the cultivator. The culture of the pine, and the manufacture of
resinous substances, have largely extended, and the time, perhaps, is
not far distant when these deserts will almost completely disappear ;
when these desolate and unproductive plains will pleasantly bloom,
transformed into shadowy woods or verdurous meadows.*

To so fortunate a result nothing will more powerfully contribute
than the embankment of the Dunes. These have been, in reality, the
true scourge of this country ; these were the moving desert, the con-
stantly ascending sea, which had already engulfed forests, villages,
even towns, under its billows of sand, and driven before it the ter-
rified inhabitants of the coast.

CHAPTER III.

THE DUNES, OR SAND-HILLS.

THE Dunes form the extreme line of the Brittany coast for nearly
two hundred miles, from the Adour to the Garonne. They are hills
of white sand, as fine and soft as if it had been sifted through an
hour-glass. Their outline, therefore, changes every hour. When the
wind blows from the land, millions of tons of sand are hourly driven
into the sea, to be washed up again on the beach and blown inland
by the first Biscay gale. A water hurricane from the west will fill

* The fir plantations, which are so numerous in the Landes, were first formed in 1789,
under the direction of the minister, M. Necker (father of Madame de Stael). In 1862, the
department had a population of 300,859. Acreage, 2,434.752.

THE DUNES, OR SAND-HILLS. 35

up with sand square miles of shallow lake, driving the displaced
waters into the interior, dispersing them in shining pools among the
" murmurous pines," flooding and frequently destroying the scattered
hamlets of the people, and inundating their fields of- rye and millet.*

Their origin is due to the prevalence of the sea-winds on those
points of the coast which are not protected by rock and cliff, and
whose slopes of sand descend very gradually to the margin of the
waves. Their formation is easily explained. The sand of which
they are composed is a silicious material, reduced to minute grains,
generally rounded, by trituration. These grains, nevertheless, are often
too big and too heavy for the wind to take them up and scatter them
afar, like the dust of the highways or the ashes of volcanoes. But at
low tide the sand, dried by the sun's rays and the action of the wind,
offers to the latter a sufficient holdfast to be dragged up the slopes which
descend seaward, and deposited at a certain distance. This process
being constantly repeated, the heaps are daily increasing in dimensions.

It will easily be understood that this accumulation along the
shore cannot have taken place where the force and direction of
the sands experience periodical or capricious changes ; for then the
sands cast upon the beach by the winds of the north and west would
be driven back into the sea by the winds of the south and east.
This is noticeable in many places where the nature of the coast is
favourable for the production of such a phenomenon. But on other
shores — as on the Atlantic littoral of France — the winds which blow
most frequently and most violently are from the west and south-west.
And it is there we encounter the Dunes. Those of Gascony are by
far the most remarkable. Northward, they extend as far as the
Point de Grave, which shuts in the mouth of the Gironde ; south-
ward, to the bank of the Adour, and even further, to the cliffs of
Be'arn. Here the basin of Arcachon constitutes one vast hollow ;
and some openings exist, moreover, in the department of Landes,
between that basin and the Adour, for the overflow of the waters
which descend from the interior. To the north and south of the

* Angus B. Reach, " Claret and Olives.

36 FORMATION OF THE DUNES.

Teste de Buch the chain of sand-hills measures from 4400 to 6600
feet in width. At other points it is still wider ; but it narrows
towards its extremities, and both at the Point de Grave and near
Bayonne does not exceed 450 yards.

Owing to their extreme shiftiness of soil, the Dunes can attain no
considerable elevation. The sand deposited by the wind on the sum-
mit of the hill is always in a state of precarious equilibrium. It has
a constant tendency to be precipitated down the other side ; and the
higher the summit the greater is this tendency, so that there comes
at last a moment when no further accumulation in height is possible.
The Dune may then extend its basis, may even increase twofold in
dimensions, but it no longer rises.

Let us note, moreover, that owing to its density the sand cannot
be carried even by the most violent winds into the higher regions of
the atmosphere ; and that the Dunes, when they have reached a cer-
tain elevation, oppose to them an insuperable obstacle. This circum-
stance would consequently have a salutary effect, and the accumulation
of sand would be determined by a law of its own, if the Dunes, once
formed, had time to cohere. But this is not the case. Incessantly
does the wind undo or modify its work ; and the loftiest hills being
the most exposed to its violence, are quickly reduced to the common
level. In general, the greatest elevation of the Dunes corresponds to
their greatest breadth. Thus the culminating point of those of Gas-
cony is found in the belt situated between the lakes of Cazau and
Biscarosse, where the chain is from 7500 to 9000 yards across.
Their average height is 180 feet to 200 feet above the sea-level ; but
some of the hills in the forest of Biscarosse attain an altitude of 320
feet. In the neighbourhood of the mouths of the Gironde and the
Adour, where the chain is considerably nan-owed, the height of the
Dunes is only thirty to forty-five feet.

The reader must not suppose that the Dunes consist of a single
series of sand-hills ranged along the shore. He will, however, have
conjectured, from our statements respecting their width, that they
really compose a chain of several more or less regular ridges. The

ENCROACHMENTS OF THE DUNES. 37

hills are separated from one another by valleys, locally named laites
or lettes. These valleys, where the pluvial waters flow and accumu-
late, exhibit a striking contrast, in their freshly- blooming verdure, to
the naked, barren Dunes. The general aspect of the landscape may,
therefore, be compared to that of the ocean. There is the same
broken surface, the same extent of undulation, the billows of sand
being upheaved by the wind like the billows of the sea, and sharing
in their mobility. You must see, says a writer, in order to form an
idea of those colossal masses of fine sand, which the wind incessantly
skims, and which travel in this way towards the inland country :
yon must see their contours so softened that they look like mountains
of plaster of Paris polished by the workman's hand, and their surface
so mobile that a little insect leaves upon it a conspicuous track ;
their slopes, at every degree of inclination ; their everlasting steri-
lity—not a blade of grass, not an atom of vegetation ; their solitude,
less imposing than that of the mountains, but still of a truly savage
character. You must see, from the summit of one of these ridges,
the ocean on your right hand, and on your left the extensive lakes
which border the littoral ; and, in the midst of this tumultuous sea of
tawny sand, green grassy valleys, rich and fertile pastures, smiling
oases of verdure, where herds of horses graze, and cows half-wild,
guarded by shepherds scarcely less wild than they.*

The marked characteristic of the Dunes, as we have already said,
is their mobility, which renders them a constant menace for the
neighbouring populations. To the wind which creates them they
owe their frequent changes and their inland movement. While the
sea eats into the coast, assisted by the breezes which gradually sweep
clear the ground before it, the Dunes extend, and drive before them
the shallow lakes : these in their turn encroach upon the Landes, and
until now man has been constrained to recoil, step by step, before his
threefold enemy. It is in this phenomenon, rather than in the
ungrateful soil of the Landes, that we must seek the cause of the
curse which has seemed so long to rest upon this country-side. You
* SI. Perris, in " Memoires de I'Academie de Lyon."

38 TERRIBLE DEVASTATIONS OF THE DUNES.

must go back some twenty centuries to trace the origin of the Dunes
of Gascony. Fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago the coast north
of the Adour .was inhabited, and comparatively nourishing. Mimi-
zan was then a town and a sea-port, from which were exported the
resinous products of the neighbouring forests. The Normans disem-
barked there on- several occasions. Under it's walls, in 506, was
fought a great battle between the allied Goths and Ostrogoths on the
one side, and the Bdarnais, commanded by a bishop of Lescar, on the
other. Both town and port to-day are buried under the sands.
" Full fathom five" lie church and convent, and the busy street, the
noisy mart, and the once peaceful home. The present village has
nearly perished : the Dune was not three yards from the church
when its progress was recently arrested. Other cities, laid down in
old charts of the country, but of which not a trace remains, have in this
manner disappeared, and entire forests have been ingulfed, now under
the sands of the Dunes, now under the sands and waves of the sea.

Some parts of the chain have been rendered to a great extent
immovable by the vegetation which has gradually covered them, and
these have opposed a formidable obstacle to the encroachments of the
sands. Yet here and there the barrier has been defied. For example,
in the forest of Biscarosse the movable Dunes, actually sweeping over
the ancient hills, have not only filled up the valleys, but ingulfed a
great number of pines, and raised themselves several yards above the
crest of the oldest trees, planted on the summit of the highest hills.

In whose favour, in this struggle of science against the elements,
will the victory eventually be decided ? The question is one which
the future alone can resolve.*

* " Dunes," from dun, a hill. These sand-mounds also extend along the coast of the
Netherlands, where they serve to protect the low country from tidal inundation. " In
some places," says a traveller, " they look like a series of irregular hills ; and when seen
from the top of the steeples, they are so huge as to shut out the view of the sea. The
traveller, in visiting them from the fertile plains, all at once ascends into a region of desert
b'arrenness. He walks on and on for miles in a wilderness such as might be expected to
be seen in Africa, and at last emerges on the sea-shore, where the mode of creation of this
singular kind of territory is at once conspicuous.' — TT. Chambers, " Tour in Holland."

CROSSING THE CHANNEL. 39

CHAPTER IV.

WILD SCENES OF ENGLAND : DARTMOOR AND THE FEN

COUNTRY.

CROSSING the Channel, and surveying the limited expanse of our own
" beloved England," we become aware of certain districts which
belong to the Desert World. Through the ceaseless energy of our
race, and the introduction of mechanical inventions which economize
time and labour and treble the reproductive power of capital, almost
all England has been transformed into a rich and radiant garden,
where the waste places are " few and far between," where the solitude
of desolation is scarcely known ; yet, as already observed, there
are districts which retain much of their ancient wildness of
character.

Such a region is Dartmoor, the extensive and romantic table-land
of granite which occupies the south-western part of the county of
Devon. In its recesses still linger the eagle, the bustard, and the
crane ; its solitudes are broken by the hoarse cries of the sparrow-
hawk, the hobby, and the goshawk ; and the Cyclopean memorials of
Druidism which cover its surface — cromlechs and kistvaens, tolmens
and stone-avenues — invest it with a peculiar air of mysterious awe.
It extends in length about twenty-two miles (from north to south),
and in breadth twenty miles (from east to west). Its total area
exceeds 130,000 acres. It rises above the surrounding country like
"the long, rolling waves of a tempestuous ocean, fixed into solidity
by some instantaneous and powerful impulse." A natural rampart is
cast around it. Deep ravines, watered by murmuring streams,
diversify its aspect, and lofty hills of granite, locally called tors, of
which the principal, Yes Tor, has an elevation of 2050 feet above the
sea. Its soil is composed of peat, in some places twenty-five feet

40 THE FOREST OF DARTMOOR.

deep ; underneath which lies a solid mass of granite, occasionally
relieved by trap (a volcanic rock), and traversed by veins of tin,
copper, and manganese.*

Nearly in the centre of this dismal wilderness lies an immense
morass, whose surface is in many places incapable of supporting the
lightest animal, and whose inexhaustible reservoirs supply the foun-
tains of many a river and stream — the Dart, the Teign, the Taw, the
Tavy — all clear as crystal in the summer months, but after heavy
rains running redly through the " stony vales." The roaring of
these torrents, when angry and swollen, is sublime to a degree incon-
ceivable by those who have never heard the wild impressive music of
untamed Nature.

The tors are remarkable for their quaint fantastic outlines, which,
like the clouds, suggest all manner of strange similitudes — to dragons,
and griffins, and hoary ruins, and even to human forms of gigantic
size, apparently confronting the traveller as the lords and natural
denizens of the rugged waste. The principal summits are Yes Tor,
Cawsand Beacon, Fur Tor, Lynx Tor, Rough Tor, Holne Ridge, Brent
Tor, Rippen Tor, Hound Tor, Sheep's Tor, Crockern Tor, and Great Mis
Tor. Not only must their variety of form delight the artist, but his
eye rests well pleased on their manifold changes of colour ; purple,
and green, and gray, and blue — now softened by a delicate vaporous
shadow, now glowing with intense fulness in the sun's unclouded light.

Dartmoor is traditionally reputed to have been anciently clothed
with forest. The sole relic now existing is the lonely Wistman's
Wood, which occupies a sombre valley, bounded on the one side by
Crockern Tor, on the other by Little and Great Bairdown ; the slopes
being strewn with gray blocks of granite in "admired disorder," as
if the Titans had been at their cumbrous play. Starting from this
chaos of rocks, appears a wood or grove of dwarf weird-looking oaks,
interspersed with the mountain-ash, and everywhere festooned about
and garlanded with ferns and parasitical plants. None of these trees

* Rev. S. Rowe, "Perambulation of the Ancient Forest of Dartmoor" (ed. by Dr. E.
Moore; London, 1856).

WISTMAN'S WOOD. 41

exceed twelve feet in height, but at the top they spread far and
wide, and " branch and twist in so fantastic and tortuous a manner
as to remind one of those strange things called mandrakes." Their
branches are literally covered with ivy and creeping plants, and their
trunks so thickly embedded in a coating of moss that at first sight,
says Mrs. Bray, " you would imagine them to be of enormous thick-
ness in proportion to their height. Their whole appearance conveys
to you the idea of hoary age in the vegetable world of creation ; and
on visiting Wistmaii's Wood it is impossible to do other than think
of those ' groves in stony places' so often mentioned in Scripture as
being dedicated to Baal and Astaroth." *

That heathen rites were celebrated here in the pre-historic era
seems very probable, the best etymologists agreeing that the name is
a corruption of Wise-man, or Wish-man ; that is, of the old Norse
god Woden, who is still supposed to drive his spectral hounds across
the silent wastes of Dartmoor. Celtic or Cymric memorials, as we
have previously hinted, are very abundant and very various. There
are cromlechs, where the Britons buried their dead ; stone pillars,
with which they commemorated their priests and heroes ; avenues
of upright stones leading up to the circles, where, perhaps, their
priests celebrated their religious rites ; kistvaens, or stone-chests,
containing the body unburned ; tolmens, or holed stones, whose
meaning cannot be determined, but which may probably have had
some astronomical uses ; bridges, huts, and walled villages, all bear-
ing traces of the handiwork of our "rude forefathers." There is no
spot in England so thronged as this with the shadows of a remote, a
mysterious, and an irrecoverable past.

From Dartmoor our wanderings take us to the eastern coast, and
the district of THE FENS, now so rapidly yielding to the labour of
the agriculturist as to exhibit but. rare glimpses of their ancient
"savagery." It extends inland, around an arm of the North Sea
called the Wash, into the six counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon,
* Mrs. Bray, " The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy "

42 THE DISTKICT OF THE FENS.

Lincoln, Norfolk, Northampton, and Suffolk, with an area of upwards
of 420,000 acres. Inland it is bounded by an amphitheatral barrier
of high lands, and touches the towns of Bolingbroke, Brandon, Earith,
Milton, and Peterborough. Into this great basin flow the waters of
the greater part of the drainage of nine counties, which gather into
the rivers Cam, Glen, Lark, Nene, Great and Little Ouse, Stoke, and
Welland, these being linked together by a network of natural and
artificial canals.

Anciently, the Fens were pleasant to the eye of the lover of
the picturesque ; for they contained shining meres and golden reed-
beds, haunted by countless water-fowl, and strange, gaudy insects.
" Dark-green alders," says Kingsley, * " and pale-green reeds
stretched for miles round the broad lagoon, where the coot clanked
and the bittern boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own
sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around ; while high
overhead hung hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite
beyond kite, as far as eye could see." What strange transformations
must this wild region have undergone ! There was a time, in all
probability, when a great part of the German Ocean was dry land,
through which, into a vast estuary between North Britain and
Norway, flowed together all the rivers of North-eastern Europe —
Elbe, Weser, Rhine, Scheldt, Seine, Thames, and all the rivers of east
England, as far north as the Humber. Meanwhile, the valleys of the
Cam, the Ouse, the Nene, the Welland, the Glen, and the Witham, were
slowly "sawing themselves out" by the quiet action of rain and
rivers. Then came an age when the lowland was swept away by the
biting, corroding sea-wash still so powerfully destructive on the east
coast of England, as far as Flamborough Head. " Wave and tide by
sea, rain and river by land ; these are God's mighty mills in which
he makes the old world new. And as Longfellow says of moral
things, so may we of physical, —

" ' Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small ;
Though he sit and wait with patience, with exactness grinds he all.'"

* Rev. 0. Kingsley, in Good Words, vol. for 1867, pp. 302-310.

ITS ANCIENT ASPECT. 43

These ever-active causes have converted the dry land into the fens.
The mud brought down by the rivers cannot get away to sea ; and,
with the debris of the coast, is constantly swept southward by tide
and current, and deposited within the great curving basin of the Wash,
between Lincolnshire and Norfolk. There it is kept by the strong
barrier of shifting sands coming inwards from the sea ; a barrier
which also confines the very water of the fens, and spreads it inland
into a labyrinth of streams, shallow meres, and bogs. The rainfall,
over the whole vast area of dull level, has found no adequate
channels of escape for centuries ; and hence we may understand how
peat — the certain product of standing water — has slowly overwhelmed
the rich alluvium, and swallowed up gradually the stately forests of
fir and oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which once spread far
and wide over the blooming country.

" Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,"

sings Shelley ; and this dreary outcome of mudbank and bog and
mere had its wooded isles, very fair and lovely to behold, redeeming
the desolation of the landscape. Such were Ramsey, Lindsey,
Whittlesea, whose names remind us of their whilome characteristics
(ea, ey, an island). In these green places the old monks loved to
build their quiet abbeys, rearing their herds in rich pastures, feeding
fat fish in their tranquil streams, and dreaming in the shadow of
green alder and stately ash.

But these Eden-isles were few, and the surrounding marsh was
black and dismal enough to scare the boldest spirit, and pestilential
enough to sap and undermine the strongest frame. The Romans had
attempted to drain and embank it, and their vallum may still be
tracked along the surface of the marsh-lands, marked to this day by
the names of Walsoken, Walton, and Walpoole. In the Middle Ages,
however, it returned to its primeval desolateness — a waste and
wilderness, haunted by the foul legends of an unwholesome super-
stition. In the immediate neighbourhood of the great monasteries of

44 GREAT SCHEMES OF DRAINAGE.

Oowland and Ely, and of the thriving towns, the good work of
drainage went on slowly ; but elsewhere the land was given up to
the bittern and the heron.

No comprehensive scheme was adopted, however, until Russei,
Earl of Bedford, cut the great Bedford River, twenty-one miles long,
and rescued from the desert the rich tract known by his name — the
Bedford Level.

'• Erst

A dreary pathless waste, the coughing flock
Was wont with hairy fleeces to deform ;
And, smiling with its lure of summer flowers,
The heavy ox, vain struggling, to ingulf;
Till one, of that high-honoured patriot name,
Eussel, arose, who drained the rushy fen,
Confined the waves, bade groves and gardens bloom,
And through his new creation led the Ouse
And gentle Camus, silver-winding streams."*

The work was continued by William Earl of Bedford, who added,
in 1649, to his father's old " Bedford River " that noble parallel river
the Hundred Foot, -both rising high above the land to allow for flood
water. It was carried on at a later period under the direction of
Government surveyors. Then came Rennie, the great engineer,
whose operations effectually shut out the desert, and handed over to
the agriculturist nearly the whole level of the Fens, some seventy
miles in length. Works are now in progress for rescuing a further
portion of the basin of the Wash, to be formed into a new county,
and named after the Queen. So that now, in tracts once covered by
the sea, or knee-deep in reedy, slushy, pestilential slime, the grass
grows luxuriantly, the crops wave in golden abundance, or the breeze
takes up and carries afar —

" The livelong bleat
Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds."

But the dominion of labour has not yet been established over the
whole Fen-district. There are still dreary nooks, and gloomy corners,
and unproductive wastes ; wild scenes there are, which few English-
* Dyer, " Poetical Works," The Fleece, Look ii.

CONTRASTS OF SCENERY. 45

men have any conception of as contained within the boundaries of
their own "inviolate isle." Romantic scenery, remarks Mr. Walter
White, must not be looked for on the Lincolnshire coast. In all the
journey from the Wash till you s*ee the land of Yorkshire, beyond the
Humber, not an inch of cliff will your eyes discover. Monotonous is
the prospect of —

" A level waste, a rounding gray "

of sand-hills, which vary but slightly in height, and bristle with
marum. "But tame though it be," continues our authority,* "the
scene derives interest from its peculiarity. Strange perspective effects
appear in those irregular hills : yonder they run out and form a low
dark, purple headland, against which the pale green and yellow
of a nearer tongue look bright by contrast. Here for a few furlongs
the range rises gray, cold, and monotonous; there it has a warmth of
colour relieved by deep shadows, that change their tint during the
hours that accompany the sun while he begins and ends his day.
Sitting on the summit of those dry hills, you will remark the con-
trasted landscape : on the one side, the level pasture land, league
after league of grassy green, sprinkled with villages, farms, churches,
and schools, where work and worship will find exercise through
ages yet to come ; on the other, league after league of tawny sand,
sloping gently outwards to meet the great sea that ever foams or
ripples thereupon. On the one hand, a living scene bounded by the
distant wolds ; on the other, a desert, sea and shore alike solitary,
bounded only by the overarching sky. More thoughts come crowd-
ing into the mind in presence of such a scene than are easy to
express."

* Walter White, " Eastern England," ii. 13, 14.

40 , FROM WEST TO EAST.

CHAPTER Y.

THE STEPPES : THE DESERT IX RUSSIA, SIBERIA, AND TARTARY.

HITHERTO we have only been speaking of miniature deserts, of the
more limited of the world's wildernesses, where some degree of victory
seems to reward man's arduous struggle with nature. Those which
we have hitherto described are open to the " breath of civilization."
The pilgrim who visits them incurs no danger ; he has nothing to
dread from beasts of prey ; the men he meets with obey the same
general laws as himself ; he is carried into their furthest recesses by
the all-embracing railroad. He sees on every hand the efforts of
science to confine the desert within ever narrower boundaries ; to
reclaim the moor, and the fen, and the sandy waste ; to reap from
the once barren soil an abundant harvest. But if he pass from
England or France to Germany, and thence across the provinces of
unhappy Poland, he will find himself daily advancing into a country
of more and more savage aspect. He will observe that vegetation
loses its happy variety ; that the cultivated fields become scarcer ; the
morass and forest more frequent, and of greater extent ; the popula-
tion poorer, more squalid, and less numerous. Wide and dreary
intervals separate the different towns ; here and there, surrounded
by gloomy woods, are scattered the melancholy-looking villages.
Travelling becomes difficult, for the roads are ill-kept ; he has left
behind him the modern magician, the engineer ; wild wolves haunt
his path ; and he has good cause to fear the robber's knife. Civili-
zation here has left barbarism for centuries to itself ; we are
approaching the great Deserts, the Steppes of Northern Asia.

The Steppes commence near the thirty-fifth degree of longitude,
east of the Dnieper, as soon as we quit the fertile plains of the
Ukraine to enter the country of the Don Cossacks. They are the
characteristic feature of the immense zone which starts from the

THE PLATEAU OF GOBI. 47

north-eastern shore of the Sea of Azov, stretches to the foot of
Caucasus, between the Black and Caspian Seas, and is thence prolonged
beyond the Ural range, to the north and south of the metaliferous
Altai ; but mainly between the latter and the Thian-Shian mountains,
to the seas of Okhotsk and Jesso.

The word Steppe, supposed to be of Tartar origin, primarily sig-
nifies an uncultivated plain, a prairie.

The Steppes, in short, are ordinarily plains of very considerable
extent interrupted at intervals by chains of hills or mountains ; but,
on the whole, of a level, monotonous character, and with a consider-
able part below the level of the ocean. Their area may be roughly
computed at 4,200,000 square miles.

Occasionally, in traversing them, we meet with lakes or brackish
ponds, with forests of pines, even with patches of cultivated ground.
Sometimes they form lofty and extensive plateaux, as in. the case of
the plateau of Gobi, also called, but most inappropriately, Scha-mo,
or the Sandy Desert, and Scha-ho, or the Sandy River.

The Gobi begins upon the confines of Chinese Tartary, and thence
extends over thousands of leagues in a vast expanse of sterile wilder-
ness towards the coast of the Pacific. It chiefly consists of bare rock,
shingle, and loose sand, alternating with firm sand, sparsely clothed
with vegetation. But a large portion of the country, though not
less leafless and monotonous, assumes in the spring season the appear-
ance of an undulating ocean of grass, supplying pasturage to the
flocks and herds of the Mongolian nomades, who wander at will over
its vast prairie grounds, and encamp wherever they find a stream of
water or sheltering crag. The general elevation above the sea is
probably not less than 3500 feet. The Gobi was crossed by Mr.
Grant, in 1863, and, soon afterwards, by Mr. Bishop, a correspondent
of the Times.

Though their general aspect is chill and dreary, the Steppes are
not without their romantic landscapes, and their vegetation is more
varied as well as more abundant than is generally believed. You
may find among them wide meads with a soil of sufficient fertility to

48 THE ASIATIC PLAINS. f

produce corn in great quantities, although too thin to permit the
development of plants which have need of a certain depth. " The
most agreeable portion of these plains," says Humboldt, " is adorned
with small shrubs of the family Rosacece, tulips, and the cypriped/ium.
Just as the Torrid Zone is distinguished by the tendency of all its
plants to become trees, so some of the Asiatic Steppes in the Tem-
perate Zones have the peculiar characteristic that all their flowering
herbaceous plants attain to a remarkable height, such as the Saussurea
and other synantheraceae, the leguminous shrubs, and, above all, an
infinite variety of astragals. If the traveller attempts to go forward,
in the small Tartar chariots, across these pathless, trackless prairies,
he must keep standing, to ascertain his direction, and he will see the
plants, interlaced as in a dense forest, bend before his wheels. Some
of these Steppes are grassy plains ; others are covered with saline
plants, fleshy, articulated, and always green. Often, too, one sees afar
the glitter of saline efflorescence, like lichens, spreading unevenly
over the glassy soil, like newly-fallen snow."*

Comparing the Asiatic Steppes with the Pampas of South
America, Humboldt does not hesitate to declare that the former are
far the richer. " In that part of the Steppes, inhabited by the
Kirghiz and the Kalmucks, which I have traversed," he says, "that
is to say, from the Don, the Caspian Sea, and the Oural (Ja'ik), to the
Obi and the Upper Irtysh, near Lake Dsaisang, over a space of forty
degrees of longitude, one can never discover, even at the most distant
limit, a phenomenon frequent in the Llanos, the Pampas, and the
Prairies of America ; that horizon vague and boundless as the sea,
which seems to support the vault of heaven. Seldom in Asia was
the spectacle offered me of even a single side of the horizon. The
Steppes are traversed by numerous chains of hills, or covered with
forests of conifers. The vegetation of Asia, even in the richest
pasturage, is nowhere confined to the families of the Cyperacece. A
great variety prevails there of herbaceous or frutescent plants. In
the spring season, small rosacese and amygdalacese, with rosy or
* Humboldt, " Ansichteu der Natur," vol. i., App.

CHANGES OF THE STEPFES. 49

snow-white blossoms — Spiraea, crataegus, primus spinosa, amygdalus
nana — present a graceful appearance. I have elsewhere spoken," he
adds, " of the vigorous growth of Synanthers, such as Suassurea amara
and salsa, the artemisias and blue centaureas, wrhich grow profusely
in these deserts, and the leguminosse, which are there represented by
different species of astragal, cytisus, and caragana. The fritillaria
ruthenica, meleagroides, cypripedium, and tulip, delight the eye with
the brilliance of their colours. " *

This almost exclusively herbaceous, but abundant and various,
vegetation of which Humboldt speaks, is conspicuous in the spring,
in the least favoured Steppes, after the rainy season. But it is there
of a brief life. In the month of June the heat grows intense, and
the dryness excessive. Then every herb perishes, cut down by the
sun's keen-smiting rays, like the Greeks before Troy by the arrows
of Apollo.

" Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound ;
Fierce as lie moved, his silver shafts resound." f

The dust is whirled off the ground by the wind, and swept about
in revolving tornados. The Steppes situated in a comparatively low
latitude thus alternately assume the most discordant aspects. In
winter the heavy rains inundate them, and transform them into
impracticable marshes ; spring clothes them with a thick carpet of
grasses and other herbaceous plants, so that they reveal to the
eye leagues upon leagues of delightful sward cropped by numerous
flocks. In summer they undergo a third metamorphosis, and are
converted into parched and sun-scathed deserts like those of Nubia
or Arabia.

These periodical transformations are especially remarkable in the
Steppes of the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian Sea ;
where winter conies attended with abundant snows and terrific
tempests. No obstacle can arrest the fury of the gale, which
accumulates the driven snow in fearful avalanches, and like the

* Humboldt, " Ansichten der Xatur," vol. i. (Xotes).
t Homer, " Iliad," book i.
4

50 . VIOLENT HURRICANES IN THE STEPPES.

demon in the old German legend, drives before it the wild horses in
an access of violence. Half frozen by the cold, and exhausted with
hunger, they fly in a complete panic. Oftentimes their giddy head-
long course carries them forward upon the crust of ice which gathers
over the waters close to the shore ; it cracks, it breaks, and hundreds
perish ! The melting snow and heavy rains at the end of winter
drown the plains under vast sheets of water, which, however, quickly
evaporate in the first rays of the sun. Rain, in summer, is extremely
rare, and as there are neither brooks nor springs to refresh the thin
layer of earth in which the herbs and shrubs take root, all these
plants enjoy only a butterfly existence ; they bloom, they fade, they
die, with startling rapidity.

The hurricanes are neither less numerous nor less furious in the
hot than in the cold season ; dust, however, takes the place of snow,
when, as is sometimes the case, no tremendous deluge of rain follows
in the track of the mighty wind. To sum up : the spring and
summer of the Steppes are compressed (so to speak) into two months ;
all the rest of the year seems given over to desolation. Two months
in the year of bloom, and sunshine, arid colour, and beauty, are all
that Nature grants the wandering Mongolian.

Such being the general configuration of the Steppes, one may
easily imagine how stern and gloomy is the aspect of these immense
plains, with no other interruptions of the soil than their tumuli, no
other boundary than the sea. He who has not been habituated from
youth to their monotony finds himself wholly unable to struggle
against its depressing influence. Their dismal solitudes are in truth
an immeasurable prison, where he wanders to and fro without hope of
escape. In vain does he interrogate the north and south, the east
and the west ; in vain does he turn from one side to the other ; it
is always the same uniformity, the same immovability, the same
solitude.*

* Madame Hommaire dc Hell : " Voyage aux Steppes dc la Mer Caspicnnc," tome lor-

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE STEPPES.

CHAPTER VI.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE STEPPES : THE WILD HORSE THE CAMEL.

REFERENCE has been made to the numerous troops of wild horse
which haunt the Steppes on this side of the Oural. Similar troops of
these animals wander over the whole extent of the Steppes of Central
Asia, which the most accredited modern naturalists repute to be the
original cradle of their race.

These horses are called tarpans, a word undoubtedly derived from
the Tartar. Shall we look upon them as the representatives of the
primitive breed, whence have sprung all the varieties known at the
present day ; or shall we see in them, as well as in the wandering
horses of the prairies and pampas of the New World, the descendants

62 THE TARPAN, OR WILD HORSE.

of individuals which had escaped from the thraldom of mail ? This
latter hypothesis seems to be the most probable. But there is good
ground for believing that, living a wild life, these animals are gradually
returning to the primitive type. They have lost the harmonious
graces of form, the beauty, and the vigour which we admire in the
high-bred steed, perfected by the assiduous care of man. There
seems as great a difference between the Arabian horse and the wild
horse of the Steppes as between the accomplished European gentleman
and a Malagasy savage. They are of small stature ; their limbs are
lank; their coat is coarse, woolly, rude, and rough. With the tarpans
of the northern Steppes it is thick, flaky, and frizzled. Their mouth
and nostrils are garnished with long hair, not unlike a goat. Then-
colour is generally brown, of the shade called Isabelle, after a certain
Queen of France who, in fulfilment of a vow, wore her linen unchanged
for a considerable period. A few are black or white. They have a
large head, with the forehead projecting above the eyes ; a straight
chamfer ; and long ears, customarily laid back close to the head.

The troops of the tarpans are subdivided into groups of twenty to
thirty individuals, each group usually living apart, and only uniting
in a compact phalanx when a common danger threatens, or a necessity
arises of migrating from one region to another. The gaunt grim
wolves, which hunger drives from their neighbouring forests ; and
man, who hunts them hotly, either to reduce them into subjection, or
kill them for their flesh, are almost the only enemies they have any
reason to dread. The warlike nomade tribes of the Black and Caspian
coasts, and of Central Asia, have no other breeding-grounds than the
steppe which they inhabit. Thither come Cossack, and Mongol, and
Kirghis, and Kalmuck, to choose their chargers. They catch them
by means of a lasso, which they throw with surprising dexterity, and
in a few days train them into a suitable docility. When in want of
their hide or flesh, the nomades hunt them with gun, arrow, or spear;
for hippophagy, which a few zealous amateurs are now endeavouring
to popularize in France and England, has been practised from
time immemorial by the inhabitants of the Steppes.

THE KIRGHIZ AND HIS HORSE. 55

These barbarians, however, respect the life of their domestic
animals, or sacrifice them only in cases of pressing need. They treat
them also with a gentleness unknown to our European grooms and
horse-dealers. With them, as with the Ai-abs, the horse is a friend
rather than a slave ; he is, in truth, one of the family ; and it is
with great difficulty that his master consents to part with him. Our
travellers describe the Tartar, Mongol, and Kirghiz horsemen as
realizing the celebrated fable of the Centaurs, — as becoming, so to
speak, one with their horses. The exigencies of their wandering
life require that they should be constantly on horseback ; it is almost
their home, their abode, their dwelling-place ; there they are mounted
day and night ; there they sleep, prepare their food, and take their
repasts. True that their cooking is of the rudest and simplest, and
their taste not so fastidious as that of an European epicure ! If, for
example, they would make ready a piece of meat, they insert it
between the saddle and the horse's skin, and in this impromptu oven
leave it for a few hours, while it undergoes the processes of heat,
pressure, and frequent friction, serving in some degree to cook it ;
then a pinch of salt for seasoning; and lo! a dainty titbit which our
cavalier devours with the best appetite in the world.

But it is to the inhabitants of the Steppes of the Black and Caspian
Seas that the horse renders the most estimable services. To make
use of a phrase of Buffon's, "He shares with them the fatigue of war
and the glory of battle;" he provides them with the best and swiftest
means of transit ; he nourishes them with his flesh, and the mare
quenches their thirst with her milk. In their dairies mares take the
place of our European milch-cows, and are regularly milked once or
twice a-day. The milk, warm, is employed as a medicine. It is
thicker and more saccharine than that of ruminating animals, and
this, undoubtedly, is the reason that the Cossacks, Tartars, and Kal-
mucks have succeeded, by fermentation, in distilling alcohol from it,
and procuring vinegar by acetifying it. The}7 prepare with it an intoxi-
cating liquor (koumis), to which they are very partial, and with which
the wealthiest among them consider it an honour to be largely provided.

5f> THE ASS, WILD AXD TAME.

By the side of the horse, we naturally place his humble congener
and compatriot, the Ass.

Nor need we be ashamed to devote a few lines to this useful
animal, though civilization has appointed to it a very different lot
from that of the horse.

While man has devoted his utmost efforts to ennoble, as it were,
and aggrandize the latter, to perfect his capabilities, develop his
qualities, embellish and vary his form, for the former he has had
nothing but contempt and harsh treatment. He has made the horse
the companion of his campaigns, the minister to his sumptuous
pleasures, the instrument of his grandest labours. He has dismissed
the poor ass to the fields to carry the heaviest burdens, to share in
the toil and privation of the peasant. In these different conditions,
who will wonder that while the horse has become a strong, graceful,
and proud-spirited animal, the ass, on the other hand, remains bowed
and bent, with a rough coarse hide, lanky limbs, a heavy head, —
always drooping, as if under the weight of continual lassitude and
unconquerable melancholy, — and long ungraceful ears, which give his
physiognomy an air of ridicule. Everything in him bears the impress
of degradation. How has he merited so obscure a destiny ? Alas,
he is the victim of an iniquitous caprice of man. For see him in his
natural condition ; contrast with the well-worn servant of civilization
the Onagra,* the free wild ass of the Steppes, with the Tarpan, and
the parallel will be wholly to the advantage of the former. The
onagra is at least of the same size ; his ears are short ; he carries
aloft a well-proportioned head ; his skin, of a handsome gray or
yellowish-brown, is sleek and shining ; his limbs are long, delicate,
and nervous. He lives in very numerous troops, and migrates from
north to south, and south to north, according to the season. The
Tartars employ him as a beast of transport and the saddle rather
than as a beast of burden. They eat his flesh, preferring it to that
of the wild horse. Even the domestic ass of the East differs notably

* The Onagra is identical with the Koulan (Equus hemionus) of Ihe Persian. It is
described in the Book of Job, ch. xxxix. 5-8.

THE ONAGHA. OH AVILD ASS.

67

from the slow, dogged, ill-used animal of European notoriety. Under
a more favourable climate, and in the free life of the desert, he has
preserved his tall stature, his vigour, and the haughtiness of his
bearing. The wealthiest and most distinguished personages do not
disdain to mount him or harness him to their carriage. He has a
keen eye, a quick scent, a sure foot, a mild and resolute aspect. He
accomplishes with ease from six to eight miles an hour ; and, lastly
— a fact worthy of notice — his life, which with us seldom exceeds

OXAGKA, OR WILD Ass.

fifteen years, in Asia is frequently prolonged to thirty or thirty-five.
He is less subject to sickness than the horse, and he almost equals
the camel in sobriety, docility, arid endurance of hunger and fatigue.
Whether the Tartars and Kalmucks, who use mares' milk as a
medicine, attribute, as we do, certain therapeutical virtues to the milk
of the ass, we are unable to say; but it is certain that this 'milk
forms a portion of their daily food. On account of the strong
proportion of saccharine serum which it contains, it is well adapted

4 «

58 TROOPS OF WILD HORSES.

for the preparation of the fermented drink already spoken of, known
to the Tartars under the name of Koumis or Kaniuis. Mr. Atkinson
speaks of the large leathern Jcoumis sack or bottle, as an important
piece of Mongolian furniture. One which he saw was five feet eight
inches long, and four feet five inches wide, with a leathern tube at
the corner about four inches in diameter, through which the milk Ls
poured into the bag, and the Jcoumis drawn out. A wooden instru-
ment is introduced into this bag, its handle passing through the tube,
not unlike a churning staff; with this the koumis is frequently
agitated. The Kirghiz begin making it in April, and its due agita-
tion and fermentation occupy about fourteen days.*

The horse, and a few nocks of sheep and herds of horned cattle,
amply suffice for the wants of the warlike tribes in the south of
Asiatic Russia. These tribes have almost entirely abandoned the use
of the camel. But as we advance eastward, we find these gigantic
and mis-shapen ruminants in great numbers, the faithful companions
and indispensable auxiliaries of the noinades of the East. They
wander freely about the Steppes, in troops of several hundreds, browz-
ing indifferently on the grass of the wide pastures or the foliage of
the bushes. They are without fierceness, and the traveller who
intrudes upon their immense domains seems only to inspire in them
a benevolent curiosity. " It is impossible to describe," says Madame
Hommaire de Hell, " the astonishment they exhibited as we passed
them. As soon as they caught sight of us, they ran with all speed
towards us, and then stood motionless, with heads turned towards our
cavalcade, until we had got to such a distance as to be no longer
distinguishable."

" Gold and silk," says Buffon, " are not the time wealth of Asia.
The camel is the treasure of the East." It is a fact that this animal
is wonderfully adapted to supply the wants of the desert races. It
may be said to supply them with every object of primary necessity ;
food, clothing, and even habitation, fire, and the means of transport
* T. W. Atkinson, " Oriental and Western Siberia," pp. 286, 287.

PHYSIOLOGY OF THE CAMEL. f,g

The flesh of the young camel, though inferior to beef or mutton, is
savoury and easy of digestion ; the she-camel yields an abundance of
milk as substantial and agreeable to the taste as that of the cow.
The camel's skin is, it is true, a coarse wool, but long, tenacious, and
readily wrought. The Mongols make it into tissues and cord. Out
of the tissues they weave their clothing, coverings, and tents ; with
the cord, which is of various thicknesses, they fabricate the harness of
their horses and other objects of equipment. Camel-leather is not
inferior in suppleness and solidity to that which we make use of in
Europe. The dung of these animals, dried in the sun, serves as fuel
not only for cooking food, but even for working metals. Finally, as a
beast of burden, the camel surpasses every other in strength, swiftness,
endurance of fatigue, and, above all, in that proverbial sobriety which
enables him to accomplish a journey of several successive days without
taking either food or drink. From nature he has received a special
organization, which well justifies his Arab name of " the ship of the
desert." It consists essentially in the structure of his feet, in that of
his stomach, and in the species of hunch or hump which he carries on
his back.

"\Ve know, in the first place, that the camel's foot does not
resemble that of other ruminants ; it is bifurcated, but the two toes,
very strong and much elongated, are furnished not with a hoof, but
with a short nail, adhering only to the final phalange ; they are, more-
over, palmated ; that is to say, reunited near the extremity by a car-
neous membrane, which is supplied underneath with a veritable thick
and horny sole. The foot can thus plant itself on a wide surface, and
seems expressly adapted to the shifting sandy soil which the camel
usually traverses.

As for the stomach, beside the four compartments into which the
stomach of all ruminants is divided, we notice, on the sides of the
paunch, a mass of cubic cells, or partitions, always containing a
quantity of tolerably pure water, very drinkable, and kept as a kind
of reserve supply ; so that more than one traveller, when crossing the
desert, and perceiving neither fountain, well, nor stream in which to

60 USES OF THE CAMEL'S HUMP.

quench his devouring thirst, has preserved his life at the expense of
that of his camel, by killing the poor animal, and opening his reser-
voir to drink its contents.

The hump, of which the Arabian camel, or dromedary, has but one,
while the Bactrian, or camel properly so called, has two, is, in truth, " a
storehouse of solid nutriment, on which he can draw for supplies long
after every digestible part has been extracted from the contents of the
stomach : this storehouse consists of one or two large collections of fat

BACTRIAN CAMEL.

stored up in ligamentous cells supported by the spines of the dorsal
vertebrae. When the camel is in a region of fertility, the hump
becomes plump and expanded ; but after a protracted journey in the"
wilderness it becomes shrivelled and reduced to its ligamentous con-
stituent, in consequence of the absorption of the fat."*

To be deprived of drink for from eight to ten days is no hardship
to the camel. Accredited authorities testify that without any serious

* Brande, " Dictionary of Art and Science," art. Camel.

THE CAMEL OF THE STEPPES. 61

inconvenience he can go without drink for twenty-three and even
twenty-five days. In the way of solid food, a ball of cake weighing
from a pound to a pound and a quarter, will suffice him for a whole
day. Often when he has set out on his journey fasting, he contents
himself with browsing on the way a few green or dry bushes, and in
the evening sups on a handful of dried beans. But this singular
abstemiousness is not his sole good quality ; his vigour, his docility,
his swiftness render him equally valuable.

The ordinary burden of a small camel is from 600 to 800 Ibs. ; a
large camel will cany 1000 Ibs. or upwards, from thirty to thirty-five
miles a-day ; but the maharis, or those which are used for speed alone,
will travel daily from twenty to thirty leagues.

The camel of the Steppes, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, is, as
I have already hinted, the Bactrian or camel strictly so called. This
animal differs from his African congener in several very important
physical characteristics, and perhaps also in some moral peculiarities.
His two humps are smaller than the one hump of the dromedary. He
is a little larger than the latter ; his average stature is from six feet
and a half to seven feet. His hair, of a deep chestnut brown, almost
woolly on the humps, the head, and the upper part of the neck, is short
and smooth on the body, and hangs in long fringes below the neck and
around the fore-legs. He endures without inconvenience the most
opposite temperatures, great heat and extreme cold, so that his habitat
naturally ranges over an immense extent of country. He is found
throughout the zone of the Steppes, even to the confines of Siberia, on
the borders of Lake Baikal ; he was formerly still more common in
Hindostan, but has now almost disappeared, owing to the great con-
sumption entailed by the military expeditions of our East Indian
Government.

The camel is an excellent traveller, but his gait is rough and awk-
ward, and almost insupportable by those who have not been long
habituated to it. In this relation we may borrow an anecdote from
Madame Hommaire de Hell :* Her dragoman, a Frenchman, named
* Madame de Hell, " Voyage aux Steppes de la Mer Caspienne," tome !''•

62 THE CAMEL'S MORAL QUALITIES.

Antoine, curious to essay this new species of equestrian practice, begged
a Kalmuck in the escort to lend him his camel. The request being
readily granted, he perched himself on the extremity of the saddle, in
" measureless contentment " with his lofty post, and by no means
mindful of the malicious smiles exchanged between the Cossacks and
the camel-drivers. Scarcely had the beast advanced four paces, how-
ever, before his face turned pale, and he clung to the saddle, with a
most pitiful countenance, and imploring help in the most agonizing
tones. " One need be a Kalmuck," says Madame de Hell, " to be
capable of enduring the trot of a camel. His jerky gait shakes the
body so severely, that a long journey is a positive punishment, even
for the Cossacks. The unfortunate Antonio, left some distance behind
by the escort, made a vain effort to overtake us ; he was compelled,
willy-nilly, to retain his steed as far as the Caspian Sea, where he
arrived about two hours after ourselves. I have never seen a man
more demoralized. His groans, when he was lifted off the camel,
were so lamentable, that we really hardly knew what to think of
his condition."

As for the camel's moral qualities, the same lively writer furnishes
a very different estimate to what we gather from the majority of
travellers. She represents him as idle, pettish, and very vindictive.

" All that we had read," says she, " of the rapidity of these ships
of the desert ; their insensibility to fatigue, to hunger, to thirst ; their
tractability to the will of man exceeding the obedience of the leaf to
the wind, was completely contradicted by the conduct of these quad-
rupeds, little careful to maintain their reputation for agility. Despite
of a stout cord passed through one of the nostrils, and which caused
them a sharp pain every time they became refractory, they would not
march more than two successive hours without flinging themselves on
the ground. We had to battle with them incessantly to rouse them
from their torpor, and prevent them from biting one another. When-
ever a camel-driver pulled a little roughly his animal's guiding-string,
we heard a succession of cries, all the more frightful from their resem-
blance to the human voice. In a word, these camels behaved so ill

A CAMEL'S KEVENGE. • 63

during their short journey, that we entirely lost the good opinion our
great naturalist (Buffon) had given us of their species, in descriptions
more poetical than true."

Notwithstanding Antoine's discouraging experience of camel-
riding, Madame de Hell, a few days afterwards, essayed the same
experiment, with the result that, like her poor dragoman, she made a
vow never to repeat it. Somewhat later, she had an opportunity of
witnessing a very curious illustration — and one very amusing to the
lookers-on — of the natural vindictiveness of these rough steeds. We
give the adventure in her own words : —

" Everybody knows that the camel possesses the faculty of rumi-
nating the food already stored in one of his stomachs, and that he
willingly enough grants himself this pleasure when he has nothing to
eat ; but it is not generally known, perhaps, that he possesses suffi-
cient malice to make, when an opportunity arises, this prerogative
a 'means of vengeance.

" I had noticed in the morning that one of our camel-drivers
appeared on bad terms with his beast. He vainly tried to master
him by punishment, pulling with all his might the cord which passed
through the animal's nostril ; the latter was obstinate, and threw him-
self every moment on the ground, a proof of rebellion. The Kalmuck,
irritated by the struggle, profited by a halt to dismount, and inflict
severe chastisement on the recalcitrant ; but the camel, disdainfully
raising his long neck, followed with so malicious an eye all his tyrant's
movements, that without doubt he was revolving some project of
revenge in his head. And so it happened that he quietly waited
until the Kalmuck stood opposite to him ; then, opening his great
mouth, he ejected full in the camel-driver's face a double volley of
masticated herbs, mixed with slaver and all sorts of filthiness. It
would be impossible to describe the air of satisfied vengeance with
which the camel raised his neck, and moved his head from one side
to another, as if in quest of applause. What astonished me most in
this affair was his master's moderation after undergoing such an out-
rage. He wiped himself coolly, remounted his saddle, and caressed

64 MAMMALIA OF THE STEPPES.

the neck of the ill-bred animal, as if he had received the most natter-
ing compliment. A good understanding being thus strangely re-
established, they went on their way peaceably, without giving another
thought to what had taken place."

CHAPTER VII.

THE ANIMAL LIFE OF THE STEPPES : WILD RUMINATING ANIMALS

RODENTS CARNIVORA BIRDS.

BESIDES those species of which we have just spoken, and which man
has subjugated to his service, the Steppes nourish a host of other
animals which seem for ever destined to a savage life. Some are
spread through the entire zone of the Steppes, and include represen-
tatives of the genera or species belonging to the temperate latitudes
of Europe. But most of them are circumscribed in more or less
limited habitats, out of which they would not meet with the condi-
tions of climate or provision that are essential to their existence.

The mammalia which are found in the plains of Eastern Europe
and Central Asia .belong principally to the orders of Ruminants,*
Rodents, and Carnaria.

Cuvier divides the ruminants into two great sections : one com-
prising the ruminants without horns (genera, camel, lama, and chev-
rotairi); and the other, those ^^)^th horns. The latter he again divides
into ruminants with decaying or wooden horns (these are the cervidce
of the new nomenclature), ruminants with membraneous horns (as the
giraffes), and ruminants with hollow horns (oxen, goats, antelopes,
sheep).

The section of Ruminants without horns is represented in the
Steppes by the camel. Of the three groups of horned ruminants, one

* Class I., Mammalia: Order III., Carnaria; Order V., Rodentia ; Order IX., Kurninantia.

ABOUT THE ELAND.

65

only is wanting in this region of the Old Continent — namely, that of
the ruminants with membranous horns ; but we meet there with
varieties of all the species included among the cervidse, except the
reindeer, which is confined to the glacial countries of both continents.
The common European stag is found on this side of the Oural, in the
Steppes bordering on the forests, where he prefers to seek an asylum.

THE ELAND (Antilope oreas}.

The aliu, or roebuck of Tartary, inhabits the valleys and plains which
stretch to the north of the Himalaya and along the chain of the
Thian-Chan. Deer wander in troops, or in isolated couples, in all
the temperate and fertile portions of the zone of the Steppes, and the
eland is spread over all Asia between the 45th and 41st degree of
latitude. The latter is the largest of all the cervidse. It ordinarily
attains, and sometimes exceeds, the stature of the horse. His antlers,

66 THE SAIGA ANTELOPE.

spread out perpendicularly to the axis of his head, take at first a
nearly horizontal direction, then spring upwards in an abrupt curve.
At their extremity they terminate in a broad palm, set with sharp
snags around its outer edge. Their weight, for adults, averages from
fifty-five to sixty-five pounds. The eland has a short robust neck,
which is necessary to enable him to support the burden of his
branching honours ; but which, joined to the projection of his
shoulders, and the disproportionate length of his fore-legs, gives him
a very ungraceful aspect. Nor can he browse the herbage without
making a great digression or falling on his knees. The male, more-
over, under the throat has a sort of goitre, or swelling, garnished
with a rude pointed beard. The female wears a beard, but has no
goitre. The neck is surmounted with a short, stiff, blackish mane.
The rest of the hair is of a pronounced gray.

The eland inhabits the marshy plains and banks of rivers ; he
dreads the heat, and to escape it will often remain during the long
summer days plunged up to his neck in the cool waters. He lives
with his comrades in tolerably numerous herds. The first birth of the
female is only one ; afterwards she produces two a,t a time. Fre-
quently the eland attains a prodigious stature. An individual killed
in the Altai measured four feet and a half in height to the shoulder,
and four feet and a third in length. His flesh is said to be light and
nourishing ; his hide excellent for making shoulder-belts ; and his
antlers are converted to the same uses as the horns of the stag.

Among the hollow-horned ruminants I may mention the Saiga, a
kind of antelope which inhabits the Asiatic Steppes, and is met with
even in Poland. In figure he takes the poetical elegance of the
gazelle ; his horns are of a clear yellow colour, and of a transparency
which rivals that of tortoise-shell. His forehead is covered with
transversal folds ; he has no muzzle, properly speaking, but a kind of
snout like that of a hog. It is said that he drinks through his
nostrils. The saigas travel in herds of about two thousand each, of
whom a certain number keep always some distance in advance, in

NOTES UPON THE RODENTS. 67

the rear, and on the flanks of the main host, so as to watch over
their security.

Another kind of gazelle, the Dseren, is peculiar to the Mongolian
Deserts, and named by the inhabitants the yelloiu stag. His stature
is little inferior to that of the deer. The female is without horns.

The Moufflon* the original of our domestic sheep, sometimes
strays into the plains of Central Asia, but prefers the solitude of the
mountains. His general size is that of a small fallow deer, but
though clothed with hair instead of wool, he bears a closer resemblance
to the ram than to any other animal. In summer his hair is close,
but in winter it becomes rough, wavy, and slightly curled. On the
upper part of the body it is brown, but the under part and insides
of the limbs are whitish. The hair is considerably longer under the
throat, and about the neck and shoulders, than elsewhere.

We may refer, in this connection, to the Egagra, or wild goat,
which Cuvier considers to have been the original stock of the numer-
ous races of goats spread over various regions of the globe.

The Steppes nourish two species of Rodents : the Varying Hare
(Lepus variabilis), so called because he changes from tawny gray in
summer to white in winter ; and a gray squirrel, which is probably
only a variety of our common European squirrel. He is not a climber
and a "haunter of the woods," like his congener. He abounds in the
Mongolian Steppes, where he lives in holes excavated under the earth,
like the rats and rabbits. He is, however, much more ingenious
than the other troglodyte-rodents ; he shelters the entrance to his
abode under a domed roof, skilfully constructed of dry herbs woven
together, and covered with clay. These works closely resemble the
mounds upheaved by moles.

The Carnaria of the Felidce, or feline family, are wanting, or
* Also called the Musmon (Ovis Mitsmon),

68 THE WOLF OF TARTARY.

nearly so, in the immense zone which we are considering. Except a
species of lynx, the Chilason or Chulon, whose existence has been
recognized in the north of Tartary; and a few tigers which adventure
into Mongolia, we may say that the Asiatic Steppes, and, therefore,
also those of Europe, are exempt from these inconvenient guests.
The most dangerous, and almost the only enemy which man and the
herbivora have reason to dread, is the Wolf. This animal, now very
rare in Western Europe, where his race will soon disappear, is still
found in great numbers in the wild Lithuanian forests, in Russia, and
all Northern and Central Asia. To him, as to other animals of the
Canidce, cold appears more favourable than heat, and it is in
countries where the average temperature seldom rises high he attains
his greatest dimensions. In Lithuania wolves are often met with
which measure three feet and a half in length, without the tail.
Those of Northern Asia are also of a great size and nerve, of terrible
strength and audacity ; they have been seen to pounce on a sheep,
and carry it oif at full speed. They intrude in quest of victims into
the towns, the villages, and the encampments : combat to the last with
their enemies; and when vanquished die without a groan. Generally
they lurk in the woods and forests ; but hunger, according to the
proverb, drives them forth from their lairs. Then they assemble in
vast hordes ; they pursue, they assail, they defend, with ingenious
tactic, skilfully availing themselves of the disposition and accidents
of the ground. Their manoeuvres vary according to the nature of
the game or the enemy. In general, if a man preserve an upright
bearing and a bold countenance, they will not attack him ; they
follow him stealthily, however, prepared to pounce upon him if.
unhappily, he should stumble or falter. But the wolves of Tartary,
far from sharing in this deference towards the lord of creation, dis-
play a singular bitterness against him. " It is remarked," says the
Jesuit missionary Hue, " that the Mongolian wolves attack man more
willingly than any animals; one sees them sometimes galloping through
innumerable flocks of sheep, without inflicting any injury, in order to
dash upon the shepherd. In the neighbourhood of the Great Wall they

WAR TO THE KNIFE. 60

frequently descend upon the Tartar-Chinese villages, enter the farms,
turn aside with contempt from the domestic animals which they
encounter, and penetrate even into the interior of the houses to select
their victims, seizing them invariably by the throat and strangling
them. Not a village in Tartary but has every year to deplore some
calamity of this kind. One might say that the wolves of this

CAPTURE or A WOL

KIRGHIZ HORSEMAX.

country sought specially to avenge themselves on men for the blood-
thirsty war the Tartars wage against them." And it is true that in
their pursuit of these animals the inhabitants of the Steppes display
not only an ardour which would be legitimate, but a fierce and
uncontrollable cruelty.

" They pursue them everyAvhere a entrance" remarks M. Hue ;
" they regard them as their chief enemy, on account of the terrible

70 CAPTURED IN THE LASSO.

losses they inflict upon their flocks. The news that a wolf has made
his appearance in the neighbourhood is for everybody a signal to
'mount and ride away.' And as each cavalier has always two or
three saddled horses in waiting near his tent, the plain is speedily
covered, as if by enchantment, with a cloud of eager horsemen.
Their weapon is a long rod.* Thus, in whatever direction the wolf
may seek to escape, he encounters a band of determined adversaries,
whose cry, as they precipitate themselves upon their traditional foe,
is ' No quarter ! ' There are no mountain-sides so rugged or so
difficult, that the nimble horses of the Tartars cannot pursue him
thither. The cavalier who finally overtakes the beast, flings a lasso
round his neck as he passes at full gallop, and drags him in his rapid
track to the nearest tent. There they firmly bind up his muzzle,
that they may proceed to torture him with impunity, closing up the
tragic scene by flaying him alive, and then setting him free. In the
summer the miserable animal will live in this condition for several
days ; but in winter, exposed without his furry coat to the rigour of
the season, he dies almost immediately, frozen to death." -f-

It is generally considered that the wolf is an animal as cowardly
as he is fierce, because he flies before man when man does not
retreat before him, and because he kills unoffending animals. But
we forget that man acts in a precisely similar manner. Numerous
experiments, and especially those of Cuvier, have clearly proved that
the wolf is fully capable of being domesticated, is very sensible of
kindly treatment, and will as readily grow familiar with, and
attached to, his master, as the best of dogs. We must, therefore,
refer his ferocity to the instinct of self-preservation and of a vengeance
too frequently excited ; just as at the Cape of Good Hope, the
unfortunate Bosjesmen, formerly treated like beasts by the Dutch
colonists, though naturally of a peaceable disposition, became active

* This rod, or whip, is furnished with a long cord terminating in a slip-knot, something
like a lasso. With this instrument the Tartars seize and carry away the horses and wild
asses, and, as we see in the Engraving, capture wolves alive, and satisfy their hatred
against these unfortunate beasts, less ferocious, assuredly, than the Tartars themselves.

t Hue, " Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartarie, la Thibet, et la Chine," tome !"•

THE KORSAK AND THE KAROGUN. 71

and cruel aggressors, and daring assailants, against the enemies who
had exhausted their patience.

Two other wild beasts of the dog genus, the Korsak and the
Karogun, are eagerly hunted by the Tartars, especially by the Kirghiz.
But the chase, in this instance, is carried on for industrial purposes.
The fur of these animals is very valuable, and the Kirghiz hunters
carry thousands every year to the great market of Orenburg. The
korsak is a species of fox. In colour he closely resembles the jackal ;
but he has a long tail, with a black tuft at the tip, and on each side
of the head a brown stripe extends from the eye to the muzzle. He
ranges over all the Steppes of Tartary, and lives in burrows like the
foxes. The natives pretend that he never drinks. He is a very
handsome animal, and when, towards the close of the sixteenth cen-
tury, several individuals were brought to Europe, he became quite the
fashion. All the great ladies of the court were desirous of possessing
one, which they tended in their chambers, and when promenading in
the parks, often led about like a spaniel. The mania was of brief
duration, but it clearly showed how easily the animal could be tamed
and reared.

Buffon has confounded the karogun with the isatis or polar fox,
and other animals with the korsak. He is equally distinct from the
one as from the other, and the Kirghiz never make a mistake, though
they hunt for both in the same districts. His skin is of an ashen
gray on the back, and a pale yellow under the belly. His fur is
not less precious than that of the korsak.

The wild Ornithology of the Steppes comprises some migra-
tory palmipedes, a few gallinacese, and some predatory birds of the
falcon family. Gulls, wild ducks, herons, curlews, and especially
pelicans, people the shores of the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the
Caspian, with the banks of the rivers that flow into them, and the
neighbouring pools. The Cossack and Kalmlik chiefs, who now
ardently cherish the love of falconry that was so marked a trait

72 HERONS AND BITTERNS.

in the character of the mediaeval nobles, hunt these birds with much
enthusiasm, save, indeed, the pelican, whose flesh is not edible.

The herons form, in the order Grallatores and the tribe Culti-
rostres (knife-like beak), a family (Ardeidce) composed of numerous
species, several of which inhabit or frequent the marshes, lakes, and
streams of the region of the Steppes.

" O'er yonder lake the while,
What bird about that wooded isle,
With pendant feet and pinions slow,
Is seen his ponderous length to row ?
Tis the tall heron's awkward flight,
His crest of black, and neck of white,
Far sunk his gray-blue wings between,
And giant legs of murky green."*

The most remarkable species is the great white heron (Ardea
alba), or yellow-billed white egret, clothed in plumage of snowy white,
with a long yellow bill, long lank limbs, and black feet ; length about
forty inches. On the nape and the croup his feathers are long- and
flexible, wavy, and with tapering ends ; they are eagerly sought after
for purposes of adornment. We may also mention the great bittern,
the " bird of desolation" (Botauris stellaris) — which the French
expressively name eau-m&re, or " water-mother," and which derives its
zoological appellation from the Latin words bos and taureau, in allusion
to the booming, bellowing sound of his hoarse voice. His plumage
is of a pale yellow, marked with brown and nest-coloured zig-zag
patches and shades. From the fulness of the feathers about his neck,
he presents a very quaint, and even ridiculous appearance ; but he is
a bird of courage, and even of ferocity, striking with keen bill at
the eyes of his antagonist. When attacked by dogs or other carni-
vora, he will throw himself upon the ground, and right with both
claws and bill unto the very last.

The curleiu is allied to the ibis, differing from it only in secondary
particulars, and notably in the form of his bill, which is thinner, and
rounded in its whole length. His tail resembles the hen's ; the

* Bishop Maiit, " British Months."

FACTS ABOUT CURLEWS.

73

plumage of the head, neck, and fore part of the back, is light reddish-
gray, streaked with dark-brown ; the hind part of the back is white,
with dark narrow longitudinal markings ; the tail, breast, and abdo-
men are white, the former crossed with black bars, and the latter
with dark marks and spots of a similar shape to those on the back.

1. Great Bittern.

2. White Heron or Egret.

The female lays four excessively large pyriform eggs, about three
inches long. The cry of the curlew is loud, wild, and plaintive. These
birds assemble in numerous flocks, and live on the sea-coast and the
marsh-border, feeding on worms and molluscs. At breeding- time they
separate into pairs, and haunt the wild hills and dreary moorlands, —

Itemote from human sight,

hi lonely pairs their venial flight

5 a

74 FABLES ABOUT PELICANS.

They speed o'er heathy mountain rude,
On some waste marsh's solitude,
To the tall grass or bristling reed
Their wild unnestled young to breed."

The species of Pelican which inhabits the shores of the Black
and Caspian Seas is the Common (Pelicanus Onocrotalus). We must
not pass unnoticed this well-known wader, which has for ages been
invested with an atmosphere of song and fable, and which is specially
remarkable for the bright yellow membranous pouch attached to the
lower mandible of his long robust bill. This pouch, says Broderip,
will hold a considerable number of fish, and thus enables the bird to
dispose of the superfluous quantity which may be taken during fishing
excursions, either for his own consumption or for the nourishment of
his young. " In feeding the nestlings — and the male is said to sup-
ply the wants of the female, when sitting, in the same manner — the
under mandible is pressed against the neck and breast, to assist the
bird in disgorging the contents of the capacious pouch ; and during
this action the red nail of the upper mandible would appear to come
in contact with the breast, thus laying the foundation, in all proba-
bility, for the fable that the pelican nourishes her young with her
blood, and for the attitude in which the imagination of painters has
placed the bird in books of emblems, with the blood spirting from the
wounds made by the terminating nail of the upper mandible into the
gaping mouths of her offspring. "

It is usually in the evening or the morning that these birds
gather about the lonely shores to fish in company, like a party of
sociable Izaak Waltons, and proceeding, as Nordmann remarks, upon
a systematic plan, which is apparently the result of a kind of con-
certed agreement. They select a suitable station — a shallow bay
with a smooth bottom. There they arrange themselves in a half-
circle, the bill turned towards the ground, and keeping at a distance
of from ten to twelve feet. With their wings they beat the water
hurriedly, and sometimes plunge in up to their middle, gradually
wading towards the beach, and driving the fish before them into a
very narrow channel. Now the feast commences, and other birds

ASIATIC ORNITHOLOGY. 7?,

never fail to profit by the ingenious labours of the pelican. Nord-
mann counted, on one occasion, forty-nine pelicans fishing together
in this fashion on the shores of the Black Sea.

" Besides these forty-nine," he adds, " there were assembled on
the heaps of algae, confervae, and shells cast ashore -by the sea, hun-
dreds of sea-mews, sea-swallows, sea-daws, preparing to snatch the
fish out of the water, and to divide amongst themselves the remains
of the banquet. Finally, several grebes swimming in the area circum-
scribed by the semicircle of fishers, while this space was still suffi-
ciently broad, played their part at the welcome feast, frequently
plunging after the scared and terrified fish."

The bustard and the grouse, or heather-cock, are common enough
in the prairies of Central Asia. Crows and numerous birds of prey
also flock thither in search of their dead or living prey. Travellers
speak of a black eagle of Mongolia which the Mongols and Kalkas
train to hunt the moufflon, the yellow goat, and the saiga. We can-
not find the bird described under this name by any naturalist, nor
can we determine whether he is an eagle properly so called, or whether
he is not rather the cosmopolitan black kite (milvus ater), which
rises so fiercely on his plumed wings,

" And hunts the air for plunder."

We may mention, as also proper to Central Asia, the Aquila
bifasciata of Dr. Gray, and several species of buzzards, hawks, and
falcons. These Raptorcs live very peacefully in the desert solitudes,
where none disturb them ; and so little do they fear man, that they
venture into the Mongol encampments and carry off the provisions
destined for the travellers' refreshment. An incident of this nature is
recorded by the Abbe' Hue, who, with his companions, was at the
time preparing to sup on a quarter of a kid skilfully " dished up " by
their Tartar neophyte, Samdadchiemba.

" We had just seated ourselves," says M. Hue, " in a triangle on
the grassy sward, having in our midst the lid of the pot which served
instead of a dish, when suddenly a noise like thunder broke over our

76 A THIEVISH EAGLE.

heads. A great eagle fell like an arrow on our supper, and rose again
with the same rapidity, carrying off in his claws some slices of kid.
When we had recovered from our surprise, we had nothing better to
do than laugh at the adventure. However, Samdadchiemba could not
laugh, not he ; he was exceedingly wroth, not on account of the stolen

THE EAGLE OF THE STEPPES, AND THE ANTELOPE SAIGA.

kid, but because the eagle, in flying off, had insolently buffeted him

with the tip of his wing

" The eagle," adds our author, " is found almost everywhere in
the deserts of Tartary. You see him sometimes hovering and wheel-
ing round and round in the air ; sometimes, perched upon a hillock in
the middle of the plain, he remains there for a long time as motionless

SERPENTS IN THE STEPPES. 77

as a sentinel. Often we encounter him on the ground, apparently
larger than an ordinary sheep ; when we draw near, he is com-
pelled, before he can rise into the air, to make a long detour, agitating
his heavy wings ; after which, succeeding in lifting himself a little
above the ground, he soars aloft at pleasure."

The Erpetological fauna of the Steppes is little known, and is
probably very scanty. Unfortunately, this region has not been
explored by scientific naturalists, and the unprofessional travellers
who have visited it do not appear to have met with any reptiles
which seemed to them worthy of detailed notice. Atkinson, how-
ever, speaks of the stony ridges of the plain as " swarming with
serpents." — " I observed," he says,* " four varieties : A black one,
three feet eight inches long, and about one inch and an eighth in
diameter. Another was of slaty-gray colour, from two to three feet
long, and smaller in diameter than the black snake. This breed was
numerous, and often difficult to see, they so nearly resembled the
colour of some of the rocks. We also found some of an ashy-green
and black, with deep crimson specks on the sides ; as they moved
along in the sun the colours were most brilliant." Another, which
Mr. Atkinson's companions killed, was of a dark-brown, with greenish
and red marks on the sides, and evidently very venomous. He
measured five feet two inches and a half without his head, and four
inches and a quarter round his body.

* Atkinson, " Oriental and Western Siberia," pp. 463-465.

A GLIMPSE OF HUMAN LIFE.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE INHABITANTS OF THE STEPPES : TARTARS, COSSACKS, KALMUKS,

KIRGHIZ, MONGOLS.

THE Steppes of Tartary and Mongolia, interrupted, says Humboldt,*
by chains of mountains of various aspects, separate the ruder peoples
of Northern Asia from the primitive races, which have been for ages
civilized, of Hindostan and Thibet. Their existence has influenced
the destinies of mankind in various important ways. They have
rolled back the populations towards the south, and more than
the Himalaya, more than the snow-crowned peaks of Serinagur and
Goorkha, have raised an obstacle to the alliances of peoples, while
opposing, in the north of Asia, insuperable barriers to the refinement
of manners and the genius of the arts.

But it is not only as barriers that History should regard the
plains of Central Asia ; they have several times let loose on earth a
torrent of calamity and devastation. The pastoral races of the
Steppes — Mongols, Getse, Alans, and Huns — have convulsed the
world. If, in the course of ages, intellectual culture has directed its
course from east to west, like the vivifying light of the sun, Bar-
barism at a later period has followed in the same track, when
threatening to plunge all Europe into darkness. A people of tawny
shepherds, Tou-Kin (that is to say, Turkish) in origin, the Hioung-
Nou, inhabited, under tents of skin, the elevated Steppe of the Gobi.
Long formidable to the Chinese power, a horde of the Hioung-Nou
was driven back towards the south into Central Asia. The impulse
which they gave spread uninterruptedly even into the native country
of the Fins, on the borders of the Oural, and thence the Huns, the
Avars, the Chasurs, and various mixtures of Asiatic races, poured
forth in furious violence. The Hunnish hosts first appeared on the

* Humboldt, " Ansichten der Natur," vol. i.

ETHNOGRAPHICAL DETAILS. 70

banks of the Volga, then in Pamionia, and finally on the banks of
the Marne, and 011 those of the Po, ravaging the beautiful fields
where, from the days of Antenor, the genius of man had accumulated
its glorious monuments. Thus from the Mongolian deserts blew a
pestiferous wind, which choked even in the Cisalpine plains the deli-
cate blossom of art, the object of such tender and continual cares.

Our English traveller, Atkinson, has called the Steppes " the
cradle of invasions;" and this not only because from their solitudes
issued the hordes which devastated Europe in the first centuries of
the Middle Ages, but because Kussia and Austria have found therein
those truculent soldiers of repulsive aspect who, in their hands, have
become, even in our own day, the scourge of the free and civilized
nations they would fain have subjugated.

In the present day the Steppes of Eastern Europe and of Asia are
still the asylum of savagery, if not of barbarism. The tribes scat-
tered over them are more or less closely allied to that fraction of the
human family which ethnographists designate under the name of the
" Turanian." Those of the East belong exclusively to the Mongolian
branch, and those of the West partly to the Mongolian and partly to
the Turkish, more or less modified by their mixture with the Slave
branch of the great Caucasian family. To all these peoples we
commonly apply the term Tartaro, or Tartars, which originally " was
a name of the Mongolic races, but through their political ascendancy
in Asia after Chingis-Khan (A.D. 1227), it became usual to call all
the tribes which were under Mongolian sway by the name of
Tartar." * It now really belongs to the small tribe of Turkic origin
which, after occupying Turkistan, has spread even into the Crimea.
We must distinguish from it, however, the Cossacks, or Kosaks, who
inhabit the Ukraine, the banks of the Don and the Dnieper, and who
are more closely related to the Slave family than the Mongolian race.

We shall pass in rapid review the principal hordes which inhabit
the Steppes, from the western border to the eastern extremity of
these deserts.

* Prof. Max Miiller, •' Lectures on the Science of Language," 2nd Series, p. 309.

80 THE TARTAR-XOGAIS.

The first tribe which we encounter on the shores of the Sea of
Azov and the Black Sea is that of the Tartar-Nogais, who formerly
lived north-east of the Caspian. " Pressed by the Kalmuks, or
Mougolic tribe, the Nogais advanced westward as far as Astrachan.
Peter I. transferred them thence to the north of the Caucasian moun-
tains, where they still graze their flocks on the shores of the Kuban
and the Kuma." Of late years, however, they have begun to settle
themselves in permanent habitations, owing to the exertions of a
French emigre, Count Maison, who was appointed their governor
in 1808.

They now occupy (according to Madame Hominaire de Hell) all
the territory comprised between the Sea of Azov and the river of
Malochnia-Vodi. They number about 32,000 souls, spread over
seventy villages. Their huts are small, with a roof constructed of
beams of timber, covered with reeds, which are afterwards loaded
with clay and ashes. They occupy themselves wholly in rearing
horses and cattle. The horses of the Kalm ilk-Kirghiz breed are of
moderate stature, but nimble and robust. All the year round they
roam across the plains, and in winter seek their provender beneath
the snow. The horned cattle are small and puny, the cows yield but
a poor supply of milk, and are of scarcely any value.

The aged Nogais shave the hair entirely off; the young people
preserve a single tuft on the top of the head. This custom compels
them to wear constantly a bonnet of wool or lamb's skin. A short
caftan over a shirt of cotton or woollen, bound round the waist by a
leather belt ; loose, wide trousers ; in winter a pelisse of sheep's skin
and a kind of hood enveloping the head and shoulders, compose the
dress of the males. As for the women, they wear above the chemise
a caftan of cloth, girded about the form by a large belt ornamented
with great metal buckles ; they likewise figure in Turkish trousers
and slippers, with a long white veil fastened round the head, and
allowed to fall upon the shoulders ; small silver rings adorn the
fingers and the nose ; heavy ear-drops hang from their ears, the two
being frequently linked together by a chain passing under the chin.

DESCRIPTION OF THE COSSACKS. 81

The young girls dress their hair in a multiplicity of curls, and instead
of the veil wear a small red fez, garnished with pieces of metal and
all kinds of trinkets.

The Nogais are Mohammedans, of the sect called Sunnites (or
believers in the " Sunna," the sayings and aphorisms traditionally
attributed to the Prophet). Their name is derived from that of
their first chief, the grandson of Chingis-Khan, who, about 1260,
declared himself independent of the Kapchakian empire, and estab-
lished himself with his warriors on the borders of the Black Sea.

The Kosaks (or Cossacks) are, as we have said, Slaves rather
than Tartars. They have blue eyes, red hair, thick lips, a flat nose.
Nimble, robust, indefatigable, skilful horsemen, they furnish the
Russian army with a formidable host of irregulars. Some have fixed
their homes in the towns, but the majority inhabit the villages or
stanitzas scattered over the Steppes. Very few are agriculturists.
Either they devote themselves to breeding horses and cattle, or live
on the small pension allowed them for their military services. Nearly
all the young and hardy of the males have no other trade but that of
arms. The Cossack chieftains, their Hetmans, or Attamans, derive
their authority directly from the Czar. Their religion is that of the
Russian Greek Church ; and they are, we believe, the only Chris-
tians in the entire zone of the Steppes.

Bold and resolute robbers in time of war, the Cossacks " at
home" are peaceable, kindly-natured, and more honest than the
Russian Mongiks. The erroneous ideas which still prevail respecting
their character are mainly due to French prejudices, excited by the
disastrous events of 1814 and 1815, when the jingle of their arms
resounded in the streets of Paris. But they are not really so black
as they have been painted. The traveller passes through the country
which they inhabit with the utmost security, and is received in their
stanitzas with a hospitable welcome.

These stanitzas, if we may credit Madame Hommaire de Hell,
present a far more agreeable appearance than the Russian villages.

G

82 WATCH-POSTS OF THE COSSACKS.

They consist of small wooden houses, gaily painted. There is but one
story, which is surrounded by a miniature gallery, and seems
expressly constructed to please the eye. The interior is exceedingly
neat and pretty, indicating an intelligence and an idea of comfort
which the Russians never exhibit. You will find it enriched with
towels, dishes of delft ware, forks, and all the most necessary utensils.
Usually two huts are built in one block ; the first, which we have
just described, is occupied for a summer residence ; it contains, gene-
rally, one room hung with paper of a lively design, and adorned with
images, flowers, and trophies of arms, which is reserved for state
occasions and the entertainment of strangers. The second hut, built
of dried clay, resembles the Russian kates, consisting of a single
chamber, where all the household huddle together during the winter
to shelter themselves from the cold.

The traveller seldom sees in these stanitzas any but women and
children. With the exception of a few gray veterans, who have
purchased by forty years of service the right of dying under the
home-roof, the entire male population is under arms. Thus all the
work falls upon the shoulders of the women, who must repair the
houses, cleanse and diy the furs, take care of the children, and
watch the cattle.

The Cossack soldiers, regulars and irregulars, are the guardians
of the Steppes. To them is intrusted the security of the traveller,
who is much exposed to the attacks of nomadic Turkomen, whose
only occupation is robbery. The surveillance of these immense
plains is not so difficult, however, nor does it necessitate so large a
force as you might suppose. Small watch-posts, or platforms, of
extreme simplicity of design, are raised at intervals on the higher
grounds ; they consist of four long stout poles planted in the earth, and
supporting a timber floor, which is sometimes sheltered by a roof of
timber. These are the observatories, the prospect-towers of the
Cossacks, who can thus obtain a survey over an immense sweep of
country, and exchange signals with one another. The horse-
men always remain stationed under the platform, ready to leap

THE NOMADIC KALMUKS.

83

into the saddle and to gallop wherever their presence may be
required.

In the Steppes of the Caspian Sea the Cossacks give place to the
Kalmiiks, or Olots, a people of the Mongolic race, who originally
inhabited Turkistan, but abandoned that country, in 1778, for the

banks of the Volga. Their life is wholly nomadic. They encamp
under tents called kibitkas, formed of a trellis-work of wood covered
with thick felt. In stature they do not often exceed the middle
height ; they are thin and ugly, with a swarthy skin, a large flat
countenance, little eyes, broad nose, thick lips, and frizzled beard.
They are inoffensive, hospitable like all Eastern people, but idle and
cunning. Their costume differs but little from that of the Tartars-

84 A STKANGE SPECTACLE.

Nogais. They profess the Lamaii religion, and obey the chiefs whom
they themselves elect, and who bear the title of khans. The Russian
Government levies among the Kalmuk tribes encamped on its terri-
tory a body of irregular troops, whom it employs in the defence of
its eastern and southern frontiers.

According to Madame de Hell, the Kalmiiks are as friendly as
the Cossacks in their reception of a stranger. " The last encamp-
ment," she says, " where we passed the night, appeared to us one of
the most considerable which we had hitherto met with. The country,
almost transformed, was no longer saddened by the great sandy

plains of the Caspian Sea and the Manitch Herds of horses,

camels, and oxen furrowed the surface of the Steppe, announcing the
wealth of the hordes to which they belonged. No hostile manifesta-
tion on the part of the latter occurred to disturb our security.
Happy in receiving us in the very midst of their tents, these good
Kalmiiks never attempted to rob us even of the most trifling article.
Their desires and their wants are so limited ! To tame a wild
horse, to roam from one Steppe to another on their camels, to smoke,
and to drink koumis, to shut out the cold airs of winter with smoke
and ashes, and to observe devoutly the superstitious practices of a
religion which they cannot understand — such is their whole life."

At intervals, the traveller who crosses the Steppes of the Caspian
encounters with astonishment, in the most dreary localities, far from
every Cossack village and Kalmuk kibitka, a group of men, women,
and children with bronzed complexions, with features strongly defined,
covered with squalid and grotesque rags, dragging their naked feet
over the damp and burning soil, and leading small vehicles loaded
with implements and utensils of every kind. He easily recognizes in
these beings of sinister mien, audacious mendicants, skilful thieves,
musicians, blacksmiths, conjurers — what shall I say ? — the debris, in
a word, of that once great, and perhaps powerful race, now so degraded
and corrupt, whose problematical history is the despair of the scholar.
The scorn and mistrust of every nation — impatient of all discipline,
all education — without law, without religion, without country — these

THEIR ADVENT IN EUROPE. 85

men speak a language which none can understand. Of their real
name they are themselves ignorant, and they accept with indifference
that which is imposed upon them in different countries : in the East,
Romany ; in Moldavia, Tsiganes; in Italy, Zingari ; in Spain,
Gilanos ; in France, Bohemians ; in England, Gipsies* The Ger-
mans call them Zigeuner ; the Dutch, expressively but intolerantly,
Heathens ; the Persians, Sisech ; the Hindus, Kavachee ; the Danes
and Swedes, Tatars ; and the Arabs, Harame. Their origin has
been a theme of speculation for centuries, and all that seems certain,
after a vast amount of research and discussion, is, that the cradle of
the race was India. To what Indian people they should be affiliated
is still doubtful ; whether to the Zuts or Djalts of the north ; the
Tshingani, who dwelt near the mouth of the Indus ; or the Tshandalas,
chronicled by name in the laws of Menou.

We know that their first immigration into Europe occurred about
the close of the tenth century, for we find them referred to in a para-
phrase of the book of Genesis, written by an Austrian monk, about
1122. They are there spoken of as " Ishmaelites and braziers, who
go peddling through the wide world, having neither house nor home,
cheating the people with their tricks, and secretly deceiving man-
kind." In the fourteenth century a considerable body settled in Walla-
chia, Hungary, and the island of Cyprus. Next, they invaded Ger-
many, broke into Switzerland, and appeared in Bologna and other
Italian cities. Like a besieging army they set down before Paris in
1427, but were not suffered to enter its precincts. A few years later
they crossed into England, and gradually they overspread the whole
of Europe. Their own account of themselves represented that they
came from " Little Egypt ; " that about four thousand of their num-
ber had been compulsorily baptized by the king, and condemned to
seven years' wanderings, while the remainder had been slain. At
first, their wealth, their pomp, and their supposed penitence secured

* The Spanish gipsies call themselves CaUs (black). Many interesting details of this
curious people are embodied in George Borrow's •' Zincali ; or, An Account of the Gipsies in
Spain."

86 MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER OF THE GIPSIES.

them a favourable reception ; but when their wealth was dissipated,
their pomp decayed, and their penitence discovered to be a sham,
a storm of obloquy broke over their heads. Every European govern-
ment levelled the most arbitrary decrees against them, which con-
tinued in force down to the middle of the eighteenth century.
Various attempts have since been made to civilize and incorporate
them with the general body of the population, but these have obtained
a very limited success. They still remain a race apart, with their
own language (Romany Tschib), their own traditions, their own cus-
toms, their distinct personal characteristics. They still remain a race
cursed with the curse of perpetual restlessness ; a mysterious impulse
constrains them to wander ; they live secluded from all other peoples ;
an atmosphere of secrecy enshrouds their inner life, their language,
and their creed. They are gifted with a remarkable love of and
capacity for music, and a strange wild charm invests their own
gipsy-melodies. Their character is a grotesque combination of the
most opposite qualities ; for they are brave and yet cowardly ; revenge-
ful, yet loyal; treacherous, yet capable of the most passionate attach-
ment ; indolent, yet energetic ; chaste, yet fond of licentious songs
and dances. In a word, they are a problem to the ethnologist, the
moralist, and the historical student ; and fence themselves about with
so impenetrable a reserve, that we may well doubt whether the full
truth respecting them will ever be ascertained.*

The Tsiganes or Romany are very numerous in Southern Russia.
They pass from town to town, from village to village, sometimes
begging or stealing, sometimes exercising their peculiar trades and
industries, and providing for their wants more honestly. They never
establish themselves permanently in any place. They halt wherever the
evening shades may chance to overtake them, stretch a few fragments
of woollen stuff across the poles of their vehicles to serve for tents,
kindle a fire with herbs, twigs, and dry branches, partly to cook their
food, and partly to scare away the wild beasts, and fling themselves

* All that is really known about them will be found in Professor Pott's " Zigeuner-
Bprache " (Halle, 1845).

THE KIRGHIZ HORDES.

87

down pell-mell to sleep on mats or the naked earth. When morning
dawns, they resume their life-long march — giving no thought to the
future, no dream to the past — without object, hope, or purpose.

The Steppes of the interior of Asia, from the Aral river to the
Ala-Tau mountains, are occupied by the great nation of the Kirghiz,

NIGHT ENCAMPMENT OF GIPSIES IN THE STEPPE.

who have, from time immemorial, been divided into the Great,
Middle, and Little Hordes. To the former belongs the territory north
of the Ala-Tau, with portions of China and Tartary. They are sub-
ject to the sovereigns of the countries in which they dwell. The
Middle Horde inhabits the district between the Ishim, Irtish, Lake
Balkhush, and Khokari. The Little (and far most numerous) Horde

88 INTERIOR OF A YOURT.

wanders over the grassy plains bounded by the Yamba and the
Ural, Turkistan (now a Russian province), and the country of the
Middle Horde (or Siberian Kirghizes). Altogether, the Kirghizes
number upwards of one and a quarter million of souls. They
are of Turco-Tartaric origin, and Southern Siberia is their mother
country.*

Though owing a nominal allegiance to the Russian Czar and the
Chinese Emperor, they are virtually independent, and obey only their
sultans or chiefs. They are frequently at war. Many live wholly
by brigandage ; suddenly descending, under cover of night, upon
the richest aouls, or villages, slaying all who resist, and carrying off
horses, cattle, and all objects of value, and men, women and children,
whom they sell as slaves. These nocturnal razzias are designated, in
the Kirghiz language, barantas.

The yourt, or tent of these nomades, resembles the kibitka of the
Kalmiiks. We borrow a description of one belonging to a Kirghiz
chief from Mr. Atkinson's entertaining pages.

" It was formed," he says,* " of willow trellis-work, put together
with untanned strips of skin, made into compartments which fold up.
It was a circle of thirty-four feet in diameter, five feet high to the
springing of the dome, and twelve feet in the centre. This dome is
formed of bent rods of willow, one and a quarter inch diameter, put
into the mortice-hole of a ring about four feet across, which secures
the top of the dome, admits light, and lets out the smoke. The
lower ends of the willow-rods are tied with leathern thongs to the
top of the trellis-work at the sides, which renders it quite strong
and secure. The whole is then covered with large sheets of voilock,
made of wool and camel's hair, fitting close, making it water-tight
and warm. A small aperture in the trellis-work forms a door-
way, over which a piece of voilock hangs down and closes it ;
but in the daytime this is rolled up and secured on the top of
the yourt.

* Max Miiller, " On the Origin of Language," 2nd series, p. 317.
t T. W. Atkinson, " Oriental and Western Siberia," pp. 284-286.

A HOUSEHOLD PICTURE. 89

" The furniture and fittings of these dwellings are exceedingly
simple ; the fire being made on the ground in the centre of the yourt,
directly opposite to the door voilocks are spread : on these stand
sundry boxes, which contain the different articles of clothing, pieces
of Chinese silk, tea, dried fruits, ambas of silver (small squares, about
two and a half inches long, one inch and a half wide, and about three-
tenths of an inch thick). Some of the Kirghiz possess large quanti-
ties of these ambas, which are carefully hoarded up. Above these
boxes are • bales of Bokharian and Persian carpets, some of great
beauty and value. In another part of the yourt is the large koumis
sack, completely covered up with voilock to keep it warm and aid
the fermentation. In another part of the yourt is the large leathern
koumis sack, completely covered up with voilock to keep it warm and
aid the fermentation.

" And near this bag stands a large leathern bottle, sometimes
holding four gallons, often much ornamented; so are the small
bottles made to carry on the saddle. In another place stands the large
iron caldron, and the trivet on which it is placed when used for
cooking in the yourt. There are usually half-a-dozen Chinese wooden
bowls, often beautifully painted and japanned. These are used to
drink the koumis from ; some of them hold three pints, others more.
On entering a Kirghiz yourt in summer, one of the Chinese bowls full
of koumis is presented to each guest. It is considered impolite to
return the vessel before emptying it, and a good Kirghiz is never
guilty of this impropriety.

" The saddles are placed on the bales of carpets. Kich horse-
trappings being highly prized by the wealthy Kirghiz, many of their
saddles are beautiful and costly. If of Kirghiz workmanship, they
are decorated with silver inlaid on iron, in chaste ornamental designs,
and have velvet cushions ; the bridles and other trappings covered
with small iron plates inlaid in the same manner.

" Leathern thongs and ropes made of camel's hair are hung up
on the trellis-work, common saddles, saddle-cloths, and leathern
tchimbar. This part of a Kirghiz costume is frequently made of black

6 a

90 THE KIRGHIZ COSTUME.

velvet, splendidly embroidered with silk, more especially the back
elevation."

Such is the dwelling of a Kirghiz chief in the Steppe.

The national garment of the Kirghiz is the khalat, a kind of
pelisse, very long and very full, with large sleeves, in silk or cash-
mere, and of the most dazzling colours ; but the poorer warriors sub-

KlROHIZ AOUL OR VlLI.A«E.

stitute for this state dress a horse-skin jacket. Breeches fastened
below the hips by a girdle of wool or cashmere, high-heeled madder-
coloured boots, and a fox-skin cap, rising into a cone on the top, and
lined inside with crimson cloth, complete his costume. His weapons
are the spear, the gun, the axe, and the cutlass. The women wear a
long and copious robe, and a veil of numerous folds, surmounted by a

COOKERY IN THE STEPPES. 91

lofty calico head-dress, a part of which falls over the shoulders and
covers up the neck.

The Kirghiz are fierce, cunning, and often cruel, but the life of a
guest is esteemed sacred. They have not so much respect, however,
for his property, and do not always resist the temptation of plunder-
ing him of any article which suits their fancy. Equestrian exercises
and falconry are their favourite amusements. They love the chase,
indeed, with a true sportsman's passion ; they love it for itself
rather than for the game it secures, for they have no greater dainty
than a dish of mutton. Their mode of preparing this viand is ex-
quisitely simple. They content themselves with skinning the animal,
cutting it into quarters, and plunging it into a, pot, where they keep
it boiling in a great quantity of water for a couple of hours. Gener-
ally, to .prevent the loss of any portion, they cook with the meat the
animal's intestines, without even taking the trouble of cleaning them.
The guests arrange themselves in a circle on carpets of felt ; the men
in the foremost rank, the women and children behind them. The
smoking quarters of mutton are removed from the pot ; each man
draws his knife, slashes off a slice, eats a portion, and passes the re-
mainder to his wife and children, who speedily finish it. The dogs
come in for the bones. Afterwards, bowls of the liquor in which the
meat has been boiled are handed round, and not a Kirghiz but
swallows, the greasy broth with delight. This broth, koumis, and tea
are his customary drink ; the tea is not made in the European fashion,
but becomes a veritable soup, prepared with milk, flour, butter, and
salt. In every well-to-do aoul the women keep constantly upon the
fire a vessel full of this beverage, which they offer to visitors, just as
the Turks serve up coffee, the Spaniards, chocolate, and the French,

To the north of the Great Horde, in the government of Irkutsk
(Siberia), we meet with the Agro-Mongolian people of the Buriats,
numbering about 35,000 families. They are given to Chamanism,
an idolatrous worship widely spread through Eastern Siberia. Their

92 THE MONGOL RACE.

supreme divinity inhabits the sun, and reigns over a host of lesser
gods.

Finally, between Lake Baikal and the Altai' Mountains to the
north, the Ala-Tau mountains west, the Great Wall of China south,
and the sea east, stretches the immense territory commonly known
as Mongolia, and inhabited in part by the tribes which represent the
Mongol type in all its primitive purity. This great desert, where
grassy lands alternate with dry and sandy or saline plains, was
formerly the seat of a flourishing empire, established by Chingis-
Khan in 1227, which gave birth to the three Mongol kingdoms
of Krim, Kasan, and Astrachan. Mongolic empires, at a later period,
arose in China, Turkistan, Siberia, Southern Russia, and Persia. The
Mongolian dynasty lost its hold on China in 13 GO, and a -century
later was driven out of Russia. In Central Asia it was rehabilitated
in 1369, by the illustrious Timur ; but a hundred years afterwards
the empire was again crushed by its own weight. Baber, a descendant
of Timur, conquered India, and erected there a Mongolian throne,
which endured until the soldiers of Great Britain defeated Tippoo
Saib and captured Delhi. Most Mongolic tribes are now under
the rule of the nations whom they once had conquered, the
Tungusic sovereigns of China, the Russian Czars, and the Turkish
Sultans.*

The ruins of Mongolian grandeur are still visible in those solitary
cities, which the traveller in the desert discovers half overwhelmed
in sand. "We met," says the Abbe' Hue, "with an imposing and
majestic memorial of antiquity. It was a great city, desolate and
abandoned. The crenellated ramparts, the watch-towers, the four
great gates, situated at the four cardinal points, were all in perfect
preservation ; but all was buried three-fourths deep in the ground,
and covered with a thick sward. We entered its vast precinct with
a profound emotion of awe and melancholy. We saw neither debris
nor ruins, but only the outline of a beautiful and spacious city,
* Max Miiller. " Origin of Language," pp. 311, 312.

CREED OF THE MONGOLS. 93

wrapped in grass and weeds as in a funeral shroud." Similar relics
of the past are scattered over the deserts of Mongolia, but every-
thing connected with their origin is enveloped in shadow.

The Mongolian family includes several branches, each subdivided
into tribes, obeying chiefs of unequal rank. The most numerous
people are the Kalkas, who occupy all the northern districts. The
Mongols of the south, dwelling near the Great Wall, have been
affected in their habits and manners by the neighbourhood of the
Chinese ; they have become industrious, and engage eagerly in com-
mercial affairs. But the Kalkas, and the other tribes of the Great
Gobi, are still nomadic, reckless, and indolent. Their religion is Budd-
hism ; they profess for its head, the living Buddha or Great Lama
(Dalai-lama, or Ocean-priest — i.e., wide as the ocean), a reverence
and a blind obedience, which they also pay to the inferior lamas.
"Under an external aspect of savagery," says Hue, "the Mongol
hides a character full of mildness and kindly feeling; he passes
suddenly from the wildest and most extravagant gaiety to a sadness
which has nothing forbidding. Timid to excess in his ordinary life,
when impelled by fanaticism or revenge, he displays an irresistible
impetuosity of courage. He is simple and credulous as a child, and
passionately loves stories and legends of the marvellous."

The Mongols are ugly in feature, of the middle height, agile and
robust ; their sight is wonderfully keen, their hearing of an extraor-
dinary acuteness.* Their wants are restricted to the indispensable
necessities of life ; of luxury they have no conception ; their few
pleasures are easily enjoyed ; their instincts lead them rather in the

* Dr. Latham thus describes their physical characteristics : — " The face is broad and
flat, because the cheek-bones stand out laterally, and the nasal bones are depressed. The
cheek-bones stand out laterally ; are not merely projecting, for this they might be without
giving much breadth to the face, inasmuch as they might stand forward. The distance
between the eyes is great, the eyes themselves being oblique, and their carunculse concealed.
The eyebrows form a low and imperfect arch, black and scanty. The iris is dark, the
cornea yellow. The complexion is scanty, the stature low. The ears are large, standing out
from the head ; the lips thick and fleshy rather than thin ; the teeth somewhat oblique in
their insertion, the forehead low and flat, and the hair lank and thin." — Descriptive
Ethnology.

94

DESTINY OF THE MONGOLS.

path of good than of evil, and their defects, to use an expression of
M. Hue's, are those of ill-trained children. They need, perhaps, but
a well-directed impulse to develop their intellect, and guide them
onward to a far higher civilization. In the great human family, it is
true that as yet they do but fill the children's place, and it is impos-
sible to say whether their national genius is capable of any great or
lasting work.

BOOK II.

THE DESERTS OF SAXD:—THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND AFRICA.

CHAPTER I.

THE RAINLESS DESERT THE BED OF A SEA THE DEAD SEA.

Sandy Deserts may with equal, nay, with greater
accuracy, be entitled Salt Deserts, Rainless Deserts, Seas
of Sand ; for they present at one and the same time all
these characters, and the three last, though less generally known than
the first, are the most essential.

The soil is generally covered with a thick stratum of sand ; but
in several places it also exhibits great walls of rock, and in others
masses of rolled or shattered pebbles. The subsoil is nearly always
of a gypseous or calcareous nature, rarely clayey ; wherever it is
porous and permeable, it is impregnated with salt, which rises to the
surface, or is held in solution in the subterranean basins of water, the
thermal springs, the ponds, and the lakes. The saline efflorescences
of the deserts of Persia and Oriental Asia not only suffice for the
wants of the inhabitants, but supply the great Asiatic caravans with
their principal article of exportation.

The atmosphere of the Deserts is not less dry than their sands
and rocks. The sky wears a perennial azure, more or less veiled in
haze, or rather spotted with a few clouds. Johnstone represents
them, in his admirable " Physical Atlas," by two white unequal

96 ORIGIN OF THE DESERTS.

bands, characterised as " Rainless Districts." Of these the larger
occupies all the northern region of Africa, and the greater portion of
Arabia, Syria, Persia, and Beloochistan, embracing an area of 80° of
longitude over 17° of latitude. The other extends over the table-
lands of Thibet and the Gobi. It is in form an irregular ellipsis,
obliquely inclined from south-west to north-east. Its length is about
1100 leagues ; its width, 450. From the former it is only separated
by a narrow belt. In the region marked by these two species rain is
an extraordinary phenomenon ; several years will pass without the
clouds shedding a single drop of water. This permanent, and nearly
absolute, aridity, establishes a very marked difference between the
Deserts properly so called, and the Landes, Steppes, and Prairies, con-
demned as these are during the hot season to a deadly dryness, but
in winter inundated with rain or covered with snow ; and in spring
converted into immense marshes, where an exuberant vegetation
makes its appearance, frequently capable of resisting the* action of
the summer sun and the withering winds.

In the Rainless Districts vegetation is a nullity ; it becomes
reduced to a very small number of saline plants and dwarf bushes,
nourished by the brackish waters which, the soil conceals. Finally,
the desert region may not only be compared to a sea in its aspect and
immensity, but it is a true sea, or at least the bed of an ancient sea,
which formerly communicated, and, perhaps, was confounded with
the Mediterranean, and whose drying up, though still incomplete,
took place at a recent geological epoch. We may reasonably conclude
that, owing to a series of gradual upheavals, this sea was at first
broken up into vast lagoons; that most of these successively disap-
peared, but not without leaving some certain evidences of the
primitive submersion of the continent. " If we might hazard a
conjecture," says a recent writer,* "it would be that the same
convulsions and upheavals which at the close of the tertiary epoch
indented the southern coasts of Europe, at the same time drained the
ocean which hitherto had rolled over the plains of the Sahara, and
* Rev. H. B. Tristram, " The Great Sahara," p. 360.

THE GREAT GOBI. 97

submerged the low-lying lands, which probably united the Canaries and
Madeira to the mainland." To a similar cause must be attributed the
existence of the subterranean waters, springs-, ponds, and salt lakes, of
which I have already spoken, and of the inland seas — the Caspian, the
Sea of Aral, and the Dead Sea ; while the Black Sea and its offshoots,
the Sea of Azov and the Sea of Marmora, must have had the same origin.
I shall discuss this subject further when describing the Great Sahara.

In Eastern and Central Asia, the Sandy or Salt Deserts alternate
with the Steppes, and with lands susceptible of a certain amount of
cultivation. The vast region which geographers designate the Great
Gobi, or the Shamo, is intersected by many grassy Steppes and even
by fertile fields, where the sedentary Mongols, and especially the
Artons, yearly sow and gather hemp, millet, and buckwheat. The
sombre picture of " a barren plain of shifting sand blown into high
ridges where the summer sun is scorching, no rain falls, and when
thick fog occurs it is only the precursor of fierce winds,"* is true only
of special districts, such as the Han-hai, or "Dry Sea/' or the Desert
of Sarkha. There, for instance, we meet with no other vegetable
than the salsolje, or salt-worts, which flourish around the small saline
pools. Of these pools, when seen from a distance, Mr. Atkinson
notices a remarkable characteristic : the salt crystals which accrete
upon their banks frequently reflect the orange or crimson hues of
flowers, and resemble glowing rubies set in a rich mounting.

As we advance in a south-easterly direction, we find the features
of the desert region more prominently marked.

Immense plains of sand, with a bare and brackish surface, called
IJejaban, traverse the whole of Persia, from the Caspian Sea to
the Indus. They comprise the Deserts of Kerusan, Seistan, Beloo-
chistan, and Mekran, rich in salts with a basis of soda. "The
coasts of the Persian Gulf," as Mrs. Somerville remarks, " are
burning hot sandy solitudes, so completely barren, that the country
from Bassora to the Indus, a distance of 1200 miles, is nearly a
sterile waste. Three-tenths of Persia is a desert, and the table-

* Mrs. Somerville, •' Physical Geography," vol. i., p. 105.

7

08 THE PERSIAN DESERT.

land is nearly a wide scene of desolation. A great salt-desert
occupies 27,000 square miles between Irak and Khorasan, of which
the soil is a stiff clay, covered with efflorescence of common salt and
nitre, often an inch thick, varied only by a few saline plants and
patches of verdure in the hollows. This dreary waste joins the large
sandy and equally dreary desert of Kerman. Khelat, the capital of
Beloochistan, is 7000 feet above the level of the sea ; round it there
is cultivation, but the greater part of that country is a lifeless plain,
over which the brick-red sand is drifted by the north wind into
ridges like the waves of the sea, often twelve feet high, without a
vestige of vegetation. The blast of the desert, whose hot and pesti-
lential breath is fatal to man and animals, renders these dismal sands
impassable at certain seasons."

The Desert of Mekran is separated from that of Moultan by the
Indus. That which lies to the east of Kom, in the centre of Persia,
is more than sixty leagues in extent. Of Persia, M. Forgues observes
that the actual reality differs strangely from those glowing eastern
landscapes which poets and romancists love to paint. Even in those
provinces where the winter rains encourage the growth of vegetation,
the scene would hardly remind the traveller of

" That delightful province of the Sun,
The first of Persian lands he shines upon,
Where all the loveliest children of his beam.
Flowerets and fruits, blush over every stream."*

" To bare, dry mountain-ridges," says M. Forgues, " succeed
plains, sometimes incrusted with hard clay, sometimes clothed with
thick sand. At the outset of spring, in the months of April and
May, the country is coloured with some softer tints, the grass breaks
here and there through the granite and the gravel ; but in the first
summer heats everything grows dry, and the soil resumes its monoto-
nously brown or gray livery. Water fails for cultivation, which in
the best districts is confined to a few scattered oases. In these vast
spaces, when the eye surveys them from some mountain-crest, there

* Moore, " Lalla Rookh " — Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.

THE DEAD SEA. 09

occurs nothing to arrest the gaze ; and when once the spring has
past, the cultured fields become blended with those which the
plough has suffered to lie fallow, the clay-built villages with the earth
of which their walls are constructed. In these confused landscapes
even a considerable town scarcely traces its blurred outline among
the accumulated ruins in whose centre it persists in living, and whose
extent attests its decadence. It is a marvel if, on arriving at the
limit of these monotonous plains, the traveller distinguishes them
from the deserts to whose threshold they have generally conducted
him. He only recognizes the latter by the dazzling gleam of their
saline efflorescence, which stretches far out of sight, and where at
intervals abruptly projects some mass of ebon-black rock, transformed
by the solar refraction, and assuming in quick succession the most
fantastic aspects."

I have spoken of the inland seas and salt lakes which testify
to the primitive submersion of the whole region of the Great
Deserts. Let us pursue our route towards the west, and we
shall encounter the most remarkable of these vestiges of a remote
past.

First, I shall speak of the Dead Sea, the Lake Asphaltes, which
Dean Stanley justly designates " one of the most remarkable spots
in the world," and which, as the reader knows, is situated in the
south of Palestine, at a short distance from Jerusalem. It is true
that " a great mass of legend and exaggeration, partly the effect,
partly the cause, of the old belief that the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah were buried under the Dead Sea, has been gradually
removed in recent years. The glittering surface of the lake, with
the thin mist of its own evaporations floating over its surface, will
now no more be taken for a gloomy sea, sending forth sulphurous
exhalations. The birds which pass over it without injury have long
ago destroyed the belief that no living creature could survive the
baneful atmosphere which hung upon its waters." But still, for the
scientific no less than for the historical student, it possesses an absorb-
ing interest. It is the most depressed sheet of water in the world,

100 STRANGE WILD CHARACTER OF THE SEA.

lying fully thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean :
as the Lake Sir-i-Kol, where the Oxus rises

" In his high mountain-cradle in Paracre,"

is the most elevated.* " Its basin," to quote Dean Stanley's graphic
description, " is a steaming caldron — a bowl which, from the pecu-
liar temperature and deep cavity in which it is situated, can never be
filled to overflowing. The river Jordan, itself exposed to the same
withering influences, is not copious enough to furnish a supply equal
to the demand made by the rapid evaporation. Its excessive salt-
ness is even more remarkable than its deep depression. This pecu-
liarity is, it is believed, mainly occasioned by the huge barrier of
fossil-salt at its south-west corner, and heightened by the rapid
evaporation of the fresh water poured into it. Other like phenomena,
though in a less striking form, exist elsewhere. But, without enter-
ing into its wider relations, this aspect is important, as that which
most forcibly impressed the sacred writers. To them it was ' the
salt sea,' and nothing more. They exhibit hardly a trace of the
exaggerations of later times. And so it is in fact. It is not gloom,
but desolation, which is the prevailing characteristic of the Sea of
Death. Follow the course of the Jordan to its end. How different
from the first burst of its waters in Mount Hermon, amongst the
groves of Dan and Paneas ! How different from the ' riotous prodi-
gality of life' which has marked its downward course, almost to the
very termination of its existence ! Gradually, within the last mile
from the Dead Sea, its verdure dies away, and the river melts into
its grave in a tame and sluggish stream ; still, however, of suffi-
cient force to carry its brown waters far into the bright green sea.
Along the desert shore the white crust of salt indicates the cause of
sterility. Thus the few living creatures which the Jordan washes
down into the waters of the sea are destroyed. Hence arises the
unnatural buoyancy and the intolerable nausea to taste and touch,

* Lake Sir-i-Kol is 15,600 feet above the sea-level ; that is, nearly as high as Mout
Blanc. It is fourteen miles long and one mile broad.

VALLEY OF THE JORDAN. 101

which raise to the highest pitch the contrast between its clear, bitter
waves, and the soft, fresh, turbid stream of its parent river. Strewn
along its desolate margin lie the most striking memorials of this last
conflict of life arid death : trunks and branches of trees, torn down
from the thickets of the river-jungle by the violence of the Jordan,
thrust out into the sea, and thrown up again by its waves, dead and
barren as itself. The dead beach shelves gradually into the calm
waters. A deep haze — that which to earlier ages gave the appeai-
ance of the 'smoke going up for ever and ever' — veils its southern
extremity, and almost gives it the dim horizon of a real sea. In the
nearer view rises the low island close to its northern end, and the
Jong promontory projecting from the eastern side, which divides it
into its two unequal parts. This is all that I saw, and all that most
pilgrims and travellers have seen, of the Dead Sea." *

The sinister aspect of the valley of the Jordan, especially at the
embouchure of the river, impresses itself on the mind of every spec-
tator. There the traveller finds the path narrowed between two
abrupt gigantic walls. On the right rises the Arabian chain, black
and perpendicular ; on the left, the Judaean range, less elevated, more
irregular, and resembling a dismantled ruin. " The valley comprised
between these two chains," says the Pere Laorty-Hadji, " exhibits a
soil closely resembling the bed of a sea which has long been dry.
You can discern but a few stunted trees. Ruined towns and castles
appear in the distance. At the moment of flinging itself into the
Dead Sea, the Jordan itself, traversing a muddy soil, changes its
physiognomy and colour. It seems to drag reluctantly, towards the
motionless lake, a burden of slow and tawny waters. The shores of
the Dead Sea are low on the east and west ; to the north arid south
high mountains enclose it." " These mountains, separated by a
formidable cleft, exhibit their beds of red sandstone, overlain by a
thick stratum of compact chalk, interrupted by silicious fragments.
One is surprised not to see a volcanic crater, when all about, in this
convulsed site, the action of fire is visible — the violent, bitter struggle

* Dean Stanley, li Syria and Palestine," pp. 290-294.

102 A SEA OF TERROR.

of the two Neptunian and Plutonian principles, which, during the
geological eras, contended for the empire of the world. One might
say that here the two antagonistic forces exhausted themselves, that
they have equally lost their potency ; so much so, that at the close
of the combat all has sunk into the silence and immobility of death.
And who knows if the volcanic crater, whose absence at first
astonishes the observer, is not the Dead Sea itself? Is it unreason-
able to admit that after the upheaval of the mountains which inclose
it, and which a terrible explosion of subterranean fire will have sepa-
rated, the neighbouring waters were precipitated into and swallowed
up in the yawning gulf which they still fill to-day ? . . . This hypo-
thesis is so much the more probable, because in this fire-scathed
region the lake affords manifest indications of an igneous travail even
now accomplishing itself sullenly in the bowels of the globe. We
know that its name of Lake Asphaltites is due to the semi-fluid
bituminous matter which constantly rises to its surface and accumu-
lates on its shores. With the vapours exhaled by this bitumen under
the influence of heat, mingle sulphurous and amrnoniacal exhalations,
which render the atmosphere of the Dead Sea dangerous to breathe."*
Before 1835 no one had ventured upon its waters. An Irish
traveller, named Cottingham, was their first navigator ; but after a
five days' voyage he returned to Jerusalem, and died of exhaustion.
Two years later Messrs. Moore and Beke made a new attempt. For
several days they withstood the pestilential exhalations of the lake,
and succeeded in proving the deep depression of its basin ; but at
length, both of them being taken ill, they were compelled to cut
short their explorations. In 1847 the enterprise was undertaken by
a Frenchman — Lieutenant Molyneux — who sounded it in many
places, but was speedily carried off by fever. The following year
Lieutenant Lynch, of the American navy, embarked on the lake in
iron boats, with competent crews. He navigated its waters for
three weeks ; but all who composed the expedition were more or less
Beverely attacked,- and one of them, Lieutenant Deane, succumbed.
* Laorty-Hadji, " La Syrie, la Palestine, et la Juclee."

ANALYSIS OF ITS WATERS. 105

Though, as we have said, geographical research has dissipated
most of the wild stories formerly accepted in reference to the pecu-
liarly fatal concomitants of the Dead Sea, it well deserves its expres-
sive name. It is a dead sea : it has neither the ocean's living
movement nor deep-sounding roar ; the surf and the spray never
sparkle on its rocks ; that " multitudinous laughter " which Homer
ascribes to the sea is wholly wanting ; the wind never wakes a smile
on its passive and sombre countenance. By its shores one might
realize Shelley's mournful wish, and feel

" In the warm air

His cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er his dying brain its last monotony." *

It is lifeless, untenanted; the fish found there, and brought down by the
Jordan, are dead. Unlike the Caspian, it is never stirred by the whirr of
wings — by the flight of gulls, or pelicans, or sea-mews. The migratory
birds sweep across it without even a pause, without seeking the prey
which they could not find. Its waters are denser than those of other
seas : their constituents are different, and mingled indifferent proportions.
Laorty-Hadji is mistaken in his idea that they repose on a bed of
rock salt. Rock salt is the chloride of sodium in a nearly pure con-
dition. But the Dead Sea holds in solution a comparatively small
portion of this salt, mixed with large proportions of other salts. Its
water was analyzed for the first time in 1778 by Lavoiser, Macquer,
and Sage. Experiments have also been made by Arcet, Klaproth,
Gmelin, Gay-Lussac, and, more recently, by Boussingault. According
to the latter, it contains :• —

Chloride of magnesium, 10.7288

Chloride of sodium, 6.4964

Chloride of calcium, 3.5592

Chloride of potassium 1.6110

Bromide of magnesium, 0.3306

Sulphate of lime, 0.0424

Sal-ammoniac, 0013

Water,... ... 77.2303

100.0000

Shelley, '' Poetical Works" — Stanzas Written in Dejection, &c.

7 a

106 ARABIA DESERT A

It will be seen that it possesses neither chloride of manganese nor
chloride of aluminium, no nitrates, and no iodines : that it is, there-
fore, not sea water, properly so called, but a mineral water sui
generis.

The enormous proportion of saline matter accounts for its excep-
tional density, and justifies the assertion of travellers that a man
floats upon its surface like a log of wood ; though we can hardly
credit the statement of Pococke that it is impossible to sink to the
bottom. Its gravity undoubtedly endows it with extraordinary
buoyancy, and to dive to any considerable depth is a matter of diffi-
culty ; but in the Dead Sea, as in other seas, man must employ his
strength and skill to keep his body afloat.

CHAPTER II.

ARABIA DESERTA AND ARABIA PETR^A.

THE traveller who starts from the southern extremity of the Dead
Sea encounters a succession of deserts. To the east extend wide
plains, covered with ruins, where upwards of thirty cities are to be
traced in their decay, like Palmyra, by the trunks of shattered
columns and the wrecks of desecrated temples. This is the once
nourishing countiy of the Nabatheans, now haunted by some tribes
of Idumean Arabs. One might not inappropriately call it the
vestibule of Arabia Deserta ; a name applicable to all the central and
southern districts — that is to say, to nearly three-fourths of the
Arabian peninsula. There the sea of sand reveals itself in all its
nakedness, in all its horrors ; with its implacable sky and fiery at-
mosphere, its sandy billows, its masses of salt, and, in certain places,
with its hidden quicksands capable of devouring entire armies. The
Desert of Akhaf, situated towards the extremity of the peninsula,
conceals, it is said, several of these abysses, where the hapless

THE HAUNTED ABYSSES. 100

traveller, if lie set his foot upon them, would be instantly swallowed
up. Thus even the Arabs regard it with an unconquerable dread.
It owes its name to a Saffite king who would fain have traversed it
with his troops, and who saw them perish therein even to the last
man. The tradition does not inform us how he himself escaped this
immense disaster.

A European traveller, Baron de "VVrede, undertook nevertheless,
some twenty-five years ago, to penetrate into this soul-appalling
desert, and attempted to measure the extent and depth of one of
these abysses. Starting in the morning from Saba, under the guid-
ance of a few Bedouins, he reached, after six hours' marching, the
threshold of the desert of Akhaf.

"A sandy plain, extending as far as the eye could reach," he says,
" and upon which arose innumerable hills in the semblance of waves,
— such was the scene presented to my gaze. Not the least trace of
vegetation was perceptible ; not a bird interrupted with its song the
tomb-like silence which prevailed around the graves of the Sabean
army. I remarked three tracts distinguished by a dazzling whiteness.
'Yonder are the abysses,' said the Bedouins; 'they are inhabited
by the spirits who have covered with this deceitful sand the
treasures intrusted to their charge. He who dares approach them
will assuredly be dragged down under the sand ! Do not venture
there ! '

" Naturally, I paid no attention to this counsel ; on the contrary,
I demanded to be guided towards them, according to agreement.
Two hours were consumed by our camels in reaching the bottom of
the plateau, where we arrived at sunset, taking up our quarters for
the night on the lee side of two enormous rocks. On the following
day I insisted that the Bedouins should guide me over these tracts.
My trouble was in vain ; fear rendered them unable to utter a word.
Furnished with a plumb-lead weighing about a pound and a quarter, to
which was attached a rope nearly 350 yards in length, I accomplished
this dangerous enterprise. I occupied thirty-six minutes in reaching
the first abyss ; it was thirty-six feet long by twenty-six feet broad,

110 EXPLORED BY SCIENCE.

and formed an inclined plain towards the centre, about six feet deep,
which I attributed to the action of the wind. I approached at first
with the utmost precaution, in order to examine the sand, and found
it to be almost impalpable. I cast my plumb-lead as far as I could ;
it disappeared immediately ; however, the rapidity with which the
rope shortened gradually diminished ; in five minutes, it had wholly
disappeared."

Baron de Wrede has made no attempt to account for this strange
phenomenon, which is not, I may add, peculiar to Arabia. The late
Doctor Cloquet, who for many years acted as chief physician to the
Shah of Persia, relates that he had seen similar gulfs in the great
Salt Desert, which he considered to occupy the place of lakes suddenly
vanished. This hypothesis is certainly admissible, and perhaps very
probable ; but while in some degree explaining the existence of these
abysses of sand, it raises fresh questions which are by no means
easily answered ; for instance, why have these lakes disappeared, and
why have they been replaced by this impalpable and incoherent dust
in which heavy bodies sink as in a void ?

Consider, moreover, the remarks made by Doctor Cloquet in a
letter addressed in 1851 to the Academy of Medicine at Paris : —

" At fifteen parasangs from Teheran,* commences the Salt Desert,
which, from east to west, extends to the very frontiers of India.
This immense basin, eastward, has no other limits than the horizon ;
to the west, to the north, to the south, it is bounded by hills of sand
which completely represent the Dunes of France, The soil, of a fawn-
coloured yellow, is composed of clay and sand, exactly resembling the
mud which occupies the bottom of a dried-up basin. It is said that
at many points a man on horseback will disappear without his
body being ever again disco vered.-j- I have seen one of these places,
near Sivas ; the soil is everywhere impregnated with salt mingled

* A parasang varies in length ; in some parts of Persia it measures thirty, in others fifty
furlongs.

t Such quicksands are found at some parts of the British coast, and the reader will
remember that in one of them occurs the catastrophe of Scott's romance, '• The Bride of
Lammermoor."

SOME NATURAL PHENOMENA. Ill

with nitre, which crystallizes on the surface. For the rest, if you
Jig two or three inches deep, you find water, though very brackish
in quality. The general opinion is that the desert was once occupied
by a sea, which suddenly disappeared on the night that Mohammed
was born. And it seems to me that there is no reason to doubt this
sudden disappearance, since even in our own days, and only a few
years ago, the salt lake of Ourmiah (Urumiyeh), in the province of
Azerbaidjan, vanished completely for twenty-four hours ; it is true
that the waters emerged again from their subterranean basin. I
think it almost absolutely demonstrated, from inspection of these
localities, that at a remote epoch this sea communicated with the
Caspian, and formed one united basin of water. I am not sure but
that in the south it also communicated with the Indian Sea, for I
have not travelled in that direction. The apparition of the Elburz
chain has cloven the two basins, and the sea, receiving only incon-
siderable streams, insensibly receded, until the day when it was
wholly dried up, leaving only two lakes : one, the lake of Sivas,
which disappeared in the seventh century ; the other, the lake of
Seistan, which is still extant, and receives several of the important
rivers of Afghanistan. At all events, the great sea itself had dis-
appeared some generations prior to the epoch of Alexander.

"The great humidity of the soil," adds Doctor Cloquet, "struck
me vividly. Does not this humidity appear to indicate the presence
of vast subterranean sheets of water, which sweat, so to speak
(transsuderaienf), through the porosities of the earth ? "

The desert table-land of Nadjed, which fills all the central part
of Asia, is bounded on the west and south by the more fertile and
fortunate countries of the Hedjaz and the Hadramant, which skirt
the Indian Ocean. To the north-east lies the desert of the Tih,
whose deep sand-drifts lie between Palestine and the Isthmus of Suez,
and which the Mediterranean washes on the north, on the south-west
the Gulf of Suez, and on the south-east the Gulf of Akaba. This is
the small triangular peninsula which was known to ancient geo-
graphers as Arabia the Stony. A group of ever-famous mountains,

112 THE SACRED MOUNTAINS.

hallowed by the sublimest associations, Sinai, Horeb, Jebel Musa,
Jebel Bestin (St. Episteme), raise their granitic summits on the
southern point of this peninsula. " They are ' the Alps ' of Arabia ;
but the Alps planted in the desert, and therefore stripped of all the
clothing which goes to make up our notions of Swiss or English
mountains ; stripped of the variegated drapery of oak, and birch, and
pine and fir, of moss, and grass, and fern ; which to landscapes of
European hills are almost as essential as the rocks and peaks them-
selves." Sinai', or St. Catherine, the loftiest peak in the range,
reaches an elevation of 8160 feet. It is so closely connected with
Mount Horeb, to the north, that the two mountains really seem but
one. Ravines, and narrow valleys planted with palm-trees, thorny
acacias, tamarisks, and some other shrubs, wind between the abrupt
trunks of this grand chain. In one of these valleys stands the
Monastery of the Transfiguration, and on Mount Horeb rises the
Church of St. Catherine, a shrine held in great esteem by devout
Greeks. The pilgrims ascend on their knees a large staircase labori-
ously constructed by the monks.

I have no space to recapitulate the sublime historic memories
which invest these solemn heights with an interest of their own.
The presence of the Almighty has clothed their summits with a glory
that might not be borne; the thundei'S of the Most High have
echoed through their deep dark valleys. At their base the people of
Israel watched and waited while Moses received from Heaven the
code which thenceforth determined their religious and civil polity.
Down the side of yonder mighty peak came their Prophet and Leader,
his face bright with a radiance such as was never before on the face
of mortal man. They were the scene of a singularly unique history ;
by which, as Dean Stanley remarks, " the fate of the three sur-
rounding nations — Egypt, Arabia, Palestine — and through them the
fate of the whole world, has been determined."

The locality, consecrated by such glorious associations, is also
rich in geological interest. It exhibits indubitable traces of- the
great volcanic convulsions which have so profoundly shaken the

FACTS AND FANCIES.

113

shores of the Dead Sea, and which still growl sullenly under the
accumulated rocks. In the time of Procopius, the legend runs that
men fled from Sinai' on account of the gruesome noises which haunted
it ; and modern travellers, notably Stutzen and Gray, declare that
they have heard at intervals a sound comparable to the dull heavy

MOUNT SINAI.

throbbing of a Cyclops' pulse. It might be said that one of the vast
arteries which provide for the circulation of the ever boiling and
seething flood of lava of our globe passes in this direction at an
insignificant depth below the surface. The springs of thermal waters
which well out at the mountain-base, the masses of bitumen and lava
scattered over the soil, the gigantic rocks which bristle over the

8

114 A LAKE OF SALT.

desert of El-Tih, and whose hue, to adopt the expression of a
modern traveller, is that of calcined and fire-scathed matter, are
sufficient evidence that this country has been the theatre of dreadful
volcanic phenomena.

Messrs. Bida and Hachette describe a place named Wddy-Nassoub,
situated a short distance from Sarabit-el-Kadim, on the road from
Sinai' to Suez. It is gained after traversing Ramleh ("the sandy"),
a sandy ravine which serves as a retreat for horrible black serpents,
both big and little, and for enormous lizards, and which is followed
by a narrow valley. " Wady-Nassoub," according to these travellers,
" is one of the most magnificent spectacles we have ever seen. It is
a circus of twenty to twenty-five leagues in extent, surrounded by
huge rocks arranged in successive terraces, and of incomparable
beauty of form and colour. Its arena is an immense sheet of
black basalt, furrowed here and there . by torrents of yellow sand.
A dazzling sun kindles up this landscape, which is one of incredible
splendour."

As you approach the Isthmus of Suez — which will soon be an-
nihilated, so to speak, by M. de Lesseps' great ship-canal — the desert
resumes the character which we have seen it bear in Persia and
Central Arabia. The rocks, much rarer and less lofty, gradually give
place to mountains of sand. Salt lakes and fields of salt re-appear.
Near the shores of the Mediterranean lies a pool of salt, still known
by that name of Lake Baudouin (Baldwin), which the Crusaders
imposed upon it. There the salt forms a firm and tenacious crust,
on which the camel safely plants its foot. Sometimes the iron hoof
of a horse breaks through, but beneath this first frail stratum it
meets with another of astonishing hardness. " You might think
yourself," says a traveller, " on the Mer de Glace of Mont Blanc.
Our camel-drivers collected some large pieces from the surface.
Nothing can be more brilliant or more transparent than these
crystals. It is by tasting them only that you can distinguish
them from rock crystal. As we advance, the impression grows
overpowering. A plain of dazzling whiteness surrounds us, and is

THE PETKIF1ED FOREST. 117

prolonged far beyond our ken. Dimly on the left may be perceived,
like an indigo-coloured ribbon, the line of the distant sea. The sky
itself appears jet black. The reverberation of sound is unendurable."
Still further, between Suez and Cairo, the same traveller speaks
admiringly of a natural amphitheatre, enclosed between two moun-
tain-spurs, and strewn with debris of rock, and especially with
petrified wood. It might be compared to a forest-clearing which
the woodmen had just quitted. The splinters are quite fresh, the
cloven fragments still expose the notches made by the axe. Great
trees, divided into beams, resemble long serpents which have been
slain by blows from a hatchet. The division is so clear that each
gash reveals the concentric tissues perfectly preserved by this
mineral embalming, this natural silification. Similar petrifactions
may be seen in abundance on the plateaux of the Makattam,
and the amphitheatre now described is not far from the hill, visited
by every tourist, which has received the name of the Petrified Forest.
Thus it appears that the Land Deserts, despite the proverbial
monotony of their aspect, do not fail to offer to the artist as well as the
savant, the philosopher no less than the historian, objects worthy of
patient study. Everywhere the handiwork of God and the evidences
of Almighty design awaken the admiration of the thoughtful. Whether
the picture be sombre or beautiful, grand or appalling, we see that it
was conceived and filled up by superhuman power. But we are now
in Egypt, on the threshold of the world's vast deserts. Egypt, kept
alive by the fertilizing and genial Nile, is but an island in the great
ocean of sand which encircles it, and which, far more truly than the
Red Sea or the Mediterranean, isolates it from the rest of the globe.

118 THE RIVER AND THE DESERT.

CHAPTER III.

THE NUBIAN DESERT THE GREAT SAHARA DESERTS OF AFRICA.

As soon as we pass beyond the narrow borders of the Nile valley we
encounter the Desert. Egypt is, in fact, the Nile ; the Nile makes,
recreates, preserves, fecundates Egypt, which, without this grand and
ever-famous river, would immediately cease to be.

" Everything in Egypt," says Miss Martineau,* with equal truth
and eloquence, " life itself, and all that it includes, depends on the
state of the unintermitting conflict between the Nile and the Desert.
The world has seen many straggles ; but no other so pertinacious, so
perdurable, and so sublime as the conflict of these two great powers.
The Nile, ever young, because perpetually renewing its youth, appears
to the inexperienced eye to have no chance, with its stripling force,
against the great old Goliath, the Desert, whose might has never
relaxed from the earliest days till now ; but the giant has not con-
quered it. Now and then he has prevailed for a season, and the
tremblers whose destiny hung on the event have cried out that all was
over ; but he has once more been driven back, and Nilus has risen
up again to do what we see him doing in the sculptures — bind up
his water-plants about the throne of Egypt."

The traveller, ascending the famous river which has so long been
mixed up with an apparently insoluble geographical problem, sees
the Desert everywhere present ; its yellow boundary-line is vividly
traced against the rich emerald-green of the fertile valley, and, as
he advances, that line seems to draw nearer and nearer, until
the cultivated soil appears reduced to a narrow strip on the
river-bank. It has encroached upon many once prosperous and
busy sites, and buried deeply the memorials of the old Egyptian
civilization.

* Mias Martineau, " Eastern Life : Past and Present.''

A FAIRY LANDSCAPE. 119

" Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Everywhere outside the valley of the Nile, I repeat, lies the Desert.
West of the Arabian chain of heights stretch the vast sandy plains
frequented by the Arab tribes of the Beni-Wassel and the Arabdd
Beyond the eastern chain spread the Libyan Deserts, which, in the
remote distance, merge into the Great Sahara, and those of the
Theba'id, where the early Christian anchorites found a dismal
asylum. Lower, to the south of Egypt, extend the Deserts of Lower
Nubia.

Let us ascend the Nile as far as Korosko, on the right bank of
the river, and cross the huge chain of rocky hills which separates the
cultivated zone from the Desert to which the village just spoken of
gives name. These hills, all of equal elevation, assume the form of
truncated cones. They are layers of granite superimposed horizontally,
and with a depth of colour which makes them resemble at the first
glance masses of basalt. They are absolutely bare, and separated
from each other by abrupt sinuous gorges, whose bottom is covered
deep in sand of golden liglits, brought from the desert on the wings
of the south-west. Long streams of the same brilliant sand descend
the slopes opposed to the direction of the wind with graceful undula-
tions, which subside imperceptibly in the blown sand that carpets
the floor of these mysterious valleys. The crests of the hills can
only be distinguished by their different colours ; some are lightly
shaded with gray, others with blue or green, and others again with
rose or crimson. The reflets of the setting sun on these uniform and
many-coloured summits have a marvellous splendour, lighting up the
scene until it assumes a fairy aspect,

" And all puts on a gentle hue.
Hanging in the shadowy air,
Like a picture rich and rare."

At certain times it would rather remind the spectator of another
of Coleridge's conceptions :

120 THE MOLOCH OF THE DESERT.

" A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover ! " *

Yet the spectacle is generally one of a rare and peculiar loveli-
ness. " If nature," says M. Tr&naux,f " had invested with this kind
of beauty our verdurous fields of the West, they would have been
veritable Edens ; but to produce, blend, and harmonize these inimi-
table hues, it requires, under the last beams of the sun, the emana-
tions from the heated sands and those which the day has called into
existence from the burning surfaces of the denuded rocks. It is by
the side of her greatest horrors nature places her grandest beauties."

The horror of the Desert does not lie only in its aridity, in its
vacuity — this vacuity is not absolute ; in default of life, Death
peoples its solitudes. The glens or gorges frequented by the caravans
are lined with stones, symmetrically disposed at certain intervals.
These stones mark the places where rest the remains of the hapless
pilgrims who have attempted to cross the wilderness, and perished in
the attempt. Round and about each rugged tomb lie the skeletons
of animals which none have troubled themselves to bury in the
sand. Frequently you may see, on the sandy wastes of Africa, or the
desolate plains of Asia and the New World, these carcasses laid out
in two interminable rows ; indicating the gloomy track which should
be followed by the traveller, and never failing to remind him of the
tribute Death levies upon mankind in these accursed regions. Thus
does the Desert show itself more relentless than even the hungry
ocean, which at least devours its victims whole, and affronts the eye
with no traces of its murders. But the Moloch of the Desert has no
shame ; it cynically exposes the hideous remains of those whom it
has killed ; it strews the earth with their bones ; it has its museums
of skeletons, or rather of preserved animals.

M. Tremaux observed this curious phenomenon in the ravines of
Korosko, but it probably occurs elsewhere under similar conditions.

* Coleridge, " Poetical Works "—Kubla Khan.

f Treinaux, " Egypte et Ethiopie," lre partie, c. viL

DESERT OF KOROSKO. 121

On closely examining the carcasses which he met at every step, he
was astonished to find them covered with their skin, and presenting
still their natural forms, as if the animals had been stuffed or em-
balmed. He readily distinguished horses, oxen, asses, camels. He
observed with no less surprise that these corpses exhaled no odour.
They had been dried by the heat before decomposition could com-
mence its frightful work. The skin had hardened ; the muscles and
internal organs had been reduced into dust and gradually blown away
by the wind through the yawning apertures at the two extremities
of the body. There remained nothing more, literally, but skin and bone.
"This skin had such a consistency," says our author, "such a
degree of solidity, that all my efforts to split it were without result.
The heaviest stones which I could raise rebounded upon their car-
casses with a loud noise, but did not pierce them. If a man dies
while a caravan is on its march, he is buried in the sand. I have
had no opportunity of examining whether the desert-heat produces
the same effect upon his body as upon the corpses of the animals just
mentioned ; but it ought not to be so, since the human skin has not
the same consistency."

On issuing from these gorges, we enter upon the Desert proper
by a sandy plain which the Djellahs have named the " River without
Water," and which, very low at first, slowly rises into a plateau of
very slight elevation, intersected by some veins of a sandstone similar
to that of the conical mountains. Then the plain declines anew, and
we emerge upon the Sea of Sand, where the pulverized sandstone
alternates with fields of rotted or broken pebbles, and mounds of
porphyry and granite. At the foot of one of these mounds, the
Tallat-el-Guinde, flourish a few wretched vegetables, among others
some gum-trees and doum-palms. The latter trees are also found in
solitary mournfulness scattered about the plain. Otherwise the Desert
of Korosko is wholly deprived of vegetable life, of

" The glory in the grass, and the splendour in the flower."
As for water, it must needs be content with that of a few brackish

122

DESERT OF BAHIOUDA.

wells, grouped, about twelve in number, at a spot called El-Mourath.
It is there only that the caravans can fill their ill-tanned leather-
bottles, in which the already nauseating liquid grows hot, and quickly
becomes putrid. Its stench and its taste are then so disgustful that

the very camels reject it several times before they can constrain
themselves to drink of it.

The Desert of Bahiouda, situated in about the same latitude as
that of Korosko, but on the other bank of the Nile, is of a less abso-
lute aridity and nakedness. Water is more abundant and less
brackish ; vegetation is less scanty ; and one meets on every side

THE RAINLESS BELTS. 123

with giraffes, gazelles, wild cattle, and even, it is said, with lions and
elephants. Great numbers of reptiles, lizards, serpents, and tortoises
inhabit the sand and the crevices of the rocks.

South of the above-named Deserts, towards 17° N. lat., is placed
the limit of the Eainless District. Under the 18th parallel the
rains do not last above one or two months in the year, and in some
years are absolutely wanting ; but when they do fall, it is generally
in impetuous torrents. As we advance towards the Equator they
become more regular, and last for longer periods. According to
Humboldt, the average yearly rainfall in 19° N. lat. measures 80
inches ; under the equator, 9 6 inches. In these tropical climes the
year is divided into two seasons — one of excessive drought, and one
of excessive rain. During the former, the sky is ever cloudless ;
during the latter, completely overcast.

There are, in fact, two rainless belts or districts, one on each side
of the Equator. In the old world, the northern belt commences on
the west side of Africa; includes the Sahara between 16° and 28° of
latitude ; and narrowing as it extends easterly, comprises on the
banks of the Nile from 19° to 27°. It also embraces the low coast;
and portions of the interior of Arabia ; passes through Beloochistan
to the base of the Himalayas, and terminates with the rainless table-
land of Thibet. The southern district occurs north of the Gareep or
Orange River in South Africa, and includes wide tracts in Australia,
and a narrow belt in South America.

Where the earth is blessed with copious showers, vegetation will
abound ; grass, and herb, flower, bush, and tree ;

'• Fields of grain
Will bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops."

To meet with the true Desert we must, therefore, direct our steps in a
north-westerly course, and penetrate into The Sahara.

M. Charles Martins, in his elaborate monograph on this re-

124 THE SAHABAN STEPPE.

markable region, divides it into three distinct sub-regions : the
Desert of the Table-lands, the Desert of Erosion, and the Sandy
Desert*

In Algeria, and in Barbary generally, the Mediterranean littoral
does not come into immediate contact with the Sahara ; but is
separated from it by the Atlas chain. But the Atlas does not rise
abruptly from the plain : on either side it ascends by a succession of
rocky steps or terraces, which form the sub-region of the elevated
Table-lands. Vast denuded surfaces, sprinkled with ckotts, or salt
lakes, deprived of all arborescent vegetation, traversed in summer by
immense herds which feed on the plants even to their very roots, bare
mountains starting abruptly from these horizontal surfaces ; such is
the general aspect of the landscape. The richly-varied culture of the
Mediterranean littoral has disappeared, and barley is the only cereal
which the husbandman relies upon for his harvest. At many points,
however, the " purple vine " and " golden olive " succeed admirably,
and are destined one day to clothe the nakedness of these plateaux
which the free-pasturing herds and the careless Arab have stripped of
their blooming verdure.

Descending these rocky terraces of gray old Atlas, we enter the
desert region in its first phase : the Desert of the Table-lands, or
Saharan Steppe.

Here, horizontal strata of mud and gypsum, or sulphate of lime, are
deposited upon the shores, as it were, of the great Sandy Sea. The gyp-
sum reposing on the mud is composed of plates in such close juxtaposi-
tion as to resemble an artificial pavement. "It covers the surface of vast
plateaux which have not been encroached upon by the waters; whether
those waters were marine currents at the epoch when the Sahara was
a vast sea, or diluvian torrents which descended from the mountains
after their elevation, little matters ; the gypsum, produced by the
violent evaporation of the Saharan sea, has withstood their operation,
and composes the plateaux of which we are speaking. Their surface
is so smooth, that vehicles might roll for leagues upon this natural

* M. Charles Martins, " Du Spitzberg an Sahara" (Paris, 1866), pp. 555, et sej.

LANDSCAPE IN THE ATLAS (REGION OF TABLE-LANDS).

A PICTURE IN THE DESERT. 127

pavement, which echoes like a vault under the horses' hoofs. A
plateau of this kind, the small Desert of Mourad, extends from Biskra
to the banks of the great salt lake called Chott Mebrir by the Arabs.
The gypseous surface is not everywhere exposed : most frequently it is
covered by a layer of small rounded pebbles, nearly all quartzose,
exhibiting the greatest variety of tints, from the purest white to the
most vivid red ; they are mixed with black calcareous stones split on
the surface. Whence came these pebbles, which have evidently been
' rolled ' by the waters ? We know not. They are the mysterious
witnesses of those grand diluvian torrents which have left the traces
of their passage over the surface of the whole earth, though the
geologist cannot always discover the mountains or rocks that fur-
nished the materials of this diluvium."*

From the Desert of the Table-lands we must needs make another
descent. The town of Batna is situated at the extremity of the lowest
of the Atlantean terraces, whose elevation is still some 3300 feet
above the level of the sea. To the north-west rise the lofty spires of
the colossal chain, with their diadems of cedars sharply defined in black
upon the azure of the sky. Loftiest of all soars the Jebel-Tougour, or
" Peak of Cedars," reminding the spectator of the Pyrenean crests.
Towards the south-east stretch the rounded shoulders of the mountains
of the Aures, clad with dense dark forest of oak and pine. In a fold
of the mountains lurk the ancient Lambessa and the mouldering ruins
of a Roman camp. Four miles to the south of Batna is a large
depressed hill, whose base mingles with the table-land, above which it
rises only three hundred and thirty feet. This ridge marks the water-
shed ; all the streams on the north flowing towards the Mediterranean,
and, on the south, gradually disappearing in the arid bed of the
ancient Saharan sea. On the frontier line, like a Cyclopean landmark,
is planted the Peak of Cedars, while from its loins a torrent issues,
and through a deep ravine whirls and leaps and flows towards
the desert. Springs, abundant and warm, bubble up through the
chalky marls, and take the same direction. Beyond the French mili-

* Martins " Du Spilzberg an Sahara.'' p. 556.

128 THE DESERT OF EROSION.

tary post, called Les Tamarins, the road descends the ravine-cloven
mountain-slopes, and passes over the torrent which bifurcates at the
foot of the majestic Metlili. On the left is seen a steep wall of rock,
the Jebel-Gaouss, cleft midway by a chasm, or breach, which the Arabs
expressively designate " The Mouth of the Desert," and which,
gradually enlarging, opens upon the first oasis of the Sahara, El
Kantara (" the bridge," from a Roman arch which spans the torrent),
the most northerly limit of the palm-tree. " A magnificent, semi-
alpine, semi-tropical scene. Below, a tumultuous foaming stream, its
banks on either side clad with palms bending their feathery foliage
towards the river, and sheltering fig, apricot, peach, almond, and
pomegranate trees."* Above, a range of snowy heights, wreathed in
ever ascending and descending clouds.

We now enter the Desert of Erosion, a mass of mountainous high-
lands ; of ridges, peaks, and cols, intersected and, as it were, gashed
by ravines where roll the winter torrents and the rivers which the
heats of summer dry up, and which, hollowing and gnawing into the
stony soil, spread themselves over the valleys and awake a transitory
vegetation. The erosive action of the waters is, then, the special charac-
teristic of this part of the desert, which the Arabs call Kifar, or " the
abandoned country." Most of .the streams which water it have their
sources in Mounts Aures and Zibans, which form its northern boun-
dary. They have excavated wide intermingling furrows, whose inter-
vening spaces are occupied by gypseous plateaux. The formations of
less resisting power, the marls, clays, and sands, have been washed
away.

The waters, whether proceeding from rain, or the melting of the
snows on the loftiest peaks, are very pure at first, and roll in deep
beds with vertical sides ; when they reach the plains, their channels
grow wider and shallower. In the wet season, the floods burst the
banks, and overflowing, carry down immense quantities of rolled
pebbles, which are distributed over an extensive area ; in ordinary
weather they are reduced to thin threads of silver, which, on arriving
* Tristram, " The Great Sahara," p. 354.

A SINGULAR EFFECT. 131

in the desert, vanish completely. You must excavate the soil to
obtain a supply of water, and when found, it is brackish. Frequently
the beds unite, forming basins of greater or less extent and depth, which
fill themselves at the close of the winter floods, and a few of which
preserve, even in the winter season, a certain quantity of water.
Elsewhere, the soil is only humid, thanks to the abundance of salt,
which retains the moisture. In such places numerous slimy marshes
occur, where the traveller may not adventure without peril. But
in general the surface is dry, cracked, cloven, and completely
parched.

The Desert of Erosion is not completely inhabited. At inter-
vals you meet with a few squalid villages, and a multitude of
camel' s-skin tents are scattered like black spots over the yellow
or grayish plains, on the borders of the chotts or scanty water-
courses. Herds of goats and flocks of sheep wander in the valleys,
browsing on the rare short grass. Columns of smoke arise from
the Arab bivouacs, and the women of the Sahara group themselves
around the wells and springs to fill the water-bags with which
they load their asses.

When, from the summit of the rocks which fence round and bristle
over the Desert of Erosion, we perceive for the first time the Desert of
Sand, the impression is very similar to that which we derive from
the sight of ocean. M. Martins had already become sensible of this
peculiar effect when, from the Col de Sfa, he had gazed down
upon the Desert of the Plateaux. " A grand circular arch," he says,
" extended before us, bounding a violet surface, smooth as the sea,
and blending at the horizon with the azure of heaven ; it was the
Sahara. The arc eastward rested against the chain of the Aures ;
westward, against that of the Zibans, some of whose offshoots, in the
neighbourhood of Biskra, arose like reefs upon that sea which seemed
to have been frozen suddenly into immobility. The actual sea ever
trembles and shivers on the surface ; a light wavering, imperceptible
to the eye, propels towards the shore the expiring wave, fringed with
a border of foam. Here, nothing like this may be seen ; it is a

132 THE DESERT AND THE OCEAN.

motionless, a congealed sea, or, rather, it is the smooth bed of a sea
whose waters have disappeared. Science teaches us that such is the
fact ; and now as ever the expression of the reality is more picturesque,
more eloquent than all the comparisons created by the imagina-
tion."*

An eminent French artist, M. Fromentin, whose skill with the pen
equals his talent with the brush, has also painted this " congealed sea"
in grand and poetic language. "The first impression," he says, "pro-
duced by this glowing lifeless picture, composed of the sun, space, and
solitude, is keen, and cannot be compared to any other. Little by
little, however, the eye grows accustomed to the grandeur of the lines,
to the emptiness of space, to the denudation of the earth ; and if any-
thing can still astonish, it is that one becomes sensible to effects which
change so little, and is so powerfully affected by spectacles in reality
of the simplest character, "-f-

I must also enumerate among the " artists in words " who have
painted the wonders of the Sahara, General Daumas, not one of the
least distinguished of the Franco- Algerine warriors. He describes it in
the following language :— " It is a naked and barren immensity, —
this sea of sand, whose eternal waves, agitated to-day by the choub,
will to-morrow be heaped up immovable, and which are slowly fur-
rowed by those fleets called caravans."

General Daumas, it is evident, confines himself to the scientific
realism, which M. Martins prefers to the glowing and inexact imagery
of the poets, and conveys in a few words an accurate yet very pic-
turesque idea of that arid sea, where the wind stirs up rolling waves
of sand instead of foaming billows, and which the Arabs call Falat.
I shall place before the reader, however, the description given by M.
Martins himself, for it represents both the ensemble and the details of
the picture.

" If the Desert of the Plateaux," he says,* " be the image of a sea
suddenly fixed during a level calm, the Desert of Sand represents to

* Martins. " Du Spitzberg au Sahara," in loc.
t Fromentin. " Une Etc dans le Sahara."

SAND-HILLS OF THE SAHARA. 133

us a sea which may have been solidified during a violent tempest.
The Dunes, or sand-hills, like waves, rise one behind another even to
the limits of the horizon, separated by narrow valleys which represent
the depressions of the great billows of the ocean, all whose various
aspects they simulate. Sometimes they narrow themselves into keen-
edged crests, or shoot upwards in pyramids, or swell into cylindrical
domes. Seen from a distance, these Dunes also remind us at times of
the appearances of the n£v£ (or granulated snow) in the amphitheatres
and on the ridges which lie contiguous to the loftiest Alpine summits.
Their colours still further enhance the illusion. Moulded by the
winds, the burning sands of the desert assume the same forms as the
ntfvfa of the glaciers."

Whoever has seen the Dunes on the coast of Norfolk, or more
particularly in Gascony, may gain a very accurate conception of the
Desert. The only notable differences are in the extent, which here
seems infinite, like that of ocean ; the purity of the heaven, which is
seldom sullied by a cloud ; and the colour, which is of a soft, intense
blue. The nature of the soil is the same ; it is a very fine, shifting,
silicious sand, white sometimes, like that of Fontainebleau, and
sometimes reddened by the presence of oxide of iron. In the Sahara
this sand gathers in veritable Dunes, hillocks which the wind upheaves,
displaces, and transforms from one day to another. Only the lettes,
or valleys, which in our Dunes receive the pluvial waters and preserve
a sufficient amount of fertility, are here just moistened by rare saline
infiltrations, and almost always remain in a condition of absolute
sterility. Nevertheless, in some localities, the presence of gypsum
gives the sand a certain fixity, which permits a small number of
plants to germinate and develop themselves. This gypsum is never
found but in the valleys, and never in tabular masses, as on the pla-
teaux, but only in crystals of various forms, penetrated by silica.
" You pick up a pebble," says M. Martins, " and find it to be a
crystal." The villages are surrounded by crenellated ramparts built
of crystals ; the houses which compose these villages are constructed
of the same materials ; and very weird and splendid is the scene pre-

134 THE ATMOSPHERE AND THE SOIL.

sented by these edifices with their sun-illuminated walls. Notwith-
standing their small dimensions and mean architecture, when thus lit
up in glorious radiance, they seem to realize the wonders told in fairy
tales of the enchanted palaces of the genii !

CHAPTER IV.

PHENOMENA OF THE DESERT.

THE desert has its own meteorology ; it is the theatre of peculiar
phenomena, which one observes in no other part of the globe.
Its climate, at least in the sandy region, is remarkably uniform ;
it varies only, according to latitude, in a greater or less elevated
thermometrical mean. Hippocrates, the ancient philosopher, rightly
called "the Father of Medicine," states the three elements of
climate to be, the atmosphere, the soil, and the waters. Throughout
the desert these are identically similar, and consequently originate
identically similar phenomena.

The atmosphere, in fact, is everywhere of an almost unchanging
purity. It is only in the neighbourhood of mountains that clouds
accumulate, to spend themselves at periodical seasons in more or less
abundant rains. In the plains it never rains, and during the day no
veil is interposed between the earth and the sun's burning glare, nor
during the night do any refreshing dews weaken the force of the
terrestrial radiation. There result constant alternations of devouring
heat while the sun is above the horizon, and of rapid and frequently
intense cooling when he has disappeared.

The soil is everywhere as smooth as " the liquid main." This
uniformity contributes, in addition to its silicious, argillaceous, or
calcareous character, to render more abrupt the changes of tempera-
ture which occur from morning to evening and from evening to morn-
ing. In truth, the earth reflects the sun's heat in proportion as it

ATMOSPHERIC FEATURES OF THE DESERT. 135

receives it ; it absorbs but insignificant quantities, which it loses in
a few minutes when the calorific source begins to fail. On the other
hand, in these immense plains where no inequality of surface can
oppose the atmospheric movements, the wind acquires an increasing
force and swiftness, vires acquirit eundo, and soon assumes all the
characteristics of a tempest. Hence arise those terrible typhoons,
those appalling hurricanes, of whose destructive effects history
records so many instances, and of which I shall presently be called
upon to speak. As for water, we have seen that its entire absence
is a characteristic feature of the Sandy Desert.

To sum up, an overpowering degree of heat during the day, — a
freshness, often even an excessive cold, during the night (in the
Sahara the thermometer frequently rises above 120° F. at noon, and
not infrequently sinks below 32° about two or three o'clock A.M.) ;
an ever transparent and azure sky,

" Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue ; "

the absence of rains and dews, of gales and thunder ; but a frequent
recurrence of terrible hurricanes : such is the meteorological constitu-
tion of the arid zone, which embraces all the northern districts of
Africa, except the Mediterranean region — that is, from the snowy
heights of Atlas to the fertile pastures of Soudan — and which extends
in Asia from the west to the north-east, for all but one narrow belt,
as far as the 1 1 9th meridian of longitude.

Foremost among the phenomena peculiar to this zone we must
place those famous tempests which, in default of humid clouds, tra-
verse with startling swiftness the changing surface of the Desert,
driving before them whirlwinds of burning sand, and striking the
traveller's heart with a sense of unconquerable awe. The wind of the
Desert is called by the Arabs the choum. or khamsin ; but is more
generally known in European books as the Simoun, Simoom,
or Samoun. It is the Samiel of the Turks ; and, under a somewhat
milder form, the Scirocco of the Mediterranean. Wherever, or how-

136 A TERRIBLE PHENOMENON.

ever it blows, it is a pernicious and hateful wind ; the blast, in all
probability, which destroyed the hosts of Sennacherib at the bidding
of the Divine Word, —

" The angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed.
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still."

Torrents of burning sand sweep before it, a thick veil of darkness
envelopes the firmament, and the sun assumes a blood-red hue.

" That crimson haze
By which the prostrate caravan is awed
In the red desert when the wind's abroad."*

When the Simoom rises, says M. Martins, f the air is filled with
dust of such extreme fineness that it makes its way through objects
hermetically sealed, penetrates into the eyes, the ears, and the organs
of respiration. A burning heat, like that which breathes from the
mouth of a furnace, possesses the air, and paralyzes the strength of
men and animals. Seated on the sand, with their backs turned to
windward, the Arabs, wrapped in their burnous, wait with fatalistic
resignation the end of the torment ; their camels crouching,
exhausted, panting, stretch their long necks upon the scorching soil.
Seen through this powdery haze, the sun's disc, shorn of its beams,
shows pale and ghastly as that of the moon.

Fortunately, the phenomenon never prevails over any very con-
siderable area, and beyond its limits the atmosphere remains serene
and calm ; so that travellers who have watched it approaching in the
form of a reddish cloud, without being able to calculate on its direc-
tion, have often escaped with no worse result than a panic, and
have only witnessed its terrible effects at a distance.

It must not, however, be confounded with the sand-storms which

* Moore's " Poetical Works "— Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.
f Martins, " Du Spitzberg au Sahara," p. 662.

PRECAUTIONS AGAINST THE STORM. 137

the pilgrim encounters in the Arabian Desert, and which seem
confined to that region. Dean Stanley, on his route from Suez to
Sinai, met with one which prevailed the whole day. " Imagine," he
says, " the caravan toiling against this, — the Bedouins each with his
shawl thrown completely over his head, half of the riders sitting
backwards, — the camels, meantime thus virtually left without guid-
ance, though from time to time throwing their long necks sideways
to avoid the blast, yet moving straight onwards with a painful sense
of duty truly edifying to behold. Through the tempest, this roaring
and driving tempest, which sometimes made me think that this must
be the real meaning of ' a howling wilderness,' we rode on the
whole day."*

A French cavalier, M. Tremaux, while crossing the Desert of
Korosko, had the good fortune to witness the course of a Simoom,
while himself in a position of safety.

It was the 8th of February 1848. The horizon in the south-
west wore a hue of the evillest augury. Gusts of wind, which
seemed to have issued from some red-hot brazier, beat in the face
of the travellers. The camel-drivers, accustomed to interpret these
sinister signs, and assured that a tempest was at hand, felt them-
selves called upon to give M. Tremaux a few counsels, which were
by no means reassuring.

" As soon as the storm darkens the air," said one of them, " by
surrounding us with a cloud of sand, we must throw ourselves prone
on the ground, wrap our heads in our finest stuffs, to protect our
respiration from this sand, which burns the throat. It will be use-
less to trouble ourselves about the camels ; they will lie down
of their own accord, bend their head against their burden, and
never stir so long as the tempest lasts. If the sand accumulates
by our side, we must move in such a manner as to prevent it from
covering us, making it roll under itself, but without exposing
our heads. Remember these things carefully ; and the will of God
be done !"

* Dean Stanley, " Sinai and Palestine," pp. 68, 69.

138 ACTUAL EFFECTS OF THE SIMOOM.

"That is not all/' added another; "when the water-bags are
partly shrunken, as are ours at this moment, and the Khamsin
blows for some time, it finishes by completely drying them up."

Thus warned, M. Tre'maux was compelled to face, with all the
resignation he was capable of, the melancholy alternative of perishing
suffocated by the sand, or, a little later, of succumbing to the tortures
of thirst. He continued to journey, or rather to drag himself towards
the centre of the choking atmosphere, and to watch the scourge
which rapidly drew near. This lasted a couple of hours, after which
the travellers had the satisfaction of seeing the Simoom glide by on
their right, and depart with the same rapidity.

A column of the French army, commanded by the Dukes of
Aumale and of Montpensier, had met with a less happy chance on
the 7th of March 1844, in the Souf, or Algerine Sahara ; it was
attacked by a Simoom, which prolonged its furious assaults during
fourteen hours. On the day following, M. Fournel, a mining
engineer who accompanied the expedition, ascertained that the
meteor had swept but a narrow zone parallel to the Aures range, and
that at the mountain base the tranquillity of the atmosphere had been
undisturbed.

The Simoom, or Khamsin, is, however, more troublesome and
painful than really dangerous. M. Martins speaks of the annihilated
army of Cambyses, the Persian king, which perished in the Libyan
Desert (B.C. 524),* and of whole caravans engulfed in the sepul-
chral sands. "The numerous skeletons of camels," he adds, "which
we met with on our way prove that these catastrophes are still of
frequent occurrence." It is more probable, however, that they died
from dearth of water and want of food. As for the Persian host, it
was probably swallowed up in one of those quicksands, those hidden
treacherous gulfs, which are found in the deserts of Libya, as well
as in those of Persia and Arabia. The evil effects of the Simoom
have, in fact, been exaggerated by the Arabs, whose highly-coloured
narratives have been too easily adopted by credulous travellers. It
* Philip Smith, " History of the World," i. 286.

WHIRLWINDS OF SAND. 141

heats the blood, it dries the skin, it renders respiration troublesome ;
but it does not kill.

It is not always a single wind which blows in the Deserts ; but
sometimes two or three currents, from opposite directions, cross and
clash and drive against one another with increasing fury. Then

WHIRLWINDS or SAND (SAND-SPOUTS).

is produced the singular phenomenon of the sand-spout, often witnessed
on a magnificent scale in the sandy plains of Eastern Asia and Southern
America. The sand is not now driven in voluminous masses in a
rectilineal direction ; but raised aloft in the form of long tortuous
columns, which whirl to and fro like gigantic specti'es in the mazes of
a wild demon-dance. At the same time, the azure of the sky grows

142 THE MONGOLIAN SAND-SPOUTS.

pale and troubled, the sun's light obscured, the boundaries of the
horizon seem to meet together ; the burning dust held in suspension
in the air renders it irrespirable, and if one of these whirlwinds
encounters any object which offers a resistance, it carries it upward
and hurls it a considerable distance. Fortunately the phenomenon is
one of brief duration. The atmospheric equilibrium is speedily
restored ; the heavens recover their serenity ; the atmosphere grows
clear, and the sand columns, falling in upon themselves, form a
number of little hills or cones, apparently constructed with great care,
like those mimic edifices of sand or snow built up by children in
their pastimes.

It is said that these furious whirlwinds have occasionally
engulfed whole caravans in their tremendous vortex, —

" Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush,
Hosts march on hosts, and nations nations crush ;
Wheeling in air the winged islands fall,
And one great sandy ocean covers all."

Whether this be true or not, there can be no doubt that the spectacle
is one of great magnificence, and calculated to inspire the traveller
with emotions of awe and dread. Mr. Atkinson describes it as seen
by him, on one occasion, when traversing the Mongolian Desert : —

"As we passed," he says,* "in the middle of a space sown with
innumerable hillocks of sands, we saw about thirty of them suddenly
raise themselves around us, lengthen into long elliptical columns, and
glide with many a whirl and sweep over the surface of the Desert
with the hissings and contortions of gigantic serpents which had
awakened at our approach. These spouts, for the phenomenon was
no other, varied in diameter ; the smallest measured between twenty
and thirty feet ; a few attained to a hundred ; and one, which
absorbed in its vortex all that it approached, rose to nearly two
hundred. One might have said, on seeing them bending, rising again
and crossing one another in space amidst an atmosphere of dust, that
they were antediluvian monsters emerging from their geological bed.
* T. W. Atkinson, " Travels on the Eusso-Chinese Frontiers."

AN ATMOSPHERIC DELUSION. 143

and returning into the feverish activity of existence. But soon, the
atmospheric forces which had raised them beginning to fail, we saw
these sand-spouts fall away one after another, and form on the surface
of the Desert a number of moving hillocks similar to those from
which we had just emerged."

The poet, invoking the judgment of Heaven on the traitor, would
fain doom him to the misery of cherishing hopes that shall never be
realized. " May he," cries the minstrel —

" May he, at last, with lips of flame,
On the parched desert thirsting die,
While lakes that shone in mockery nigh
Are fading oft, untouched, untasted."*

The image here is borrowed from that most singular phenomenon
of the Desert, the Mirage ; an atmospheric illusion due to the refrac-
tion of the sun's rays upon the sand, and the intense expansion of the
lower strata of the air, — in other words, it arises from the total
reflection of the rays of light from the lower surface of a stratum of
air. " This occurs when, from any cause, such a stratum of air pos-
sesses a higher refractive power than the one immediately below it.
Such a condition of the atmosphere causes remote objects to be seen
as if reflected in a mirror, or to appear as if suspended in the air.
When the effect is confined to apparent elevation, the English sailors
call it looming ; when inverted images are formed, the Italians give
it the name of Fata Morgana.. The Arabs call it Serab, or Suhrab,
the ' Water of the Desert ; ' and the Hindus, Tchittram, or ' the
Picture.' "

The effects of the illusion are extraordinary, but undoubtedly
they are heightened by the imagination of observers, generally over-
excited by fatigue, by privations, or sometimes by fever. These
causes contribute to vary the nature of the phenomenon as seen by
different eyes. Thus some gaze enraptured on verdurous islands
bright as Armida's enchanted garden, with feathery palms and bloom-

* Moore, " Lalla Eookh "—The Fire-Worshippers.

144 NATURE'S PHANTASMAGORIA.

ing flowers, and delicious sparkling lakes ; others see, in that dim far-
off which is never reached, the laughing waves of ocean, with ships
resting calmly at anchor, or

" Veering up and down, they know not why,"

and camels browsing quietly upon its shores ; others, again, see before
them the rolling river, its banks studded with groves and palaces ;
and all this, while there is not a solitary real object on the horizon
whose presence might serve in some degree as a foundation for their
visions. It is the very phantasmagoria of nature ; her wildest, most
wayward, and most fantastic sport. The reflection of the sky, modi-
fied by the inequalities of the soil and the vibratory movements of
the air, can alone account for the singular deception. Imagination
shows its victim, in the reflected image of the cloudless sky, a sheet
of water, which is variously taken for a sea, a lake, or a river ; it
invests the slightest objects on the earth's surface with forms, colours,
and dimensions, which are easily metamorphosed into houses, ships,
men, animals ; and it seems certain that those which in Nubia our
fancy converts into camels would, in the Soudan, be transformed into
elephants, and at Venice into gondolas. Imagination makes us its
dupes, and gives to airy nothings

" A local habitation and a name."

It becomes absolutely necessary, therefore, to distinguish these
wholly personal illusions born of a heated brain, from those which
are really due to a definite physical cause. The latter necessarily
suppose the existence of actual objects, below or very little above the
horizon. Under such conditions, the most frequent illusion is that
which shows the sky or rocks reflected in the expanse of rarified air
superincumbent on the earth's surface, and which through this cause
alone resembles water. It is then that the ignorant or inexperienced
traveller, overwhelmed with fatigue and devoured by thirst, hastens
his eager steps to reach more quickly that limpid water, where he
hopes to refresh and reinvigorate himself, but which flies before his

CERTAIN FORMS OF MIRAGE.

115

advance, and speedily vanishes altogether. Sometimes it is an
inverted representation of terrestrial objects which appears in the air ;
or rather, these same objects, several times reflected, appear to multi-
ply themselves. M. Tre'maux relates that he saw the latter form of
mirage in Nubia. He observed a row of doum-palms, which were

A MlKAGE IN THE DESERT.

about two thousand yards distant, repeated in several similar rows,
each with a like number of trees, so as to produce the effect of a
quincunx ; among these trees floated several seeming sheets of water.
We must remember, moreover, that the immensity, uniformity,
and vacuity of the Desert, singularly contribute to render optical
illusions frequent. The very serenity of the air assists in destroying

10

146 DIAGNOSIS OF THE RAGLE.

the perspective to which we are accustomed in temperate climates,
which are always more or less misty. Objects appear much nearer
than they are in reality, because they are more distinctly visible, and
also because nothing intervenes between them and the observer.
Their dimensions, too, become arbitrary, for want of standards of
comparison by which to measure them. So the trees and the moun-
tains where the weary traveller hopes to obtain a temporary repose
and a passing shelter from the Pythian' s fiery arrows, seem constantly
to recede before him, like the rainbow when pursued by the ignorant
peasant ; and, until experience has taught him to rectify the apparent
testimony of his senses, he is doomed, like Tantalus, to be the victim
of continual deceptions, —

" Ev'n in the circling floods refreshment craves.
And pines with thirst amidst a sea of waves ;
When to the water he his lip applies,
Back from his lip the treacherous water flies."*

Nor is this all ; hunger, thirst, weariness, and especially the
action of the solar heat upon the brain, determine a peculiar patho-
logical condition, a species of mental intoxication or delirium which
powerfully predisposes the victim to hallucinations, and deprives the
mind of that self-control which would enable it to chase away the
phantoms that haunt it. To this affection, whose symptoms are
frequently but erroneously confounded with those of the mirage, the
Arabs have given a specific name. They call it Ragle. A distin-
guished French traveller has described it with exhaustive fulness, -f-
and he attributes it to fatigue, excessive heat, and want of sleep.

It shows itself most commonly at night, and in dreams, attacks
of nightmare, and a somnambulism of which the sufferer is perfectly
conscious, without being able to throw it off. By day strange hallu-
cinations affect the sight, the hearing, and even, though less power-
fully, the senses of taste and smell. The aberration extends, as far
as the sight is concerned, to the objects which we are in the habit of

* Homer, " Odyssey," book xi., Pope's Translation.

t M. lo Comte d'Escayrac de Lauture, " Le D&ert et le Soudan " (Paris, 1853).

THE MIND BETKAYED BY THE BODY. 147

seeing ; a small stone, for instance, expands into a rock ; the rut of
a carriage-wheel enlarges into the furrow of a freshly ploughed field ;
a tuft of grass or a bush will assume the grand proportions of a
forest ; and, what is remarkable, these objects seem always close at
hand. Another frequent error is the elevation of horizontal surfaces ;
the horizon becomes a wall or a mountain. " It has happened to
myself," says M. d'Escayrac, " to meet with walls constantly reap-
pearing before me. My extended arm has plunged into the masonry,
but my body never encountered any obstacle ; the rampart opened
to give me a free passage."

Hearing is, in its turn, affected. Then, any sound whatsoever,
such as a footfall, the blow of a stone, the whisper of the wind, is
changed into melodious sounds, keen cries of distress, the murmur of
woods, the harmony of familiar songs.

One day, says M. d'Escayrac, I heard the click-clack of a village
mill. Endeavouring to collect my senses, and to obtain an explana-
tion of the sound, I perceived that it arose from the clink of my
sword-belt against the pommel of my saddle, to which I had buckled
my sabre.

Jomard, the savant, who experienced the effects of the ragle
during his travels in Egypt, confirms in every respect the foregoing
description. On his way from Rosetta to Alexandria, he kept along
the border of the sea, and found his feet painfully staggering in the
thick fine sand. Such a journey is necessarily one of extreme
fatigue. After the first night, this fatigue grew overwhelming ; the
traveller lost all accurate perception of objects, or of the form of
places. The surface of the lake Medeah appeared not so much a
sheet of water as a monotonous plain. Constantly pressing forward,
he maintained a hard fight against the overpowering sense of slumber.
Half-asleep, half-awake, his brain was dazzled with the most fantastic
phantoms, and the hallucination was so great that he plunged into the
lake before him, without perceiving it, though the water was very
deep. But the freshness caused by the evaporation of the water
warned him of his error, and the vision suddenly passed away.

148 THE FLORA OF THE DESERT.

Such being the phenomena of the Desert, one can understand the
dreary picture which Dante paints in his " Inferno," of — •

" The plain
Which from its bed rejecteth every plant ; ''

whose soil is —

" Of an arid and thick sand ; "

and where —

" With a gradual fall
Are raining down dilated flakes of fire.
As of the snow on Alp, without a wind."*

CHAPTER V.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE DESERT : — THE OASES.

THE Flora of a region where nature provides no genial fertilizing
rains, and whose soil is simply a shifting sand, moistened only in
certain places by a brackish water, must necessarily be one of extreme
poverty.

It is reduced very nearly, as we have seen, to a few plants of the
genus Salsola (salt-wort), flourishing on the borders of the salt pools
and lakes. Nevertheless, at a few points, where a certain degree of
fixity obtains in the sand, we meet with the thornless bushes or
shrubs, the EpJiedra alata and the retama Durioei ; some pistachios
(pistada lentiscus and p. terebinthus) ; the "drin" (aristida pungens},
a tall grass, with linear leaves, some seven feet high, to which the
camel is very partial; and the "e'zel," a member of the family of
Polygonaceae, which botanists class with the allied buckwheat and
knot-grasses, and which attains the stature of three to four feet. The
latter plant throws out roots, which are generally uncovered, to a
distance of twenty to twenty-five feet ; its woody stem spreads in its
* Dante, " L' Inferno," c. xiv., Longfellow's Translation.

THE ROSE OF JERICHO. 149

upper portion into gnarled branches, terminated each by a cluster of
green, cylindrical and leafless twigs, which fall during winter. Else-
where rise the tall trunks of the doum-palms, either isolated or
assembled in scanty clumps, under which the traveller obtains with
difficulty a modicum of shade, but which are otherwise of no value
to him.

In districts where the surface is more broken up, notably in
Palestine, on the banks of the Jordan and the Dead Sea ; in the
Sinaitic Peninsula of Arabia ; in the Nubian deserts of Naga,
Aredah, and Bahiouda ; finally, even in the Sahara, in the " Desert
of Erosion," and the table-land region, vegetable life becomes more
abundant and more varied, though still but of mediocre interest.
However, a curious arbustus, the Limioniastrum Guyonianum, shows
itself very frequently in these damp localities, where it attains some-
times the dimensions of a tree. Its attenuated leaves are covered
with saline efflorescence, and its particles of rosy flowers relieve the
monotony of the wilderness. In the permanent salt marshes, or
chotts, some of the plants are analagous to those formed in the
bogs of Languedoc.

Among the plants of the Desert I must not forget the rose of
Jericho (Anastatica hierochuntica),* an annual which contracts
itself into a ball, and, blown about by the breeze, seems a dead and
withered mass of twigs. But plunge it into water, and it expands,
regains the bloom of life, affording a remarkable example of what is
called " revivification." The fable respecting it is, that the first time
it ever bloomed was on the eve of the Nativity, and that its flower
remained open until Easter.

Several other vegetable species grow on the table-lands of the
Algerine Sahara, which are found elsewhere under similar conditions
of soil and climate. They are thorny shrubs and underwood, almost
wholly belonging to the family of Salsolacese, or littoral plants, which
only thrive on ground impregnated with salt ; there are also sub-fru-
tescent plants, partly dried up by the sun. In some places the

* Order, Cruciferx.

150

" BORN TO BLUSH UNSEEN."

nakedness of the earth is concealed by the bloom of geraniums and
heliotropes. Further, you may notice in the region of the table-lands,
the Melantha punctuata, a member of the Colchicum tribe, which
bears a bouquet of very white flowers grown upon the sand, and sur-
rounded by a crown of ensheathed leaves. Not unworthy of rejoic-

1. Jujube Tree

VEGETABLE LIFE nr THE DESERT.
2. Lentiscus.

ing the eyes of the most fastidious connoisseurs, it lives and dies
unknown in the solitudes of the Sahara.

In the hollows, where the earth preserves some degree of humi-
dity, a fine soft sward prevails, of the most delicious emerald green ;
two herbs, the Alfa (stipa tenticissima) and the White Wormwood

A PANTHER'S SKIN. 151

(artemisia alba),* often cover extended areas; the jujube trees
clothe themselves in profuse foliage ; the coloquinta stretches over the
ground its branches loaded with spherical fruit ; and the tamarisk,
developed into a tree, waves in the wind its tufts of snowy and ros'e-
hued flowers. It is in these meadows that the Arab rears his tent
and pastures his flocks under a winter sky. The industrious and
sedentary tribes seek in the oases a more benignant nature, —

"The yellow down

Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow ;"

and a soil which will repay their toil with liberal harvests. And it
is there only, in truth, that vegetation presents a development, a con-
tinuity, and sometimes even a variety, which recalls the fortunate
countries of the Mediterranean region.

The old geographer, Ptolemseus, compared the Sahara to a pan-
ther's skin, sprinkled with black spots on a tawny ground. These
spots which, by an effect of contrast, are set off in black on the
yellowish tint of the desert, are the far-famed oases, which have
furnished our poets and romancists with so many an appropriate
image. Ptolemy's comparison is the more accurate because these
islands of verdure scattered over the sandy ocean,

" Like precious stones set in a silver sea,"

have, in general, a circular form. We must except, however, the
grandest and most beautiful of all, Egypt. That immemorial land of
mystery and power is enchased in the Desert region like any other
oasis, and only differs in its greater extent and more elongated
figure. It stretches along the Nile like a ribbon —

" And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave."

Its length, from Cairo to Assouan, is 450 miles. Its breadth
does not exceed nine to twelve miles, except at Cairo, where it
* Sub-order, Tubuliflorx.

152 THE VALLEY OF THE NILE.

measures about eighty miles along the sea-coast, which forms the base
of a triangular district known as the Delta (A) of the Nile. The two
other angles are marked by the cities of Pelusium and Alexandria.
This long strip of fertility is narrowly shut in between deserts of
almost incredible sterility.

A peculiarity worthy of attention, because it is the unique cause
of the fertility of Egypt, is, that the valley of the Nile, instead of
sloping down on either side to the river-bank, assumes a gently con-
vex form. It is owing to this slight convexity that, at the epoch of
the inundation — beginning in June and ending in October — the Nile
waters overflow to the right and to the left, rest upon the soil, and
there deposit their precious mud. How different the aspects of the
country at different seasons of the year ! First, the bright sparkling
sheets of far-spreading and fertilising water ; then the emerald green
of the growing crops ; lastly, the ripe warm yellow hues of the full
harvest. Well might Amrou, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, remark
to the Caliph Omar, that, " according to the vicissitudes of the
seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a silver wave, a
verdant emerald, and the deep gold of an abundant harvest."

The soil of Egypt is, then, simply an alluvium mixed with the
sand which the winds bring from the Desert. Its aspect is that of a
rich, well-cultivated land, but bears the impress of a wearisome mono-
tony. You see there neither the dark dense forest, the rolling prairie,
nor the undulating woodland ; from the shore of the Mediterranean to
the tropics you meet everywhere with the same cultivation ; the same
mud-built villages, with their dirty and winding streets ; and ever
the same clumps of palms, which would end by becoming tedious if it
were not that their elegance of form invests them with an eternal
beauty — if a glorious radiance did not gild with "refined gold"
everything it touches — if, finally, an after-glow of wondrous loveli-
ness, of which the eye and soul can never weary, which whenever
seen suggests some new and subtle emotions, did not terminate
every day by a crepuscular pomp of indescribable magnificence.

The Palm-tree is, in Egypt, as in all the oases, the principal

VEGETABLE LIFE IN EGYPT.

153

element of the arborescent vegetation. But you also meet there with
the banana, the gum-tree, the orange, the jujube, the mulberry, the
sycamore, and other tall trees, which were planted by command of
Mehemet Ali, and have perfectly succeeded. The green banks of the
river are diversified by coppices of acacias and tamarisks. In the

1. Doum-Palm.

VEGETABLE LIFE is THE DESERT.

2. Date-Palm. 3. Alfa (Stipa tenacissi*

Fayoum district bloom impervious hedges of cactus, and plantations
of roses for the production of rosewater. Cereals yield four crops
a-year ; flax, hemp, indigo, cotton, the sugar-cane, prosper admirably ;
and under a climate where ice, snow, and hail are unknown, not a
month but has its burden of flowers and fruits. Abundant crops of
vegetables are raised, even as in those days when the Israelites

154 THE OASES OF THE SAHARA.

in the wilderness bewailed "the cucumbers and the- melons, the leeks,
the onions, and the garlics " of Egypt.

M. Charles Martins classes the Oases of the Sahara under three
heads, corresponding to his three sub-regions.*

The oasis of the Table Lands is watered by a stream or a copious
spring. That of the valleys of Erosion, by natural or artificial
Artesian wells. That of the Sandy Desert wants water. In the
latter the palm-trees are planted in conical cavities hollowed by the
hand of man, that their roots may strike down to the subterranean
reservoir which is to nourish them.

Every oasis is composed, in the main, of date-palms, which seem
to form a continuous forest ; but in reality they are planted in rows,
and in gardens separated from one another by walls of earth, which
are pierced with an aperture to admit of the entrance of the irrigating
rill into the enclosed square. The soil employed in the construction
of the walls is removed from the paths, which are consequently below
the surface, and can be employed for a double purpose ; they facili-
tate circulation in the oases, and the waters, after having refreshed
the gardens and revived the soil, discharge themselves into these
hollow ways, whence they flow towards the chotts, or stagnate in
swamps, which the lethargic Moslem never thinks of draining. From
such hotbeds of infection issues the monster Fever every year, and
slays its hundreds.

In case of need, every oasis becomes a fortress. Each " square of
flowery ground " is a redoubt ; the assailant's bullet lodges in the earth
wall, or if it pierces through, forms a new loophole in which the
Arab plants his gun to aim at his enemy. The villages themselves
are encircled with walls, flanked by towers, which remind the spec-
tator of the picturesque fortifications of mediaeval times.

The Date-Palm (Phoenix dactyUfera) is the tree of the Desert ;
there only will its fruits ripen ; without it, the Desert would be

* Martins, " Du Spitzberg au Sahara," pp. 565, et seq.

HABITAT AND CONDITIONS OF THE DATE. 155

uninhabitable and uninhabited. Arab poesy represents it as a living
being, created by God on the sixth day, at the same time as man.
To express under what conditions it prospers, the imagination of the
Saharan exaggerates the true, to render it the more palpable. " This
king of the oasis," he says, "must plunge his feet in the water and
raise his head in the fire of heaven." Science, to a certain extent,
confirms this seeming hyperbole ; for it needs 5100° of heat accumu-
lated during eight months for the date to ripen its fruit perfectly. If
the sum of heat be less, the fruits set, but they do not grow to their
full dimensions, remain bitter to the taste, and fail in the sugar and
farina, which form their nutritive properties.

These conditions are realized in the climate of the Sahara. The
mean temperature of the year averages from sixty-eight to seventy-
six degrees, according to the locality. The heat commences in April,
and does not cease until October. The thermometer seldom sinks in
the cold season more than two degrees below zero, and the date
can endure six degrees below zero.

Rain, as already stated, is rare in the Sahara ; it falls in winter,
and stimulates into a newly awakened life the vegetation which has
been drained of vigour by a summer sun. Sometimes they descend
in torrents, but these torrents, like our summer showers, are of briefest
duration. At Tongourt and Ouraegla whole years pass by without a
drop of rain. Does not the reader understand, then, the gratefulness
of the Arabs towards a tree which can derive its nourishment from
the burning sand, the scarcely less burning airs of heaven, and the
brackish waters beneath the soil which are fatal to all other kinds of
vegetation — which retains its verdure fresh in the glare of a pitiless
sun — which resists successfully the winds that bow to the ground its
flexible stem — which provides him with beams and coverings for his
tent, cordage for the harness of his horses and camels, fruit to satisfy
his hunger and wine to quench his thirst— which is, moreover, "a
thing of beauty," and gladsome to the eye ?

" Those groups of lovely date-trees bending
Languidly their leaf-crowned heads,

166 THE DATE-PALM DESCRIBED.

Like youthful maids, when sleep descending,
Warns them to their silken beds."*

What the vine is to the Italian, the oak to the Englishman, the
cocoa-nut tree to the Polynesian, is the date-palm to the Arab. And
more — far more. This single tree has peopled the Desert. A civili-
zation, rudimentary compared with that of the West, sufficiently
advanced if you contrast it with that of the Malay or the South
Sea Islander, finds in it its standing-point, its centre, its support.
And without it the tribes of the Sahara would cease to be.-f

The wealth of an oasis is computed by the number of its palm
trees. All of them, however, are not fruitful ; for the date is
dicecious. It has its males and its females. The males have flowers
furnished with stamens only, and form a closed-up, folded, grape-like
ball, previous to the ripening of the pollen in an envelope called
the spathe. The females, on the contrary, bear clusters of fruit also
wrapped up in a spathe, but incapable of development until fecun-
dated by the pollen or dust of the stamens. To multiply the date-
trees, the Arabs do not sow the kernels of the fruits, though they
germinate with extreme facility, for it is impossible to tell beforehand
of what sex the tree will be ; they prefer, therefore, to detach a slip
from the trunk of a female tree, and this becomes fruitful at the
expiry of eight years.

The male trees blossom, says Mr. Tristram, J in the month of
March, and about the same time the case containing the female buds
begins to open. To impregnate these, a bunch of male flowers is
carefully inserted and fastened in the calyx. Towards the beginning
of July, when the fruit begins to swell, the bunches are tied to the
neighbouring branches.

The dates are ripe in October, at which time any premature rain
is fatal to the crop, though the roots require a daily watering. Not
less injurious are east winds in March and April. The tree when it

* Moore, " Lalla Eookli " — The Fire-Worshippers.
t Martins, " Du Spitzberg au Sahara," p. 567.
t Tristram, " The Great Sahara," pp. 95-98.

A USEFUL TEEE. 157

begins to bear is about seven feet high. Each year the lowest ring
of leaves falls off, so that the age of a palm may be roughly computed
from the notches on its stem. Its fruit begins to decline after a
century, and the tree is then cut down for building purposes ; but it
will live for at least a couple of hundred years. Some trees produce
as many as twenty bunches, but the average in a favourable season
is from eight to ten bunches, each weighing from twelve to twenty
pounds. Before the dates ripen, each proprietor is bound to set
apart one tree in his garden, whose fruit is consecrated for the
service of the mosque and the use of the poor.

From the juice of the date the Arab obtains a sweet fermented
liquor, called "laguni," of which he is inordinately fond. He makes
an incision in the top of the tree, taking care to strike home to the
centre. A funnel is attached, by which the sap flows into a vessel
at the rate of about three quarts every morning for ten to sixteen
days. The incision requires to be opened afresh daily.

The cabbage, or soft pith and young unfolded leaves at the sum-
mit of the stem, in taste approaching the chestnut, is also eaten, but
only when the tree has fallen or been felled, as the loss of its crown
invariably destroys it.

There are fifteen varieties of dates, of which the dghetnour is
considered the best for keeping, and three other kinds are pre-
ferred fresh.

The crest of the full-grown trees rises about fifty feet above the
ground. The air circulates freely under the leafy canopy formed by
their interlacing branches, but the sun's rays do not penetrate.
Shade, air, and water — these three elements permit the most varied
cultivation in the palm-garderis, despite the scorching heats of
summer. The fruit trees which flourish are the fig, the pomegranate,
the apricot ; less frequently, the vine and the olive ; still more rarely,
the peach, the pear, and the orange. Vegetables are commonly
cultivated during winter ; such as turnips, cabbages, onions, carrots,
beans, and pimento (Capsicum annuum), an indispensable condiment
for those Arab sauces (merga) destined to stimulate the digestive

158 THE MOUTH OF THE DESERT.

energies of a people who abstain from alcoholic liquors. You may
also remark pumpkins, gourds, and water-melons ; small squares of
lucerne, which yield as many as eight crops yearly ; the henna
(Lawsonia inermis), which tints with yellow the nails of the Arab
women ; and tobacco (Nicotiana rustica), cultivated most largely in
the Souf. In winter you may refresh your eyes in the clearings of
the oasis with verdurous fields, green with barleys and early wheats
springing vigorously from the earth. The cultivation of cotton,
though considerably stimulated by the failure of the usual supply
from the Southern States of America, is still in its infancy. There
can be little doubt, however, that with improved methods of irri-
gation it will be considerably and successfully developed.

The oases of the table-land region, fertilized, as we have already
seen, by the streams of fresh water which flow down from the moun-
tains and spread abroad in natural or artificial channels, are much
the most fertile, and also the most healthy. They possess, moreover,
the inestimable advantage of being but a short distance from the
Mediterranean region, in a country less arid and less desolate than
the remainder of the Desert.- I may name, among these oases, those
of El-Kantara, Biskra, and El-Outa'ia, which form a sort of chaplet,
and are watered by the same river.

The oasis of El-Kantara is the first we encounter on quitting the
Mediterranean region to penetrate into the Sahara through the
gloomy and precipitous ravine, entitled " The Mouth of the Desert."
It is situated 1800 feet above the sea-level. Its length is 5000
yards. Fournel, the first geologist who examined it (in 1864), chris-
tened it the Hyeres of the Sahara. Its temperature is cool and
equable, and does but just suffice to enable the dates to ripen. It
possesses upwards of 76,000 palm-trees, sheltering under their leafy
shadow legions of apricots, pomegranates, and fig-trees. In the
centre of this pleasant and fruitful shade houses of brick, with flat
roofs and narrow loop-holed windows, surround a square tower. The
ancient watch-towers have fallen into decay. Before France took

AN OASIS IN THE DESERT.

159

under its " protection " the peaceful Berbers who cultivate the oasis,
these towers were useful as posts of observation whence to descry
the approach of the wandering Arabs, who resort in summer to the
pastures of the mountains, and in winter to those of the Sahara.

As a type of the oasis of the Desert of Erosion, let us take that
of Ouargla, the last which submitted to the French in South Algeria.

A STREET IN- OUARGLA.

It is situated in a profound hollow. In form it is elliptical, with
its major axis measuring about five thousand yards, and its minor
about three thousand. The palms are planted at the rate of ten to
eleven hundred a hectare (two acres) ; they attain to extraordinary

160 THE Q'SOUR OF OUARGLA.

dimensions, and their dense foliage over-arches a small world of fruit
trees. Outside the gardens grow some wild date-palms, which yield a
smaller crop, but whose fruit is much more savoury. Two avenues,
or clearings, bisecting the forest from north to south, lead to the
q'sour, or village, of Ouargla. This q'sour, like every other, is built
of sun-dried earth, and surrounded by a circular rampart in very bad
condition, six to thirteen feet in height, and four and a-half feet
thick at the base. It is flanked with loop-holed towers, and encircled
externally by a muddy moat, crossed by six causeways leading to as
many gates.

Before some of these gates are planted the small entrenched
camps, wherein the Arab shepherds of the neighbourhood take
refuge with their flocks what time the oasis is menaced by an enemy.

The q'sour of Ouargla is divided into three quarters, inhabited
by three tribes, who do not live always on the most friendly terms.
In appearance it resembles the Saharan q'sours, which have all a
strong family likeness ; there are the mosque, and the governor's
residence, and the open market-place, and the narrow squalid streets,
often obstructed by heaps of unclean and unsavoury rubbish; and the
low dull houses, pierced with holes instead of windows, which have
seldom any shutters ; so that the traveller, when he, penetrates into
these dismal quarters, is startled by the contrast which they present
to the picture of enchanted palaces full of shade, perfume, and fresh-
ness, drawn by his eager imagination. Our poets and romancists have
much to answer for. Their ideal East is very different from that
actual East, in all its heat, and -noisomeness, and glare, which the
voyager finds around him, and which seems to have lost much of its
beauty along with its grandeur and its power. Pleasant to the
fancy is the palm-grove, pleasant the garden with its golden and
purple fruitage, but the warm (and often mineral) waters which
irrigate, or rather inundate the soil, exhale the most deleterious
emanations, so that the unfortunate inhabitants are constantly
decimated by fever, blinded by ophthalmic disease, and devoured
by insects !

ARTESIAN WELLS. 161

We have already seen that the Desert of Erosion is watered by
means of artesian wells, natural or artificial. The latter have been
known to the peoples of the Sahara from the remotest antiquity ;
but the implements and the methods employed to bore or preserve
them were, as the reader will suppose, very rude and unsatisfactory.
The sides of the well are only supported by a framework of palm-
wood, which decays very quickly ; the well gets choked ; divers
descend with baskets to clear away the sand ; but after awhile the
evil exceeds their power of remedying it. " Then, for want of
water," says M. Martins, "the palms grow sick and perish; the
villages are emptied of their population ; the oasis contracts its
boundaries, and gradually disappears. The Desert resumes possession
of the demesne which the labour of man had temporarily won for it."
Fortunately, in the track of the French army have trodden the
French engineers, with all the wonderful apparatus that Science
places at their disposal, and in numerous places they have excavated
true artesian wells, similar to those which supply some of our great
towns. And thus many oases which were on the point of perishing
have been saved, others have been created, and the conquest of the
Desert by modern industry is henceforth no more than a question
of time.

The oases of the Sandy Desert, as I have said, are not watered.
They only possess such wells as suffice, more or less, for the needs of
the poor cultivators. As for the palms, and other nutritive vege-
tables, they are planted at the bottom of conical excavations some
eighteen, twenty-five, or thirty feet in depth ; so that at a short
distance you only see their crests rising above the sandy soil like
large tufts of herbage. The slopes around these hollow gardens are
stayed indifferently well by a matting of palm leaves. The well
itself is placed in the centre, and its depth does not exceed five-and-
twenty feet. Nothing can be more precarious than these oases, which
a gust of wind may bury under an avalanche of sand. Yet the men
are cleaner in their person, neater in attire, and livelier in spirit — -

11

162 THE SHIP OF THE DESERT.

the women are less wretched and less oppressed — and the houses
better built and better provided than in the great q'sours of the
upper regions. In the Souf, the sandy region of the Eastern Sahara,
the industrious inhabitants of these oases remain at peace in the
midst of the tumults and insurrections of their turbulent neighbours,
and appear fully sensible of the advantages they undoubtedly derive
from the firm and impartial rule of the French Government.

CHAPTER VI.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE DESERT.

THE artist who wishes to represent the broad expanse of Ocean's
" liquid plain," does not fail to animate it with the white canvas of
the labouring ships. If he paints the Desert, his picture would be
divided by a horizontal line into two parts— the blue heaven, the
yellow sand; the latter, an undulating sea, with a few clumps of
palms in the background, and in the foreground, to enliven the too
monotonous scene, a group or so of camels. The camel is, in fact, the
indispensable accessory of every view of the Desert, as the ship of
every marine painting ; which justifies once more the Arab designa-
tion of " ship of the Desert" or " terrestrial ship" (gouareb el beurr).
In Book the First I have spoken of the Camel properly so-called,
or camel with two humps, which is peculiar to Central and Eastern
Asia. The camel of Arabia and Africa is the dromedary. The
latter is employed conjointly with the two-humped camel in the
westernmost countries of Asia: in Egypt, and in Nubia, he is much
more widely spread than his congener, which is nearly unknown in the
rest of Africa. The dromedary has but one hump. His hair is soft,
woolly, moderately long about the body, longer and much thicker on
the hump, the head, the neck, and the shoulders. Its colour varies
from a reddish-brown to a clear yellow. Zoologists recognize three

THE MAHARI, OR WAR-CAMEL.

103

varieties of this species: — The Brown dromedary, also called, but
improperly, the Caucasian dromedary — he is brown, like the Bactrian
camel, and his short squat limbs indicate strength rather than agility;
the White dromedary, of a very transparent colour, and of slender
figure; and the Egyptian dromedary, larger than either of the pre-
ceding, and with body and limbs uniformly clothed in short gray hair.
But the Arabs distinguish only two races : the Djemel, or camel of

2. The DjemeL

burden, which is no other, probably, than the Caucasian dromedary;
and the Mahari, or camel for the saddle and war, whose name seems
to apply equally to the two other varieties.

The mahari is to the djemel what our chargers are to our cart-
horses, or, as the Arabs say, what the djend (noble) is to the kheddim
(the servant). He has a very sure foot, a free, sustained, and rapid

1G4 UTILITY OF THE DJEMEL.

trot; he. is sober, enduring, and courageous; a true courser, and the
nomade's inseparable friend and companion. His training is a matter
of the highest importance, and skilfully adapted to develop all his
best qualities and highest faculties.

The Arabs of the Tell assert that the maharis accomplish in one
day ten times the march of a caravan, or a hundred leagues ; but the
best in blood and breeding do not generally exceed a daily journey of
from thirty-five to forty leagues.

The young mahari has his place in the Arab's tent. The children
play with him ; he is a recognized member of the family ; custom
and gratitude attach him to his masters, whom he divines to be
his friends.

If the djemel be not as noble as the mahari, he is not less useful.
Without him, all relations would be suspended between the peoples of
the Sahara; the Soudan, wide, populous, and fertile as it is, would be
a terra incognita; he is the sole means of intercommunication possible
in the arid wastes of the Desert.

Alike living and dead, he is the fortune of his master.

Living, he carries the tents and the provisions ; he makes war, he
carries on commerce; that he might be patient, God (say the Arabs)
created him without gall; he fears neither hunger nor thirst, fatigue
nor heat; his hair is woven into the burnous and the tent-stuff; the
milk of the female nourishes rich and poor, and fattens the horses ; it
is " a spring which does not dry up.''*

Dead, all his flesh is excellent eating; his hump (deroua} forms
the daintiest dish at the banquet; in the bottles made of his skin, the
water is neither consumed by wind nor sun; the shoes fashioned from
it may tread unhurt upon the viper, and will save the traveller's
feet from burning wounds (haffa}; denuded of its hair, afterwards
soaked in water, and simply applied to a wooden saddle, without
nails or pegs, it adheres to it, like the bark to the tree, and communi-
cates to the whole a solidity which will defy war, the chase, and the
foray.

* General Daumas, " Le Grand Desert," pp. 160-1C2.

A PICTURE OF THE DESERT.

165

The superiority of the mahari consists in this, that to all his own
peculiar qualities he adds those of the djeniel. His inferiority arises
from the difficulty of his training, which consumes for more than a
year all his master's time without compensation, and from the fact
that animals of his race are few in number.

If we turn to the poet or the artist for a picture of the Desert,

we find it peopled with animals of a very unsatisfactory character:
the lion, the leopard, the panther, in quest of prey, seeking whom
they may devour, or troops of hysenas and jackals, tearing with keen
teeth the corpses of men and animals.

" With these, lean clogs in herds obscene repair,
And every kind that snuffs the tainted air." — (Lucan.)

Others diversify the scene with the graceful form of the gazelle, with

166

POETIC FANCIES.

the ungainly body, immensely long neck, and spotted hide of the
giraffe; or with the ostrich, the camel of the bird-world, spreading his
plumes to the wind, and ftying with swift feet from the hunter or the
wild beast that pursues him. But, in truth, these are bold fancies,
artistic or poetic licenses, rather than exact representations of what one
really sees in the Desert; and most of the animals with which we
people, at our pleasure, the immense solitudes of Africa and Asia
actually belong to neighbouring regions of a less arid character. And,

JACKALS DISPNTEKIXG DEAD BODIES.

in the first place, the lion of the Desert is a myth, or nearly so.
" When you speak," says Carrette, "to the inhabitants of the Desert
of these ferocious beasts which Europeans give them as companions,
they reply with imperturbable coolness, ' You have, then, in your own
country, lions which drink air and browse on leaves? But, among us,
lions must have running water and live flesh. Therefore they only
appear in those parts of the Sahara where are wooded hills and an
abundance of water. We dread nothing but the viper (lefa) and the

HABITAT OF THE CAKNIVORA.

167

innumerable swarms of mosquitoes ; the latter being found wherever
any humidity prevails.' "*

What Carre tte relates of the lion is also true of the other carni-
vora, of the panther and the leopard, as well as of the hyaena and the
jackal. It is surely easy to understand that these animals greatly

1. GypaStos, or Bearded Vulture.

2. Sociable Vulture.

Cathartes Percnopterus.

prefer to sojourn in fertile and well-watered countries, where they
enjoy freshness, shelter, copious supplies of water, and abundant prey,
than in hot glaring plains of sand, which offer them no asylum, and
where they run the risk of perishing of hunger and thirst. It is,
then, only on exceptional occasions that the lions and other large
* Carrette, " Exploration de 1'Algerie," tome ii.

168 THE HY^NA AND THE JACKAL.

of Africa issue from their caverns or their lairs, and wander
into the Desert (properly so called) in pursuit of prey. The hyaena
and the jackal venture there more willingly. We know that these
carnivora only attack living animals at the last extremity; their food
is the dead and even putrid flesh; it is a nutriment which costs them
less trouble to obtain, and probably, also, most pleases their taste.
Thus, it is by no means an uncommon occurrence to see them in the
towns and q' sours, devouring the carrion, or in the cemeteries disinter-
ring the corpses; they follow also in the Desert the caravans and
detachments of troops on the march, and at night prowl around their
encampments, in the hope of some windfall, which they seldom expect
in vain, but which the dogs, the vultures (Cathartes percnopterus
and vultur fulvus), the gypaetos, and the crows rarely fail to dispute
with them.

The region of the table-lands, or Saharan Steppes, the valleys of
Erosion, and certain parts of the Gobi — Persia, Syria, and Arabia —
which are not absolutely deprived of rain, or which are refreshed by
mountain-streams, nourish several species of mammifers : gazelles,
hedgehogs, porcupines, hares, offering both to man and the carnivora
an abundant variety of game. Of all these animals, the most interest-
ing are the gazelles, several species of which inhabit the desert region.
I shall refer in the first place to the gazelle properly so called, or
Antilope dorcas, so remarkable for the grace of his movements, his
slender limbs, and the expressive gentleness of his eyes. This beauti-
ful species is common in Central Sahara, Nubia, and Asia. He lives
in numerous troops, is of small stature, with a yellowish or yellow-
brown skin on the back, and a white belly, a brown or blackish belt
marking the sides. The horns, larger and stronger in the male than
in the female, have a double curve, are lyrated, and without projec-
tions. The Ariel Gazelle is about twenty inches high at the shoulder.
The Gazella Scemmeringii belongs to Abyssinia and Sennaar. The
gazelle nanguer is found as far as Morocco, Nubia, and in the Cor-
dofou ; some varieties occur at the Senegal. Finally, the oryx-
leucoryx inhabits Tropical Africa, and rarely makes his appearance in

VARIOUS SPECIES OF GAZELLES. 169

the Deserts; he differs from the gazelle in his arched horns, but his
skin is nearly the same. Although the gazelles are generally con-
sidered extremely timid animals, which, moreover, their weakness
would fully justify, they display on emergency a surprising courage.
When they cannot escape from danger through agility, they bravely
confront the enemy which attacks them. Menaced by a panther

1. Gazelle.

3. Gazelle (of Scemmering,.

2. Antelope (Oryx-leucoryx}.
4. Nanguer.

or a leopard, they form themselves into a circle, which, bristling
everywhere with keen-pointed horns, compels the antagonist to
retreat.

In the deserts of Africa and Arabia the traveller frequently meets
with small rodents, which excavate their burrows in the sandy soil,

and only issue from them at night in quest of food. These are the

11 a

170 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JERBOA.

jerboas and jerbilles. The jerboas are easily recognized by the length
of their hind-legs and the disposition of their toes — three to each*
hind-foot, the middle larger than the rest ; five to each fore-foot ; and
all furnished with sharp, strong, crooked claws ; their structure
resembling that of the raptores among birds. These animals leap
with great celerity, and to an extraordinary distance. The tail,
which is a fifth longer than the body, and terminated by a tuft of
black hair, forms at one and the same time a sort of balance, a

GAZELLES OP ARABIA OPPOSING A TAXTIIER.

rudder, and a lever. It enables the jerboa to preserve his equilibrium,
and to direct himself when he has taken his spring ; or, in a state
of repose, furnishes him with a substantial support.

The jerboas constitute, in the family of dipodidce, a tribe com-
posed of several species, which are found in eastern and central
Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The jerbilles, owing to the similarity of name, are often con-
founded with the jerboas ; but the only things they have in common

THE HORNED VIPER.

171

are a certain conformity of habits, and a nearly equal aptitude for
leaping.

Otherwise, their organization rather resembles that of the rat,
along with which it is classed by zoologists. Their hind-legs are
much shorter than those of the jerboa, and their tail is garnished
with but a few short, stiff hairs. Like the jerboas, they inhabit the
sandy wildernesses of Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe.

These small animals, exclusively frugivorous and graminivorous,

^*nrm*jg!

JERBOAS ATTACKED BY A HORSED VIPER.

seem able, in the solitary places where they make their retreats, to
multiply themselves ad infinitum ; but, while a great number perish
through famine, they are also decimated by a host of enemies in the
reptiles of the Desert, and especially by the terrible horned viper, or
cerastes, and a great saurian, intermediate between the lizard and
crocodile — the " varan of the Desert."

The horned viper (vipera cerastes) is thus named on account of
the two horns or protuberances on its forehead, which give it a

172

VARANS OR MONITORS.

physiognomy more hideous, perhaps, than that of any of its con-
geners. It attains the length of two to three feet. Its head is
depressed, very obtuse, swollen behind the eyes, and, so to speak,
truncated in front. Its body, cased in shells of a tawny-like yellow,
marked with brown spots, blends curiously with the sand, half-buried
in which it lurks to surprise its prey or escape from its enemies.
The cerastes frequents the deserts of Lybia, Arabia, the Sahara, and
the valley of the Nile. Its bite is exceedingly dangerous.

The varans, or monitors, called also tupinambis by the ancient
naturalists, form a genus represented in tropical climes by several
species of great size. English writers commonly designate them
monitors, the French sauvegardes, because they frequent the haunts
of crocodiles and alligators, and give warning of their approach by a
whistling sound. Two species belong to Africa : one, aquatic, the
varan of the Nile (varanus draccena) ; the other, sand-burrowing,
the varan of the Desert (varanus sunius, or arenarius), called by

THE MANNA OF THE DESERT. 173

the Arabs onaran-el-ard. Their usual size is from three feet to
three feet four inches. The varan of the Nile wears an armour of
alternately green and black scales. Its congener exhibits a mixture
of brown and yellow, more suitable to its sandy lairs. It is rare in
the Sahara, but common enough in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and
Nubia.

Poor as may be the Fauna of the Desert, there is yet cause
enough for astonishment that the species which compose it, especially
the herbivora, should be able to find subsistence in these seas of
sand, where they can find but a few saline plants scattered at rare
intervals, and where fresh water is almost wholly wanting. It is,
however, well known now-a-days that the wilderness provides its
denizens with an aliment, which is sometimes very abundant, suitable
for man, the camel, and the beasts, and is considered identical by
many authorities with the manna of the Bible.* This substance is
a cryptogamous vegetable, variously christened lichen esculentus
(Acharius), lecanora esculenta (Pallas), luttarut (by the Arabs), and
vasseh-el-ard, or " earth-dung" (by the Algerines). It sometimes
forms on the sand, in the morning, a layer one or two inches in
thickness, and appears to have dropped from heaven, or to have
sprung spontaneously from the soil, during the night. It is probable
that its spores, transported by the wind, are developed by the humi-
dity which is condensed through the nocturnal coldness.

A shower of this lichen was observed, in April 1846, in the
Russian government of Wilna. It covered the soil for three or four
inches in depth, and the inhabitants lived upon it for several days.
Its form is that of a small, anfractuous, rounded grain, about the
size of a pea, externally of a gray colour, but white and farinaceous
within. Its taste is weak, amygdalaceous, with a faint, mushroom-
like aroma. Boiled in water, it swells, becomes gelatinous, and may
be served up in various ways. In the Sahara, as well as in Arabia,

* This substance, according to other authorities, was more probably the saccharine
exudation, Mount Sinai manna, which forms on the branches of the tamarix mannifera,
and thence falls to the ground.

174 THE MEN OF THE DESERT.

it adheres to any foreign body. Cattle feed upon it eagerly. It
certainly facilitates digestion, and contains all the assimilating prin-
ciples which form the constituents of the wholesomest vegetable food.
Such as it is, the lichen esculentus is an inestimable boon to the
wandering tribes of the Desert, who would perish of hunger in years
of famine but for its heaven-sent nutriment.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MEN OF THE DESERT.

WHEN I use the terms " Men of the Desert," " Populations of the
Desert," evidently I must not be understood to employ them in their
absolute sense. Man, no more than that other so-called " lord of
animals" — the lion, makes a voluntary sojourn in countries where
game, verdure, and fresh water are wanting. The peoples whom we
entitle " Inhabitants of the Desert" are then, in reality, those who
dwell upon its borders or in its oases, but whom the necessity of
traversing and frequently abiding in it has familiarized with its
gloom and its peril, as a similar necessity has familiarized the mariner
with the ocean. We have seen, however, that some pastoral tribes
pitch their tents and pasture their flocks in those districts where
vegetation is favoured and cherished by a supply of rain or subter-
ranean waters, and which should more accurately be designated as
Steppes than Deserts. Some authorities have, indeed, affixed the
name of " the Saharan Steppe" to the region of high table-lands
which lies at the base of the Atlas range.

Other groups, who are partly shepherds and partly hunters,
inhabit, in the Southern and Western Sahara, those plateaux where
ostriches, gazelles, and hares abound. The more peaceful and indus-
trious tribes occupy the oases. As for those who encamp or habi-
tually wander in the Sandy Desert— where all cultivation is impossible,

FOUNTAIN-HEADS OF HUMANITY. 175

where the herds can obtain but an insufficient pasture, where game
very seldom shows itself — the reader will suppose that they can only
subsist by plundering or ransoming the caravans. These are the
rovers, the pirates of the Sea of Sand. There are " land-rats,"
Shakspeare tells us, as well as " water-rats." Others, again, there
are who seem convinced that " honesty is the best policy," who give
themselves up exclusively to commercial transactions, and act as
agents and intermediaries between nations separated from one
another by leagues of rock and sand, for the exchange of their respec-
tive products. It might be said of these that they discharged a
useful and honourable function, if the purchase and sale of slaves
were not the most ordinary, and unfortunately the most lucrative, of
their operations.

In our previous examination of the peoples of the Steppes, we
discovered that all were more or less directly sprung from the same
sources ;— the yellow or Mongolian race, which blends in the north
with the Hyperborean race, and in the west with the Japhetic or
Indo-Germanic. We have now to note a not less remarkable fact —
that the whole Desert zone is likewise occupied by one family, the
Semitic, modified in certain parts of Africa by commixture with the
Xegro race. Soon we shall see the latter peopling of itself the plains
of Central and Southern Africa ; the Malayo-Polynesian and Papuan,
but slightly distinguished from the preceding, in possession of the
islands of the Indian Ocean, those of Oceania, and the Australian
continent ; the Hyperborean race, scattered through the Arctic soli-
tudes ; and, finally, the "Red Man," gradually dying away among
the prairies and forests of the two Americas : so that, to each of
the great divisions of the Savage or Desert World corresponds one of
the great fractions of the human species.

The Shemites— so named because the Bible attributes their origin
to Shem, the eldest son of Noah— are now-a-days represented only by
the Jews and the Arabs, though they formerly included also the
Assyrians, the Chaldseans or Babylonians, the Syrians, Phoenicians,
and Ethiopians. Of their modern representatives, the Jews alone

176 THE SHEMITIC SOCIETY.

have displayed any real aptitude for civilization. The Arabs, whose
name is derived from the word Ardba, which signifies " desert,"
seem almost exclusively adapted for a nomadic life ; and it is to
them can most correctly be applied the characteristics which Renan
too broadly attributes to the entire Shemitic race.

" As far as concerns the civil and political life," says that distin-
guished orientalist, " the Shemites are distinguished by the same
character of simplicity. They have never understood civilization in
the sense which we apply to the word. We do not find among them
any great organized empires, or commerce, or public spirit — nothing
which recalls the absolute monarchy of Egypt and Persia. The true
Shemitic society is that of the tent and the tribe : it owns no politi-
cal or judiciary institution ; its principle is, man free, without any
controlling authority, and without any other security than that of
the family tie. The questions of aristocracy, democracy, feudality,
which sum up all the history of the Aryan peoples, have no meaning
for the Shemites. Aristocracy, not having among them a military
origin, is accepted without protest and without repugnance. The
Shemitic nobility is purely patriarchal : it owes nothing to conquest ;
it has its origin in blood."

As far as their physique is concerned, the Arabs are in general
tall, thin, nimble, not very strong. Their face is pale and long, their
forehead low, their nose aquiline, their mouth large, their chin receding.
The complexion is brown, as becomes those who live for months under
a glaring sun ; the eyes are keen and glowing ; the port is free and
even haughty. They have black hair and beard.

Of their history, prior to the day when Mohammed's genius knit
them into a great proselytizing military people, little certain is
known. A Shemitic tribe, descended from Joktan, grandson of Shem,
settled in Arabia at a remote period of antiquity, and Joktan' s great-
grandson, Himzar or Homin, founded a dynasty which ruled in
Yemen for upwards of two thousand years. Even the Romans
could not utterly subdue them, but gradually the different tribes fell
apart from one another, and for centuries waged against each other

INHABITANTS OF THE DESEET. 177

the most desperate wars, until Mohammed supplied them with a
rallying-point in the creed of Islam. Thenceforth their mission was
to propagate the new faith by fire and sword, and bursting from their
rocky highlands like a torrent, they poured along the shores of the
Mediterranean to Gibraltar on the north, and Tangier on the south.
In Northern Africa they gradually mingled with the Berbers, the
Nuiriidians, and the Getulians, and from the fusion sprang the
Kabyles, the Tibbous, and the Touaregs, while the Shemites themselves
lost a portion of their original character.

All the tribes of the desert are Moslems. The precepts of the
Koran, and certain traditional usages, are almost the only laws which
they recognize.

The Koran authorizes polygamy, and the Arab women, therefore,
are less the wives than the slaves of their husbands, who enforce upon
them the strictest seclusion, and impose upon them the most arduous
labours. The tyranny which weighs upon the women is, however, in
inverse proportion to the degree of welfare and civilization of the
various tribes. Among the poor and almost barbarous peoples of the
desert, these unfortunate creatures are reduced to a condition of
degradation and brutishness which inspires in the European almost
as much disgust as pity.

The instinct of rapine which most writers f have signalized as one
of the leading features of the Arab character, appears to have been
greatly exaggerated, or, at least, too much generalized. This vice is
a special result of their position, and, we must own, of the very
antiquated views they hold upon the " rights of man," which, indeed,
they sum up in much the same manner as Wordsworth's Rob Hoy: — *

" The creatures see of flood and field,
And those that travel on the wind !
With them no strife can last ; they live

In peace, and peace of mind.
" For why? — because the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,

And they should keep who can."
* Wordsworth, " Poetical Works "—Rob Roy's Grave, vol. iii., p. 21.

12

178 CHARACTER OF THE ARAB.

We must also take into account the spirit of hostility which their
religion fosters against the infidel — against, that is, all who do not
accept the laws of the Prophet. " The sword," says Mohammed, " is
the key of heaven and of hell ; a drop of blood shed in the cause of
God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of
fasting or prayer : whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven : at
the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion and
odoriferous as musk ; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by
the wings of angels and cherubim." Such a declaration could not
but fire the enthusiasm of the Arab, and whet their swords against
the enemies of Islam.

The leading features of his character have been discriminated by
Gibbon with his usual sagacity, and described with his wonted
stateliness of language.

" In private life," he says,* " every man, at least every family, is
the judge and avenger of his own cause. The nice sensibility of
honour, which weighs the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly
venom on the quarrels of the Arabs ; the honour of their women, and
their beards, is most easily wounded ; an indecent action, a con-
temptuous word, can be expiated only by the blood of the offender ;
and such is their patient inveteracy, that they expect whole months
and years the opportunity of revenge. A fine or compensation for
murder is familiar to the barbarians of every age ; but with the
Arabs the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to accept the atonement,
or to exercise with their own hands the law of retaliation. Their
refined malice refuses even the head, of the murderer, substitutes an
innocent for the guilty person, and transfers the penalty to the best
and most considerable of the race by whom they have been injured.
If he falls by their hands, they are exposed in their turn to the
danger of reprisals, the interest and principal of the bloody debt are
accumulated ; the individuals of either family lead a life of malice
and suspicion, and fifty years may sometimes elapse before the account
of vengeance be finally settled. This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of
* Gibbon, " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," v., p. 451.

CHILDREN OF THE SWORD. 179

pity or forgiveness, has been moderated, however, by the maxims of
honour, which require in every private encounter some decent equality
of age and strength, of numbers and weapons

" According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are equally
addicted to theft and merchandize ; the caravans that traverse the
desert are ransomed or pillaged ; and their neighbours, since the
remote times of Job and Sesostris, have been the victims of their
rapacious spirit. If a Bedouin discovers from afar a solitary traveller,
he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice, ' Undress
thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a garment.' A ready submis-
sion entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor,
and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed
in legitimate defence. A single robber, or a few associates, are
branded with their genuine name ; but the exploits of a numerous
band assume the character of lawful and honourable war. The temper
of a people thus armed against mankind, was doubly inflamed by the
domestic license of rapine, murder, and revenge."

The name of " Bedouins " (from bedaoui, " man of the Desert ")
has been bestowed on the nomades of Arabia, Egypt, and the Northern
Sahara. The majority of them are shepherds ; a few add to this
industry the much less honourable occupation of plundering trade-
caravans ; some prefer to devote themselves wholly to this pursuit.
All the Bedouins are children of the sword. They exult in strife
and the clash of arms. It is their acm£ of happiness to mount the
war-steed and ride against the foe. The theme of the Arab and his
horse, of the attachment which subsists between them, of the services
which the latter renders to his master, of his physical and moral
qualities, his courage, his swiftness, his fidelity, has been worn so
threadbare that I need not here insist upon it.

I must state, however, that as there are two varieties of Arab
camels, so are there of Arab horses : the noble and the common, the
beast of blood and the beast of burden. The former seem to be
growing scarcer every year. He is named koleil. The nobility
of a horse depends entirely upon that of his mother, so that an

180

THE BEDOUINS AND THEIR HABITS.

authentic certificate of birth is always delivered to the purchaser of a
" high-bred steed." This certificate is enclosed in a small bag, which
also contains a mysterious writing, and suspended to the animal's
neck will be an omen of good fortune, it is hoped, to him and his
owner.

The arms of the Bedouins are the curved sword, the yataghan, and
the long musket. Pistols are sometimes added, and the lance. They

BEDOUIN SHEPHERDS AND BEDOUIN NOMADES.

fight hand to hand, and without any strategical method. They never
venture upon night attacks. They seek to surprise the enemy by
rapid marches and unexpected diversions, by ensnaring him in
ambuscades, and harassing him when he is the strongest in numbers.
The most trifling fortification, however, arrests them — a wall of brick,
a simple ditch, a hedge of the fig-tree, will suffice to protect a village
from their depredations.

TIBBOOS AXD TOTJAREGS.

181

The nomades of the Southern Sahara have not, like the Bedouins,
preserved in its purity the Shemitic type, but they have fostered and
developed the spirit of adventure and rapine which characterizes the
Arab of the desert, and €hey have added something of the ferocity of
the still barbarous tribes of Ham, with whom they have intermarried.
These nomades form two principal groups — the Tibboos on the east,

and Touaregs (Touarick, Touereug, or Tawarik) on the west. The
former, according to Humboldt, are called "birds," on account of
their agility ; they are still imperfectly known to Europeans, despite
of the labours of Richardson, Clapperton, and Earth. The second are
divided into the Touaregs of Aghadez and the Touaregs of Tagazi.
It was not until 1862 that the French army, crossing the Sahara
from north to south, entered into direct relations with these fierce

182

THE MARAUDERS OF THE SAHARA.

children of the desert. In the same year their ambassadors attracted
the curiosity of ever- curious Paris. They are the despots, the tyrants
of the southern Sahara. The charge of their lean flocks is their leavst
occupation. They are, it is true, skilful and enthusiastic hunters ;
but their veritable industry is the exploration of the desert : an
exploration which changes in form according to circumstances. For

ATTACK UPON A Q'SOUR.

a proper remuneration they undertake the guidance and protection of
the caravans ; but whoever has not purchased their safeguard they
treat as an enemy, and if not adequately ransomed sell into slavery.
The Berbers of the oasis not unjustly regard these marauders with
alarm. For they pitilessly exact from the peaceful cultivator a share
of his harvest, which is always the lion's share ; the right of the

THE GREAT EGYPTIAN OASIS. 183

strongest being the only right they recognize, and each man for
himself the only principle they respect. A troop of Touaregs, for
instance, descends upon an oasis, and summons its inhabitants to
deliver up immediately a certain number of bags of dates. In case
of refusal they withdraw, but the people of the oasis may prepare to
defend themselves with arms, for the dreaded blow will very shortly
be delivered. The Touaregs, leaving their maharis and their baggage
at a convenient distance, penetrate at night into the palm-gardens,
scale the walls, and, unless very energetically repelled, seize upon the
tribute they had demanded.

Nothing is there to be remarked in the Arabs of the q'sours but
their misery and degradation. A French officer, M. Tremblet, has
described with exactness and force their physiognomy, manners,
character, ideas, and history.* One rises from the perusal of his
book with a painful impression. In the narrow and pestilential
streets of the q'sours, where vermin are as numerous as men and
women, in those mud palaces where the sultans are enthroned in
rags, the same passions, the same ambitions, the same all-potent
appetites, the same struggles, intrigues, and crimes prevail, as occupy
so large a place in the history of the great states of Europe and
Asia.

Among the inhabitants of the Desert I would include the posses-
sors of the great Egyptian oasis, — that ancient cradle of civilization
— that strange and mysterious land which, after throbbing with so
full and brilliant a life in the days of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies,
slumbered for centuries under the leaden domination of the Moslem.
Let us note only that the Egyptian people have undergone no special
modification ; the features of the fellahs of to-day are exactly thoso
which we trace in the pictures that cover the walls of palace and
tomb, the monuments that carry us back in imagination to the
erection of the Pyramids or the glories of hundred-gated Thebes. It is
the o]d Egypto-Berber race, wherein we recognize the mixture of the
black and Shemitic blood, or perhaps the still incomplete result of the
* Tremblet, " Les Francais dans le Desert " (Paris, 1863).

184

EGYPTIANS AND SHEMITES.

influences which have transformed into negroes the whites who
emigrated, some thousands of years ago, from Western Asia into
Africa.

The Egyptians establish, very clearly, the transition between the
Shemites and the population of Nubia and Ethiopia. With the latter

the skin is black or of a deep bronze ; but the form, the features, the
hair, approach much more nearly the Caucasian than the Negro type.
The Nubian women especially exhibit a grace and dignity of move-
ment which reveal the nobleness of their origin. " It is in these far
lands," says Tre'maux, "we meet with the modern Rebecca, attired
with the antique Biblical simplicity, and carrying the water vessel on

THE WOMEN OF NUBIA.

185

her head. Their air, at once easy and reserved, their black modest
eyes, recall those images of the holy history which every one has
seen ; only, instead of a cotton stuff gaily coloured, imagine a piece
very dirty and often in tatters, and you will have the portrait
of the Nubian woman ; this garment is otherwise so naturally
draped and so proudly worn, that it yields in nothing to the ancient
models."

12 a

BOOK III.

PRAIRIES, SAVANNAHS, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS.

CHAPTER I.

THE WILD PLAINS OF THE OLD WORLD : THE AFRICAN INTERIOR.

jjHEX we have crossed the 18th parallel (or nearly so) of
north latitude in Africa and the 30th in Asia — the
southern boundary of the Rainless District — countries of
extreme fertility and exuberant product succeed to the dreary soli-
tudes we have hitherto traversed.

At intervals, indeed, the traveller encounters some vast blighted
and accursed area, where, for a part of each year, a deadly aridity
prevails ; but ever there comes a happy moment, even in these
desolate wastes, when genial Nature resumes her rights, abundant
rains nourish vegetable and animal life, and the glowing scene con-
strains us to exclaim with thankful heart, " The earth is the Lord's,
and the fulness thereof."

The Asiatic plains in the south, are, however, preserved from
such abrupt alternations; numerous water-courses, leaping downward
from the snowy fountains of the Himalayan chain, refresh and fertilize
these countries, which are almost everywhere subject to the dominion
of man. Analagous causes, in the grand rich islands of the warm
Indian seas, produce similar effects ; there, also, the very deserts are
humid regions, and tall grasses, bushes, shrubs, reeds, and climbing

THE SOUTH-AFRICAN PLATEAU. 187

plants grow in a rank and luxuriant chaos which we designate by the
name of jungles, in whose dense obscurity the tiger makes his lair,
and the serpent conceals his deadly venom !

In the immense triangle denned by that portion of the African
continent which extends from the Mountains of the Moon to the
Cape of Good Hope, nature has maintained almost intact her savage
independence ;- but she displays there her most varied forms, from
the snow- crested ice-bound mountain to the lowest and most mono-
tonous plain, from the impenetrable forest to the nakedest and
barrenest steppe.

To enable the reader to comprehend these widely different aspects,
and to describe the peculiar characteristics of each region of this
immense continent, it will be necessary for us to recapitulate its most
important geographical features.

A vast plateau, of comparatively slight elevation, occupies all
Southern Africa, extending eastward as far as the fifth or sixth degree
north of the equator. To the north-west, it is bounded by the
mountains of Senegambia ; to the north-east, by those of Abyssinia.
On the east and west, the mountains descend to the very shore in
secondary chains ; to the south the table-land is brought down to the
sea in a series of terraces which separate the mountain-ranges. •

At its southern extremity, the African continent is from 550 to
600 miles broad. It is occupied by the British colony of the Cape,
which is bounded on the north by the Orange River. The most
striking features of the physical geography of this part of Africa, and
which determine in the main its climate and natural productions, are
three chains of mountains disposed parallel to one another and to the
southern coast. These are separated by terraces or upland plains,
each range forming the boundary of the lower and the abutment of
the higher terrace. The communication is maintained by transverse
valleys, which are often of a highly romantic character. The loftiest
and most inland chain is christened in different parts of its course the
Roggeveld Bergen, the Nieuveld Bergen, and the Sneeu Bergen, or

188 THE CAPE COLONY.

"Snowy Mountains." Of these the loftiest summit is the Compass
Berg, 10,000 feet in altitude. The second chain, the Black Moun-
tains, though not so lofty are more massive, and, in truth, composed
of two or three chains in close juxtaposition. The third, or last
chain, in proceeding from south to north, varies from eighteen to
fifty-four miles, enlarging towards the west.

The plain or terrace between the Black and the Snowy Mountains
is much loftier than the two other steps by which we descend to the
southern extremity of the continent. The lowest terrace, bordering
on the sea, is well-watered and fertile. The second, or central
terrace, consists of fertile districts, equally well watered, but inter-
sected by vast dry deserts, called (from a Hottentot word) Karroos.
The third terrace, commonly designated the Great Karroo, at the base
of the Roggeveld and Nieuveld chain, is 300 miles in length, 80 miles
in breadth, and 2000 feet above the sea-level. Its soil, says a writer
in the Quarterly Review, presents throughout its whole extent, for
the greater portion of the year, not a trace of vegetation. These
gloomy solitudes assume a character of picturesque grandeur through
their very wildness of desolation. The scene might convey to a
fanciful mind the dreary image of a ruined world, where the witches
and demons of Goethe's Walpurgis-Night might fitly celebrate their
revels.-

" And through the cliffs with ruin strewn,
The wild winds whizz, and howl, and moan.''*

During the . long dry summer months, the smallest birds would not
find wherewithal to sustain their existence in these sombre deserts,
whose solemn silence not even the murmur of an insect interrupts.

Yet these regions, deprived of springs and running waters, are
not always sterile deserts, are not always desolate plains. In the
dry season, the soil, a yellow ferruginous clay, acquires the hardness
of brick, just as if it had been exposed to the fire of a furnace ; but
the roots and bulbs, protected by a ligneous covering, resist the
devouring heat. The first rains revive them ; they put forth their
* Goethe's " Faust," translated by Theodore Martin, p. 202.

XATAL AND KAFFRARIA. 191

stems and branches ; a myriad flowers reveal their sparkling colours ;
and the country which, a day or two before, had shown to the eye a
bare and dreary surface, shines out in a panoply of splendour, as if a
magician's spell had suddenly transformed it into a terrestrial para-
dise ! But as the days lengthen, and the sun's power increases, the
bloom and the beauty vanish, and the curse of fire once more
descends upon the gloomy scene.

In several districts north of the Cape Colony whole years pass
by without the sight or sound of running water rejoicing the wistful
wanderer. Dr. Livingstone, while residing among the Bakouans, in
the Bechuana country, saw the natives excavating the bed of the
Kolobeng to extract a few drops of water. A centigrade thermometer,
sunk two and a half inches in the earth, at noon, marked 56°.
Insects placed on the surface of the ground died in a few seconds.
The grass was so dry that it crumbled into powder when plucked.

The coast of Natal is rich in trees and herbage. The Zambesi,
and other rivers which descend from the central plateau, refresh the
plains of Mozambique and Zanzibar. But from the 4th parallel of
north latitude to Cape Guardafui extends an almost continuous
desert. The southern extremity of the Lupata chain also presents a
vast naked country, where the presence of gold has encouraged the
Portuguese to found some establishments.

The neighbouring zone of Kaffraria consists of great far-spreading,
gently-undulating plains, characterized by extreme aridity. The
western districts are much ]ess broken than the central, and exhibit
no undulations except in the vicinity of the ocean. There an
immense level territory exists under the name of the Kalihari Desert,
whose southern boundary is marked by the Gariep or Orange River,
which drains rather than waters it. To the north this awful wilder-
ness stretches as far as the Lake Ngami, thus covering the area com-
prised between the 29th and 30th parallels of south latitude. The
pastoral country of Namaqua and Damaras bounds it on the west.
Eastward it extends to the 24th meridian of west longitude.

Moisture is not wholly wanting in this vast region. The Kali-

192 DESERT OF THE KALIHARI.

hari has been called a desert, says Livingstone,* because it contains
no running water, and very little in wells. Far from being destitute
of vegetation, it is covered with grass and creeping plants, and there
are large patches of bushes, and even trees. It is remarkably flat ;
and prodigious herds of antelopes roam over its trackless plains.
The soil is composed in general of a fine soft sand, lightly coloured —
that is, of a nearly pure silica. In the ancient beds of dried-up
rivers lie immense patches of alluvial soil, which, hardened by the
sun, form great reservoirs, retaining the rain-water for several months
of the year. The quantity of grass flourishing in this region is remark-
able. It grows generally in thick tufts, occasionally intermingled with
spaces where the earth is naked or closely overgrown with creeping
plants. These, deeply rooted in the soil, suffer but little from the
effects of the excessive heat. Most of them have tubercular roots,
and are so organized as to furnish both food and liquid during the
long droughts — an epoch when one vainly seeks elsewhere anything
which can appease one's hunger or one's thirst.

The rich vegetation of the Kalihari is due to its geological consti-
tution. It consists of a great valley, or rather of a vast basin, whoso
bottom is formed of a diluvial earth, and which is encircled by a belt
of rocks, cloven at several places. It follows that where the rain is
abundant, the slope of the hills directs it towards the centre of the
basin, and this rain filters and deposits itself beneath the surface of
the soil. And it appears to be a proof of this statement, that on dig-
ging in the sand cisterns are formed, or " sucking-places," which are
filled with water supplied by subterraneous conduits.

This so-called Desert is not without its utility. Not only does it
nourish innumerable multitudes of animals of every kind, but it has
become the asylum of fugitive tribes. Here at first the Bakalabaris
found a refuge ; and then, in their turn, other peoples of the Bechuana,
whose territories had been invaded by the Kaffirs.

The Kalihari has its mirage and its sirocco. During the excessive
drought which precedes the rainy season, a burning wind traverses
* Dr. Livingstone, " Missionary Researches in Sonth Africa."

SOUTH-WEST COAST OF AFRICA. 193

this desert from north to south, and during its three or four days'
dui'ation it withers and dries up everything in its path. It is so
loaded with electricity that a bundle of ostrich feathers, which
remained exposed to it for a few seconds, was itself charged as if it
had been in contact with a powerful electrical machine, and produced
a lively disturbance, accompanied by cracking noises, when taken in
the hand. As often as this wind prevails, the electricity of the
atmosphere is so abundant that every movement of the natives causes
sparks to be given off their harasses, or cloaks made of the skin of
beasts.

The contrast is striking between the well-watered east coast of
South Africa and the arid western coast. After the scarped moun-
tains of the Cape, which ascend northward to the ocean, come the
less lofty chains — the hills of sand which separate the interior sandy
desert from the equally sandy district of the littoral. With the
exception of the Wa-lvish Bay, the coast for eight hundred miles —
from the great Orange River to Cape Negro — has not a stream of
water.

At Cape Negro commences a series of terraces, separated from one
another by long bands of sunken ground. This ensemble describes a
curve towards the interior, and leaves on the coast a level plain of
about 110 miles in breadth.

In Benguela the plains are healthy and cultivated. More to the
north, one encounters nothing but monotonous savannahs and forests
with gigantic trees. The soil, at a great number of points, is satu-
rated with water, and, so to speak, enveloped in a shroud of pestilen-
tial vapour, which the breeze never scatters.

The low plains of Biafra and Benin, and especially the Delta of
the Niger, are unwholesome, rank, and foul-smelling marshes. In
their mangrove swamps lurks fever, and a legion of deadly diseases.

" Macies et nova febrium
Terris incubuit cohors." — (Horace.)

Until the early years of the present century very little was
known of the interior of Southern Africa. At this epoch some

13

194 DESCRIPTION OF LAKE NGAMI.

native merchants traversed the country from one sea to another —
from St. Paul de Loanda to the coast of Mozambique and Zanzibar.
This exploit was repeated and outstripped by Dr. Livingstone, who,
from 1850 to 1856, accomplished a marvellous journey of six
thousand miles, through regions never before trodden by the white
man's foot.

Setting out from Kolobeng, the most advanced of the English
missionary stations, he arrived, after having crossed some three hun-
dred miles of a region without water, at the beautiful river Zouga,
which issues from the western extremity of Lake Ngami.

" A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides,
Nor sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount
Appears, to refresh the aching eye ;
But barren earth, and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon round and round." ?

Lake Ngami is from 45 to 60 miles long, and from 56 to 110 in
circumference. Its direction is N.N.E. to S.S.W. Its southern por-
tion curves westward, and it receives from the north-west the Teoughe.
The water, very fresh when the lake is full, grows brackish during
the dry season. At the latter period it is very shallow, and at
eighteen or twenty miles from the shore canoes can be mano3uvred
with the help of a pole. The banks are everywhere low. At the
west a considerable space, utterly bare of trees, proves that the lake
was formerly larger. During the months which precede the arrival
of the northern waters, cattle, to quench their thirst, make their way
with difficulty through the belt of reeds dried up by the sun. The
natives, says Livingstone, who reside on the shores of the lake, tell
us that trees and antelopes are carried down by the waters during
the annual inundation.

The same traveller informs us that the vast regions lying to
the north of the lake at such great distances — regions copiously
watered, and deluged every year by the heavy tropical rains — pour
* Thomas Pringle, " South African Sketches."

A FRUITFUL COUNTRY. 105

towards the south the excess of the waters which saturate their soil ;
cand a certain quantity of these waters, encountering the lake on
their way, flow into it. It is in March and April that the inunda-
tion begins. The waters, on descending, find the rivers dried up,
and the lake itself exceedingly shallow. The rivers in this part of
Africa flow in channels capable of containing a far greater volume of
water than they generally hold. When looking at them, you might
believe yourself in some desolated Oriental garden where all the irri-
gating canols still exist, but where the dams permit only a mere
thread of water to take its course.

" The water," adds Livingstone,* " is less absorbed by the earth
than lost between banks too wide apart, where the air and the sun
evaporate them. I am persuaded that there is not in the whole of
this country a river which loses itself amid the sands."

The country situated to the north is exceedingly level for some
hundreds of miles, and abundantly provided with lakes and rivers,
which the slightest undulations of the soil divert into innumerable
windings. The plain is alternately covered with sombre thickets,
lofty forests, and dense herbage. On the banks of some rivers this
herbage assumes gigantic proportions, and by its tenacity opposes an
effectual barrier to animals. In many places the wide green pastures
are enlivened by large herds of cattle, which the natives breed. The
land of the Barotses possess immense prairies of this description, the
home of numerous herds of elephants. But this richness of the soil
is counterbalanced by the insalubrity of the climate. These vast,
periodically flooded surfaces become, when the waters recede, the
nurseries of deadly fevers, and other formidable maladies, whose
destructive influence extends to a great distance.

The magnificent river Zambesi, known in its upper course by the
local appellation of Leambye — both words having the same significa-
tion in the native tongue, " the River" — fertilizes and brightens these
productive regions. Flowing at first from north to south, it makes a
sharp bend westward, to march with stately step from south to north,

* Livingstone, " Missionary Travels and Researches."

19G COURSE OF THE ZAMBESI.

and from west to east, until, with a south-eastern inclination, it
moves onward to the Indian Ocean.

It was at a point nearly midway between the two oceans — the
Indian and the Atlantic — that the intrepid Livingstone first descried
the Zambesi, regarding its fertile banks and noble stream with much
the same emotions of delight and surprise as thrilled to the heart of
Balboa, when

" With eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific — and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise —

Silent, upon a peak in Darien."*

He arrived there near the close of the dry season, and yet a grand
volume of water still sparkled in the river's bed, which varied from
950 to 1900 feet in breadth. At the epoch of the great floods, the
Zambesi rises perpendicularly more than eighteen feet, and at certain
points extends more than forty miles from its bank. From the
borders of the Chobe to those of the Zambesi spreads a low, level
country, whose uniform expanse is only broken by the gigantic
hillocks of the termites. At intervals the traveller lights upon spots
where the waters have formerly settled, then on great morasses and
deep rivers, winding their slow way through an almost impervious
jungle. There is a certain fatal beauty about the whole region, like
that of a Circe or a Lucrezia Borgia; but its atmosphere breathes
disease and death.

A general depression and flatness of surface seems to be the physical
characteristic of this part of Central Africa. Thus, on the route adopted
by Livingstone, in a N.N.E. direction, from the chain of Bamunguatos
to the Zambesi, all is level. Mount N'goua, an isolated mass in
18° 27' 20" south latitude, and 24° 13' 63" east longitude, is a
wholly exceptional accident. The Kandehy Valley, which deploys on
the northern slope of this narrow colossus, is one of the most
picturesque scenes that greeted the eyes of Livingstone during his
adventurous pilgrimage. Fruit trees, loaded with emerald foliage,
* Kcat's " Poetical Works," sonnet ix.

AN ARCADIAN REGION. 197

adorn its sides; a crystal brook ripples in the centre. Under the
shade of an enormous baobab the graceful antelopes browse undis-
turbed, until alarmed by the footfall of the approaching traveller.
Gnus and zebras contemplate the strange intruder with an air of
surprise. A few continue to crop the grass indifferent; others pause
in the banquet, uncertain whether to stay or take to flight. The
huge hulk of a white rhinoceros drags labouring up the shady valley.
Buffaloes, and condors, and giraffes stray far into its pleasant depths
as peaceful and almost as trustful as those of their race which, in
days remote, wandered among the beauties of Eden, in

" That delicious grove,
That garden, planted with the trees of God."

Further to the north, even to the river Sanshureh, the country
increases in richness and beauty, the water-courses multiply, and the
herbage aspires to such a height that vehicles and animals are lost
amongst it.

An exceeding gentleness, an almost Arcadian calm, characterizes
the landscape on the banks of the Leeba, a great affluent of the
Leambye. This river drags its slow and ever-winding waters through
a delightful meadow-land, which is probably flooded eveiy year, for
there is no wood except where the ground rises four or five feet
above the general level of the plain. The soil of these tree-crowned
plateaux, or knolls, is sandy, while that of the prairies consists of an
alluvial earth, gray and black, and mixed with numerous river-
shells.

Ascending the Leeba, we enter on a plain more than eighteen
miles in breadth, where the water rises to the traveller's ankles.
This water, says Livingstone, does not proceed from the overflow of
the river; but the level of the ground is so horizontal that the rain-
water cannot pass away, and abides there for months. Still more
humid are the adjacent plains of Lobala. This vast submerged area
forms a watershed between the rivers of the north and those of the
south. Up to this point all the rivers wend their way southward;

198 THE " SMOKE-RESOUNDING " FALLS.

but from this point they adopt a northerly course, to empty their
tribute into the Kasaii or Loke.

The interior table-land, especially towards the mid-course of the
Zambesi, is intersected by lofty mountain-chains. It is in this region,
and at the southernmost point of the river's great Delta, which is
270 miles in length, that the famous Falls occur, named by the
natives " Mosioatounya," or "Smoke-resounding," re-christened by
Livingstone, the Victoria. Their vast columns of vapour are visible
at a distance of five or six miles, and might suggest to an American
traveller the rolling clouds that ascend from a burning prairie. The
banks and islands of the river are here enriched with sylvan vegeta-
tion of every variety of form and colour: the mighty baobab, each of
whose enormous arms would form the trunk of a large tree; the grace-
ful palm, with its crest of plume-like foliage; the silvery mohonams,
whose leaves sparkle in the sunshine like Achilles' shield; and the
nutsouri, abounding in clusters of pleasant scarlet fruit.

The Falls are bounded on three sides by densely-wooded ridges
300 or 400 feet in height, and may be likened to a flood of water
a thousand yards broad, suddenly hurled over a basaltic precipice
100 feet in depth, and then as suddenly compressed into a narrow
gully not more than fifteen or twenty yards across.

"If one imagines," says Dr. Livingstone,* "the Thames filled with
low tree-covered hills immediately below the Tunnel, extending as
far as Gravesend, the bed of black basaltic rock instead of London
mud, and a fissure made therein from one end of the Tunnel to the
other, down through the keystones of the arch, and prolonged from
the left end of the Tunnel through thirty miles of hills; then fancy
the Thames leaping bodily into the gulf, and forced there to change
its direction and flow from the right to the left bank, and then rush
boiling and roaring through the hills, he may have some idea of what
takes place at this the most wonderful sight I have witnessed in
Africa."

In descending into the narrow abyss already spoken of, the
* Livingstone, " Missionary Travels and Researches."

LAKE TANGANYIKA. '201

cataract breaks into five separate streams, which send up, to an ele-
vation of 200 or 300 feet, as many columns of luminous vapour —
pillars of shivering spray, and foam, and diamond sparkle, which in
the sunlight are gloriously wreathed with the rare hues of Iris.

" How profound

The gulf! and how the giant element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a vent
To the broad column which rolls on." — (Byron.)

In descending the Zambesi, we encounter the great river Kafue,
which flows from the north. Beyond the point of confluence the
country becomes opener, freer, and healthier, and we arrive at the
Portuguese town of Te'te.

About 200 miles to the north-west of Tete' lies the great lake of
freshwater, Niyanyizi-Nyassa, or "Lake of Stars," which stretches
far away to the north-west across Unyamuezi, or " The Land of the
Moon." It is rather shallow, sprinkled with numerous fairy islands,
and seems to be the remains of an ancient lake of much greater
extent. To the south-west a belt of fertile country separates it from
another lake called Shirwa, whence issues a beautiful river, tributary
to the Zambesi, impeded in its course by numerous rapids, but tra-
versing a level and unwholesome country.

At the same time (1856-58) that Livingstone accomplished these
great discoveries, Equatorial Africa was penetrated from the coast of
Zambesi by Captains Burton and Speke. These undaunted and in-
defatigable travellers, after having ascended the river Pangany for
a hundred and thirty miles, through a rich and cultivated but pesti-
ferous plain, arrived in February 1858 at Lake Tanganyika, of which
the natives had spoken to Livingstone, describing the country lying
to the westward of that mass of water as bare of wood, and solely
covered with marshy plains.

Lake Tanganyika lies 200 miles S.W. of the Victoria N'yanza,
between lat. 3° and 7° 45' S., at an elevation of 1844 feet above the

13 a

202 THE VICTORIA N'YANZA.

sea. The 30th meridian of east longitude strikes it in the centre.
Its length is 320 miles; but its breadth seldom exceeds 15 or 20,
and never 60 miles, so that it has been compared to a beach inclining
its head towards the north. To the north-east its shores are bold
and elevated; the water is fresh and deep. The country around it is
rich in pasture, where a thriving population breed numerous flocks
and herds.

About two hundred miles to the north-east of this lake, and 3740
feet above the sea-level, lies the vast basin of the Victoria N'yanza,
discovered by Captain Speke in 1859, and more fully explored by
Speke and Grant in 1862. Its northern shore runs nearly parallel
to the Equator, at a distance of about twenty miles from it; its
southern is in lat. 2° 46' S., and long. 33° E. It would seem at
some remote period to have occupied a much larger area than it does
at present, though even now it is supposed to measure 220 miles in
length and fully as much in breadth. Speke describes it as very
shallow. Fleets of canoes cover its surface ; but the natives on the
one shore never venture across to the other, and no intercommunica-
tion has ever existed between them. The surrounding landscapes
are of a pastoral character, genial and fertile, with quiet breadths of
rich meadow land, dotted by hundreds of white hornless cattle, and
scarcely distinguishable from our midland English scenery, were they
not interspersed with groves of the banana, the coffee-tree, and the
date-palm. At its north-eastern extremity, and probably connected
with it, lies a long narrow basin which the natives call Lake Baringo.
On the west it receives the tributary waters of the Kitangule', and
from the north throws off the various streams which unite in one
channel to form the famous Nile.

North-west from the N'yanza lies the little Luta N'zige, or Albert
Lake, discovered by Sir Samuel Baker in 1864 ; a long, narrow, and
shallow basin, surrounded by mountains 7000 feet high, about 230
miles in length, and 2488 feet above the sea-level, which apparently
serves as the great reservoir of the Nile.*

* Baker. " Basin of the Nile and Equatorial Africa," ii. 101-103.

HEAD WATERS OF THE NILE. 203

The discoveries of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Grant, and Baker,
seem to confirm the theory put forward by Sir Roderick Murchison,
that the central portion of South Africa is a large and elevated basin,
abounding in immense plains, in fertile lands, besprinkled with
numerous lakes fed by a thousand currents descending from the lofty
mountains that surrounded it. The rains, says Morin, cause these
lakes to overflow, and their waters, prevailing over every obstacle,
break through the barrier of the high lands, and descend into the
lower levels in a series of cataracts, to make their way eventually
towards the ocean. Livingstone has proved the truth of this felici-
tous induction as far as the Zambesi is concerned. The Nile also
issues from the lofty table-lands through deep and rocky ravines.
The great reservoir of the mysterious Egyptian river, the N'yanza
Spekii, may be accepted as the final confirmation of Sir Roderick's
theory, and the conspicuous feature of the African people. The
southern extremity of this lake stretches as far as the watershed
between North and South Africa. Starting from the same view-
point, Speke concludes that another great lake will be found under
the Equator, to the west of the Tanganyika and the N'yanza Victoria.
This will be the reservoir of the Congo. To establish this fact will
be to solve the last problem of the hydrographic system of Africa.*

The western region of the African equatorial zone has been but
superficially explored, and in this direction numerous hypotheses
remain to be verified. Lake Tchad, situated in Central Nigritia,
between Bornou on the west and the south-west, and the Kanem to
the north and east, was discovered in 1823 by Major Denham, and
explored by Dr. Earth in 1852. The latter traveller grows eloquent
in his description of the delicious perspective which he had supposed
it would offer to the gaze. He met with numerous slaves on their
way to cut grass for the horses. But instead of a lake, an immense
treeless plain stretched as far as the eye could reach. The herbage
became fresher and greener, thicker and taller; a marshy bottom,
describing a curve which projected here and receded there, embar-

* Morin, " Sources du Nil," in Annuaire Scientifique for 1864.

204 ABOUT LAKE TCHAD.

rassed his progress more and more ; and after a useless and pro-
longed struggle to escape from the quagmire, seeking in vain on the
horizon some mirror-like surface, he retraced his steps, dabbling in
the slimy water, and consoling himself with the reflection that at
least he had seen some traces of the " liquid element." But the
scene was strangely different when, in the winter of 1854—55, more
than one-half of the Ngornou was destroyed by the inundation ; and
to the south of that town lay a deep sea, swallowing up the whole
plain even to the village of Koukiya ! The lower stratum of the
soil, composed of limestone, appeared to have given way in the
preceding year, and had lowered the shore of the lake several yards ;
hence the inundation. But apart from this evidently exceptional
geological catastrophe, the character of the Tchad is clearly that of an
immense lagoon whose borders change every month, and of which it
is consequently impossible to lay down any strictly accurate map.*

Lake Tchad lies between lat. 12° 30' and 14° 30' N., long. 13°
and 15° 30' S. Its length varies from two hundred to three hundred
miles, according to the amount of rainfall and similar circumstances ;
at its broadest it measures one hundred and seventy miles ; and it
has an elevation of eight hundred feet above the sea-level. The
actual margin of its waters is lined by a deep fence of papyrus and
tall reeds, from ten to fourteen feet high. Its islands are densely
peopled. Fish and water-fowl abound, and not less do crocodiles and
hippopotami. The lake has no outlet, but receives several rivers, of
which the Waube and the Shari are the most notable.

The country watered by the Niger is also broken up by vast
plains which, fertile and glowing in the rainy season, are scorched
and withered by the summer heats. The famous port of Kabara,
not far from Timbuktu, is several miles from the river, and only
accessible for five months in the year at the epoch of the great rains.

Beyond this belt of vegetation, this girdle of fertility, Nature
wears a sombre aspect — the stony look of a corpse ; for the immense
Desert of the Sahara begins. The transition from the one region to
* Dr. Earth, " Travels and Discoveries in Central Africa " (London, 1857-68).

THE CHARM OF CONTRAST. 205

the other, from the land of plenty to the land of want and famine,
from the land of bright lakes, and copious streams, and green pastures,
to the land of rocky heights and barren sandy wastes, is as startling
as the change which sometimes occurs in human life — the change of
a moment, from bustling and exuberant happiness to profound sorrow.
It is such contrasts, however, that enable us fully to appreciate the
beauty and wealth of Nature.

" The scorching winds' from arid deserts borne,"

teach us to prize the balmy breath of the " sweet south " that
wanders " o'er a bank of violets." Fresh from the dreary Sahara
plain, burnt and scathed by a Tropic sun, we can feel all the loveli-
ness of the woodland and the leafy vale, of each

" Melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless."

Tims, in the material world as in the moral and intellectual, the law
of compensation prevails, and the wayfarer in the Desert of Life may
cheer himself with the recollection that in due time the silence
will be succeeded by music, the desolation by beauty, and the
wilderness by

" Verdurous glooms, and winding mossy ways."

CHAPTER II

DESERTS OF THE NEW WORLD : PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, LLANOS.

THEY who study the philosophy of history, of which men talk so
much, and know so little ; they who seek in the general laws of
nature and the physical economy of the globe an explanation of its
ethnological phenomena, may find, it seems to me, a curious subject
for investigation in the singular destiny of the New World. They
will have to ascertain by what concurrence of circumstances the two

206 WESTWARD COURSE OF CIVILIZATION.

Americas, separated from us by an immensity of waters, and revealed
to the world of the East but some four centuries ago, shall have
traversed in so brief a period the successive phases of conquest,
colonization, and emancipation ; why European emigration was
directed thitherward at the very beginning, and thitherward continues
still to flow from every quarter ; finally, by what tacit and unani-
mous agreement this New World has become the adopted country of
all the proscribed and disinherited of the Old ; while almost the
entire area of the African continent, which is so much more readily
accessible, is scarcely less favoured in its climatic conditions, and
upon which the white race has rested, from the remotest antiquity, its
political institutions, its arts, and its industry, has remained unin-
fluenced by the advancing tide of civilization.

I limit myself to indicating this problem, which, however, it is
not within my present province to examine, but which naturally
suggests itself when we think of the swift development undergone by
the European societies planted on the American continent — when we
remember how rapidly they are narrowing the area of the desert and
the wilderness. At the epoch of the discovery of the New World it
was one vast desolation, with the exception of Mexico and Peru ; and
these were but the seats of a civilization which seemed to have passed
without transition from infancy to old age, from vigour to decrepi-
tude, and which crumbled into dust under the pitiless blows of the
Spanish conquerors. Neither Cortez nor Pizarro would have over-
thrown a great empire with a handful of foot-soldiers and men-at-
arms, a squadron or two of horse, and a few unwieldy guns, had not
the Colossus already nodded to its fall, had not the Column been
hollow at the base. But soon the European nations shared among
themselves this immense country and the neighbouring islands.
The Slave race, whose destiny it seemed to be to reign among
the polar ice and snow, long contented itself with the inclement
and inhospitable region of the extreme north-west, which it has
but recently surrendered to the United States Government. The
Anglo-Saxon race, in the northern continent, has seized the lion's

PROGRESS IN THE NEW WORLD. 209

share. It now holds between the two oceans, from the fifty-fifth to
the thirtieth parallels of north latitude, a fertile and life-breathing
territory, well fitted to be the cradle of great empires ; the flourish-
ing Confederation of Canada, the colony of British Columbia, and the
mighty republic of the United States. Virgin forests have fallen
before the restless axe of the hardy pioneer ; hundreds of populous
cities have risen as if by enchantment in districts haunted within the
memory of men by the bear and the wild buffalo ; a network of
railways spreads from the Atlantic almost to the base of the Rocky
Mountains ; crops of waving corn bloom over wide prairies that a
few years ago yielded only the tall grass and waving reed; the
aboriginal tribes of the Red Indians have melted away before the
impetuous tide of an ever-advancing civilization ; and the exhaustless
energies of our race have already raised in less than a century two
mighty empires on the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, destined to
a marvellous, a changeful, and doubtlessly a glorious history. And
both these empires have sprung from the loins of England, are
governed in the main by the same laws, hold the same religion, are
animated by the same aspiring and unwearied genius, and

" Speak the tongue

That Shakspeare spoke ; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held ; "

in everything, as we believe,

" Are sprung
Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold." *

Southward from the thirtieth parallel stretches the domain of the
Latin races, already mingled with and being absorbed by the Anglo-
Saxon, in Canada, California, and the Southern States of the Union.
Vast as this region is, for it comprehends all Central America and all
the Southern Continent, it is infinitely less prosperous, less powerful,
less peopled, than what we may call Saxon America. Mexico is a by-
word and a reproach for savage anarchy and murderous license.
Neither Chili, nor Peru, nor even Brazil approaches Canada in solid
power and the auspicious promise of future greatness. The Latin race

* Wordsworth, " Poetical Works ;" sonnet xvi., vol. iii., p. 61.
14

210 THE GREAT RIVER BASINS.

seems dwarfed and cowed by the neighbourhood of the energetic
Anglo-Saxon, is swiftly retiring before it in North America, and in
the course of centuries will probably be subjugated by it, even in the
southern division of the great Continent.

A considerable portion of South America, however, is uncultivated,
unpeopled, and but imperfectly explored. There the Desert re-appears
with —

" The pale, cold aspect of a wearied friend," *

under its most sharply defined forms and most impressive conditions.
The supremacy of the whites over the indigenous tribes is almost
nominal ; and if the latter are gradually dying out, the catastrophe,
in this instance, is due rather to their own lack of vigour, energy, and
capacity, than to the pressure of civilization.

However rapid may be the growth of population in North America,
however great the rapidity — -shall we say the avidity ? — of the
American squatters in their conquest and appropriation of the soil, the
Desert still occupies, principally in "the far West" and the North —
that is to say, in the angle comprised between the line of the great
lakes and the Rocky Mountains — an area almost equal to the whole
of Continental Europe. There we find, as Mr. Johnstone points out,
the largest plains in the world. One such, for example, is that
immense basin which extends from the mouths of the Mackenzie, in
the icy Arctic Sea, even to the remote Delta of the Mississippi, and
from the huge chain of the Rocky Mountains, with their piny recesses
"and snowy peaks, to the less rugged and more pastoral range of the
Alleghanies; a total area of 4,400,000,000 square yards (3,245,000
square miles). A table-land of gentle elevation, nowhere above 1500
feet, and rarely more than 700 feet high, separates this territory into
two secondary basins.

The north-east, which pours its waters into the Arctic Ocean,
Hudson's Bay, and through the Canadian lakes and River St. Law-
rence, into the Atlantic ; and,

* Taylor, " Isaac Comnenus," Poetical Works, ii. 216.

PRAIRIES OF NORTH AMERICA. 211

The south basin, of the Missouri-Mississippi, whose mighty waters
flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

It is in the latter that the traveller encounters the great grassy
plains of the Prairies or Savannahs which are so remarkable a feature
of North America, and which chiefly lie along the western bank of
the Mississippi. " There are no prairies," says Sir J. Eichardson, " to
the north of Peace River, and the level lands which border the Rocky
Mountains do not extend beyond the Great Salt Lake."

Under so wide a range of latitude the plain necessarily embraces a
great variety of soil, climate, and productions ; but being almost in a
state of nature, it is characterized in its central and southern parts by
interminable grassy savannahs and enormous forests, and in the far
north by deserts not less dreary than those of Siberia.*

Southward, a bare sandy waste, 400 or 500 miles wide, skirts
the base of the Rocky Mountains to the forty-first parallel of north
latitude. The dry plains of Texas and the upper region of the
Arkansas have all the features of Asiatic table-lands ; further to the
north, the lifeless, treeless steppes on the high grounds of the far
West are burnt up in summer, and frozen in winter by biting blasts
from the Rocky Mountains. Towards the Mississippi the soil improves,
but its delta is a labyrinth of streams, and lakes, and dense brushwood,
and the rank marshes at its mouth cover an area of 35,000 square
miles. " There are also," says Mrs. Somerville, " large tracts 01
forest and saline ground, especially the Grand Saline between the
rivers Arkansas and Neseikelongo, which is often covered two or three
inches deep with salt, like a fall of snow. All the cultivation on the
right bank of the river is along the Gulf of Mexico and in the adjacent
provinces, and is entirely tropical, consisting of sugar-cane, cotton, and
indigo. The prairies, so characteristic of Xorth America, then
begin."

And what are these prairies ?

Leagues upon leagues of rolling meadow-land, sometimes as level as
an English pasture, always as boundless, apparently, as the sea; richly
* Mrs. Soiucrvillc, " Physical Geography," i. 259, et seg.

212 THE " MAUVAISES-TERRES " OF NEBRASKA.

covered with long rank grass of tender green, and lighted up by
flowers of the liliaceous kind which scent the air with fragrance.
Here and there, in the north, occur clumps of oak and black walnut:
in the south, groups of tulip, and cotton, and magnolia trees. Occa-
sionally the monotonous scene is relieved by a lazy brook, whose
banks bloom with a brilliant mass of azaleas, kalmias, rhododendrons,
and andromedas ; the low howl of the cayeute, or prairie dog, breaks
the silence ; and life is given to the landscape by the frequent appear-
ance of herds of bison, deer, and wild horses. At times, in the
remote districts, the prairie wolves will be seen in some leafy covert
awaiting the approach of a victim ; or flights of birds darken the air,
and tempt the traveller with the promise of an abundant provision.

On the right bank of the Missouri, and on the borders of the White
River, in the territory of Nebraska, lies a dreary desert valley, some
30 feet deep, which the French expressively designate les Mauvaises-
Terres. It may be doubted whether the whole world offers a stranger
or a more impressive landscape. Here geology recognizes the vestiges of
an astonishing diluviaD labour, and it is impossible to venture a step
without striking one's foot against the fossil relics of vanished animals.

It is a kind of world apart, says an American writer ; a large
valley which seems to have been excavated, in the first place, by an
immense vertical out-throw, and then modelled by the prolonged and
incessant action of denu dating agents. With a mean breadth of 28,
and a total length of 90 miles, it develops itself in a westerly direction,
at the foot of the sombre mountain-chain known as the Black Hills.
On issuing from the immense, uniform, and monotonous prairie, the
traveller finds himself suddenly transported, after a descent of 100 to
200 feet, into a depression of the soil where rise a myriad of abrupt
rocks, irregular or prismatic, or like columns dressed with enormous
pyramids, and from 110 to 220 feet in height.

These natural towers are so multiplied over the surface of this
extraordinary region, that the roads wind through them in narrow
passages, and the labyrinth may be likened to the irregular streets
and narrow alleys of some mediaeval European city. Seen from afar,

VIEW OF THE " MAUVAISES-TERRES," NEBRASKA, U.S.

A CITY OF THE DEAD. 215

the interminable succession of rocks resembles the massive monuments
of antiquity; nor are turrets wanting, nor flying buttresses, nor grace-
ful arches, nor vaulted portals, groups of columns, fa9ades, and taper
spires. If at one place the eye lights upon the ruins of a feudal for-
tress, at another it surveys the graceful ensemble of a Saracenic
mosque. Or you might almost say, in the distance, that it is a fan-
tastic " city of the dead " which looms before you ; or the gigantic
palace of a race of unseen beings, fashioned by the power of spell
and enchantment. And if the illusion vanishes when, descending
from the heights, you penetrate into the mazes of this Dcedalian
marvel, the reality is not less calculated to inspire you with astonish-
ment, and the imagination remains confused before this wild, this
grand, yet ominous freak of Nature — ominous, for the place seems
like a colossal Golgotha, and the rocks may be the monuments conse-
crated by invisible hands to the things and creatures, the life and
majesty, of a forgotten Past !

A spectacle unexpected by the European traveller comes at intervals
to heighten and confirm the illusion. Here and there are reared con-
structions of manifest human work, but of a truly primitive character.
They consist of four poles, supporting a rude platform of wicker.
Mount any adjacent hillock, and you will see corpses and human
skeletons outstretched upon the platform. These constructions are,
in truth, the burial-places of the Sioux Indians, who wander still in
the neighbouring districts.

The whole coast of the Mexican Gulf, from the Pearl River east-
ward, through Alabama and a great part of Florida, is occupied by
the so-called "pine barrens," which extend far into the interior.
These "vast monotonous tracts of sand, covered with forests of
gigantic pine trees," are not less a characteristic feature of North
America than the " rolling prairies." They are not limited to this
part of the United States, but occur to a great extent in Virginia,
North Carolina, and elsewhere. Tennessee and Kentucky, though the
plough has passed over extensive areas, still possess large forests, and
the Ohio flows for hundreds of miles among patriarchal trees, with a

216 THE ROLLING PRAIRIES.

rich undergrowth of azaleas, rhododendrons, and other beautiful shrubs,
bound together in chains of flowers by creeping plants. When
America was discovered, one mass of unbroken forest spread over the
mainland, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Canadian Lakes to
the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic Ocean it crossed the Alle-
ghany Mountains, and spread in gloom and grandeur over the valley
of the Mississippi — an ocean of vegetation swelling and sinking for
upwards of one million of square miles.

" Then all the broad and boundless mainland lav,

Cooled by the interminable wood, that frowned

O'er mound and vale, where never summer ray

Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his way

Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild ;

Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms gay,

Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild,
Within the shaggy arms of that dark forest smiled." *

Prairies which, in their general aspect, resemble those of the
Missouri and the Mississippi, are found to the east and west of the
American Desert, in Arrisona, in Texas, in California, and various pro-
vinces of Mexico. Vegetation, however, nevertheless differs according
to the conditions of each region, and the alternatives of deluging rains
and extreme dryness become more and more conspicuous as we ap-
proach the Equator. Nevertheless — and this, perhaps, is the feature
most distinctive of the Prairies, or Savannahs, from the Pampas and
Llanos — the dryness is never sufficiently severe in the former to
destroy vegetation, as is the case in the latter. But the herbs and
grasses often grow so dry in summer that the most trivial accident —
such as a lighted match flung carelessly away, or the ashes dropped
from a hunter's pipe — will kindle the most awful conflagrations, and
the flames will spread devouringly over leagues of open ground, con-
suming trees and shrubs, and burning to death the cattle or wild
animals which haply fall within their range. With the crackling,
hissing, seething noises of the fire mingle the groans of the perishing
beasts, while huge clouds of smoke roll before the wind, like the
* W. C. Bryant, " Poetical Works."

14 a

THE LAND OF FEAli. 219

billows of a wind-swept ocean, and live tongues of flame ever and
anon light up the terrible scene with lurid splendour. These
" Prairie-fires " are sometimes kindled in revenge by the Indians,
and occasionally the settlers resort to this dangerous but summary
method of clearing the encumbered ground. However caused, the
spectacle is one of infinite grandeur, which might have furnished
Dante with a fresh image of horror for his " Inferno."

From the fortieth to the thirty-fifth parallels of north latitude the
Desert appears in North America under a form more like the " seas
of sand " of Africa and Arabia ; the vast areas of the Llanos and the
Pampas. These two words are nearly synonymous. They are used
to designate wide level plains, inundated and fertile in the rainy
season, but in the hot season stripped by the sun's rays of every
apparent trace of vegetation. Between the Californian Alps and the
Rio-Colorado withers a grand, sandy, and utterly barren plain, which
touches the northern borders of La Sonora. Somewhat further to the
east extends the Llano-Estacado, which eventually merges into the
American Desert. But the most considerable Pampas and Llanos
belong to South America. Of these, the most arid and the most
desolate — which most vividly recall the rainless deserts of the Old
World — are the Pampa of Atacama, between the Andes and the
Pacific, with Taracapa on the north, and Copiapo on the south ; that
of Sechura, which forms a great portion of the littoral of the Peruvian
department of Truxillo ; and that of Pernambuco, which forms the
major part of the plateau north-east of Brazil.

These Deserts, no less than those of Africa and Arabia, merit the
name of the "Land of Fear."

Their surface is as smooth as that of the calm sea, and bounded
only by the circular line of the horizon ; the eye frequently ranges
over a space of twenty-five square miles without meeting a clump of
trees on which to rest ; nor is the monotony relieved by the slightest
undulation of the soil. Everywhere is nothingness, silence, desolation,
death. More than one wayfarer has never escaped from their mazy
solitudes. Fatigue, hunger, thirst, decimate the caravans which under-

220 LIFE OF THE LLANEKO.

take to traverse them, and the track is marked by whitened skeletons,
whose flesh has been devoured by vultures, and which unknown
hands have piled up and arranged with a ghastly symmetry of order.

However, since the discovery of America, certain portions of the
Llanos have become habitable. Towns have risen at intervals on
the banks of the rivers which water them. These centres of popula-
tion are connected with each other by huts of reeds, covered with
ox-hides, and separated by about a day's march. Here reside the
Llaneros, to whose charge are intrusted the innumerable herds of cattle,
horses, and mules, which subsist on the pasturage of the Steppes.

The inhabitants of the Llanos possess characteristics as marked as
those of their plains. The hatos wherein they assemble are situated
at long distances apart ; but the true home of the llanero, a bold
and skilful horseman, is his saddle. Firmly seated on his rapid
steed, he gallops at will across the trackless plain, and combining the
two extremes of solitude and activity, confines his half-savage exist-
ence to the custody or the ownership of his herds of horses and
cattle. Thus, born in the Llanos like his father, a descendant of the
first Spanish settlers, he has no idea of any other country than his
southern pastures, of any other career than his dreamy pastoral life.
Clothed in a picturesque costume, half Spanish, half Indian ; his
machete (or cutlass) thrust through a belt of leather, his poncho (a
chequered mantle) over his shoulder, and the redoubtable lasso
suspended in a coil to his saddle-bow ; armed with the clumsy lance,
which serves to drive his herd before him, and, at need, to vindicate
its owner's courage in some partisan affray ; the llanero, never think-
ing of the past, never dreaming of the future, on the alert in every
danger, and accustomed to the severest privations, enjoys with intoxi-
cation the rude happiness of his wild freedom.

The Llanos of Venezuela occupy a superficial area, estimated, ac-
cording to Humboldt, at 153,000 square miles, between the deltas of
the Orinoco and the river Coqueta. They are as flat as the surface
of the sea, and covered with long rank grass. You might travel over
the dreary level for 1100 miles from the delta of the Orinoco to the

CHARACTER OF THE STEPPES. 223

foot of the Andes of Pasto, and frequently not encounter an eminence
a foot high in 270 square miles. Their length is twice that of their
breadth ; and as the wind blows constantly from the east, the climate
is the more ardent the further west. " These Steppes, for the most
part," says Mrs. Somerville,* " are destitute of trees or bushes, yet
in some places they are dotted with the mauritia and other palms."
Flat as they are, two kinds of inequalities will sometimes occur : one
consists of banks or shoals of grit or compact limestone, five or six
feet high, perfectly level for several leagues, and imperceptible except
on their edges; the other inequality can only be detected by the
barometer or levelling instruments ; it is called a Mesa, and is a
gentle knoll swelling very gradually to an elevation of a few fathoms.
Yet slight as is this altitude; a Mesa forms the watershed from south-
west to north-east, between the affluents of the Orinoco and the
streams flowing to the northern coast of Terra Firma. In the wet
season, from April to the end of October, the tropical rains pour down
in torrents, and hundreds of square miles of the Llanos are inundated
by the overflow of the rivers. In the hollows the water is sometimes
twelve feet deep, and such numbers of horses and other animals
perish, that the ground smells strongly of musk, an odour peculiar to
many quadrupeds. " From the flatness of the country, too, the
waters of some affluents of the Orinoco are driven backwards by the
floods of that river, especially when aided by the wind, and form
temporary lakes. When the waters subside, these Steppes, manured by
the sediment, are mantled with verdure, and produce ananas, while
occasional groups of fan palm-trees and mimosas skirt the rivers.
When the dry weather returns, the grass is burnt to powder ; the air
is filled with dust raised by currents occasioned by difference of tem-
perature, even when there is no wind. If by any accident a spark of fire
falls on the scorched plains, a conflagration spreads from river to river,
destroying every animal, and leaves the clayey soil sterile for years,
till vicissitudes of weather crumble the brick-like surface into earth."
When this takes place, the rending of the indurated soil is sudden
* Mrs. Somerville, " Physical Geography," i. 79.

224 DROUGHT AND DESOLATION.

and violent, as if from the shock of an earthquake. If at such a time
two opposing currents of air, whose conflict produces a rotatory motion,
come in contact with the surface of the earth, the Llanos assume a
strange and singular aspect. Like cone-shaped clouds, whose ex-
tremities seem to touch, the ground, the sand rises through the
rarefied air in the electrically-charged centre of the whirling current ;
like the sand-spouts of the Saharan Desert, or the waterspouts which
formerly were the awe and dread of the mariner. Then does the
lowering sky cast a "dim uncertain light," like a November fog in
London, on the desolate plain. The horizon draws suddenly nearer;
the Steppe seems to contract, and a nameless terror seizes the heart
of the wanderer. The hot dusty air increases in suffocating heat ;
and the east wind, blowing over the long-heated soil, yields no re-
freshment, but rather oppresses with its burning glow. The pools,
hitherto protected from evaporation by the yellow fading branches of
the fan palm, begin to disappear. As in the north the animals grow
torpid with the mortal cold, so under the influence of the parching
drought the boa and the crocodile fall asleep, buried deeply in the dry
mud. Everywhere the drought prevails, and yet everywhere the
refracted rays of light delude the traveller with the image of gleaming
lakes and rushing rivers. The distant palm bush hovers above the
ground like a spectre, apparently raised by the influence of the con-
tact of unequally heated, and, therefore, unequally dense strata of air.
Half hidden by the rolling clouds of dust, restless with the pangs of
thirst and hunger, the horses and cattle roam around, the cattle dis-
mally lowing, and the horses stretching out their long necks and
snuffing the wind, in the hope some moister current may betray the
neighbourhood of a not wholly failing pool. More sagacious and
astute, the wary mule seeks a different mode of alleviating his thirst.
Under its prickly envelope the melon-cactus conceals a watery .pith.
The mule first strikes the prickles aside with his fore-feet, and then
cautiously approaches his lips to the plant and drinks the cool juice.
But the experiment is not always without danger, and many animals
are lamed by the spines of the cactus.

A FAERY TRANSFORMATION. 225

When the overpowering heat of the day is followed by the cooler
temperature of the night, which is always of the same length in these
latitudes, even then the cattle can obtain no repose. Enormous bats
suck their blood like the fabled vampires during their sleep, or attach
themselves to their backs, causing festering wounds in which mos-
quitoes, horse-flies, and a host of stinging insects, niche themselves.
Thus the animals lead a weary life during the hot season. But at
length, after the long drought and the parching glow, comes the
welcome rain ! Then takes place a transformation such as the fancy
of the poet never surpassed or equalled. The deep blue of the hitherto
unclouded sky grows lighter ; the dark space in the constellation of
the Southern Cross is hardly distinguishable at night ; the soft phos-
phorescent lustre of the so-called Magellanic clouds " fades, fades, and
falls away;" even the stars in Aquila and Ophiucus in the zenith
beam with a tremulous and less planetary radiance. And lo, yonder
in the south, a single cloud, like the peak of some remote mountain,
soars perpendicularly from the horizon. Gradually the gathering
vapours fold over the sky. Hark ! The thunder is pealing in the
distance, and louder and nearer come its awful reverberation. It
heralds the life-restoring rain ! Scarcely has the genial moisture
refreshened earth, before a blessed fragrance breathes from the pre-
viously barren Steppe, and its nakedness is clothed upon with the
bloom and beauty of a thousand grasses. The herbaceous mimosas,
with renewed sensibility to the influence of light, open their drooping
leaves to greet the rising sun ; and the rosy-fingered morn is saluted
with a glad chorus of birds, and by the opening blossoms of the water-
plants. Now the horse bounds over the plain in keen ecstasy of
spirit, and the cattle grazes plentifully on the fresh green herbage.
Yet the new life is not without its peril. Anguis latet in herbd.
Among the tall thick grass lurks the spotted jaguar, the tiger of the
New World, and measures carefully the distance that separates him
from his unsuspecting victim.

Sometimes (so say the natives) the moistened clay on the margin
of the swamps will blister and swell slowly into a kind of mound.

15

226 VIOLENT INUNDATIONS.

until, with a violent noise, like the outbreak of a small mud volcano,
the accumulated earth is cast high into the air. The spectator who
comprehends the purport of this strange scene immediately retreats,
for he knows that the birth of the portentous travail will be a
gigantic water-snake or huge crocodile roused from its torpidity.

The rivers which bound the plain to the south — the Arauca, the
Apure, and the Pajara — gradually swell, and now Nature compels the
same animals, which in the first half of the year panted with thirst
on the dry and dusty soil, to adopt an amphibious life. A portion
of the Steppe now assumes the aspect of a vast inland sea.* The
brood mares retire with their foals to the more elevated banks, which
rise like islands above the watery expanse. Every day the dry
space grows smaller. It is a miniature reproduction of the Noachian
Deluge. The animals, crowded together, swim about for hours in
quest of other pasture, and feed sparingly on the tops of the flowering
grasses that spring above the seething surface of the turbid waters.
Many foals are drowned, and many are surprised by the crocodiles,
killed by a blow from their powerful tails, and devoured. It is no
uncommon thing to see the marks of these monsters' cruel teeth on
the legs of horses and cattle which have narrowly escaped from their
blood-thirsty jaws. Such a sight reminds the thoughtful observer of
that capability of adaptation to the most varied circumstances with
which the all-powerful Creator has endowed certain animals and
plants, f

The Pampas of Perriambuco and Buenos Ayres have three times
the superficial area of the Llanos of Venezuela. So great is their
extent, that while forests of palms border them on the north, they are
covered with snow in the south, during a great part of the year, like
the northern Steppes of Tartary. According to the climatic divisions
generally adopted, these regions belong to the Temperate Zone ; but
in truth they comprehend a great variety of climates. Their- char-

* These inundations are nowhere more extensive than in the network of rivers formed
by the Apure, the Araclmna, the Pajara, the Arauca, and the Cabuliare. Large vessels
eail across the country over the Steppe for forty or fifty miles.

f Humboldt, " Ansichten der Natur," i.. Steppes and Deserts.

THE SOLITARY PAMPAS. 227

acter is not less grand or original than that of the Llanos which
precede them. " The Pampas," says an American writer, " surpass
in majesty all the marvels of the new continent, and yet they astonish
the traveller by the air of abandonment and sadness which is
impressed upon them, especially in the low country watered by the
Plata. Traces of life are there infrequent ; still rarer are the objects
which attract attention. Here, at the bottom of a crevasse, a cactus
conceals its head bristling with spines ; there, a solitary tree rises
majestically toward heaven. Sometimes, upon the plain, the eye
discovers the monstrous skeleton of an animal which nourished in
those remote times when the Alps still slept in the depths of ocean,
and dreamed not of blending^ their snow-burdened peaks with the
clouds. The Pampas serve as the burial-place for races of gigantic
men, now extinct, who seem to issue from their silent graves in
testimony to the former being of vanished generations, and to bear
witness to the Creator of all things. Above your head, and far away
in the azure of heaven, you perceive a black point ; it is a condor
describing slowly its sinister circles. In the 'distance passes and
disappears the ungainly figure of an ostrich. The inexpressible
charm of these solitudes is their absolute freedom. And while
traversing them the wayfarer comprehends the love with which
they inspire the Indian, whose hope it is to meet beyond this
world with yet vaster horizons for the indulgence of his wandering
tastes."

At the southern extremity of South America spreads a sterile
plain, sown with pebbles and blocks of porphyry : it is Patagonia.
As we retrace our steps towards the north, the soil rises before us in
terrace after terrace, till it reaches the base of the Cordilleras. In the
northern districts the pebbly soil gives place to verdant meadows,
where the Patagonians breed numerous herds of horses and cattle.
Water is wanting in this country. The rains are rare, and the dry
seasons very prolonged. The summer heat is overwhelming; in
winter violent winds sweep the Savannahs, which are covered with
nocturnal frosts. Under such climatic influences the soil produces

228 A RAINLESS REGION.

only a dry coarse grass. In the interior a few beeches and cacti are
met with, and then broad swamps, fringed with reeds and rushes.
In the spring a mantle of clover spreads over the earth, but only to
be withered up by the first heats of summer.

Along the banks of the Rio Negro the Pampas of Buenos Ayres
stretch from the coast of the Atlantic to the foot of the Andes. On
a considerable portion of this vast area marshes of salt water encroach
— a phenomenon all the more curious because the salt lies only on
the surface, and all the wells artificially excavated yield fresh water.
During the rains the low grounds are flooded ; but as soon as the sun
has dried up the plain, it is clothed in rich pasturage, while the
elevated table-lands are dry and withered. There, too, the dryness
is often attended with disastrous results. From 1827 to 1830, as
Mr. Darwin records, not a drop of water fell ; all traces of vegetation
disappeared ; the rivers ran dry, and the herds perished in incalculable
numbers ; in the single province of Buenos Ayres, the loss was
estimated at more than a million head of cattle.

To the north of -the Rio Salado, at the portals of the Andes, the
country assumes a look of implacable desolation ; no winds ever
agitate the lower strata of the atmosphere. The water-courses which
descend from the mountains lose themselves in the sand ; salt marshes,
whence the very birds hold aloof, alone alternate with a soil every-
where intersected by crevices. The district of the Pampas which
stretches northward to the spurs of the Andes consists of a sandy soil,
free from salt, but wholly unproductive. These solitudes, however,
are ploughed by running streams, none of which communicate with
the sea. They descend from the Andes, traverse the Pampas from
east to west, and empty themselves into the saline lakes. Somewhat
further to the north, and nearer the Equator, lies an almost unknown
region of salt — a region of indescribable gloom, where neither tree, nor
bush, nor blade of emerald grass, delights the eye. Eighteen months
frequently elapse in this land of desolation, worthy of being one of
the circles in Dante's " Inferno," without the cheering sound of a
shower of rain, and when at length it arrives, it splits the rocks of

THE " DESPOBLADO " OF THE ANDES. 229

salt and melts them into wide pools of brackish mud. As soon as
the sun has absorbed the excessive humidity of the soil, myriads of
salt crystals glitter on the surface, and convert the Desert into one
immense mirror.

To the north-west of La Plata extends a desert of very different
character — the Despoblado, or uninhabited land, a plateau of the
Andes, rising some 4200 feet above the level of the sea. This desert
is cloven into two portions by a deep valley, bordered with sharp
rocks, which affords the only practicable route from Bolivia to Buenos
Ayres. Winter, in this sombre world within a world, is a time of
horror, when the spirit of Desolation goes to and fro in wrath unchained.
Yet even here humanity drags about the fetters of existence. The
traveller occasionally alights upon the wretched huts where the
unfortunate descendants of the ancient Peruvians linger through life.
Their wealth consists in a few llamas. Their occupation, in hunting
the alpaca, the guanaco, and the chinchilla ; in filtering the river sands
for scanty grains of gold ; in collecting salt, and disposing of it to the
inhabitants of the nearest towns.

" The aspect of the Puna, or Despoblado," says Von Tschudi,* " is
singularly monotonous and dreary. The expansive levels are scantily
covered with grasses of a yellowish-brown hue, and are never enlivened
by fresh-looking verdure. Here and there, at distant intervals, may
be seen a few stunted Quenera trees, -f- or large patches of ground
covered with the Ratanbia shrub.:}: Both are used by the Indians as
fuel, and for roofing their huts. The cold climate and sterile soil are
formidable impediments to agriculture. Only one plant is cultivated
in these regions with any degree of success. It is the maca, a
tuberous root grown like the potato, and, like it, used as an article of
food. In many of the Puna districts it constitutes the principal
sustenance of the inhabitants. It has an agreeable and somewhat
sweetish flavour, and when boiled in milk it tastes like the chest-
nut."

* Dr. I. Von Tschudi, " Travels in Peru " (London, 1847), pp. 305, 306.
t Polylepis racemosa. I Krameria triandria.

230 DESCRIPTION OF THE PAMPERO.

The most imposing spectacle presented by the Deserts of South
America is that of their frequent hurricanes. As the Simoom to
the Sahara, so is the Pampero to the Pampas. Its approach is fore-
told by signs which the native's experienced eye readily recognizes.
All at once the air seems stricken motionless, and over the solitude
broods a solemn silence. A cloud white and light as snow — a cloud
" no bigger than a man's hand " — rises in the south-west. It
advances, and as it advances enlarges its proportions. Other clouds
appear, and all gather into one imposing mass. The dust rises and
whirls round in thick columns suspended between heaven and earth.
Lower and lower descend the congregated vapours, until they envelop
the earth in a funeral shroud, whose folds the hurricane incessantly
agitates, and which the forked lightnings seem to rend in fragments.
Suffocating gusts of a fiery wind traverse space. And now the sudden
tempest stoops down from the summit of the Andes, and sweeps the
Savannah with resistless fury. Enormous masses of sand, upgathered
by the rafale, obscure the clearness of day; at noon the earth is
covered with a darkness that may be felt. The thunder mingles its
roar with the strident voices of the storm. All that lives, all that
breathes, is at the mercy of the unchained elements, which are
as pitiless in their wrath as a roused people. Thousands of animals
perish in the Savannahs ; and prostrate, with his face to the earth,
man tremblingly awaits the expiring breath of the grand convulsion !

The horses and cattle of Europe are replaced in the Pampas of
South America by the herds of guanacos and llamas which covered
them at the epocfi of the Spanish conquest. Their owners, descendants
of the Spaniards intermingled with the native races, possess many of
the characteristics of the Arab.

Like the llanero of Venezuela, the guacho of the Pampas realizes
the idea of the ancient centaur ; and from the throne of his saddle,
to which hangs the inseparable lasso, he surveys the plains where he
is lord -and king with the fiery glance of a free and independent spirit.
He owes scant allegiance to any established authority, and under the
blue sky of heaven enjoys the blessings of uncontrolled freedom.

A CONTINENTAL EQUILIBRIUM. 231

And what to him the fever and turmoil of civilization, when, mounted
on his noble steed, he can roam at will, with none to say him nay,
over leagues and leagues of grassy prairies !

CHAPTER IIL

THE AUSTRALIAN INTERIOR.

GEOGRAPHERS have given the name of the "fifth division of the
globe" to that immense archipelago, or rather, that mass of archi-
pelagoes which remote geological convulsions have elevated in the
Pacific Ocean, between the three continents, Asia, Africa, and Ame-
rica, and whose existence was first revealed to the Western World by
the maritime explorations of the Portuguese and the Dutch, in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From the epoch when these
enterprises commenced, the spherical figure of the earth was established
beyond dispute ; and after the discovery of America, it became only
reasonable to suppose that, in virtue of a law without which our
planet could not have maintained its equilibrium in space, there must
exist a continent intended to balance those of the Northern Hemi-
sphere. But for many years all the researches of intrepid navigator?
only led them to the shores of small islands and islets, not a few of
which were barren, uninhabited, and swept by the winds of ocean;
while others, girdled with palms, enriched with vegetation, and
blessed by bland and genial airs, seemed to realize the poetical
idea of the Fortunate Islands,

" Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea."
At length, however, by directing their investigations towards the
less submerged region of the Indian Ocean, and by sailing beyond
the great eastern islands which seem to have been formerly connected
with the Indian Peninsula, the Portuguese mariners were the first to
descry a long line of coast which they did not doubt was that of an

•232 TERRA AUSTRALIS INCOGNITA.

Austral Continent, whose satellites, so to speak, were the previously
discovered islands. This supposed continent is still represented in the
old maps published at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning
of the eighteenth centuries, by a mass of ill-defined contours, with this
indication : Terra Australis incognita. The succeeding voyages of
Carpenter, Nuyts, Tasman, and the illustrious Cook, proved that this
Austral or Southern Land was in effect a continent, or, at least, an
island of extraordinary dimensions, whose coasts alone — and these
but a small extent inland — were inhabited by miserable tribes, with
black skin, and hideous features, placed at the extreme limit which
separates man from the brute. The Dutch navigators, who had first
determined the principal outlines of this continent, named it New
Holland, but after it passed into the hands of England, it received,
as it still preserves, the appellation of Australia.

Take away from this Australian Continent its fertile districts
in the south-east, where have sprung up and developed with amazing
rapidity the flourishing colonies of New South "Wales, Victoria, and
Queensland, and what remains? A country entirely wild, and, one
might almost venture to say, an immense Desert. The gloomy aspect
and the barrenness of its northern shores, with few exceptions, had
repulsed the early Portuguese and Dutch navigators, who little sus-
pected what splendid treasures were hidden among its auriferous sands
and rocks. They saw but insufficient rivers and scanty vegetation,
and went no further.

None of the rivers of New Holland are navigable to any great
distance from their mouths. The want of water is severely felt in
the interior, where a treeless desert of sand, swamps, and jungle is
intersected by streams called "creeks," which are dry for the greater
portion of the year; yet a belief long prevailed that a large sea or
fresh-water lake occupied the centre — a belief founded partly on the
nature of the soil, and partly on the circumstance that all the rivers
that flow into the sea on the northern coast, between the Gulf of
Van Diemen and Carpentaria, converge towards their sources, as if
they served for drains to some large body of water.

AUSTRALIAN LANDSCAPE.

EXPLORATION IX AUSTRALIA. 235

The eastern side of the country is traversed by a great range of
thinly timbered down, clothed with grasses and herbage, and rising
to an elevation of 3500 feet. These are known as the Blue Moun-
tains, and stretch from north to south over nearly thirty degrees of
latitude, from Cape York to Cape Wilson. All their western slopes
descend gradually towards the interior, until they are lost in the vast
desert plain of the interior.

The streams which flow in this direction either pour their waters
into the great rivers, such as the Darling and the Murray, which has
an internal navigation of 1800 miles, or lose themselves in the
marshes and lakes, which the great summer heats periodically diy up.

Another chain of mountains stretches from south to north along
the western coast of Australia, from Point d'Entrecasteaux to Murchi-
son River. A third chain, in the northern region, runs from east to
west, between Camden Harbour and the Gulf of Carpentaria. The
interior of the country is, as I have already indicated, in all proba-
bility an immense plain, thinly sown with trees of the two families of
Acacise and Eucalypti, and tenanted by the wombat and the
kangai-oo.

Over this vast portion of Australia, which still remains a blank
upon the map, numerous expeditions of discovery have been attempted
since the earliest days of European colonization. Hardy pioneers —
those men who are the real, but obscure, and speedily forgotten
founders of empires — have sacrificed their lives in the endeavour to
lay down a track across the great' island-continent from north to south.
Anglo-Saxon enterprise no sooner found itself securely planted on the
sea-coast, than it felt that behind it lay a continent to acquire, and
the indomitable instinct of the race bade it continue its mission of
colonization. During the last quarter of a century, the colonial
governments have liberally encouraged these explorations, and the
annals of Australian discovery have been illuminated by the names of
Eyre (1840), Sturt (1845), Leichardt (1846-48), Kennedy (1848),
and M'Douall Stuart (1858—62), second to none among our English
discoverers in patience, resolution, and heroic daring.

238 EXPEDITION OF BURKE AND WILLS

The problem remained: to cross the central wilderness of Aus-
tralia, and prove the possibility of a passage from the southern shores
to the northern, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. This
problem was finally solved, at no light cost, by the intrepid Burke
and energetic Wills.

On the 20th of April 1860, there set out from Melbourne, under
the auspices of the Government of Victoria, a small troop of gallant
explorers, under the immediate direction of Robert O'Hara Burke, a
man well-fitted for his post: born in the county of Gal way in 1821,
after having served as captain in a Hungarian regiment, he had
discharged for several years the duties of inspector of a body of the
colonial police.

The second in command was a brave young Englishman, William
John Wills, twenty-six years of age, an assistant in the Observatory
at Melbourne.

The expedition consisted of eighteen persons, and was provided
with horses, camels which had been expressly imported from Arabia,
waggons, all kinds of scientific instruments, and the necessary amount
of stores and provisions for a protracted journey.

Cooper's Creek, which marked about a third of the whole dis-
tance, was fixed upon as place of rendezvous and as the final start-
ing-point. Thither, to save time, Burke and Wills, with six men,
six camels, five horses, and some months' provisions, proceeded in
advance of the main body ; and arriving there on the 13th of Decem-
ber, Burke established a depot, left it in charge of Brahe', a petty
officer, and three assistants, and with Wills, a couple of men (King
and Gray), the camels, and one horse, plunged on the 16th into the
trackless Australian wilds.*

Keeping nearly due north, and near or upon the meridian of
140° E., they traversed, day after day, well- watered plains, with
numerous clumps of wood, and tolerable indications of a good
grazing country. On the 12th of February 1861, the four travellers
had conquered every obstacle, and struck the marshes on the Albert
* Journal of W. J. Wills, in locis.

ACROSS THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT. 237

River, which flows into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Their goal was
reached, and the problem of a connecting route between north and
south successfully solved.

The vast Australian solitudes hitherto traversed had presented
every variety of aspect, from the stony plateaux and the watery
sands where the rivers can keep no regular channel, and where wide
spaces of dry bare ground separate great shallows of brackish water,
to finely irrigated plains, clothed with herbs or bushes, and promising
abundant resources for future colonists. Meteorological phenomena
present in these regions the greatest uncertainties: either the dry
season is so protracted as to ruin all vegetation, or the rains so
thoroughly deluge the soil as by a contrary cause to ensure the same
result. These climatic contradictions explain the variations observable
in the narratives of the different travellers who have visited the
interior. One point, however, is beyond all doubt; the hopeless
sterility of Nuyts Land, — that immense sandy tract which, over an
extent as yet unknown, is regarded as impassable, and stretches along
the southern coast between Spencer Gulf and King George Harbour.
As before said, the primary cause of the barrenness of Central Aus-
tralia is the lack of water — running water and rain water. Yet the
most sterile portions lie far nearer the coast than was formerly
credited; and monotonous as may be the descriptions of explorers, so
far as the landscapes of Central Australia are concerned, we may
from to-day consider that, with the exception of certain points, no
obstacles exist sufficiently powerful to arrest the expansion of
European colonization, in a country especially where cattle-breed-
ing is the principal industry, and the one which takes precedence of
all others.

The chief difficulty encountered by each exploring party has
been the penury of natural products of the soil adapted for human
food. The traveler is compelled to carry with him a sufficiency of
provisions to last him from his departure until his return. It was
this insufficiency of rations which wrought the fatal denouement of
the glorious enterprise of Burke and Wills.

.238 THE RETURN JOURNEY.

After reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria, there remained nothing
more for Burke and his three companions but to retrace their steps to
their depot at Cooper's Creek. But their energies were exhausted,
and from the beginning of April their provisions failed them. At the
close often or twelve days' march, they were constrained to kill a
horse. In the following week, Gray succumbed to the excessive
fatigue. The three survivors dragged themselves on to the depot,
where they arrived on the morning of the 21st of April. But the
men whom they had left in charge had taken their departure that
very morning, after waiting long beyond the time originally fixed for
their return.

" You may imagine our consternation," says Wills in his Journal,
under the date of April 21st; " four months of harassing marches and
privations of every kind had completely exhausted our strength. It
was an extremely difficult task for either of us to accomplish a dis-
tance of only a few yards. The effort necessary to ascend the smallest
elevation of the ground, even without a burden, induces an inde-
scribable sensation of pain and helplessness, and the general lassitude
makes one unfit for anything."

There was no resource now but to rejoin Brahe and his men, if
possible. Before quitting the depot, the latter had left a small supply
of provisions, which proved eminently serviceable. On the 23rd
Burke, Wills, and King resumed their march, at the rate of four or
five miles a-day, in the direction of Mount Despair, which was about
sixty miles distant, and where were placed the most advanced posts,
northward, of South Australia. A terrible fatality, however, seemed
to pursue them; one of their camels, Landa, perished in a bog; the
other, Rajah, they were soon forced to kill for food; then they them-
selves were compelled by sheer exhaustion to return to the depot,
which, meanwhile, had been revisited by Brahe without his discover-
ing a trace of their brief sojourn. Thus abandoned to perish in the
Desert, they existed upon the bounty of such natives as they met
with, and who occasionally supplied them with a few fish and a little
nardoo, an aquatic plant whose pounded seeds the aborigines make

A DEPLORABLE CATASTROPHE.

239

into bread. Such a regimen was insufficient to restore their exhausted
strength.

Early in June their afflictions were aggravated by a deplorable
catastrophe. The flames of their bivouac fire, driven by a strong
wind, reduced to ashes their hut and all that they possessed. There
was nothing for them now but to live with the friendly natives who

BURKE, WILLS, AND KIKG is THE DESERTS or CEXTUAL AUSTRALIA.

had succoured them. Unfortunately, they had disappeared. It was
in vain they attempted to seek them out; Burke arid Wills never saw
them again.

On Saturday the 29th of June, the latter, utterly exhausted, in-
sisted that his companions should leave him in the wilderness, while
they continued their search after the natives. Unwillingly they con-

240 DEATH OF WILLS AND BURKE.

sented, and taking a solemn farewell of their unfortunate comrade,
they dragged themselves away with aching hearts. Four or five
days afterwards, King returned with some birds he had contrived to
kill, but found Wills asleep in the arms of death. King was now
alone, for the intrepid Burke had also fallen a victim to the cruel
spirit of the wilderness, resting on the barren ground, with his face
upturned to the southern stars. The sole survivor was fortunate
enough to fall in with the natives, who welcomed him cordially, and
earned him with them from camp to camp. After two months and
a half of this strange existence, he was discovered by a relief party
sent out from Melbourne, under the command of Mr. Howitt (Sep-
tember 15, 18G1), who also gathered the remains of the two gallant
but ill-fated leaders, and reverently consigned them to a decent grave.
They had not died in vain. From the shores of Port Philip to
those of the Gulf of Carpentaria they had discovered and marked out
a practicable route; and when the great Australian colonies shall
have pushed forward into the interior, and have occupied the borders
of the northern gulf, they will remember with gratitude the brave
explorers who sacrificed their lives to effect the passage from one sea
to the other.

CHAPTER IV.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE AFRICAN PLAINS.

THE facts actually ascertained in reference to the Flora of the plains
of Central Africa, although as yet of a limited character, form as a
whole too comprehensive a subject to be fully discussed in these pages.
I must, therefore, confine myself to a rapid survey of the principal
botanical features of the countries whose general features and physical
aspect I have sketched in the preceding chapters.

Senegambia and Upper Guinea, on the west coast of Africa, form a

A LEGION OF CASSIAS. '241

low table-land, situated upwards of 3000 feet above the sea-level, and
fuiTOwed by deep gorges, in whose rocky beds the rivers roll and
foam, fed by the waters of numerous streams. Grassy savannahs and
wide cultivated areas are here inhabited by a numerous population.
Several travellers have explored these regions; but all have specially
applied themselves to make known the colossal plants which flourish
therein, and those, first and foremost, which have a particular interest,
either from their Anak-like stature or the manifold uses of their pro-
ducts. I shall have occasion to speak of the arborescent species which,
in this part of the Old Continent, blend in immense and impenetrable
forests. But owing to this very circumstance we possess few details
respecting the plants which clothe the vast plains of Senegambia and
Upper Guinea. We only know that there, as everywhere, the great
family of the Graminese is largely represented. In general these
species far exceed in height the plants which make the wealth and
glory of our English meads ; and they chiefly belong to the tribe of
Panicese. A legion of Cassias inhabit the low fresh hills of the
Senegambian lands ; and some are held in high estimation for their
fruit, as the Cassia, or Senna, which is considered one of the most
active purgatives. The species generally recognized as best adapted
for medicinal purposes are those with oboval and those with obtuse
leaves — Cassia obovata and Cassia obtusifolia. The former is a
perennial herbaceous plant, from one to two feet high, with smooth
egg-shaped leaves and racemes of yellow flowers; the latter differs
only in the form of its leaves, which are short and broad, or
obtuse.

Many of the cereals are cultivated in Senegambia on a very large
scale; but they differ wholly from those which engage the attention
of the European agriculturist. Barley will not grow even on the
most elevated plateaux, on account of the constant and excessive
heat. It is true that it will germinate ; but it develops so rapidly
that it passes through all the phases of its vegetation in the space of
a few weeks, and yields but impoverished ears empty of grains; it is
useless to the people of Senegambia except as forage. But, on the

16

242 CEREALS IX SENEGAL

other hand, there are numerous Graminese adapted to hot regions,
which the natives cultivate for their uses. Among others I may
name the Tocussa and the Coracan (Eleasine Tocussa and E. Coro-
cana), with their curved digitate spikes and productive seeds; the
Pennicellaria spicata, or Guinea Corn, a very tall grass, somewhat
resembling maize, whose long cylindrical culms or blades bear each a
multitude of white round grains, which, ground into meal, form very
savoury cakes, as you may read in Mungo Park's Travels; and the
Durra, Doura, Indian Millet, or Sorgho Grass (Sorghum), a coarse,
strong", broad-leaved grass, four to eight feet high, with a round grain
a little larger than mustard seed; it is the principal corn-plant of
Africa, and exceedingly nutritious, the natives employing it in the
preparation of a favourite dish named Kouskoussou.

The cereals most widely cultivated in Senegal include the Colonial
Millet (Oplismenus colonus); the Abyssinian Meadow Grass (Poa
Abyssinica), called " Teff " in Abyssinia, whose seeds are used for
making bread, and whose blades yield an abundant herbage; Rice
(Oryza sativa), and different varieties of maize. Leguminous plants
appear wanting in Senegal. Their absence is probably due to the
same causes as those which we have indicated as affecting the growth
of barley. Cabbages and the different salads grow, in fact, with a
rapidity which prevents them from maturing; they flower in two or
three weeks after being sown. The inhabitants consequently resort
to those alimentary species which belong to hot countries, and which
can only be obtained in Europe at an enormous expense and by
artificial means. Among the plants with edible roots are various
kinds of Yams (such as the Dioscorea alata); Batatas (Convolvulus
Batatas') ; and the Manioc or Manihot (Jatropha Manihot),* better
known as Cassava, which, although in itself a deadly poison, is easily
deprived by heat of its noxious properties, and when roasted or boiled
becomes a nutritious and highly savoury food. It yields the valuable
farinaceous material of Tapioca. Its leaves are cooling and healing;
from its seeds an excellent oil is procured; and the juice which drops

* Order, Euphorbiacex.

If

THE SCREW-PINE TRIBE. 245

from its root serves for empoisoning arrows. Good and evil are both
strangely mixed in this important plant.

The Corchorua olitorius* an annual cultivated in Egypt as a
potherb, is largely grown in Senegal for the tenacious fibres of its
root and the oily juices of its seeds. The Black Pepper (Piper nig-
rnm) of India and the Sunda Isles we find perfectly acclimatized in
this part of Africa, and it flourishes even in a wild state. Finally,
the Coffee-tree (Coffea Arabicd), the Cocoa (Theobroma Cacao), Indigo
(Indigofera tinctoria}, and the Cocos oleracea, are among the culti-
vated plants of Senegambia.

In northern Guinea and the Gaboon, recently made famous by
Du Chaillu's discovery of the gorilla, Savannahs and cultivated dis-
tricts are intermingled, though their flora is still imperfectly known.
A great number of grasses adorn the fresh and humid prairies, and
sedges and reeds abound, while, on the river-banks, in shady nooks,
flourish some of the Screw-pine tribe, -f- notably the Pandanus Oan-
delabmm, a highly curious plant, which attracts one's attention by
its mode of vegetation, its graceful ribbon-like foliage, and its small
fragrant flowers. Thatching and cordage are obtained from the
fibrous leaves; the fruit resembles a richly-coloured pine-apple, but is
insipid to the taste.

The Savannahs of the neighbouring provinces, and especially those
of the Gold Coast, are in general sparsely inhabited, nor are those
on the banks of the Niger an exception ; man shrinks from a region
which the deadly malaria seems to claim as its own. The flora is
very poor, consisting chiefly of aquatic grasses, with blades of moderate
height, arid leaves of comparatively little succulence. The herbaceous
plants, suitable for food or industrial uses, which are most frequently
met with in Guinea and the Gaboon, resemble those already described
as belonging also to Senegambia. But there are many different Arums,
such as the Caladium segmium and Colocasia mucronatum, properly
known as Taro, Tara, or Tayo, and employed in making granulate
sugar from the stem of the former, and in boiling or roasting for food
* Order, Tiliacex. f Order. Pandanacex.

246 CERTAIN HERBACEOUS SPECIES.

the rhizomre of the latter ; Tobacco ; the ox-heart Annona, a plant
sometimes cultivated in Europe, where it never fructifies, though its
aromatic fruits are its most valuable product, and are highly esteemed
by the Africans, — these " Custard Apples " resembling thick cream, and
being eaten, like cream, with a spoon ; the Banana,* with its gigantic
foliage — precious " Musa Sapientum " — valuable not only to "wise
men," but foolish men, as a substitute for wheat or the breadfruit
tree, and gratifying the savage with a succulent and nutritious food.
Forty or fifty banana plants will flourish in a square space of one
thousand feet, and an acre of ground will yield sufficient provision for
fifty men. That area of land which, sown with wheat, would feed
only one man, will nourish five-and-twenty if planted with bananas.

I must not forget the Pistachios, •(• which flourish spontaneously
in the vast plains of Central Africa, and the highly valuable Sugar
Cane (Saccharum offitinarum), which, like the Cotton Plant, has
rendered inestimable services to man, and yet has been the origin
of unutterable crime and misery, promoting by its cultivation the
accursed slave-trade. The Vine (Vitis vinifera) is cultivated in a
few districts. Among the herbaceous or sub-frutescent plants peculiar
to this region, and which enjoy a certain reputation on account of the
utility of their products, I may name the following : —

The Calebash Nutmeg (Monodora myristica), one of the Anno-
nacese, remarkable for its withered fruits, which, when rasped like
its seeds, furnish a condiment deservedly esteemed by the natives ;
Guinea Pepper (Uvaria ^Ethiopica), whose properties are well known
and appreciated in this part of Western Africa ; and finally, one of
the Cucurbitacese, the Telfairia pedata, whose seeds enclose a very
oleaginous substance.

To the east, in Nigritia or the Soudan, the country is nearly level,
although situated at an elevation of 1200 to 1300 feet above the sea.
The vegetation here is very scanty ; yet the copious tropical rains
favour the growth of plants suitable for the provender of cattle ;
pastures are abundant, and formed by the principal Grasses (Panicum
* Order, Aliisacfx. f Order, Anacardiacex.

A BOTANICAL SURVEY. 247

Setaria, and the like), the Sedges, Rushes, &c. These meads are
clothed with verdure for three or four months of the year, and much
frequented by the shepherds who dwell in the vicinity of Lake Tchad.

Still further eastward, if we continue our wanderings, we plunge
into the warm regions of Darfour and Kordofan. Here the country
is cast in bold outlines ; numerous lofty mountain-chains are inter-
sected by narrow valleys and smooth expanses of meadow-land. All
that portion of Kordofan which lies west of the White Nile is a
Prairie some thirty-five miles long by twenty-eight broad, stretching
towards the rising sun, and relieved by small patches of shrubs of the
family Legumiitosm, especially the Mimosa, with its graceful shrinking
foliage, which shudders at the lightest touch, and its spherical rose-
hued or snow-white blossoms.

These meadow-lands suffer from excessive aridity ; it is only with
an arduous struggle that a few grasses resist the dryness which almost
constantly prevails ; and frequently, as is the case in other parts of
Western Africa, the inhabitants can only procure water for their
needs by sinking wells of extraordinary depth. Less arid, the
southern part of Kordofan is better clothed with vegetation ; the
country is more broken, and increases in picturesqueness of aspect as
we approach the neighbourhood of Mount Tegeler. Sennaar, which is
traversed by the Blue Nile, is far from offering an equally luxuriant
vegetation : along the river extends a vast belt of meadow, generally
barren, or only blessed with a few herbaceous plants, a few Legu-
minosee, with deeply-buried roots ; and its aspect, therefore, is one of
great gloom. The landscape wants

'• The glory in the grass, and the splendour in the flower "

which appeal so potently to the sensibilities of the poet. Nor does
the scenery improve as we ascend the Sennaar to the Lake of Zana,
situated to the south-east, for though the rich black soil of the Kulla
valley nourishes a profuse vegetation, it is the vegetation peculiar to
the marsh and the swamp ; the wind rushes through thick sedges,
and whispering reeds, and waving grasses. On the northern borders

248 THE PLAINS OF TIGRE,

of the lake the pasturages are fresh and green, and a man might
easily lurk unseen among their gigantic Graminese, the Panicas and
the Setarias. Still keeping our faces eastward, like the Ghebirs of
ancient Iran, we perceive that Abyssinia is divided into two parts by
the River Tacazze, an affluent of the Nile ; the western being called
Amliora, and the eastern Tigre'. Owing to its peculiar geographical
configuration and the elevation of its mountains, Abyssinia rejoices
in a wholly special Flora. In the Semen, west of the Tacazze, there
is a mountain lifting its crest above the limit of perpetual snow, or
to an altitude of 14,000 feet. Up to a height of 6500 feet its slopes
are thickly carpeted with fresh and fragrant sward, and the air throbs
with the music of a hundred streams which flow from the perennial
fountains of ice and snow.

In the Tigre the country is not fertile, nor is it well populated.
Its geological features are interesting, for we meet everywhere with
isolated masses of limestone, arranged generally in horizontal strata
of various extent, and bearing indisputable traces of a vast volcanic
labour. On the coast of the Red Sea, the oriental slopes only present
at their base a few scattered thickets chiefly composed of thorny
shrubs and the Leguminosse. We meet also with various kinds of
Aloes and Euphorbiacese (Spurge- Worts), as the Euphorbia neriifolia,
Euphorbia grcmdidens, and Euphorbia Abyssinica. It is said that
King Juba II., of Mauritania, discovered the plant growing on Mount
Atlas, wrote a short treatise on its virtues, and named it after his
physician Euphorbos (about the end of the first century B.C.) The
root, generally speaking, is aperient, and the milky juice useful in
cases of rheumatism and cramp.

The plains of Tigre present a beautiful appearance with the
variety of flowers that bloom among the grass ; including a kind of
scarlet aloe, which is to be met with almost everywhere in Tigre, and
appears, like our gorse, to flower at all seasons, forming a graceful
object in the foreground. The many varieties of mimosas, too, with
their different-coloured blossoms — pink, yellow, and white— appear to
be spread over the whole face of the countiy, whether rock or plain,

SOME ABYSSINIAN GENEEA. 249

hill or valley. " When in blossom," says an English traveller,*
" many of them emit a fragrance so powerful as to render the whole
neighbourhood more odorous than a perfumer's shop. The jessamine
is seen in profusion in many parts, but principally on the hills ; and
there is also a beautiful parasitical creeper (an reschynanthus), which
grows, like the mistletoe, from the bark of other trees. It has a bright
dark-green fleshy leaf, with brilliant scarlet flowers."

The same traveller describes a tree called the dima,-\- which,
though not very solid as food, adds much to the flavour of the
cuisine. It has a large greenish shell, some nine inches long ; inside
of it lie a number of seeds, and attached to them by fibres a quantity
of yellowish-white cakey powder, having a sweetish acid taste, and
when mixed with water forming an agreeable beverage, somewhat
resembling lemonade. The Abyssinians mix with it red pepper
and salt, and eat it as a relish with their, bread. When the tree
reaches a certain size, its trunk almost always becomes hollow ; and
then it frequently contains a store of wild honey, which may easily
be obtained by means of a small axe and fire.

More to the south, in the Shoa, we meet with an almost analo-
gous vegetation : the Socotrine Aloes (Aloe socotrina), which supplies
our Pharmacopoeia with an active cathartic, is particularly abundant.
The Celastrus edulis,+ a small branching shrub whose leaves possess
very similar properties to those of the Tea-plant, and are employed
for the same purpose by the Abyssinians, is widely cultivated. The
Arabs distil from them a stimulating drink called Kat. Nor should
I forget the Cousso, or Casso, named after its discoverer Bray era
anthelmintica,\\ an infusion of whose bark or leaves forms one of the
most powerful vermifuges in the world; and the Musa ensete, a
magnificent banana, with gigantic leaves and nerves of a vivid red,
which now flourishes in our European plantations.

Among the cultivated plants may be included most of those which

* Mansfield Parkyns, " Life in Abyssinia," i. 226, 227.

f Aclansonia digitata, a species of Baobab (Order, Stercubaccx} .

i Order, Celastracex. II Order, Rosacese,

16 a

250

ON THE COAST OF ADEN.

I have noticed under the head of Senegambia ; while, owing to the
considerable elevation of the mountains, we find many others which
belong to cool and temperate climates — such, for example, as rye and
barley. The Sugar Cane, the Pomegranate, and numerous Auran-
tiacese, as, for example, the Citron and the Orange, have been like-
wise introduced into this part of Southern Africa.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN SOUTH AFKICA.

1. Mesembryanthemum inflexum. 2. Hottentot's Fig (Met. edule). 3. Euphorbia neriifolia.
4. Euphorbia grand idens. 5. Stapelia hirsuta.

From the coast of Aden, where almost complete sterility prevails
prior to the rainy season — from the coast of Aden to Cape Guardafui,
situated at the easternmost point of Africa, the traveller encounters
a constant succession of mountains or elevated table-lands, haunted
by the shepherds of the Somali tribes, — a people notorious for their
brigandage. Respecting the coast of Ajan we know but little,

FLORA OF WESTERN AFRICA. 231

except that its arid and sandy soil supports a scanty vegetation of
stunted plants. The Zanguebar coast is not more familiar to the
botanist, and is mainly covered with marshes.

But the littoral of Western Africa is gifted with a flora as luxu-
riant as it is varied. According to Dr. Welwitsch, who has explored
this region, previously almost a terra incognita to Europeans, " the
special feature in the neighbourhood of Benguela is the abundance of
parasitical Lorunthacece, or mistletoe, on the thickets of the thorny
Mimosa, to which are attached those Roccellse (or Archils), the Roc-
cella tinctoria and R. fu-ciformis, that yield so brilliant a lilac dye.
In the gardens of Benguela the vegetables of Europe are most
successfully cultivated, as well as a great number of fruit trees
belonging both to tropical and temperate climes : citron and orange,
the olive, the cashew-nut, the anana, the fig, the vine, the pome-
granate, the elais-palm, the banana, the anona, and the corrossol.
The vine bears grapes twice every year, and the crop on each occasion
is abundant and of fine flavour. The gardens in the vicinity of Mossa-
medes, between the fifteenth and sixteenth parallels of south latitude,
exhibit a curious medley of vegetables on every side, where you may
see flourishing side by side the banana and the potato, manioc and
wheat, sugar-cane and flax, barley, and every kind of Spanish potato."

A few miles from Cape Negro the coast rises for from 300 to
350 feet above the sea-level, forming a continuous plateau, where the
flora, though meagre when compared with that a little further to the
north, offers nevertheless to the traveller some objects of the highest
interest. It was here that Dr. Welwitsch met with the strange plant
which, in commemoration of its intrepid discoverer, Sir William
Hooker named Wehvitschia,* but which the natives call Tumboa.
" In its youth its two original cotyledonary leaves appear to grow
considerably, and extend horizontally in opposite directions, raised
but little above the surface of the sand, whilst the intervening stock
thickens and hardens, assuming an obconical shape, flat at the top,
and rapidly tapering below into the descending root. As years go
* Order, Gnetacex.

252 THE WELWITSCHIA PLANT.

on, the original pair of leaves, having attained their full size, and a
hard, tough, fibrous consistence, do not die away, but gradually split
up into shreds ; the woody mass which bears them rises very little
higher, but increases horizontally both above and below the insertion
of the leaves, so as to clasp their base in a deep marginal slit or
cavity ; and from the upper side, at the base of the leaf, several
short flowering stalks are annually developed. These are erect,
dichotomously branched jointed stems, rising from six inches to a foot
in height, and bearing a pair of small opposite scales at each fork or
joint, each branch being terminated by an oblong cone, under the
scales of which are the flowers and seeds. The result is, that the
country is studded with these misshapen table-like or anvil-like
masses of wood, whose flat tops, pitted with the scars of old flowering
stems, never rise above a foot from the ground, but vaiy, according
to age, in a horizontal diameter of from a few inches to five or six
feet — those of about eighteen inches diameter being supposed to be
already above a hundred years old." *

These fantastic monstrous shapes were found by Dr. Welwitsch,
with their deeply-embedded roots, on the dry plateau of the Benguela
coast, in 15° 40' south latitude. Herr Montein met with it in a
perfectly similar situation on quartzose soil, in the neighbourhood of
the Nicolas River, 14° 20' south latitude; and Mr. Baines and Mr.
Anderson, in Dawaraland, between. 2 2° and 23° south latitude, in
the neighbourhood of Whalefish Bay, and in a district where never a
drop of rain falls. We may therefore place the habitat of this
remarkable plant between the 14th and 23rd parallels of south lati-
tude. The crown, when divested of its leaves, bears a close resem-
blance to a fungus.

If we now approach the Cape of Good Hope — the Cabo del
Tormentoso, or " Cape of Storms," of the early navigators — we shall
observe a characteristic vegetation peculiar to a solid or stony soil,
sometimes hilly, but generally dry. It is in the desolate and barren
steppes situated within the confines of Caffraria that those splendid
* Brande, " Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art," iii. 1018. 1019.

THE HOTTENTOT'S FIG.

2-53

herbaceous bulbous plants display their beauties, which are now
familiar to our English gardens under the names of Gladiolus, Oxalis,
Ixia, and Tulbaya. To those magnificent ornaments of the floral
world we must add some less known plants, remarkable iii other
respects ; such as the Mollugo cei'viana, which, with a few Ficoidese,
form the almost exclusi\7e nourishment of the herbivorous animals

VEGETABLE LIFE OF CAPE COLONY.

i. 2. Aloe soccotrii

5. Aloe plicatilis.

3. Aloe ciliaris. 4. Aloe arboresceus.

C. Gladiolus blandus.

belonging to these countries. The Graminese are rare in the plains of
Cape Colony, but, on the other hand, they contain a number of oleagi-
nous plants included in divers families. Here, for instance, are those
singular Compositor, whose stems so closely resemble waxen tapers ;
several Ficoidese, of which some species — as, notably, the Mesem-
bryanthemum edule, or Hottentot's Fig, distributed over the interior
of Southern Africa, and the Mesembryanthemum tuberosum — are

254

THE CARRION PLANT.

eagerly sought by the Hottentots, Caffres, and natives generally, who
eat the fruits of the former and the roots of the latter ; the Stapelia
hirsuta, or Carrion Plant, and several others of the same genus, whose
carrion-smelling flowers are singularly handsome, though their odour
is most offensive ; a great number of aloes, particularly the Aloe
verrucosa, A. ciliaris, A. plicatilis, and A. arborescens, each distin-

VEGETABLE LIFE OF CAPE COLONY.
1. Helichrysum fruticosum. 2. Erica Cavendishiana. 3. Protea longifolia. 4. Todea Africana.

guished by a strange wayward boldness of form and figure ; arid,
finally, those larger Euphorbias of which I have already spoken, and
which yield a white milky juice that hardens on exposure to the air.
It is mainly on the slopes or stony hills of the Cape that we meet
with numerous and remarkable species of the Immortelles, with their
white, yellow, or lilac, and satin-smooth flowers. The woody Immor-

EKICAS AXD PELARGONIUMS.

255

telle (Helichrysum fruticosum} is one of those peculiar to the Cape
districts. It is in analogous but more sandy localities that those
graceful little shrubs, with varied corollas, flourish, which are so
popular in England under the name of Ericas, and which frequently
exhibit the highest beauty of form and colour. In the engraving is

VEGETABLE LIFE OF CAPE COLONY.

1. Pelargonium hederaofolium (Ivy-leaved Geranium). 2. Oxalis rosacea (AVood-Sorrel).

3. Pelargonium glaucuai. 4. Pelargonium zonale (Zone-leaved Geranium).

5. Pelargonium tricuspidatum.

figured the exquisite Erica Cavendishiana, a deservedly great favourite
in our English conservatories. There, too, the traveller delightedly
examines the almost interminable succession of Pelargoniums, or
Geraniums, rich in clusters of delicate bloom, and in exquisitely
green foliage. What a blank would their absence leave in our
blossomy parterres ! Here arid there he notes dense coppices of the

256 SOUTH AFRICAN MARVELS.

Arduinia spinosa, the Lyciurn Afrum, the Euclsea ondulata, whose
berries are eaten by the Hottentots ; several species of Rhus,* among
others the Rhus lucidum ; and, finally, a great number of the
strange fantastic Proteacese, with their hard dry evergreen leaves and
curiously beautiful flowers. At the foot of the mountains, in the
countries bordering on Caffraria, different Cycadaceas are found, espe-
cially the Zamia and Encephalartus, an elegant plant with a short
spherical trunk, surmounted by a crown of long rigid palmated leaves.
The natives prepare with their pith a species of cake which they eat
instead of bread. Ferns are not numerous at the Cape ; the most
remarkable, undoubtedly, is the Todea Africana. The hills and
meadows of this part of South Africa do not always exhibit so
marked an aridity; rivers and streams refresh the soil, and there,
where the current is not too swift nor the depth too great, grows the
beautiful Calla of Ethiopia, a species of Aroidea, whose snow-white
fragrant flowers resemble a large horn in shape ; the Aponoyeton
distachyum, another aquatic plant, with white flowers and floating
leaves, is not less common in similar positions ; then on the banks,
in fresh and shady nooks of greenery, thrives the Strelitzia regince, a
gorgeous-flowered genus of Musacece, named after Charlotte of Meck-
lenburg-Strelitz, queen of George III. The foliage of this magnifi-
cent plant consists of long-stalked leaves sheathing at the base,
arising from a contracted stem, the flower stalk encircled below by
the sheath of the leaf-stalk ; while from its upper portion springs a
large bract or spathe placed obliquely, within which lie the flowers,
resplendent in orange and purple.

In the Desert of Kahalari exists an abundant and varied vegeta-
tion. According to Dr. Livingstone, it is an immense plain which
nourishes a prodigious quantity of herbaceous plants, generally of
very small elevation, and besprinkled at intervals with thickets of
bushy shrubs. The herbs which are enabled to withstand the
prolonged droughts of these arid localities are species with tuberous
roots, creeping or spindle-like, and deeply buried in the ground.

* Order, Anacardiacex,

AX ABUNDANT FLORA. 2-'7

The Cltrullus vulgans and C. amarus are found in enormous quanti-
ties. Dr. Livingstone speaks of another individual of the gourd
tribe, probably a kind of Cucumis, whose fruits colour red when
ripe, and which has sometimes a sweet and sometimes a bitter
flavour. In these vast regions, where a desolating aridity prevails,
the rivers and streams dry up for a great portion of the year, and
the soil of their bed, generally black and loamy, is rapidly covered
with a profuse vegetation, composed in great part of grasses and
rush-plants.

The bffnks of the rivers Mokolo and Zouga, and the shores of
Lake Ngami, are covered with herbs and small thorny stunted
bushes, including the Acacia detinens. In the south of Africa the
soil is so dry that only plants of a fleshy consistency can endure the
heat ; elsewhere, in more temperate climes, these latter plants are
also very abundant, but the surrounding herbage destroys them.
Among those which grow there in great numbers I may name the
Ficoidese, and particularly the Mesembryanihemiim inflexum, which
is very widely spread, and whose stems and leaves are eaten by
herbivorous animals. This plant, says Dr. Livingstone, is so useful
that it is cultivated by the Dutch Boers on an extensive scale. On
his northward route towards Linianty, this illustrious traveller fell in
with meadows of such rank fertility that its herbage frequently rose
above his vehicles. The natives, designated Makalatos, show some
agricultural taste and skill, and cultivate durra, maize, two kinds of
beans, arachides, pumpkins, and the like. Everywhere, along the
banks of the Gambye and the Liba, he met with exceptionally
fertile land, where the grasses attained an unusual development.
On the Liba bloomed wide verdurous plains, consisting of plants with
dazzling corollas and graminese of tall stature. Owing to the burning
heats which blight these districts, herbaceous plants are developed
with extraordinary rapidity.

In the rainy season the Liba meadows are covered, like our own,
with an immense variety of mushrooms, some nutritious, others
poisonous. The former are much relished by the natives. One of

17

258 VEGETATION ON THE ZAMBESI.

the most common, and one of the finest flavour, is found, says Dr.
Livingstone, on all the ant-hills ; it is completely white, very good
even when eaten raw, and about eight inches in diameter. There is
another of a brilliant red or superb blue, but it is poisonous.

The banks of the Quilo, like those of the Quango, are endowed
with a most luxurious vegetation ; the same is the case with the
banks of the Zambesi. Everywhere spreads a gigantic and abundant
herbage. In the environs of the small town of Cassanga, the natives
cultivate manioc, potatoes, haricots, tomatoes, &c. There are found
also bananas and guava plants, and probably all the legumes and
fruit trees recognized by Dr. Welwitsch at Benguela, which lies
nearly under the same latitude. From the table-land of Cassanga
you may survey nearly the whole of the valley watered by the
Quango. It is a gently undulating plain, covered with herbs, and
sown with great woods. The coffee-tree was formerly cultivated in
the province of Te'te', but has been abandoned ; cassias, however,
flourish, and indigo. Among the cultivated plants of Tete Living-
stone, moreover, mentions some species which are not yet botanically
distinguished — such as the Loatsa (Pennisetum typhoideuni), and
several of the bean tribe, one of which grows underground like the
arachides.

CHAPTER V.

VEGETABLE LIFE IX THE PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS OF THE
NEW WORLD.

OF all the provinces, as yet uninhabited or only scantily peopled,
which compose the northern regions of the New World, none offer
so vast an extent of prairies as that which is situated in the
vicinity of the Neosho and the Vert-de-Gris, between the Missouri
frontier and the River Arkansas. Woods of small extent — or,

M. TRECUL'S DISCOVERIES. 259

more generally, limited patches of copse and thicket — are met
with at intervals in these plains. The Smilax rotundifolia, a
species of sarsaparilla, •with round leaves and sarmentous stems ;
the Rhus toxicodendmrn, a shrub with a very poisonous juice ;
and the Asimina triloba, a plant bearing nutritious fruit, are,
with a few other subfrutescerit species, the denizens of these lonely
localities. Annual or perennial plants abound in the prairies, and
attain there a considerable development, especially in the more humid
districts. The plains bordering on the Swan's Marsh, situated upon
the upper course of the River Osage, nourish a great number of species,
as elegant as they are varied. As in our own meadows, the Graminese,
the Cyperacea3 (or Sedges), the Leguminosse, and the Composites —
the latter especially — are very extensively diffused. But, in contrast
to the majority of our species, their representatives are in general of
remarkable dimensions, with flowers of extraordinary splendour, and
most of them have been naturalized in our British gardens.

The American prairies, again, like the meadow-lands of Europe,
are alternated with dry, gravelly spaces, marshes, swampy angles, and
wooded tracts. It is curious to trace a certain likeness between the
genera which inhabit these localities in both continents. Thus,
M. Trdcul, who explored, in 1848 and 1849, nearly the whole of the
State of Missouri to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Louisiana,
Texas, and a part of Northern Mexico, discovered in the vicinity of
the Swan's Marsh, Water-Plantains (Alisma), Sagittarias, and
Nymphreas, in the inundated districts ; Characese — their tubular
branches incrusted with carbonate of lime — bladder-plants, and the
beautiful floating Naiadacese, in deeper pools and stagnant watei-s ;
and the Lythracese (or Loose-Strife tribe) on the banks of the brook-
lets. But the commonest aquatic plant in these morasses, and that
which conceals, so to speak, all the other plants proper to such
localities, is the NelumHum calophyllum, with its rose-coloured
blossoms ; its seeds and rhizomes are eaten by the natives.

The vast plains of Missouri are sufficiently fertile. Among the
plants most abundant in somewhat damp places we must notice

260 FLORA OF THE PRAIRIES.

several Composite^ ; the Liatris, with their violet flowers and long
spiky bunches, the Calliopsis tinctoria of the dyers, the Gaura
of Lindheimer, and the Tripsacum dactyloides. Asters, Erigerons,
Gaillardies, Helianthi (sun-flowers), Solid agos, the Mudbeckia hirta,
and the Coreopsis, are found almost as far south as Texas. By the
side of these Composite flourish several Desmodiums and Cassias,
some graceful Baptisias — with blue flowers and light green foliage,
the Melanthum Virginicum, the Euphorbia marginata, the Asdepias
Cornuti — now naturalised in the neighbourhood of Paris — the
Hibiscus paZusfris and //. moscheutos, gigantic Malvaceae, whose
splendidly-beautiful flowers are often three or four inches in diameter.
As plants widely spread in the stonier Prairies, we may note the
Gauras, different varieties of (Enothera, and especially the Silpliiu'm
laciniatum (vulgarly called the Magnetic Plant, or Compass of the
Prairies). Its leaves are said to turn their faces uniformly east and
west, so that their edges are consequently directed due north and
south. The plant is also known as Pilot- weed, Polar-plant,' Rosin-
weed, and Turpentine-weed ; the latter name derived from the copious
resin exuded by its steins, which grow to a height of three to six
feet, as well as by the leaves, which are deeply pinnatified.

In the small woods which skirt the Prairies is found in abun-
dance, twining round the bushes, the Apios tuberosa, a leguminous
plant formerly recommended to European cultivation on account of
the rounded tubercles which grow upon its subterranean stems. The
Arabians collect them in the spring, and carefully dry them to eat for
food. The Apios belongs to the family of Umbelliferse, and is conse-
quently allied to celery, parsnip, and carrot.

In Missouri, and as far as the confines of Mississippi, we also fall
in with very productive sandy plains alternating with wooded
uplands. This country recalls, on the whole, the aspect of that
which we have just described, and the plants which thrive therein are
almost the same.

On the hills and woody slopes in the neighbourhood of the Iron
Mountain, we likewise meet with sufficiently verdurous prairies.

THE IRON MOUNTAINS.

261

M. Tre'cul collected there numerous Graminese, some species of Carex,
Plantains, Euphorbias, Polygalas, and Vervains ; many genera, in
fact, which in France, and similar soils elsewhere, have numerous
representatives. It is in the grassy tracts of the wooded districts
that the larger species of Phlox flourish, while the smaller varieties of
the same genus vegetate upon the hills. The low humid meadows
enchant us with their gorgeous scarlet Actccas* their yellow Bal-

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE AMERICAN PRAIRIES.

1. Liatris squarrosa. 3. Asclepias Cornuti.

2. Calliopsis tinctoria. 4. Tripsacum dactyloides.

5. Gaura Lindheirneri.

sams, their Echinacea purpureas, and their superb Lilies ; those
which are dry and rather stony are covered with the broad golden
flowers of the gay (Enothera macrocarpa.-^

Among the shrubs which people the marshy tracts of this same
region, I must point out the Sassafras, a kind of laurel with deci-
duous leaves, yellow flowers, which precede the foliage, and small

* Order, Ranunculacex ; Sub-order, Actaea.

t Order, Onagracese, or Evening Primrose Tribe.

262 REMARKABLE SARRACENIAS.

dark-blue fruit. It is found from Canada to Florida ; a mere bush in
the north, but a tree fifty feet high in the south. The wood is soft,
light, of a coarse fibre, with a pungent aromatic taste, and a strong
agreeable odour. The wood is brought to market in the shape of
chips, but for medicinal purposes the thick spongy bark of the root is
prepared, and it is found extremely valuable as a powerful stimulant,
sodorific, and diuretic. The mucilaginous leaves are employed in
thickening soup. An infusion of the bark or wood makes a pleasant
beverage, formerly known as Saloop ; and the wood also yields an oil
which is used medicinally.

But it is in the state of Texas, and especially near San Antonio
de Bejar, that those immense desert spaces commence which occupy all
the northern region of Mexico. The southern districts of Texas offer
in their prevailing landscapes a mixture of beautiful prairies and
shady woods. Among the plants peculiar to humid and turfy
localities, I may particularize the Sarracenias, a group of remark-
able exogens, whose leaves are hollowed out into tubes or pitchers,
open at the upper end, and streaked with bands of different colours ;
the Eriocaulons, a kind of rush, carrying their small flowers in
spherical capitals on the summits of their tall branching stems ; and
the Nelumbios (Nelumbium calopliylluwi), aquatic plants of unusual
beauty, American congeners of the celebrated Lotus, the " insane
root which takes the reason prisoner." The nuts are wholesome and
edible, and the root-stocks are also occasionally eaten. These plants
are likewise found, in analogous habitats, in Mississippi and Louisi-
ana, accompanied by the light-green Magnolia, the Dog-berry tree of
Florida, several Wax-berries, and the Sassafras laurel, now acclima-
tized in Europe, and whose bark is employed as I have said, medicin-
ally, while its wood and roots are made use of by turners and toy-
manufacturers.

Prairies abound in Texas, wide rolling sweeps of grassy sward,
with an apparently interminable horizon, unbroken by rock, or wood,
or river — leagues upon leagues of rank thick grass where countless
herds are depastured, and where the hunter still finds game worthy

THE TEXAN PR A IE I ES. '263

of his deadly rifle. Among those which skirt the Bay of Matagorda,
and extend in the vicinity of Victoria, Gonzales, and Seguin, M. Tre-
cul discovered an ample variety of Composite ; of Graminese, more
especially those belonging to the generse Poa, Spartinci, Dactyloc-
tenium ; Cyperacese, Euphorbias, Cucumbers, and Gourds. From the

VEGETABLE LIFE IN TEXAS.

1. Nelumbium calophyllum.

2. Sarracenia purpurea.

3. Eriocaulon flavidulum.

4. Lauras sassafras.

Texan Prairies our European gardeners have of late years received a
Graminea of the genus Panicum, the Black Mosquito Grass, which
by its long creeping rhizomes may be employed with undoubted suc-
cess to arrest the inland movement of the Dunes and shifting sandy
shores. The yellow water-lily (Nupha/r lutea) spreads its fine leaves
on the surface of the Texan streams, in beautiful companionship with

2G4 BRAZIL WOOD.

the Nuphar advena and the Nymphcea odorata. In the same locali-
ties vegetates a weak variety of our European Sagittaria, and the
Pistia spattilata spreads itself upon the water, like our English
Duckweed, both being members of the family Pistacece.

As far as New Braunfels, the Prairies are occasionally relieved by
clumps of fine old trees ; but below that point the traveller only
encounters, and that at rare intervals, a few scarce coppices and
scanty thickets. Growing more common at San Antonio de Bejar,
they abound in the region of Castroville, and spread over nearly the
entire country to the very borders of Mexico.

These bushes or coppices mainly consist of the Prosapis glandu-
losa, the Guaiacum angustifolium, the Xanthoxylum inerme and a
few Acacias.

The Guaiacum* is noticeable for its hard and heavy wood, gene-
rally known as Lignum Vitce, sometimes as Gruaiacum ivood, and
occasionally as Brazil ivood. It also yields a peculiar resinous pro-
duct, which is medicinally employed, in powder, pill, and tincture, for
the relief of chronic rheumatism and chronic skin diseases. It is of
a greenish-brown colour, and though it has scarcely any taste, leaves
a hot arid sensation in the mouth.

The Xmitoxyton type, of the order Xanthoxylacese, derives its
name from the yellowness of its timber. Its fruits have a pungent
aromatic taste, like pepper. The popular name of "toothache tree"
is applied to some of the American species, from the relief their bark
and fruits are supposed to give in cases of that distressing affliction.

In the neighbourhood of Castroville, Trecul found, profusely
scattered among the thickets, a species of Ephedra, closely resembling
the Ephedra altissima, whose feeble reed-like branches were literally
covered with small red fruits, producing a novel and attractive effect.
As a plant curious from its mode of vegetation, and which is spread
in Texas as well as in Louisiana, I may mention the Tillandria usne-
oides, so named after Professor Tillands, of Abo. This is a genus of
Bromeliacece, growing on the boughs of trees, and notably on those of

* Order, Zygophyllaceaz.

THE TILLANDRIA USXEOIDES.

2G5

the evergeen oak. It hangs down like a tuft of long gray hair, in
somewhat the same fashion as certain lichens (usnea) in European
pine-forests, communicating to the trees a strange and positively
weird aspect. The plant is collected, and the outer cellular portion
being removed by soaking in water, the fibrous residuum is then em-

VEUETA.BLE LIFE IN THE TEXAN PRAIRIES.

1. Yucca TrSciileana.

2. Silphium terebinthinaceum.

3. Mamillaria rodantha.

4. Echinocactus rotmslus.

5. Cerens Peruvianus.

6. Opuntia microdasys.

ployed to stuff cushions, mattresses, and pillows ; whence it is some-
times called " Vegetable horse-hair."

In the thickets that dot the central Prairies commonly flourish the
Lantana Camara, and the curious Unynandia speciosa, a species of

chestnut tree on a very reduced scale.

17 a

266 MEMBERS OF THE CACTACEJ2.

It was in Texas, and in the rocky, arid, and hilly plains, that the
French botanist Trecul discovered several notable varieties of Yuccas,
to one of which, a new, and certainly the most beautiful species, his
name has very justly been affixed : the Yucca Trfauleana. It raises
its tall panicle of gorgeous flowers from the centre of a crown of glossy,
rigid, spear-like leaves, like a victorious trophy. In Eastern Texas
we note the first appearance, in the drier and stonier portions of the
Prairies, of a representation of the family Cactacece, the Opuntia
frutescens, frequently growing side by side with the Silpkium
terebinthinaceum. The Opuntia is more generally known as the
" Indian Fig " or " Prickly Pear," from the large purple juicy fruits
which it yields. The Silphium belongs to the family of Composites.
But Western Texas is the true birth-place of these oleaginous plants,
some of which, such as the Echinocactus robusta, the Mamillaria
rodantha, and the Opuntia microdasys ("small -thorny Opuntia"), are
cultivated in our apartments, where they require but veiy little
attention. M. Trecul has discovered in this region a new and rare
variety of Echinocactus (E. Treculeanus], some kinds of Cereus, and,
especially, the Cereus Perwvianus, a beautiful plant with large showy
flowers.

Such are the principal plants which, in North America, charac-
terize the vegetation of the Prairies and the Savannahs. This rapid
and condensed description will show the reader that the species most
extensively spread belong to the genera in which are grouped the more
common inhabitants of our own Old World meadows and grassy plains.

If we now transport ourselves, on the poet's winged Pegasus, that
takes no account of distance or of natural obstacles, to the Equatorial
zone of the New World — into Guatemala, for example — we shall find
the undulating and verdurous prairies giving place to high table-
lands furrowed by deep and romantic ravines. Their botanical
interest, however, is trivial, and their vegetation of a meagre and
stunted kind. But between Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras,
lies an extensive valley, locally named Llanora, sown with numer-

THE FLORA OF THE STEPPES. 267

ous beautiful varieties of plants. Among them the Graminece family
predominates, arid, without attaining the proportions and the quality
of the herbs which we shall meet with in the interior, form breadths
of meadow very charming in their rare fresh greenness.

From the summit of the Cordilleras, in the neighbourhood of
Bogota, at an altitude of about 3200 feet, the eye surveys almost the
entire extent of those vast level plains which stretch from the base of
the mountain-chain to remote Brazil, Guiana, and Venezuela.

The Steppes comprised between Bogota and the river Meta are
formed, in general, of Graminese with crawling stems, and with nearly
always very tall culms, especially in the cooler localities. Herbage
is so abundant that the traveller who penetrates into these immense
pastures experiences almost insurmountable difficulties. He himself
and his horse are nearly hidden by the tall grasses, which frequently
attain a stature of five to seven feet. And such is their vigour, that
after having been burnt to the ground by one of the terrible confla-
grations so frequent in these countries, they spring up again with
wondrous swiftness ; if the plants had not flowered prior to the pas-
sage of the destructive flames, they do so afterwards, and even when
their leaves have been wholly destroyed. The lofty table-lands of
Bogota and Tukerres, in New Grenada, present a succession of rich
pasturages, perfumed by some species of Labiatse, and notably by
the Micromeria Browniana, which thrives among the Graminese,
their fodder is highly esteemed.

The barren and sandy plains of Peru, fertilized by the numerous
water-courses which furrow them, are covered with thick bloom and
verdure in the rainy season. With the Gramineas and Juncacese —
the grasses and rushes common in these Steppes — mingle different
members of the Liliacese family, and especially several kinds of Lily.
The higher region of the eastern face of the Peruvian Cordillera,
situated between 10,000 and 13,000 feet of elevation, forms an
immense undulating plateau watered by the upper course of the
Maranon. Everywhere, over a considerable area, the plains are
clothed with a meagre vegetation, or alternate with wide morasses,

268 THE MAUEITIA PALM.

lakes, and brooks. Among the plants which people them is a species
of the Graminese, Stipa itchu ; and there are also several Alpine
varieties, Composite, Leguminosa?, and one of the Cyperaceae family,
the Cyperus articulatus.

The Llanos of Caraccas, and of the Rio Apure and the Meta, over
which roam immense herds of cattle, are, in the strictest sense of the
term, says Humboldt,* "grassy plains." Their prevalent vegetation,
belonging to the two families of Cyperacese and Graminece, consists of
various species of Paspalum, P. leptostachyum and P. linticulare ; of
Kyllingia, ofPanicum, Anthephora, A**istida, Vilfa, and Anthistiria.
Only here and there are found, interspersed among the Graminese, a
few herbaceous dicotyledonous plants, consisting of two very low-
growing species of Mimosa (Sensitive Plant) — Mimosa intermedia and
Mimosa dormiens — which are great favourites with the wild horses
and cattle. The natives give to this group of plants, which close
their delicate feathery leaves on being touched, the expressive name
of Dormideras — " sleepy plants." Not a tree is visible for miles ;
but where solitary individuals occur, they are, in moist places, the
Mauritia Palm ; in arid districts, a Protacea — namely, the Rhopula
complicata ; also the highly useful Palma da Corija, or de Sombrero ;
and our Corypha inermis, an umbrella palm, whose leaves are used
to thatch the roofs of huts.

The Mauritia palm, Palm Moriche, Mauritia flexuosa, Quiteve, or
Ita palm — for by any or all of these names it is known — belongs to
the family of Lepidocaryece. The trunk grows as high as 26 feet,
but it probably requires from 120 to 150 years to reach this height.
It extends high up on the declivity of the Duida Mountains, and
forms in moist places beautiful groups of a shining emerald verdure,
like that of our European alder groves. The trees preserve the
humidity of the ground by their shade, and hence the Indians say
that the Mauritia draws the water round its roots by a mysterious
attraction. From its tops the Indians frequently suspend their ham-
mocks to escape the attacks of the mosquitoes.

* Humboldt, " Ansichten der Natur " — Steppes and Deserts, note 17.

A REMARKABLE AQUATIC PLANT.

269

Sir Walter Raleigh was the first who brought to England this
fruit of the Mauritia palm, which he very justly likened, on account
of its scales, to a fir cone.

The plains of the Rio Negro and the Amazons are the home and
habitat of the most remarkable of all aquatic plants, the Victoria

1. Anthephora elegans.

2. Panicum Cajennense.

3. Anthistiria ciliata.

4. Aristida capillacea.

5. Cyperus articulatus.

regia,* truly deserving its royal rank on account of its curious con-
formation and splendid beauty. It is said to have been first observed
by Hauke, about 1801, and afterwards to have been noticed by
Bonpland, D'Orbigny, and others; but the first person who accurately

* Order, Nymphacfx.

270 THE VICTORIA EEGIA.

described it was Poppig, in 1832, who saw it in the river Amazons.
Sir Richard Schomburgk, who discovered it in the rivers of Guiana,
was, I believe, the first to introduce it in England, where a splendid
specimen may be seen at Kew, another at Chatsworth, and a third in
the Botanic Garden of Glasgow. Its thick fleshy root-stocks send up
a number of long cylindrical leaf-stalks, traversed by air canals, and
armed with stout conical prickles. The blade of the leaf is circular,
and floats on the surface of the water; when fully developed, it
measures from six to twelve feet in diameter, and its margin being
uniformly turned upwards to the depth of two or three inches, it
assumes the appearance of a large shallow tray. The lower surface
is traversed by a number of very prominent veins, radiating from the
centre to the margin, and connected with one another by smaller
transverse nerves ; so that the whole under-side, which is of a purplish
colour, is divided into a network of irregular quadrangular compart-
ments or open cells, admirably fitting the leaf for floating on the
water: The flowers rise upon prickly stalks. They are more than a
foot in diameter, with the white outer petals inclined downwards ;
while the central rose-coloured ones, with the stamens, remain erect :
the whole presenting the fanciful appearance of a central rose-coloured
crown resting on a circular range of snowy and most gracefully curved
petals. The fruit is a sort of globular capsule, about the size of a
child's head, and formidably beset with prickles. The interior is
fleshy, and divided into numerous cells, full of round farinaceous
seeds, which are eaten roasted by the Spaniards. Hence, in some
parts of South America, it is called Mais del Agua, or Water Maize.

The pools and lagoons of this region nourish numerous other
aquatic plants, among which it will suffice to particularize the Scyn-
dapsus fragrans and the Raphia toedigera.

Turning now to the vast area of the Brazilian empire, we find it
divided into matos (or woods) and campos (or open plains). When
the inhabitants would convert into cultivable land a district occupied
by forest, they set fire to it during the dry season, and soon a vege-
tation of frutescent but dwarf species succeeds the primitive vegeta-

THE CAPIM GORDURA.

271

tion. By renewing this purifying process a second and a third time,
the soil finally becomes covered with a species of fern closely
resembling our large Pteris, Pteris caudata ; and if the spot be
once more abandoned, it is speedily taken possession of by a viscous,
grayish, and foetid species of Graminea?, well known locally by the

1 Victoria regia.

AQUATIC PLANTS OF Gtr:
2. Raphia toedigera.

3. Scyndapsus fragrans.

name of Capim gordura, to botanists by that of Tnstegis glutinosa.
So boundless a voracity has this plant, that it wholly expels from
certain regions another and less tenacious variety of the Graminese,
the Sacchanim, or Sapa. The Capim gordura constitutes in itself
almost the entire flora of the artificial campos. It is but an indif-
ferent fodder, and cattle derive from it little vigour.

In general, the natural campos bear a certain resemblance to our
meadows ; grass, however, is less abundant ; they consist, especially

272

A BOUQUET OF BLOSSOMS.

in the colder localities, of Graminese which do not, perhaps, exceed
our British species in dimensions, but differ greatly in the size of
their leaves, and often also in their spreading inflorescence. By their
side, as is the case with us, grow other plants of a more graceful
floral character. Among these are Myrtaceoe, Melastomacese, with
their capsular fruits, and a species of Composite, called Veronia.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE PAMPAS.

Pampas Grass (Gynerium argenteum}.

The wayfarer who traverses the sterile campos is astonished to
discover, on the tortuous and stunted trees that grow there at rare
intervals, some flowers of a singular loveliness. Yet who can refuse
his admiration from the gorgeous Vochyaceaa ; the Malpighiacese,
richly and handsomely flowered ; the Leguminosse, with their long
hanging clusters of sparkling blossoms ; the trumpet-shaped flowers
of the Bignonias, and the superb Oochnus ? Nor will he forget a

THE PAMPAS GRASS. 273

rare Salvertia, fragrant as the lily of the valley, and with its blossoms
disposed in thyrses which outvie in beauty those of the chestnut.

In the genial smiling country which extends from Monte Video
to the mouth of the Rio Nigro, the vegetation is almost wholly
confined to Grammece. It is in this region that the feathery Pampas
Grass (Gynerium argenteum) nourishes luxuriantly, covering leagues
upon leagues with its silvery panicles and drooping leaves, which,
when stirred by a gentle wind, ripple like the slow-moving, spray-
gleaming waters of a sunny sea. It has become of late years a
favourite ornament of our British gardens, and may justly be taken
as a type of tender loveliness.* Beyond the Rio Negro the country
puts on a wilder aspect, and it is with difficulty the most adven-
turous botanist can penetrate into its recesses.

Nearly all the southern districts of Patagonia form, as we have
already seen, an immense and almost level plain, whose soil is gene-
rally dry, arid, and impeded with large pebbles ; the northern
districts, on the other hand, offer a less monotonous landscape, are
broken up with rocks and ravines, interspersed among tolerably
fertile pastures, whose flora has not yet been fully investigated.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FLORA OF THE AUSTRALIAN PLAINS.

THE Deserts of the Australian interior have been laboriously tra-
versed, not, as we have seen, without much suffering, and even
sacrifice, by a handful of intrepid travellers, who have proposed to
themselves simply the solution of certain geographical problems. It

* The Pampas grass is very hardy. Its stems are from ten to fourteen feet high, its
leaves six or eight feet long, and its panicles of flowers silvery white, and from eighteen
inches to two feet in length. Another Brazilian species of the same genus, Gynerium
sacchar -aides, yields a considerable quantity of sugar.

18

274 AFFINITIES OF AFRICAN AND AUSTRALIAN FLORAS.

will therefore be understood that we owe to them only a few inci-
dental notices of their botanical features. For an accurate examina-
tion of these the pioneers of commerce have neither the means, the
opportunities, nor the requisite scientific knowledge. As far as its
flora is concerned, the Australian interior is wholly "virgin soil," a
new botanical world, perhaps, awaiting the advent of a Columbus.
Only the littoral districts have been satisfactorily explored ; and here,
in the south, we meet with the names of Labillardiere, Robert Brown,
Gaudichaud, D'Urville, Sieber, Lesson, Cunningham, and other emi-
nent botanists. To these celebrated names we must also add those of
Dr. Mueller, Director of the Botanical Gardens at Melbourne, Sir
William Hooker, and Mr. Bentham. Their united labours have
provided the public with a vast amount of curious and authentic
information, and have established the fact that the botany of New
Holland, like its zoology, has a physiognomy peculiarly its own, and
that many, nay, most of its vegetable species, are not less charac-
teristic than its strange and astonishing animal types. One is almost
tempted to adopt in sober earnest what Sydney Smith said in humorous
exaggeration, that, " in this remote part of the earth, Nature (having
made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular and
useful productions for the rest of the world) seems determined to
have a bit of play, and to amuse herself as she pleases." * Un-
doubtedly she has indulged in the most wayward and eccentric
forms. If there exist any relations between the vegetation of
Australia and that of any other part of the globe, it is certainly with
the districts of Southern Africa which lie near the Cape of Good
Hope that Australia exhibits the greatest affinity. It would seem as
if these two continents in some remote age had not been separated,
as they now are, by " leagues of salt water," but that their vegetable
species had been able to propagate themselves freely from the one to
the other.

According to Richard, the approximative number of species distin-
guished by botanists amounts to about five thousand ; but so many

* Sydney Smith, in Edinburgh Review, for 1819.

INDIGENOUS PLANTS OF VICTORIA. 275

discoveries have been made of later years, that we may raise the
estimate to seven thousand. While the Australian plants are distri-
buted among numerous families, each of the latter comprises but a
very limited number of individuals. The predominant plants belong,
in the main, to these families or orders : — Leguminosse, Cornpositse,
Myrtacese, Graminese, Cyperacese, Filices, Proteacese, Epacridse, Orchi-
dacese, in a proportion which varies, moreover, according to the
various districts explored.

The fertility of the soil, and the climatic conditions of the
southern shores of the Australian continent, are highly favourable to
the introduction of new species. Our English settlers have availed
themselves to the utmost of this circumstance, and have cultivated
on a large scale all the most useful fruit trees and vegetables of
Europe, and others imported from tropical climes ; so that mingled in
the same prolific gardens may be seen the fig-tree and the banana,
the guava, the orange-tree, the olive, and the apple — cabbages,
potatoes, turnips, peas. Even the vine has been successfully natu-
ralized, and its manufactured products are not inferior in excellence
to the famous Rhenish wines.

In indicating the most curious indigenous plants of New Holland,
we shall more particularly confine ourselves to those of Victoria, one
of the best known districts, and perhaps also one of the most exten-
sive, most diversified, and most picturesque. The plains are, in
general, sufficiently grassy and fertile, especially in those parts which
border on the brooks and rivers. The plants most extensively distri-
buted belong to the Graminese and Cyperacese ; we find, among the
former, the Pennisetum fasciculare, a great number of Poacese, and
the Arundo conspicua ; in foliage and general appearance the
latter presents some striking analogies with the Pampas Grass;
among the Poacese predominates the Cyperus vaginatus, a common
object on the banks of the river Murray in those parts which are
subject to frequent inundations. A strong tenacious netting is made
from the fibres of its leaves. To these herbs we have to acid some
flowering plants, such as the star-like Lobelias ; numerous species of

276

A CLUMP OF HAKE PLANTS.

mint (as Meniha Australis, M. satureioides, M. grandiflora, and J\I.
gracilis), from which an essential oil is extracted for use in the
manufacture of perfumes ; the Sida pulchella and Lavatera plebeia,
of which stout fibre or solid thread is made, the fibres of Australian
flax (Linum marginale) being adapted to the same pin-pose. The

VEGETABLE LIFE IN VICTORIA.

1. Rosea gracilis (Arundo conspicua).

2. Astelia Banksii

3. Hectia Pitcairnisefolia.

4. Xanthorrhcea arborea.

Restias, a curious rush-like order of endogens, also inhabit these
moist places : as do the Kingias, very common grasses ; the Astelia
Banksii, a species of Liliacese, with grass-formed leaves and a strong
tenacious stem ; and the Xerotes longifolia. The Nardoo (Narsllia
macropus, or, as it is sometimes called, N. salvatrix], whose spores
and spore-cases are pounded by the native Australians and made into

THE CASSOWARY TREE. 277

bread or porridge, is a kind of cryptogamous plant, with leaves formed
of four folioles, like those of a truffle. It abounds in the low grounds
and inundated districts, especially on the banks of the Murray.
Finally, the Stag-horn (Acrostichon grande), a gigantic mushroom,
clings to the branches of the great trees.

Small bushy clumps are scattered over the plains, and flourish
with peculiar vigour along the water-courses. They consist of various
shrubs. The traveller will not fail to notice a whole series of Legu-
minosas — Chlorozoma, Pultencea, Viminaria, Mirbelia, Podolobium
(all are shrubs of exceeding elegance, and now form the rare orna-
ments of our English gardens) ; of Epacridse — Epacris stiphelia, E.
leucophogon, and others, which have also been imported into our
home-parterres ; a great number of Euribias, a genus of subfrutescent
Compositse, of which a few are rendered interesting by their heath-
like foliage ; the Pimelea axiflora, whose supple and tenacious bark
is fashioned into bands and straps ; the Myrsine variabilis, with its
woody stems and drupaceous fruit ; the Aralia crassifolia, a singular
shrub, with long, narrow, and very rigid leaves ; the Callistemon
salignum (vulgarly called "stonewood"), employed for xylographic
purposes ; the Casuarina equisetifolia,* or " Swamp Oak" — also called
" Cassowary Tree" — a lofty tree, with very durable wood, long, slender,
drooping, emerald-green branches, and conical fruit, inclosing small
winged nuts ; various species of Melaleuca, yielding the green aro-
matic oil called cajaputi or cajeput oil, valuable as a stimulant
or antispasmodic ; finally, some Cordylines, or Tis, plants of the
natural order Liliacese, and nearly allied to the Dragon's Blood Tree,
attaining a height of ten to fifteen feet, with a berry-like fruit, and
lanceolate leaves of a reddish hue, which afford a nutriment for cattle,
thatch for houses, and whose fibres are frequently made into cloth.
The root, when baked, is much used as an article of food, and the
fermented juice yields an intoxicating beverage.

The dry, rocky, arid, and sandy districts, which may be com-
pared to the Landes of Brittany, are clothed with a peculiar vegeta-
* Order, Amentaccx.

278

A BOTANICAL CURIOSITY.

tion. The strangest plant, which is also the most widely distributed,
is undoubtedly the Xanthorrhcea arborea,* forming a conspicuous
feature in the dreary landscape, and when stripped of its leaves
resembling a black man holding a spear. The leaves afford good
fodder for cattle, while the natives eat the soft white centre of the

VEGETABLE LIFE ON THE AUSTRALIAN PLAINS.

1. Doryanthes excelsa.

2. Aralia crassifolia.

3. Dryandra repens.
1. Cordyline congesta.

top of the stem. They yield two 'kinds of fragrant resin — one of
a yellow colour, balsamic and inodorous, called Botany Bay ; and the
other red, called Black Boy Gum. The tree — which the settlers
have christened " Black Boy" and " Grass Gum" — has a thick trunk,
encrusted in a thick coating of the persistent basis of old leaves,
* Order, Liliacex.

THE TRAVELLER'S TREE. 279

glued together by the yellow or red resin with which the plant
abounds, and usually burned and blackened outside by bush-fires.
The leaves are long, wiry, and grass-like, and are borne in a dense tuft
at the top of the stem, hanging gracefully all around it. Their long
flower-stalks aspire from its centre, sometimes growing as high as
fifteen or twenty feet, and carrying aloft a thick cylindrical flower
spike.

Among the lowlier plants are found a few Hectias, such as the
Hectia Pitcairnicefolia, one of the Bromelias, very curious from its
mode of vegetation ; and the Stipa crinita, a very common grass.
The leaves of the latter have been manufactured into paper of tole-
rable consistency.

The sandy and colder tracts are the habitat of the annual or
perennial Compositse, distinguished by their smooth and shining
flowers. On the other hand, the dry rocky surfaces are besprinkled
with inconsiderable woods, or rather thickets, formed in part of the
Santalum acuminatum, whose nutritious fruit are called "peaches"
by the colonists ; the Santalum persicarium, or sandal wood ; several
Nitrarias,* with edible fruits ; a great number of Acacias, notably
the Acacia verticillata, A. sophora, and A. doratoxylon, whose very
hard wood is employed in the fabrication of javelins ; a considerable
series of Proteacese, particularly the Banksia Australia, B. serrata,
and B. integrifolia, so characteristic in aspect and foliage ; and a few
Eucalypti,-]- or " Gum Trees," of small stature — among others, the
"Traveller's Tree," or Eucalyptus oleosa.^ Its roots extend hori-
zontally, and retain a quantity of water sufficient to quench the way-
farer's thirst in the hour of need. All the Eucalypti are curious
trees, with entire and leathery leaves, affording an unusual amount of
aromatic oil. Many of the species abound in resinous secretions ;
some attain a great size, with trunks of from 8 to 16 feet in
diameter, and 150 or 160 in length. The Eucalyptus resinifera —
"Red Gum" or "Iron Bark Tree" — reaches to an elevation of

* Order, Malpighiacex. f Order, JUyrtacex.

\ The same name, '• Traveller's Tree," is applied to the Urania speciosa.

280

THE AUSTRALIAN DKYANDRA.

150 to 200 feet. When wounded, a red juice flows from it very
freely, hardening into irregular, inodorous, and transparent masses
in the air, and furnishing as much as sixty gallons from a single tree.
Finally, I may refer to the Dryandra, whose foliage is very
graceful, and its conformation very varied. Sometimes it is found as

VEGETABLE LITE ON THE AUSTRALIAN PLAINS.

1. Acacia verticillata. 2. Casuarina equisetifolia, or " Black Boy Tree. "

3. Corypha Australia, or "Australian Palm."

a bush, three to seven feet high ; and sometimes, as in the Dryandra
repens, creeping along the ground.

On the more temperate heights the traveller encounters some
plants of a fantastic character : as, for instance, the Doryanihes
excelsa, with its upright gigantic leaves, more than 6 feet long, and
from 2£ to 3| inches broad ; from their centre rises a strong stalk,

THE OLD WORLD HERBIVOBA. 281

15 or 18 feet high, terminated by a compact and voluminous cluster
of great deep-red flowers. There, too, are found the magnificent
arborescent ferns, Alsophila Australis and DicJcsonia Antarctica.
The trunk of the former aspires to a stature of 25 to 90 feet ; that
of the second, to 12 to 28 feet ; and in both the stems are termi-
nated by a cluster of immense flowers, which give to these plants a
quite distinctive character.

Nor must we quit the Australian Flora and its marvels without
alluding to the Corypha Australis, which begins to make its appear-
ance at the mouth of the Snowy River. It is a gigantic palm, grow-
ing solitarily, or in thin groups, in low, cool, and even moist places.
Its trunk probably attains to 140 feet in height ; and the top of its
stem is crowned by a gorgeous crest of fan-shaped leaves, which are
employed in the manufacture of straw hats.

CHAPTER VII.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD I—-
HERBIVOROUS ANIMALS.

To the prodigal Flora of the Tropics, which we shall soon see dis-
playing in the virgin forests its exuberant fecundity, corresponds a
Fauna no less rich, and marked by a singular variety.

This Fauna offers, especially in the Old World, an impressive
character of power, strength, superior force — I had almost said,
majesty. In truth, if we do calmly compare the mammals and the
birds of tropical America with those which roam the wild plains of
Africa, Hindostan, the Indo-Chinese peninsula, and the great islands
of the Indian Ocean, we cannot but recognize the evident superiority
of the latter. The anthropoid Ape, the enormous Pachyderms, Ele-
phant, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Giraffe, and, among animals of the

282 CONTRASTS AND ANALOGUES.

same order, the Antelopes, many of which attain the dimensions of
the Horse, belong exclusively to the Eastern Hemisphere. The genus
Camel, represented in Asia by the Bactrian Camel, in Africa by the
Dromedary, is but weakly typified in South America by the Lama,
the Vicuna, and the Alpaca, not inelegant in form, but of a markedly
inferior stature. And what equality is there between the lordly
Tiger of the rank Indian jungles, and the sleek, stealthy Jaguar of
the American wilderness ? Or who will venture to compare the
so-called " Lion of America," the Puma or Cougouar, with the regal
quadruped which makes the hot Libyan wastes re-echo with his
terrible roar ?

Among the Birds, the Phenicoptera, with its disproportionate legs
and neck, distributed over all the ancient continent below 40° of
latitude, and the Ostrich, properly so called, are much superior in
dimensions to their analogues on the other side of the Atlantic, the
American Flamingo and the Nandou. So do the Eagles and Vultures
of Europe, Asia, arid Africa prevail in numbers and force over those
of the New World. And the ancient continent can likewise claim
as its own the gigantic Epiornis, the wonderful " Roc Bird" of the
well-known Oriental legend, whose petrified eggs and some of whose
fossil bones have been discovered in Madagascar. It is true, how-
ever, that the greatest of living Raptores, the Condor, inhabits exclu-
sively the Cordillera of the Andes :—

" Stands solitary, stands immovable
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabashed,
In the cold light, above the dews of morn." — ( W. S. Landor.)

But the balance is re-established by the Erpetological and Ento-
mological Fauna of the New World, which can oppose its huge Boas,
its Caimans and Pythons, to the Crocodiles and Gavials of Africa and
Asia ; its Crotali and Trigonocephali to the Najas of India, the
Echidnas of the Cape, and the Cerastes of Egypt and the Sahara ;
while the Bull Frog of the United States and the Pipa of Guiana are
only found on the banks of the vast lonesome swamps of the new

A VAST FIELD OF STUDY. 283

continent. As far as the Desert World is concerned, in both hemi-
spheres the legions are innumerable, and their energies commensurate
to the greatness of the continual work of destruction and purification
which they seem destined to accomplish in all tropical countries.

It is unnecessary to carry any further the parallel between the
two hemispheres. We shall more clearly detect their analogies and
differences by pursuing the study, already opened up in the Steppes
and Seas of Sand, of the principal species proper to the various forms
of the Desert, the different regions and divisions of the Savage
World.

Yet I must confess that the difficulties of the study increase with
the extent of the field we are called upon to explore. The Steppes and
Wildernesses of Sand constitute, both in Africa and Asia, regions which
are clearly defined, and the poverty both of their fauna and their flora
fixes a definite limit to the researches of the naturalist. Such is
not the case in the immense countries which now lie before us.
Instead of sighing, like Alexander, for more worlds to conquer, the
student of science is ever deploring the impossibility of exhausting
even a single division of the grand work before him. "Art is long ;
life is short." The most industrious among us can never rise to the
full height of his glorious task ; must always remain like a child on
the shore of the ocean of truth, and be content with the few shells his
nerveless hand contrives to gather. In the wide regions we are about
to traverse we feel at every step the colossal character of the enter-
prise. Every instant their aspect changes ; Nature never repeats
herself; their products vary with the latitude, the climate, and the
soil. To pass in review all the trees and plants and flowers which
flourish there, all the animals and peoples which dwell among them,
would be nothing less than to embrace in a Vast encyclopaedia the de-
scription and history of two organic kingdoms. But such is not the
design of the present volume. I have not undertaken to give an exact
picture of nature, which would task to the uttermost the powers of men
of such diverse genius as Humboldt, Owen, Lyell, Darwin, Tyndall,
Hooker, and Ruskin, but to sketch the bold outlines and more pro-

284 OBJECT OF THE AUTHOR.

miuent features of the physiognomy of the Desert World, and not to
reproduce its more minute details.

My embarrassment, then, arises less from the multitude and infinite
variety of the objects we have to examine, than from the difficulty of
harmonizing the study with the divisions of this work. How, in fact,
can I establish a positive distinction between the animals of the
Prairies or the Savannahs and those of the Forests, between those of
the latter and the animals proper to the Mountains ? For such
a purpose it is needful that each of these forms of the Desert
World should possess its peculiar fauna ; which is true only within
very narrow limits. In reality, most animals inhabit or frequent,
according to circumstances, sometimes one district, sometimes another,
without its being possible to assign with any amount of precision
their habitual, or simply their occasional, abode.

I shall avail myself, therefore, of the liberty allowed to every
writer who does not design a purely didactical work, by not unneces-
sarily troubling myself whether the animals whose organization or
characteristics attract our notice, particularly affect a low or elevated
locality, the shady wood or open plain, the pestilential swamp or the
river-watered valley, and by permitting myself, except in the case of
some evident and constant partiality, to place them where the most
eminent observers assure us they are really, if not exclusively, met
with.

On this account, the plains, more or less densely wooded and
broken up, which occupy the greater portion of the African Continent,
will readily furnish us with the opportunity of studying the majority
of animals indigenous to that continent, and, in general, to the entire
Tropical zone of the Old World. In fact, nearly all the genera of
Mammals, Birds, and Reptiles, are there represented by their most cha-
racteristic types. Clothed with a luxuriant vegetation ; watered by
periodical rains and numerous streams ; intersected by thick masses of
forests, groves, and thickets; relieved from monotonous uniformity by
mountain and ravine, by marshes and lakes of vast extent, — these
fields ever exhibit that aspect of busy life under which we love to

NIGHT IN THE DESEKT. 285

represent to ourselves the earth when she first emerged from the
boiling seas of Chaos, when the forces which had seethed within her
bowels for so many thousands of centuries had been tranquillized by
the Divine will, and she was despatched on her mysterious course to
be the theatre of man's glorious destiny.

During the daytime silence and solitude prevail over the open
plains. It is the hour when most animals seek, under the foliage of
the trees, among the tall rank grasses, in the bosom of the waters or
under the surface of the earth, a shelter against the swift burning
arrows of the sun, and repose immovable in their different lairs. But
when the great orb of day sinks towards the horizon, all Nature seems
to awake. More imperious needs succeed to those of rest and slum-
ber ; hunger and thirst stimulate the most sluggish into exertion.
Then the reptile begins to stir in the mud where he lay embedded ;
the herbivora return to their fresh pastures, and move towards the
rivers and ponds in whose waters they may slake their thirst ; the
carnaria take the same road; they know that in the open plain they
will find victims for their murderous jaws. The Desert is astir
with strange sounds and mysterious voices ; the air re-echoes the
thousand discordant cries which ring from the mountains and the
rocks ; black shadows pass, re-pass, and flit to and fro, in every direc-
tion ; terror, rage, agony, voracity, all these instincts obtain expres-
sion in the dreadful concert ; it is the orgie of the appetites, the
grand " Witches' Sabbath" of Nature, whose furious animation slackens
towards the middle of the night, until, at sunrise, the lively accents
and joyous melodies of the birds, and the peaceful pastimes of the
other animals of the day, succeed to the lamentations and sinister in-
vocations of the prowlers of the darkness.

In the foremost rank of the great animals to which the fauna
of Asia and Africa owes its superiority, I have named the huge
Pachyderms,* those mighty colossi which may be regarded as the ana-

* Pachydermata, from Traxfo, thick, and S^p/ia. skin ; an order of quadrupeds distin-
guished by the thickness of their hides.

286 THE RIVER HORSE.

logues, in the terrestrial creation, of the Cetacean giants of the marine
creation. The Pachyderms formed in Cuvier's system a sufficiently
natural order, which modern systematists have dismembered, and, as
I believe, a little arbitrarily. This order comprised, besides the
elephants, the hippopotami, the rhinoceroses, and the tapirs, all the
Porcidse family, and even the Solidungulates, such as the horse and ass.
In the present work I shall adopt Cuvier's division. The elephant is
the denizen of the forests where, in a succeeding chapter, we shall

HIPPOPOTAMUS AND CROCODILE OF THE RIVER NILE.

encounter both him and the rhinoceros. But the hippopotamus belongs
incontestably to the fauna of the plain. His name (from the Greek)
signifies " River Horse." And, indeed, he lives in the rivers, the
pools, the deep marshes ; bis manners are essentially amphibious.
He dives and swims with a surprising ease and agility, considering the
enormous bulk of his body, and the shortness of his heavy, unwieldy
legs. He is able to remain a long time under water. His colour is
a brownish-black, and his proportions, ten to twelve feet in length,

AN INVULNERABLE PACHYDERM. 287

and eight to ten in height. His head is immensely large ; the mouth
cavernous in its prodigious width; the teeth immensely strong, the
incisors and canines of the lower jaw being long, and curved for-
wards ; these canines or tusks sometimes measure more than two feet in
length, and weigh upwards of six pounds each. Those in the upper
jaw are much smaller, and the front teeth are of a moderate size. The
broad thick lips are beset with scattered tufts of short bristles ; the
small quick eyes are placed very near the top of the head ; the small
ears are slightly pointed, and lined with short thick hair. His food
mainly consists of the coarse herbage that nourishes on the banks of
lakes and rivers ; but Milne Edwards speaks of three or four of them
standing knee-deep in the water, forming an irregular line, and
pouncing upon the fish brought within their reach by the rapid
currents. At night time they abandon their watery haunts to prowl
among the sugar-cane plantations, the fields of millet and rice, which
they devour with eagerness. Their march is so impetuous, that they
break down every barrier ; nothing can resist them.

The hippopotamus is spread over all eastern and southern Africa ;
is found in Nubia, Ethiopia, Abyssinia; at the Cape, the Senegal and
the Congo. Both the settlers and the natives of these countries hunt
them with ardour for the sake of the ivory they yield, nor is their
flesh despised by a keen appetite and vigorous stomach. Sometimes
they excavate, in the animal's ordinary route, a tolerably deep pit,
beset with sharp pointed poles, and concealed by a covering of leafy
branches : sometimes, in the shade of the evening, they lie in ambus-
cade among the bushes, and aim at his huge bulk the deadly bullet, as
he comes up from the water, labouring and bellowing. It is neces-
sary to aim well at his head ; for the rest of his body is almost as in-
vulnerable as that of Achilles.

Here is a lively picture from Sir Samuel Baker's valuable volumes,
in which the hippopotamus is a foremost figure.

"We were towing through high reeds," he says,* "the men
invisible, and the rope mowing over the high tops of the grass, when
* Sir S. Baker, " The Albert N'yanza," &c.( i. 65-67.

288 HIPPOPOTAMUS SOUP.

the noise disturbed a hippopotamus from his slumber, and he was
immediately perceived close to the boat. He was about half-grown,
and in an instant about twenty men jumped into the water in
search of him, thinking him a mere baby ; but as he suddenly
appeared, and was about three times as large as they had expected,
they were not very eager to close. However the reis pluckily led
the way, and seized him by the hind leg, when the crowd of men
rushed in, and we had a grand tussle. Ropes were thrown from the
vessel, and nooses were quickly slipped • over his head ; but he had
the best of the struggle, and was dragging the people into the open
river; I was therefore obliged to end the sport by putting a ball
through his head. He was scored all over by the tusks of some
other hippopotamus that had been bullying him."

After conquering your enemy, kill him and eat him : such is the
maxim of savage life. It was carried out by Sir Samuel Baker and
his men, much to the satisfaction of the conquerors. "A new dish!"
exclaims our traveller; "there is no longer mock-turtlesoup; real
turtle is moc/c hippopotamus. I tried boiling the fat, flesh, and skin
together, the result being that the skin assumes the appearance of
the green fat of the turtle, but is far superior. A piece of the head
thus boiled, and then soused in vinegar, with chopped onions, cayenne
pepper, and salt, throws brawn completely in the shade."

The same traveller relates that the natives on the shores of the
Albert N'yanza, previous to embarking on a voyage, cast a handful
of beads into the lake, to propitiate the hippopotamus, that their
canoe may not be upset.

The genus Tapir is wanting in Africa ; but we find a species,
Tapirus Indicus, in India and the Indian Archipelago, where it was
first noticed by Diard and Duvaucel. These naturalists saw an
individual of this species at Barrackpore, near Calcutta, whither
he had been imported from the island of Sumatra. "I was much
surprised," says Diard, "that so large an animal had not hitherto
been discovered ; but I was much more so, on seeing in the Asiatic
Society's Museum the head of a similar animal, a native of Malacca,

THE BUSH HOG OF SOUTH AFRICA.

289

which had been sent to the Society, on the 29th of April 1806, by
M. Faghuarie, governor of that province." This tapir is as common
at Malacca as the rhinoceros and elephant. In size he closely
approaches the common ass. He is black all over, except the ears,
which are fringed with white, and on the back, which is of a pale
gray. His habits are identical with those of the American tapirs, to
be described hereafter.

In the African plains, from Nubia and Senegal to the Cape, we

RHINOCEBOS.
African Phacoccerus (Chceripotamus AfHcanus).

meet with a Pachyderm intermediate between the hippopotamus
and the wild boar : this is the Phacocoerus, which was known to the
ancients, and designated by credulous ^Elian the Sus tetrakeros, or
" Boar with Four Horns." He has no horns, however, but only,
beneath each ear, a horny protuberance, which greatly disfigures his
head, and procures him the popular appellation of the "Warty Hog"
— the "Bush Vark," or "Bush Hog" of South Africa (Choeripotamus

19

290

THE HEMIOXUS, OR WILD ASS.

Afncanus}. He has four projecting tusks, and long sharp tufted
ears. His stature, his feet, his tail, the mane of stiff bristles which
garnishes his neck, identify him with the wild boar ; but his body,
almost naked on the flanks and hinder part, likens him to an hippopo-
tamus. He is gregarious, of fierce and brutal habits, and lives chiefly
in the bushes or tall herbage.

The Solidungulse (or Solid-hoofed), which roam among the wide
pasturages of the Tropical regions of the Ancient World, contrast, by

[•HE QUAGGA..

the elegance of their forms and the beauty of their clothing, with the
unwieldy Pachyderms, of rugged and swarthy hide, placed by Cuvier
under the same classification. The Wild Horse does not exist in
these latitudes, though we may find there the most beautiful species
of the genus: the Hemione, the Onagra, the Zebra, the Daw, and the
Quagga. The Hemionus ("half-ass"), which we are endeavouring
to acclimatize in Europe, and numerous specimens of which may be
seen in the Zoological Gardens of London and Paris, is of a clear

GENERA OF SOLIDUNGTJL^. 291

brown colour all over the body, except the belly and legs, which are
white. His mane is short, and his tail garnished only with a tuft
of hairs at the extremity. The species is Asiatic, and appears to
have originated in India, whence it spread westward into Asia
Minor, and northward into the Steppes which stretch to the base of
the Himalayas. The modern names are Koulem, Kiang, and Dzig-
gethai (or "Mountain Ass"). He roams in great troops across the
dreary Asiatic deserts, and is fond of bitter and saline herbage, and
brackish water. Now, as of old, he has " the range of the mountains
for his pasture," and the "salt places" for his dwelling. His swift-
ness and wariness render his chase an exciting pastime, and in Persia
he is considered the noblest of game.

The Hemippus ("half horse"), a species closely allied to the
Hemionus, is a native of the fertile districts of Syria and Arabia.
Another species, the Tarpan, roams the Steppes of Tartary, and is
with great difficulty tamed to the use of man. He is of a reddish
colour, but the mane and tail are black, and along the back runs a
black stripe. The Onagra, Onager, or Wild Ass of Tartary, is
represented in Abyssinia by a smaller variety, of very graceful form,
whose hide exhibits already, upon the legs, some of those well-defined
stripes which so magnificently adorn the "outer vestment" of the
Quagga, the Daw, and, especially, the Zebra.

All these Solidungulse are identical in habits and character :
social among themselves, they are fierce and mistrustful towards
other animals. When in peril, they seek safety at first by rapid
flight ; but if driven to bay, they assume a courageous bearing,
assail their enemies intrepidly, and frequently compel them to retreat.
It is even asserted that the Quagga (Asinus Quagga) will mingle
with herds of domestic animals, and defend them against the attacks
of beasts of prey. According to Dr. Gray, this animal derives his
name from his voice, which resembles the barking of a dog, or a
sound like Couagg, or Quag. Pennant calls him the Quacha. He
resembles the horse in his haughty bearing and rapid movements.
His head, neck, mane, and shoulders are blackish-brown, banded with

202

THE ZEBRA OR IIIPPOTIGRES.

white ; tlie stomach, hind parts, and legs are whitish ; the dorsal line
is black; the ears have two irregular black bands and a white tip.
In the Daiu, the blackish-brown tint extends over all the upper parts
of the body, as well as the stripes, which are alternately black and
light brown. The Quagga and the Daw belong to Southern Africa,
and especially to Caffraria. The habitat of the Zebra appears to be
more extended in range. He is found even as far north as Abyssinia.
He was known to the Romans under the name of the Hippotigres,

ZEBRAS (Equus Z

and figured in the sanguinary sports of the Amphitheatre. As-
suredly he is the handsomest species of the genus Equus (Horse).
He is as tall as the Hemionus ; his legs are shapely, his mien and
bearing full of spirit ; he has a well-proportioned head, and a coat of
incomparable richness of design, with the skin lustrous, and large
black stripes symmetrically arranged over the whole body, on a
ground of pure white.

Africa, as I have said above, is the native country of the large

MEANS TO AN END. 293

Ruminants. Not less remarkable than the Camel in the fantastic
originality of his form, which matches the exquisite richness of his
skin, the gigantic Giraffe (Carnelopardalis Giraffa) is distributed
over nearly the whole continent south of the Sahara. Sometimes he
even ventures into the Desert ; but most frequently his long neck and
tall legs are seen in the fertile plains of Negroland, the Soudan, the
Senegal, and Nubia. " His head," says a popular zoologist, " resem-
bles that of the camel in the absence of a naked muzzle, and in the
shape and organization of the nostrils, which are oblique and narrow
apertures, defended by the hair which grows from their margins, and
surrounded by cutaneous muscular fibres, by which the animal can
close them at will. This is a beautiful provision for the defence of
the air passages, and the irritable membrane lining the olfactory
cavities, against the fine particles of sand which the storms of the
Desert raise in almost suffocating clouds. The large, dark, and lus-
trous eyes of the giraffe, which beam with a peculiarly mild but fearless
expression, are so placed as to take in a wider range of the horizon than
is subject to the vision of any other quadruped. While browsing on
his favourite acacia, the giraffe, by means of his laterally-projecting
orbits, can direct his sight so as to anticipate a threatened attack in
the rear from the stealthy lion, or any other foe of the Desert. To
an open attack he sometimes makes a successful defence by striking
out his powerful and well-armed feet ; and the king of beasts is said
to be frequently repelled and disabled by the wounds which the
giraffe has thus inflicted with his hoofs." The lion, however, seldom
attacks him unless he can surprise him in a state of repose, when he
will leap upon his victim's back and tear him to pieces.

Le Vaillant has justly observed that if precedency among animals
were determined by their height, the giraffe would hold the first
rank. The most careless observer must be impressed by the enor-
mous length of his fore-legs, and his long tapering neck, which
enables him to browse upon the fresh foliage and green young shoots
of the loftiest trees ; nor can he fail to admire his small and elevated
head, his brilliant beaming eyes, and his mildness of aspect. Unusual

294

THE STATURE OF THE GIRAFFE.

as are the animal's proportions, they are not inharmonious, and his
appearance is eminently picturesque. When full grown, he measures
seventeen feet from the top of the head to the fore-feet. This, how-
ever, is a maximum. It should be added that his fore-legs are not
so much longer than the hind, but the shoulders are extraordinarily
high. The animal's colour is a light fawn, marked with numerous

A LlON RENDING A GIRAFFE.

darker spots. His horns consist of two porous bony substances, about
three inches long, which form, as it were, a part of the skull.

Several species of antelopes and wild oxen traverse in numerous
herds the wide prairies of Africa and Asia. Among the African
species, I may name the Bubalus, which lives principally in the north-
west, and whose keen stout horns, disposed like the prongs of a
pitchfork, render him exceedingly formidable ; the Gnu, or Con-

THE WHITE-FOOTED ANTELOPES. 295

riochetse (Catollepus Gnu), which inhabits the wild karoos and hilly
districts of South Africa, in migratory herds, and is distinguished by
the weird ugliness of his head, with its curved horns, and its beauti-
ful flowing mane, white at the base, and black at the tips ; the Oreas
Lanna, improperly called the " Cape Eland" (Antilope Oreas}, a
graceful animal, as large as the horse, and five feet high at the
shoulder, with straight pointed horns, whose great strength is aug-
mented by a spiral wreath ; and the Oryx (Oryx gazella), Egyptian
Antelope, or Pasom, somewhat superior in size to a deer, with horns
three feet long, black hoofs and horns, a white head, and neck and
upper part of the body of a pale bluish-gray.

Tropical Asia presents but a very small number of Antelopes,
properly so called, of which the Nylghau or White-footed Antelope
(Partux pictd) is the largest. Its face is long and narrow; its black,
round, and pointed horns, though only about seven inches long, are
slightly curved forwards; the broad ears are fringed with white hairs;
along the top of the deep narrow neck runs a slight mane of black
hair, which is continued to some distance down the back; a long
hanging tuft of a similar colour adorns the breast. This animal is
said to have abounded in the forests between Delhi and Lahore in the
days of Aurungzebe, and formed one of the objects of the chase with
that "king of kings" during his expedition to Cashmere. The Hin-
doo name, " Nyl-ghau," signifies " blue ox," which is true of the male,
but the female is a pale brown. He is a courageous animal, very
difficult to tame; travellers affirm that when attacked he throws
himself on his knees, and in this position moves forward, until, sud-
denly leaping to his feet, he rushes impetuously upon his enemy, and
smites him vigorously with his sharp horns.

I must not omit to particularize, among the great Ruminants of
the Tropical regions of the Old World, the Buffaloes, or Wild Oxen,
which feed in immense troops in the fertile and well-watered prairies.
The two African species or varieties which are best known are, the
Buffalo of Caffraria, and the Short-horned Buffalo. The former is not
confined to the Caffre country, as bis name would lead one to suppose;

290

BUFFALOES IN AFRICA.

but ranges as far as Abyssinia. His horns, very wide, and close
together at the base, form, above the eyes, a kind of helmet very useful
to the animal in pushing aside the bushes that impede his progress.
His hair is rough and black over the whole body. The short-horned
buffalo has a smooth brown skin, muzzle nearly black, ears large,
horns arched and of moderate dimensions.

1. Antelope Gnu.

2. Oreas Lanna (or Eland

3. Striped or Banded Gnu.

These buffaloes, despite of their ferocious aspect and savage habits.
are wholly inoffensive, and in all cases of danger are tempted at first
to take to flight; but should they be pressed too closely, or wounded,
their irascible and vindictive disposition speedily displays itself.
When the negroes hunt the buffalo, says Paul Gervais, they are very
careful to attack isolated individuals only, because, in the herds of
these animals some will always be found disposed to avenge the death

HABITATS OF THE HERBIVORA. 297

of their companions, and pursue the hunters to the uttermost. In
their excesses of fury they strike the ground with their horns ; dash
their bodies against the trees in which their enemies have taken
refuge; sometimes they will spend their rage upon one another,
or upon the bodies of those of their kind which have been brought
low.

Asia is the home of the Common Buffalo (Bos bubalus), and from
thence he has migrated into several islands of the Indian Archipelago,
Eastern Europe, and even into Italy. In France and Great Bri-
tain he has long been domesticated. But there also exist in several
Indian provinces some savage species of the Arnee Buffalo (Bos
Ami of I)r. Shaw), easily recognized by his horns of prodigious size
and length, which frequently measure six feet in length, and eighteen
inches in circumference at the base.

Travellers have asserted that nearly all the herbivora, and in
particular the more feeble and timorous, evince a marked preference
for open and level places; to such an extent, that the herds of ante-
lopes, gazelles, and zebras may be seen abandoning their pastures
when the herbage is unusually luxuriant. It is in the thickets, the
matted and almost impenetrable jungles, and among the tall rank
grasses, that the beast of prey glides stealthily and unseen upon his
intended victim. Where the surface of the ground is smooth and
bare, the herbivora can descry an approaching enemy, and take to
flight or make ready for defence. It is not, however/ the carnaria
that they have most cause to dread, but man; not less cruel he than
the stealthy lion or the prowling tiger, and far more formidable since
European commerce has furnished the savage with firearms. He
quickly learns to make use of these ; but prior to their introduction
into wilderness, prairie, and forest, he had devised against his prey
various more or less successful means of destruction.

In Central Africa, for instance, the Bakouain Negroes, to capture
en masse buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, antelopes, and even rhinoceroses,
which gather in crowds around the grateful waters, construct a colossal
and all-devouring snare, which they call a Hopo.

298

THE AFRICAN HOPO.

" This snare," says Dr. Livingstone,* " consists of two veiy stout
and very high fences, approaching each other so as to assume the shape
of a V; at the apex of the angle, instead of completely joining them,
they are prolonged in a straight line, forming an alley about fifty
paces in length, abutting on a ditch which may measure from four to

five yards square, and be from six to eight feet deep. Trunks of
trees are arranged cross-wise on the borders of this trench, chiefly on
the side from which the animals will arrive, and upon the opposite
one, by which they will endeavour to escape. These trees form an
advanced border above the ditch, rendering flight impossible, and the
* Livingstone, " Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.'1

A MASSACRE OF INNOCENTS. 299

whole is carefully covered over with reeds, which hide the snare, and
make it resemble a trap placed among the herbage. As the two fences
are often a mile in length, while the base of the triangle which they
define is nearly of the same dimensions, a company who form around
the hopo a circle of three to four miles in circumference, by gradually
drawing it closer, are certain to collect a great quantity of game. The
hunters direct by their cries the animals which they surround, and
cause them to reach the summit of the hopo. Men concealed at this
point then fling their javelins into the midst of the affrighted herd,
which, dashing headlong through the solitary opening it can find, in-
volves itself in the narrow alley leading to the ditch. The animals
fall in pell-mell, until the snare is filled with a living mass, which
enables the others to escape by passing over the bodies of the victims.
The spectacle is horrifying; the hunters, intoxicated by the pursuit,
and no longer controlling themselves, strike these graceful animals
with a delirious joy, while the poor creatures, crushed to the bottom
of the abyss beneath the weight of the dead and dying, raise from
time to time the pile of carcasses, by struggling, in the midst of their
agony, against the burden which suffocates them."

Of the corral in which the Cingalese entraps the elephant, and of
the ingenious snares laid by the Malay or the Indian for the murder-
ous tiger, I shall speak hereafter. Between man and the carnivora it
was natural that a deadly war should be incessantly waged; but
humanity would seem to dictate towards the inoffensive herbivora a
less sanguinary hostility.

800 A POET'S DESCRIPTION.

CHAPTER VIII.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD, CONTINUED :

THE CARNIVORA.

NEXT to man, the most dangerous enemies of the peaceful herbivora
are the great Oarnivora of the Felidce genus, in whose first rank
zoologists and poets were formerly wont to place the lion.

The so-called " king of animals," however, has of late years lost
much of his prestige. Observant travellers have watched him with a
jealous and suspicious eye; intrepid hunters have dared to measure
themselves against him, and to beard him in his retreats. Our popu-
lar heroes suffer greatly by this close examination. Achilles to his
Myrmidons, I suspect, was less godlike than he appeared to the war-
riors of Troy, who saw him only in the rush and tumult of the battle.
Certain it is that the researches of modern science have stripped the
lion of most of the splendid attributes with which romance had in-
vested him. Here is a glowing picture: —

" The lion,

Who long has reign'd the terror of the woods,
And dared the boldest huntsman to the combat,
When caught at length within some hidden snare,
With foaming jaws he bites the toils that hold him,
And roars, and rolls his fiery eyes in vain,
While the surrounding swains wound him at pleasure." — (Nathaniel Rowe.)

But the fact is, that with all his prodigious strength, his terrible teeth
and claws, his imposing physiognomy and attitudes, he is an animal
more prudent than courageous, and very unlike the highly-coloured
portrait which Buffon painted. There have not been wanting well-ac-
credited authorities to accuse him of cowardice; as our own countryman
Livingstone, and the Frenchman Delegorgue. According to the latter,
lie is but a nocturnal robber, whom a ray of light disconcerts, or the

TRUTH ABOUT THE LION. 301

barking of dogs, and the shouts of men, women, and children, or a
blow from a well-applied whip, will frequently put to flight. Even if
provoked, or wounded by man, he will often refuse to fight to the last
extremity; or if he accept the challenge, and succeed in harassing his
antagonist, he contents himself by breaking a limb or two, by mark-
ing his chest with his teeth and nails, after which he leaves him and
goes his way. "I have known," says Delegorgue, "an intrepid hunter
who, twice in seven years, had been treated in this fashion by a
wounded lion; the first encounter cost him two broken limbs; the
second, six fractures, without counting the deep scars left by his claws
on several parts of the body. Another, named Vermaes, in his daring,
was held for more than a minute by a lion, and got quit with
four deep marks of his canine teeth; glorious scars, which he showed
to me with an air of lively satisfaction." Livingstone records a
similar adventure which befell himself with a lion at which he
had aimed a couple of shots. The wounded animal turned upon his
aggressor, harried him, severely injured an arm, and then directed his
wrath against one of the doctor's companions, whom he seized by the
shoulder. He intended, in all probability, to administer a similar cor-
rection to this individual, when suddenly the two bullets he had
received produced their effect, and he fell dead.

These facts prove, at least, that if the lion is not brave he is not
malicious, and that the reputation for generosity which he has borne
from remote times was riot undeserved. It is only in his old age that
the lion willingly enters upon a regimen of human flesh, from sheer
want of power to obtain any other easily. When a lion is too old, says
Livingstone, to provide himself with game by hunting, he frequently
enters into the very villages and kills the goats ; if, then, a woman
or a child go out at night, he makes them equally his prey; and as
thenceforth he has no other means of subsistence, he continues to
feed himself in this manner. Hence has arisen the saying, that if a
lion once tastes human flesh he prefers it to all other kinds. The
beasts which attack man are invariably aged lions. When one of
them conquers the fear inspired by man so far as to approach a

802 THE LION'S ROAR.

village and seize the goats, the inhabitants invariably say, " His
teeth are worn out, and he will soon kill somebody ; " and feeling
the necessity of defending themselves, they hunt him immediately.

It is generally believed, on the authority of Buffon, that the lion
lives in retirement with his mate, that he hunts in solitary dignity,
and will suffer no other carnaria, not even one of his own race, to
hunt in his own domain. This is an error. Lions, on the contrary,
often assemble in a "hunting-party," four or five in number, when
they fly at "high game," such as a buffalo or a giraffe. M. Vardon
saw three lions throw themselves at once on a buffalo which he had
just wounded with a musket-shot. " During the day-time, in winter,"
says Delegorgue, " you may frequently see troops of lions, which
assemble together for the purpose of marking off and driving the
game towards the ravines, or wooded glens difficult of access, where
some of their companions are posted ; these are strict battues, con-
ducted without any noise, the odours of the lions being sufficient to
enforce the retreat of the herbivora which they pursue." The lion
himself may, in his turn, be chased and tracked with dogs, like a
wild boar, a wolf, or a stag ; but most frequently the hunters pursue
and shoot him on foot, and this is but a pleasure-jaunt for a man of
sang-froid, if a good shot, and well acquainted with the animal's habits.

We know that the roar of the lion — that is, of the hungry lion —
is considered the most terrible of cries, which inspires all the animals,
and even man, with unconquerable dread. It appears, however, that
man — to say nothing of his dogs — speedily grows accustomed to it,
and that the lion, in his turn, cannot be frightened by the barking of
the latter. A very curious fact, remarked by Livingstone, is the
singular resemblance of the lion's roar to the cry of the ostrich. " I
have carefully inquired," says the great African traveller, "the opinion
of Europeans who have heard both. I have asked them if they could
discover the least difference between the roar of the one and the cry
of the other. They have all informed me that they could not perceive
any, at whatever distance the animal might be placed. The voice of
the lion, generally, is deeper than the ostrich's ; but up to the present

DIFFERENT SPECIES OF " LEO." 803

time I have only been able to distinguish it with certainty because
it is heard during the day, and the ostrich's during the night."

Lions were formerly common enough in all Southern Asia, Persia,
Asia Minor, and even Greece. They long ago disappeared from these
countries, and are rarely met with now-a-days in Hindostan. The
Indian lion is smaller than his African congener ; his mane is shorter
and less abundant, and several naturalists signalize him as a distinct
species, intermediary between the true African lion and the American
puma. There are three varieties of Asiatic lions : the Bengal, the
Persian or Arabian, and the maneless lion of Goojerat — the latter
confined to a very narrow district. The African " king of beasts " is
spread over the entire continent from the Mediterranean to the Cape
of Good Hope ; but the species includes three kinds : the Barbary
lion, with a deep yellowish-brown fur and a full flowing mane ; the
Senegal, whose fur is of a brighter yellow, and whose mane thinner :
and the Cape, of which there are two varieties, one brown, the other
yellowish ; the former being the fiercer and more powerful animal.

A lion of the largest size measures about eight feet from the nose
to the tail, and the tail itself about four feet. The male has usually
a thick shaggy mane ; the head is large, with rounded ears, and the
face covered with short close hair ; great strength and muscular force
distinguish his conformation ; and the tail terminates in a tuft
of hair, which is not fully developed until he is six or seven years old.

In Africa the lion has for his fellows the Leopard and the Panther.
Many writers at one time confounded these two Felidse, and even
classified them with the Indian tiger. For the vulgar, every
great cat with a spotted skin is a tiger. But scientific naturalists
neither apply this name to the American jaguar nor to other spotted
Felidse of the Old or New World ; and it is with difficulty they
now agree to recognize in the Leopard and the Panther two ill-defined
varieties of the same species. Assuredly they exhibit very marked
differences. The Leopard is nearly as large as the lion ; his limbs are
robust, his head is strong. From nose to tail he measures four feet,
his tail is two feet and a half long, and his body so flexible that he

804

THE AFRICAN LEOPARD.

accomplishes the most surprising leaps, and swims, and climbs trees,
or crawls along the ground, serpent-like, with admirable ease. Com-
pared with the jaguar and panther of naturalists, he is uniformly of
a paler and more yellowish colour, and rather smaller, while the spots
on his skin are rose-formed, or consist of several dots partially united
into a circular figure in some instances, and in others into a quadran-
gular, triangular, or other less determinate forms. The lower part
of the neck and inner parts of the limbs are white ; the spots are con-
tinued upon the tail, which is long, and black at the extremity.

THE AFBICAN LEOPARD.

The Panther is larger than the leopard, measuring about six feet
and a half from nose to tail, which is itself about three feet long. On
his sleek hide the spots are disposed in circles of four or five, with,
usually, a central spot in each circle, in which, as well as in his
deeper colour, he differs from the leopard. Both are handsome,
stealthy, and ferocious animals ; supple, agile, and muscular. The
leopard (Fells leopardus) is a native of Africa, principally ranging

AN IDEAL REPUTATION. 805

along its western coast and on the confines of the Sahara. The
panther (Felis pardus) is also an African denizen, though likewise
found in Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan. During the day he lurks in
the thickets and among the tall grasses, but when the shades of night
descend he issues from his lair, and haunts the brooks and pools
whither the herbivora resort to quench their thirst. There, upon
some rock, he lies in ambuscade, commanding the track pursued by
innocent victims, and darting with unerring precision upon the first
which presents itself.

Neither leopard nor panther often ventures to assail man. When
attacked by him, they seek at first to make their escape, and only
turn at bay when escape is impossible. In Java, and some other of
the great Indian islands, there exists a black panther, which has
gained, it is difficult to say Jioiv, the reputation of extraordinary
ferocity and daring. Sometimes, in the world of man, great reputa-
tions are built upon equally slight foundations. He owes his fame
to the imagination of the natives, and differs from his congeners in
no single respect but the blackish colour of his skin. A skilful
naturalist, who was for some years a resident in Java, relates that,
while botanizing in the fields and jungles early in the day, he
frequently roused the black panthers in their lairs. At first he was
somewhat startled by the apparition of an animal of such terrible
renown, but seeing him turn tail very quickly on his approach, he
soon grew re-assured, and troubled himself no more at these rencontres
than if he had met a dog or a cat.

We now come to the most formidable of all the Carnaria : the
Tiger, properly so called, or Royal Tiger, whose portrait Buffon has
been pleased to paint with his boldest brush and most glowing
colours, without any other motive apparently than a love of antithesis,
or the artist's desire to give force and effect to a striking picture.
He had endowed the king of animals with all the regal qualities his
imagination could suggest, and by way of contrast he ascribed to the

tiger the lowest and cruellest instincts. He painted him as the Moloch

20

3C6 FACT VERSUS FICTION.

of the brute creation ; the Domitian, Caligula, or Nero of the jungles.
He was blood-thirsty, treacherous, cowardly, and hideous. His limbs
were too short, his head was too large, he was ill-proportioned ; in a
word, on the unfortunate beast he poured out all the vials of his
satiric wrath.

"With this pi&ce de fantaisie it would be curious to contrast the
graver and more authentic description of the impartial Daubenton.
He asserted that the tiger was very little known to Europeans, and
that in France there existed but a single specimen, and that a very
badly prepared one, in the " Cabinet du Hoi." But we are now better
informed, and the tiger, perhaps, up to a certain point, is rehabilitated.
Let us take him first in his physical aspect. All travellers agree in
describing him as the handsomest of animals. He has not the grave
countenance, the majestic attitudes of the lion ; but he has all the
grace, all the suppleness, all the lively and undulatory movements of
the domestic cat. He does not stand so high upon his legs as the lion,
and he lacks that full flowing mane which invests the physiognomy of
the latter with a human and truly noble air ; but all the parts of his
head and body, despite of Buffon, are admirably proportioned. Not
quite so tall as the lion, and less robust in appearance, he is endowed
with a surprising vigour. He can carry off, while in full career, and
making the most rapid leaps, the heaviest prey — a kid, for instance,
an antelope of full size, even a bull, it is said, and, necessarily, a man.
Finally, his skin, symmetrically striped, like a zebra's, with wavy
bands of brown and black, on a reddish ground, with the contour of
the face, the chin and belly of the purest white, defies all comparison.
The stripes of his head, legs, and tail are disposed with irreproachable
symmetry in curves of the most graceful character. So much for his
physical character ; let us pass to his moral.

His appetites, and consequently his manners and instincts, differ
but little from those of the other Felidse, and, in particular, of the
lion. While he has a keen love of living flesh and warm blood, he does
not scorn to return, under the pressure of hunger, to a dead prey
already partially devoured. Like all the carnaria, a sagacious instinct

THE TIGER'S SWIFTNESS. 307

prompts him to kill in provision for coming as well as for present
hunger. This is the reason that Buffon has stigmatized him as
" unnecessarily cruel."

"The bound with which he throws himself upon his prey," says an
English naturalist, "is as wonderful in its extent as it is terrible hi
its effects." Pennant justly observes that the distance which it clears
in this deadly leap is scarcely credible. Man is a mere puppet in his
gripe ; and the Indian buffalo is not only borne down by the ferocious
beast, but carried off by his enormous strength. If he fails in his
spring, it has been said that he will take to flight. This may be true
in certain instances ; but, in general, far from slinking away, he pur-
sues the affrighted prey with a speedy activity which is seldom
exerted in vain. Hence we are led to the observation of Pliny cele-
brating his swiftness, for which the Roman zoologist has been censured,
and apparently most unjustly ; nor is he the only author among the
ancients who notices his speed. Appian speaks of the swift tiger as
the offspring of the zephyr. Pliny, says Pennant, has been fre-
quently taken to task by the moderns for calling the tiger " animal
tremendse velocitatis ; " they allow it great agility in its bounds, but
deny it swiftness in pursuit. Two travellers of authority, both eye-
witnesses, confirm what Pliny says : the one, indeed, only mentions
in general his vast fleetness ; the other saw a trial between one and
a swift horse, whose rider escaped merely by getting in time amidst
a circle of armed men. The chase of this animal was a favourite
diversion with the great Cam-Hi, the Chinese monarch, in whose
company our countryman, Mr. Bell, that faithful traveller, and the
Pere Gerbillon, saw these proofs of the tiger's speed.

The Latin " tigris " is from a Persian word signifying " swift as
an arrow," which we find incorporated in the name of the river Tigris.

The tiger's habits are essentially nocturnal, and almost aquatic.
His favourite haunts are the banks of rivers and lakes, not only
because he may there pounce upon the herbivora which come to
drink, but because he can there satisfy himself with a banquet of
fish. To this he is as partial as any European epicure, and in

308 MAX AND THE TIGEH.

angling his skill and dexterity are not unworthy of an Izaak Walton.
He is the "complete angler" of the carnivorous world! He swims
admirably, and in pursuit of his prey never hesitates at the most
tremendous "header," so that the Arnee Buffaloes, which traverse
immense distances by yielding themselves to the swift river-currents,
have more cause to dread his attacks than those of the crocodiles

Buffon has calumniated the tiger by accusing him of cowardice,
while, as we have seen, he has not less grossly flattered the lion by
representing him as the perfect type of intrepidity. During the day
the tiger, after having supped freely, sleeps in his den ; he avoids
man, and when aroused by the hunters, his first movement is one of
flight. But by night or day, if he be an hungered, no obstacle
arrests, no peril daunts him ; and he pounces upon man as he would
upon any other prey. He penetrates into isolated habitations ;
breaks into the villages, and sometimes even into the towns ; seizes
the domestic animals in their very stables ; men even within the
shelter of their own houses ; and sometimes devours his spoil upon
the spot ; sometimes, if he fears pursuit, drags it off to his secret lair.

At Goa, in a butcher's stall, was slain a tiger which had fallen
asleep there after gorging himself with food ; and in the vicinity of
that once famous, but now degraded city, a cross marks the spot where
a Portuguese officer, marching at the head of his men, was seized
before their eyes by a tiger, and carried off before they could make
the slightest effort to save him.

Tigers are found in India, in the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, at
Borneo, at Java, and at Sumatra. Civilization has hunted them out
of the Celestial Empire, but they are met with in Tartary, even in
extremely cold latitudes. The tigers of the North a beneficent
Nature has furnished with much longer hair than their congeners of
the Tropical zone, and they seem to form a distinct variety of the
species. Wherever -the tiger exists, war d I'outrance is declared
between man and him ! It is a vendetta which has been handed
down from the remotest antiquity, and is as bitter now as in
any past generation. Every year hundreds of persons fall victims to

A TIGER HUNT. 309

his appetite and his prowess ; every year hundreds of his race are
shot down by the relentless sportsman, or ensnared and killed by the
peasants, whose cattle and whose lives he threatens.

By the Malays and the half-savage Indians who dwell among the
Indo-Chinese jungles, he is hunted in the same way that the African
negroes hunt the lion and the leopard. When the presence of one of
these scourges becomes known in a district, they place some dainty
bait on the bank of the river where he drinks and plants himself
every night, and they form an ambush among the thickets, taking
care to mark the direction of the wind. It is not long before the
tiger directs his steps towards the enticing booty, and the hunters'
arrows or musket-balls stretch him dead, in most cases, before he can
seize it.

A vast amount of pompous preparation attaches to the tiger-hunt
of India. It is a sumptuous expedition, commanded by some distin-
guished chief— an European officer, a native prince, or a stranger of
rank — in which each person has his allotted station and particular
duties. Usually the hunters are mounted on elephants, so that the
tiger cannot reach them on the back of the colossus, without being
arrested by the trunk of the latter or his formidable tusks. Each
sportsman provides himself with three or four rifles, besides revolvers
and cutlasses. Formerly the Hindu rajahs made use in this chase of
arrows and lances, but now they greatly prefer the European weapons.
The expedition is never an impromptu affair. It is always organized
against an enemy whose presence has been discovered in the district,
and whose den is pretty well known. The march commences at sun-
rise, that the beast may be surprised while enjoying his siesta, after
the fatigues and the plunder of the night. Suddenly awaking, says
Mr. Stocqueler,* he bounds out of the jungle, and is saluted by a
discharge which often proves sufficient ; but sometimes the animal is
safe and sound, or only wounded ; then he furiously springs upon
the first elephant within his reach. If the hunter has not time to
plant a ball in his chest or head, the position of the mahout, or
* Stocqueler, " Handbook to India."

310 A TIGEK STORY.

driver, is very critical ; for, placed on the elephant's neck, he has no
other defence than the sharp iron-pointed stick which he uses to
guide his colossal steed. Fortunately the hunters are arrayed in a
compact mass, and a few well-directed shots terminate the struggle.

The most favourable districts for tiger-hunting, continues Mr.
Stocqueler, are those of Goruckpore, on the frontiers of Nepaul. Sir
Roger Martin relates that in this quarter once reigned a tiger of such
ferocity, and so greedy of human blood, that he was the terror of all
the " country-side." Once he broke open, in full day-light, the
cabin-door of a Taroo ; but the native dealt him such a lusty blow
on the head with his hatchet that he took to flight, and ever after-
wards preserved the mark of the wound, which caused him to be
easily recognized, and dreaded all the more. Sir Roger resolved to
free the country from this plague ; he took the field like a gallant
soldier, but slew eight-and-forty tigers before he fell in with the
Balafre' of ill renown, who defended himself gallantly, and proved
no easy victim. Abbye-Singh, rajah of Omorah, one of the oldest
hunters of the country, slew, it is said, to his own hand more than
five hundred tigers ; a fact which illustrates their numerousness in
the Terac, Nepaul, and Goruckpore. Despite the activity and address
of the hunters, they would never succeed in purging the country ;
but civilization and clearances of the ground are driving the wild
beasts inch by inch towards the north, where the hardy amateurs of
"sport" must now go in quest of them.

Among the Felidse of the Old World peculiar to Tropical Asia, I
must cite the Reinaoudahan, distinguished by his woolly and tufted
tail, from whence he has received the name of the " Fox- tailed Tiger,"
and the Gutpard, or " Maned Leopard," "Hunting Leopard," and
" Cheetah." I am inclined to believe that these two varieties really
signify one animal ; the Gueparda jubata of naturalists. " Inter-
mediate in size and shape between the leopard and the hound," says
Burnett, " he is slenderer in his body, more elevated on his legs, and
less flattened on the fore part of his head than the former, while he

THE DIGITIGRADE CARX1VORA. 313

is deficient in the peculiarly graceful form, both of head and body,
which characterizes the latter. His tail is entirely that of a rat ;
and his limbs, although more elongated than in any other species of
that group, seem to be better fitted for strong muscular exertion than
for active and long-continued speed." His anatomical structure and
general habits are those of the Felidse, but the fur is crisper. The
general ground-colour is a bright yellowish-brown above, lighter on the
sides, and nearly white beneath. On the back, sides, and limbs he is
marked with numerous black spots, which on the tail are so closely
set together that they appear like rings. The cheetah is easily
tamed, and trained to the chase ; for which purpose, like our stag-
hounds, he is bred and employed in Persia and India.

The other families of digitigrade Carnivora, Dogs, Hyaenas,
Viverras (Viverra, Civet), Mustelidse (Mustela, "Weasel), are largely
represented in the prairies and jungles of the tropical regions of the
Old World. Wild dogs, with straight ears, a pendant tail, scanty
bristling hair, thin flanks, wander in numerous troops over the plains
of Southern Africa, living, like the wolf or the hyaena, by hunting
the small quadrupeds and devouring the remains of carcasses aban-
doned by the greater Carnivora. The jackals, and even the hysenas,
range far beyond the limits of the Desert. At the Cape exists a
larger and more ferocious species of hysena than that of the Sahara,
from which it differs externally, its skin being marked with spots
instead of stripes. Moreover, the disproportion in the height of the
fore and hind legs is more marked in this animal than in his North
African congener.

At the Cape, also, and in a great part of South Africa, we find
another species, the Hycena villosa, or "Sea-Shore Wolf;" distin-
guished from the preceding by having stripes on the legs, while the
rest of the body is of a dark grayish-brown. Allied to the Hysenas
is the Proteles, or " Aard-Wolf " (Proteles Lalandii), an animal nearly
as large as a jackal, inhabiting the southern parts of the African
Continent. He has the teeth and pointed head of the civits ; the

20 a

314

THE FENNEC, OR ZORDA.

striped fur and stiff bristly hair of the hyaanas. The general colour
is a yellowish-gray, radiated with transverse stripes of dusky black ;
the tail is short and bushy. The fore-feet are provided with five
toes ; the hinder ones with four ; all the claws being strong and
large. He burrows like a fox, and prowls abroad at night in search
of food, which consists chiefly of carrion and small vermin. But it
is said that he particularly affects the enormous fatty tail of the

SPOTTED UYJBNAS (Hyasna crocuta}.

African sheep, devouring with avidity the semi-fluid mass, which
requires no mastication.

One of the most curious and most graceful of the South African
carnaria is the Fennec, or Zorda (Megatolis), a genus of Canidae,
resembling the European fox in form and stature, but his hair of a
light brown colour ; his muzzle is of extreme fineness, and his eye
lively and intelligent ; his enormous ears gift him with an extraordi-
nary delicacy of hearing. Every animal has its particular taste, and

THE PARIAH DOG OF INDIA.

315

that of the Fennec is for ostrich eggs, which, as he cannot open them
with his teeth on account of their size, he breaks by dashing them
against hard angular stones. He is not only met with at the
Cape, but in Dongola, Nubia, arid the Sahara south of Tunis and
Constantina.

I cannot conclude this chapter without alluding to a few of the
Carnivora with elongated snout and non-retractile claws, which
inhabit the plains of Southern Asia and the great adjacent islands.

ZlBETH, AND INDIAN GtSET.

The first place I give to the Cuon Bansu, or Pariah Dog of India,
which seems allied to both the Wild Dog, the Wolf, and the
Jackal. His eyes are prominent, his skin is of a reddish-yellow,
brightest about the head, spotted with black upon the tail. He is a
gregarious animal, hunting in large troops, and waging war against
hares, gazelles, antelopes. He will even venture to attack the
buffaloes. Some varieties of this species range high up on the
mouu tains.

316

THE VIVERRID.E.

From the order of Carnivora I might also select, in the wild
plains in the Old World, more than one curious species for our
investigation, if my space permitted me to pass in review the two
families of the Viverridse and the Mustelidse. To the former belong
the famous Ichneumon, that assiduous reptile-destroyer which the
ancient Egyptians included in their religious cultus ; the Genets
(Viverra genetta) with their sleek, soft fur, natives of the western
parts of Asia, India, and Java; the Civets (Viverra civetta),

STRIPED PARODOXL-RE OF JAVA DEVOURING A CRESTED GOURA.

which furnish the commerce of Europe and the East with a once
popular scent, to which important medical virtues were attributed ;
the Zibeth (Viverra zibetha}, a maneless civet, peculiar to Asia as the
latter is to Africa, and met with in Sumatra, Borneo, Amboyna. the
Celebes, and Hindostan ; and, finally, the Paradoxures (animals
with a fantastic or paradoxical tail), so named by Cuvier because
the individual studied by that great naturalist kept his tail con-
stantly coiled up and inclined on the same side. All these Carni-

THE MUSTELIDJE. 817

vora are of small stature ; their short paws are furnished with demi-
retractile claws ; their body is excessively elongated, and of a
worm-like shape ; their tail is long and flexible, the muzzle tapering,
the fur soft, and of a tawny or reddish colour-, with spots or bands
of black or brown.

The Mustelidse are allied to the Viven-idse in their general conforma-
tion. Their skin is equally soft, and capable of furnishing a beautiful
fur ; but its colour is generally uniform. The head is more rounded,
the muzzle more obtuse, the tail shorter, than in members of the pre-
ceding family. Finally, a great number are plantigrades. These
animals are more commonly distributed over the cold regions of the
Northern hemisphere than in countries bordering on the Tropics. The
genus Ratel (Ratellus meltivorus), however, is represented both in
India and South Africa. The Cape species is celebrated for the havoc
it makes among the nests of the wild bees, of whose honey it is
singularly fond, and to whose discoveiy it is assisted by the voice and
movements of a bird called the Honey-Guide. It has a rough tongue,
short legs, with very long claws, a blunt, black nose, no external ears,
a remarkably tough and loose skin, with thick hair. Its colours are
ashen gray on the upper parts, and black on the inferior, and its
length from the nose to the tip of the tail is forty inches, the tail
measuring twelve. The Indian species, differing but little from the
African, inhabits Bengal.

CHAPTER IX.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD : —
BIRDS AND REPTILES.

THE savannahs and marshes of the ancient continent are frequented
by birds of great stature : Cursores, Raptores, and Palmipeds. The
colossus of the feathered world, the Ostrich, which has been aptly

318 CHASING THE OSTRICH.

surnamed the Camel-Bird (Struthio camelus), inhabits the arid plains
of the African interior, and frequently penetrates into the Sahara.
The male is of a glossy black, with white on the wings and tail ; the
female wears an uniformly dusky livery. It is the loose flexible
plumes of the male which are so prized for a lady's toilette, and which
figure in the crest of the prince of Wales. The female's feathers are
of inferior value, and improperly designated in commerce, " vulture-
feathers."

The Ostrich lives with his fellows in flocks of some number. He
feeds voraciously on grass, grain, young twigs, and will swallow pieces
of wood, leather, metal, or any hard substance. In his apparent
want of taste he is probably guided by instinct, for these objects are
probably useful in promoting the work of digestion. Some travellers
have represented him as a stupid animal ; but this is an error, for
he displays both vigilance and shrewdness in avoiding the attacks of
his enemies. The chase of this bird is exceedingly laborious, for
though he does not fly he skims the ground, and his wings impel him
forward with a velocity which distances the swiftest horse. But
neither his speed nor his strength avails against the stratagems of
man. The Arab horsemen surround the flock in a circle, which they
gradually contract as they advance, until the poor birds are confined
in a very narrow area, and dashing madly against one another, fall
exhausted with fatigue. They are then slain by a few blows from a
stick.

The female lays from ten to twelve eggs in a hole in the sand ;
she broods over them during the night, occasionally leaving them in
the hottest part of the day. In procuring the eggs, which weigh
about three pounds each, and are reputed a great delicacy, the natives
are very careful not to touch any with their hands, as the parent
birds would be sure to discover it on their return, and not only dis-
continue laying any more in the same place, but trample to pieces all
those which have not been removed. A long stick is accordingly
made use of to push them from the nest.

Another gigantic bird, whose wings are but partially developed, and

THE HELMETED CASSOWARY.

819

whose legs are long and robust, the galeated or helmeted Cassowary
(Casuarius), is a native of Java and the adjacent islands of the Indian
Archipelago. His head is surmounted by a sort of osseous crest or
horny helmet. In size he is much inferior to the ostrich, not ex-
ceeding five feet when erect ; but he is robustly built, and of exceed-
ing strength. His plumage is very poorly supplied with feathers, so
as to resemble at a little distance, it is said, a coat of coarse or hang-

OHTIUCHES fStruthio camelusj.

ing hair. He is a swift runner, like the ostrich ; is equally voracious,
and not more dainty in his food.

At that season of the year when the coming winter in our Northern
hemisphere already "casts its shadows before," legions of migratory
birds swarm towards the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. Storks
and cranes, and aquatic birds, descend upon those vast and genial
southern prairies, where they obtain in abundance the precious food
denied them in less favoured climes.

A beautiful crane, of ashen plumage, with a shapely ebon-black

320 STOKKS AND FLAMINGOES.

neck, and her head adorned with two white tufts of plumes, the
" Lady of Numidia," selects for her dwelling-place the eastern and
western shores of the African Continent.

The Stork (Ciconia} is a cosmopolitan bird which alternately
favours with his presence the North of Europe and the Torrid Zone,
everywhere discharging with fidelity his useful sanitary mission by
destroying myriads of noxious vermin. To kill them was considered
by the ancients a foul crime, which could only be fitly punished by
death, and the Egyptians included the Stork with the Ibis in their alle-
gorical and mysterious worship. In his migrations he avoids the two
extremes of heat and cold, never going farther north than Russia,
nor, in winter, further south than the land of the Nile. The White
Stork (Ciconia alba) is upwards of three feet six inches long. One
species, popularly known as the Marabout, never quits Africa and
the Indies. The name is also applied to the light silken feathers
which embellish the wings of the species — one of the ugliest, let me
add, created by Nature, with his bald head and neck, his huge beak,
and absurdly meditative postures.

The chief of the birds of the shore and river-bank, the Flamingo
(Phoenicopterus), may merit admiration on account of his dazzling
scarlet plumage and handsome bearing. Owing to the great length
of his legs and neck he stands nearly five feet high, and measures
six feet from the point of the beak to the tip of the claws. The
small round head is furnished with a bill nearly seven inches long,
which is higher than it is wide, light and hollow, having a membrane
at the base, and suddenly curving downwards from the middle. The
legs and thighs are singularly delicate and slender. The Flamingoes
are timid and suspicious birds; they keep together when feeding,
drawn up in artificial array like the lines of a battalion of British
infantry, with some of their number planted as sentinels to give
notice of the approach of danger. Their voice has a peculiarly deep
trumpet-like sound. At the note of alarm they all take to flight,
swooping through the air in the form of a triangle.

MAN'S FEATHERED ALLIES.

321

They are skilful fishers. They wade deep into the water, where
their long necks enable them to seize their prey with ease. Their
food consists of spawn, insects, and molluscous animals. Owing to
their peculiar structure they are both waders and swimmers.

Several of the African Grallatores wage a murderous war against
reptiles in the marshes and the meads ; a war which claims the grati-
tude of man, who could never defend himself against their prolific
increase and pertinacious attacks. I have already referred to the

KOSE FLAMINGOES I Pluxnicopterus antiquorum).

Stork ; it is needful I should also mention the Ibis, once an object
of worship on the banks of the Nile ; the Jacana, his long claws armed
with sharpened nails that transfix his prey; the formidable-billed
Baleniceps, which devours the young crocodiles ; and the famous
Serpent-Bird of the Cape, belonging to the Grallatores by his legs,
to the Raptores by the talons and crooked beak with which he is pro-
vided, as well as by the structure of his internal organs. These birds
are the allies and protectors of man, as Michelet has shown with
characteristic eloquence in his rhapsodical prose poem, "L'Oiseau;" yet

21

322 THE CROCODILE OF AFRICA.

even these, in their combined efforts, are insufficient against the prolific
races of aquatic and terrestrial reptiles, some formidable by their size
and strength, some by their subtlety and venom. The narratives of
the adventurous men who have not feared to incur

" The moving accidents of flood and field,"

in traversing the wild regions of the Ancient World, are full of striking
accounts of encounters with these monsters, and of the miseries they
inflict upon the countries cursed with their presence.

" In Afric's sunny clime," flood, and river, and lake are haunted
by the loathsome and dangerous Crocodile (Lacerta crocodilus), one of
the most powerful species of the Saurian race. Though he preys
chiefly on fish, his capacious jaws will devour any animal that comes
within their reach ; and when one reflects that he often attains the
length of twenty to thirty feet, that the upper part of his body is
clothed with an almost impenetrable scaly armour, that his long, oar-
like tail is of immense strength, one can readily comprehend the vast
amount of destruction such a monster can effect. Happily his move-
ments on land are impeded by the unwieldiness of his body, which
prevents him from turning except with great difficulty, and enables
his intended victims to effect their escape. In the water, however,
he glides along with great rapidity.

The female deposits her eggs, which are not much larger than
those of a goose, in the sand or mud near the banks of the rivers or
streams which she frequents. By a beneficent provision of Nature,
the young are largely devoured by birds, ichneumons, and other
animals, preventing their otherwise rapid increase. The colour of a
full-grown crocodile is a blackish-brown above and yellowish-white
beneath, the upper parts of the legs and sides being relieved by
shades of deep yellow, and in some places tinged with green. The
mouth is of vast width, and both jaws bristle with a terrible array
of sharp-pointed teeth.

The African species all belong to the same genus, of which the
Crocodile of the Nile is the type.

THE GAVIAL OF INDIA. 323

At the Gaboon, the negroes hunt their enemies either with
muskets or a kind of harpoon. Their vulnerable points are the attach-
ment of the anterior limbs,, and, of course, the eyes. It is here that
their assailants endeavour to mark them. They are killed every day
without their number appearing to be sensibly diminished, and, what
is singular enough, without their seeming to grow mistrustful. During
the heat of the noon, they retire among the reeds and rushes for repose,
but never remain long in any one place. At evening and at morning
they sally forth in quest of prey. They swim without making any
noise, scarcely disturbing the water, which they cleave like dogs ;
they will also remain motionless on its surface, glancing around them
with cruel, dull, sinister eyes. The negro does not feel towards them
so great an horror as Europeans experience, who are powerfully affected
by their exceeding hideousness. They eat their flesh, with which
their huge bony skeleton is scantily furnished, and, according to Du
Chaillu, can never obtain enough of the much-prized delicacy.*

The Indian Crocodile, the Gavial orGarial (Crocodilus Gangeticus),
is of the same size as his African congener, but easily distinguished
by the peculiar conformation of his mouth; the jaws being remarkably
straight, long, and narrow. The sides of the head are straight and
perpendicular, the upper surface quadrilateral ; and the mandible,
instead of sloping gradually from the forehead, sinks suddenly to fol-
low a straight and almost horizontal direction. The teeth are nearly
double in number those of the Nilotic monster, but he is far less
dangerous, and feeds only on fish. There are two species : the Gavial
of the Ganges, found in all the great rivers of Southern Asia; and the
Gavial of Schlegel, belonging exclusively to the island of Borneo.

Serpents of every size, venomous and non-venomous, multiply in
the jungles, marshes, and woods of all tropical countries. Africa and
Asia are abundantly provided with them. In Senegal they are all,
or mostly all, inoffensive, and the objects of devout worship on the
part of the negroes of Dahomey ; but naturalists have not yet deter-
mined their respective genera. It is certain, however, that they do

* Du Chaillu, "Travels in Equatorial Africa."

324 SERPENT -WORSHIP.

not all belong to the same species. In size, says the French traveller,
Dr. Ee'pin, they vary from three to ten feet. Their head is large,
flattened, and triangular ; the neck not quite so large as the remain-
der of the body ; in these respects resembling the entire host of
Ophidia. They vary in colour from a bright yellow to a yellowish-
green, according perhaps to their age.' Most of them are marked
upon the back, for their whole length, with two brown lines, while a
few are irregularly spotted. The long and prehensile tail, and the
facility with which some of them climb, would refer them probably
to the genus Leptophis of Dumeril and Bibron. At Whydah, these
divinities are lodged in a temple shaded by lofty and beautiful trees.
This curious edifice is described as a kind of rotunda, from thirty to
forty feet in diameter, and from twenty-two to twenty-five feet high.
Its walls, constructed of sunburnt clay, are pierced, like those of the
Dahomean houses, by two opposite gates, affording free ingress and
egress to the deities of the place. The roof, formed of branches
curiously interlaced and covered with a layer of dried grass, is con-
stantly tapestried with a myriad serpents. Some climb or descend
by writhing round the trunks of trees arranged for this purpose along
the walls ; others, suspended by the tail, balance themselves indiffer-
ently in the air ; others, again, lie coiled up in spiral folds on the
ground or among the grasses of the temple roof. They never want
for nourishment ; the devout supply them with constant renewals of
food, and in such abundance, that the priests, who, moreover, exercise
the double profession of sorcerers and doctors, are in no greater peril
of starvation than their gods !

The spotted serpents of which Dr. Repin speaks may possibly be
no other than Pythons, those gigantic Ophidians of the tropical
regions of the Old World which are found in Africa, in India, in the
Indian Archipelago, and even in Australia. It should be noted, how-
ever, that their size generally exceeds that of the largest serpents
which Dr. Repin saw at Whydah. Their length is from fifteen to
twenty-five feet — specimens have been met with measuring thirty —
and their maximum diameter ranges from ten to twelve inches.

GIGANTIC OPHIDIA. 325

Their back is variegated with large spots, whose form, colour, and
disposition differ according to their species. The tail is short, and
not prehensile. Their favourite haunt is the low marshy ground,
rank with moist herbage, where they prey upon birds and small
animals, swallowing them whole — swallowing them even alive — after
having seized them in the invincible folds of their long sinuous
bodies, and always commencing with their hinder parts. So greedy
a repast must necessarily be followed by a slow and difficult digestion,
and cannot be renewed at any very brief interval. They eat in effect
but once a month, or once in two months. During the lethargic and
semi-somnolent condition which invariably follows their debauch, they
fall easy victims to the attacks of their enemies. The principal
African species of this genus are, the Python of Seba, of Central
Africa, and the Royal Python of Senegambia.

The species peculiar to Asiatic climes is the Python Molure, a
native of the Indian Peninsula, and of the islands of Java and
Sumatra. The Python of the Sunda Islands, called by the natives
Ular-Saiva, attains the length of fully thirty feet. It has a large
flat head, of a bluish-gray colour, a thick yellowish muzzle, and
cylindrical neck. Its body is marked with deep-blue spots, with a
yellow or tawny border ; its yellow tail with blue rings. Its ordi-
nary habitat is the rivers ; it feeds on rats and birds, but also pur-
sues, when ashore, the largest animals.

We are indebted to Dr. Livingstone for much curious information
respecting the serpents of South Africa, and especially in reference to
the Striking Echidna, a singularly formidable viper, which the
negroes designate Picakolou. He tells us that he killed one day a
reptile of this species, which was of a deep brown colour, verging on
black, and measured seven feet and a half in length.* These reptiles
possess so abundant and deadly a venom, that when one of them is
attacked by a band of dogs, the first dog bitten dies immediately ;
the second, five minutes afterwards ; the third, at the end of an hour ;
and the fourth, after a more or less lengthened agony. A great
* Dr. Livingstone, " Missionary Travels and Researches."

32C

THE NOGA-POUTSANE.

number of beasts is annually destroyed by the Picakolous ; the
fangs of an individual killed at Kolobeng distilled poison for several
hours after its head had been severed from its body. It is probably
this plentiful secretion which the natives call " the serpent's spittle,"
and which leads them to suppose that the Picakolou is endowed with
a power of injecting it into its enemies' eyes when the wind is
favourable.

Python Molure.

Echidna, or Picakolou.

Fennec (Megalotis}.

Other venomous species exist in this part of Africa, of which
several are vipers, and among others the Puff- Adder ( Vipera inflata).
The natives have named it Noga-Poutsane, or the Goats' Serpent,
because it makes at night a bleating exactly resembling that animal.
There were certainly no goats, says Livingstone, in the place where I
happened to hear it. The natives suppose that by this bleating it

THE COBEA DE CAPELLA. 327

hopes to deceive the traveller, and draw him within its reach. Some
species emit, when they are frightened, a peculiar odour, strong
enough to indicate their presence when they have found their way
into the huts. There are also several varieties of Cobras (the Naja-
Haje of Dr. Smith). When they are attacked, they raise their head
a foot from the ground, extend their neck in a threatening manner,
dart their tongue to and fro with extreme rapidity, while rage
glares in their fixed and glassy eyes.

Different serpents of the genus Dendrophis, as, for example, the
Green Climber (Bucephalus viridis), scale the trees in search of birds
and their eggs, to which they are curiously partial. The Bucephalus
is armed with fangs ; nevertheless it is not venomous, and these fangs,
which turn inwards, are only of use in preventing the retrogression
of their prey, only one part of which is enclosed between its jaws.

The Cobra or Naja (Vipera naja), the "Hooded Snake" and
" Spectacle Snake " of the English, the " Cobra de Capella " of the
Portuguese, must be classed among those serpents which are the most
dangerous through their violence, and the subtle character of their
venom. It is easily recognized by its faculty of dilating the back
and sides of the neck, under the influence of fear or rage, to which it
owes its popular appellation ; the elevated skin of the back of the neck
presenting much the appearance of a hood (capellci). It is usually
three or four feet in length ; of a pale reddish-brown colour above, and
bluish or yellowish-white below ; with a characteristic mark on the
back of the neck closely resembling the figure of an old-fashioned pair
of spectacles. It is a sluggish creature, and easily killed, but its
poison is of the most fatal quality, causing death within two hours.
It frequents the purlieus of human residences in India, and occasion-
ally penetrates into the very houses, attracted apparently by the
domestic poultry, and by the humidity of the wells and drainage.
In Ceylon, the natives, if journeying abroad by night, carry a small
stick with a loose iron ring, whose strange metallic sound, as they
strike it on the earth, frightens the cobra from their path. The
poison is harmless if taken internally. It is secreted in a large gland

328 THE TAPIRS OF AMERICA.

in the serpent's head, and flows, when the animal compresses its
mouth on any object, through a cavity of the tooth into the wound.*
The Indian species plays a conspicuous part in the displays of the
Hindu jugglers, who exercise a strange power over them by the tones
of their voice and the sounds of various musical instruments, compel-
ling them to rise partially from the ground and go through a succes-
sion of fantastic movements. Something of this power is also due to
the fascination of the juggler's eye. Serpent-charming is of remote
antiquity in Egypt and in most Oriental nations, where the profes-
sion would seem to be hereditary. Several allusions to it occur in
Holy Writf

CHAPTER X.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD : — HERBIVORE,
INSECTIVORA, AND CARNIVORA.

WE have seen that the order of Pachydermata, which furnished the
Ancient "World with the most gigantic species of the terrestrial creation,
is represented in the New World by comparatively insignificant types :
the Tapir and the Peccary. The first, although far inferior in stature
to the elephant, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, is, nevertheless,
one of the largest American Herbivora ; the bison, llama, and stag
alone exceeding it in size.

Two species are distinguished, which both inhabit South America,
— the American Tapir and the Tapir Pinchaca. The former is about
as large as a mule or an ass. His skin is black, covered with rough
brown hair. He has a long bowed neck, legs and feet resembling
those of the hog, and a nose prolonged into a kind of trumpet. He
feeds on leaves and many kinds of fruit, and sometimes does much

* F. Buckland, " Curiosities of Natural History."
t As in Jer. viii. 7 ; 'and Psalm Iviii. 4, 5.

AN INDIAN'S STRATAGEM.

329

injury in the mandioca fields of the Indians. His flesh is very good
eating, and considered exceedingly wholesome. It is even reputed to
be a remedy for the ague. A very shy and timid animal, he wanders
about principally at night. " When the Indian discovers a feeding-
place," says Mr. Wallace,* " he builds a stage between two trees,
about eight feet above the ground, and there stations himself soon
after dusk, armed with a gun, or with his bow and arrow. Though
such a heavy animal, the tapir steps as lightly as a cat, and can only
be heard approaching by the gentle rustling of the bushes ; the

^

AMERICAN TAPIR (Tapirus Americanusj.

slightest sound or smell will alarm him, and the Indian lies stiJl as
death for hours, till the animal approaches sufficiently near to be
shot, or until, scenting his enemy, he makes off in another direction."
When compelled to stand at bay, however, he defends himself with
extraordinary vigour. D'Azara assures us that if the jaguar flings
himself upon the tapir, the latter will drag him onward and onward
* Wallace, " Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro."

21 a

3SO INTRODUCTION OF THE HORSE.

through the densest bushes, until, torn cruelly by the thorns and
brambles, he is constrained to let his would-be victim escape.

The Tapir Pinchaca appears to be confined to the region of the
Cordilleran table-lands. The name "Pinchaca," bestowed on the
species by M. Roulin, is that of a fabulous animal mentioned in the
traditions of New Grenada. It is distinguished from the former
species by the absence of those lateral folds on the snout and occipital
ridge to be remarked in the American Tapir, by its long thick hair —
which, however, does not form a mane on the neck — and by a white
mark at the extremity of the lower jaw.

The Peccaries are the wild boars of Tropical America. They are
smaller than those of the Old World ; have fewer teeth, and their
tail is rudimentary. They live in numerous herds, and not only
defend themselves energetically against aggressors, but when the
latter have grown fatigued, assume the offensive, and pursue them
with incredible fury. Hunting them, therefore, is for man, no less
than for the jaguar, a dangerous adventure. When one of them has
been seized by the latter, or slain by the former, the herd combine in
pursuit of the murderer, and if he does not succeed in escaping them
by a rapid retreat, or by opposing some insurmountable obstacle to
their headlong career, he is infallibly torn to pieces.

The genus Horse, or, to adopt the new nomenclature, the family
of Equidce, are altogether wanting in the American Fauna ; that is,
in the native indigenous Fauna of the New World. Previous to the
era of Spanish Conquest, America did not possess a single species
analagous to the horse, the onagra, the hemionus, the zebra, or the
quagga ; and the reader of the animated pages of Prescott or Arthur
Helps will remember with what terror the Peruvians as well as the
Mexicans regarded the mounted cavaliers of Pizarro and Cortez. The
horse, however, when introduced by Europeans, multiplied rapidly in
the Savannahs, where he soon became wild, and breeding with the
ass, produced the mule, which, in the Spanish-American States, as in
the mother-country, is now the most useful auxiliary of man. The
European ox is likewise acclimatized over the entire extent 6f the

THE LLAMA, OR GUANACO. 333

new continent ; and immense herds of the latter species, together
with troops of horses and mules, people the Llanos and Pampas of
South America, where the first conquerors had only met with herds
of stags (Cervus Mexicanus), llamas, and cobiais.

The Llama, or Guanaco (Auckenia llama), and his congeners, the
Vicuna and the Alpaca (Auckenia), are now only found among the
recesses of the Andes, their native country, to which they have re-
treated before the restless advance of man. In describing them I
shall freely avail myself of Dr. Von Tschudi's interesting notices.*

The Llama measures from the sole of the hoof to the top of the
head, four feet six to eight inches; from the sole of the hoof to the
shoulders, from two feet eleven inches to three feet. The female is
usually smaller and less strong than the male, but her wool is finer
and better. A great variety of colour prevails; the more general is
brown, with shades of yellow or black ; frequently speckled, but very
rarely quite white or black. The speckled brown llama is, in some
districts, called the moromoro

The burden carried by this useful animal, the camel of the New
World, should not exceed from one hundred to one hundred and
twenty-five pounds. If the load be too heavy, he lies down, and no
force or persuasion will induce him to resume his journey until the
excess be removed. In the silver mines his utility is very great, as
he frequently carries the metal from the mines in places where the
declivities are so steep that neither asses nor mules can keep their
footing. His abstemiousness is remarkable, and he will not feed
during the night.

" A flock of llamas journeying over the table-lands," says Dr. Von
Tschudi, "is a beautiful sight. They proceed at a slow and measured
pace, gazing eagerly around on every side. When any strange object
scares them, the flock separates, and disperses in various directions, and
the arrieros have no little difficulty in re-assembling them. The Indians
are very fond of these animals. They adorn them by tying bows of
ribbons to their ears, and hanging bells round their necks; and before
* Dr. Von Tschudi, " Travels in Peru " (London, 1847).

33-1 FLOCKS OF ALPACAS.

loading, they always fondle and caress them affectionately. If, during
a journey, one of the llamas is fatigued and lies down, the arriero
kneels beside the animal, and addresses to it the most coaxing and
endearing expressions. But notwithstanding all the care and atten-
tion bestowed on them, many llamas perish on every journey to the
coast, as they are not able to bear the warm climate."

When resting they make a peculiar humming noise, which, if it
proceed from a numerous flock and is heard at some distance, resembles
a concert of JMian harps.

The flesh of the llama is spongy, and not agreeable in flavour:
Its wool is used in manufacturing coarse cloths.

The Alpaca (Auchenia), or Paco, is smaller than the llama. It
measures only three feet three inches from the lower part of the hoof
to the top of the head, and to the shoulders two feet and a half. In
form it resembles the sheep, but has a longer neck and a more grace-
ful head. Its fleece is very long, in some parts four or five inches,
and exquisitely soft. Its colour is usually either white or black, but
in some few instances is speckled. Of its wool the Indians weave
their blankets. It is also exported to Europe, and especially to Eng-
land, in large quantities, though since the alpaca was naturalized in
Australia, through the patriotic exertions of Mr. Ledger, England has
begun to obtain a supply from her great and thriving colony.*

The alpacas are kept in large flocks, which graze, throughout the
year, on the green and level heights, and are driven to the huts only
at shearing-time. Their shyness is very great, and at the approach
of a stranger they take to rapid flight. Their obstinacy is remark-
able. If one of these animals should be separated from the flock he
will throw himself on the ground, and neither force nor persuasion
will induce him to rise; he will frequently suffer the severest punish-
ment rather than go the way his driver wishes. Few animals seem
to stand in such urgent need of the companionship of their species,

* It was introduced into England by the Earl of Derby in 1836. An alpaca factory,
covering eleven acres, was erected at Saltaire, near Shipley, Yorkshire, by Mr. Titus Salt,
in 1852, and is now the largest establishment of its kind in the world.

THE GUANACO AND VICUNA. 335

and it is only when brought to the Indian huts very young that they
can be separated from their flocks.

The largest animal of this tribe is the Huanacu or Guanaco. He
measures five feet from the bottom of the hoof to the top of the head,
and three feet three inches to the shoulders. So nearly does he resemble
the llama in form that, until very recently, zoologists supposed the
latter to be an improved species of the huanacu, and that the huanacu
was neither more nor less than a wild llama. But there are specific
differences between them. The huanacu is of a uniform reddish-
brown colour on the neck, back, and .thighs. The under part of the
body, the middle line of the breast, and the inner side of the limbs
are of a dingy white. The wool is shorter and coarser than that of
the llama, and of nearly uniform length on all parts of the body. The
huanacus assemble in small herds of five or seven, and if taken very
young may be tamed, but can with difficulty be trained as beasts of
burden.

The Vicuna is a more beautiful animal than either of the pre-
ceding. His size is a medium between that of the llama and alpaca.
He measures four feet one inch to the top of the head, and two feet
six inches to the top of the shoulders. He is distinguished by his
longer and shapelier neck, by the superior fineness of his short curly
wool. The crown of the head, the upper part of the neck, the
back, and thighs are of a peculiar reddish-yellow hue, which the
natives call color de vicuna. The lower part of the neck and the
inner parts of the limbs are of a bright ochreous colour, and the breast
and lower part of the body white.

During the wet season the vicuna browses on the scanty vegeta-
tion of the Cordilleran ridges. He never ventures up to the bare
rocky summits, for his hoofs, being accustomed only to the yielding
sward, are very soft and tender. He lives in herds, consisting of from
six to fifteen females, and one male, who is the protector and leader
of the herd, and who, while the females graze, stands a few paces
apart, carefully \vatching over their safety. At the approach of dan-
ger he gives a signal, consisting of a kind of whistling sound and a

336 HUNTING THE VICUNA.

quick movement of the foot. Immediately the herd draws close
together, each animal stretching out his head in the direction of the
impending alarm. Then they take to flight; first moving leisurely
and cautiously, but quickening their pace to the utmost degree of
speed; whilst the male vicuna, who covers the retreat, occasionally
halts to observe the motions of the enemy. The females reward his
devotion by the warmest affection and fidelity, and will suffer them-
selves to be killed or captured rather than desert him.

The mode in which the Indians hunt the vicuna is sufficiently
curious. In the Chacu, as it is termed, the whole company, seventy or
eighty in number, proceed to the Attos — the most secluded districts
of the Peruvian mountains — which are the animal's favourite haunts,
with an abundant supply of rope and cord, and numerous stakes.
Selecting a spacious open area, they drive the stakes into the ground
in a circle, at intervals of from twelve to fifteen feet apart, and con-
nect them together by ropes fastened at the height of two or two and
a half feet from the ground. The circular space within this enclosure
measures about half a league in circumference; an opening of about
two hundred paces in width is left for entrance. On the ropes which
are carried round the stakes, the Indian women hang pieces of coloured
rag that flutter gaily in the wind.

The chacu being thus made ready, the Indians, who are mounted
on horseback, range over the country within a circuit of several miles,
driving before them all the herds of vicunas they encounter, and forc-
ing them into the chacu. When a sufficient number is collected, they
close the entrance. The timid animals do not attempt to leap over
the ropes, being affrighted by the fluttering rags, and when thus
secured, the Indians easily kill them with their bolas.

These bolas consist of three balls, composed either of lead or stone;
two of them heavier than the third. They are fastened to long
elastic strings, made of twisted sinews of the vicuna, and the opposite
ends of the strings are all tied together. The Indian holds the
lightest of the three balls in his hand, and swings the two others in a
wide circle above his head; then, taking his aim at the distance of

PROFITS OF THE CHURCH. 337

about fifteen or twenty paces, he lets go the hand-ball, whereupon all
three whirl in a circle, and cling round the object aimed at. The
aim is usually directed at the animal's hind legs, and the cords twist-
ing round them, he is unable to move. Great skill and long practice
are required to throw the bolas dexterously; a novice in the art in-
curs the risk of dangerously hurting either himself or his horse, by
not giving the balls the proper swing, or by letting go the hand-ball
too soon.

The vicunas, after being secured by the bolas, are killed; their
skins belong to the Church, and their flesh, which is tenderer and
better flavoured than that of the llama, is distributed in equal por-
tions among the hunters.

Under the dynasty of the Incas, the Peruvians rendered almost
divine worship to the llama and his congeners, adorning the temples
with large figures of these animals fashioned in gold and silver.*

* Dr. Von Tschudi, " Travels in Peru."
22

338 THE BISON. OR BUFFALO.

If the natives of the South American continent possess neither
the Ox nor the Sheep, they have at least a precious resource in the
Bison, and the Musk Ox, or Ovibos. Of the latter I shall speak when
ray survey brings me to the colder regions of North America.

The Bison is wholly confined to the great prairies of this conti-
nent, which he traverses from north to south, and reciprocally, in his
periodical migrations. According to some naturalists, he is a variety
of the Aurochs, the fierce wild bull that formerly tenanted the forests
of Gaul, Germany, and Sarmatia, and is still found in the densely-
wooded districts of Moldavia, Wallachia, Lithuania, and Caucasia.
Herds of Aurochs (Bos Bison], under the special protection of the
Russian Emperor, and believed to number fully eight hundred ani-
mals, still roam in the depths of the great Lithuanian forest of Bia-
lowieza. The American genus commonly called Buffalo, but not to
be confounded with the buffaloes of the Old World, occurs as far north
as the Great Martin Lake, in latitude 63°, and congregates in count-
less thousands on the wide undulating prairies between the Mississippi
and the Rocky Mountains. Their flesh is supposed to supply with
provision some 300,000 Indians, who pursue them on horseback, and
kill them with bow and arrow, spear or rifle. The chase is exciting,
and has proved a great attraction to the more adventurous spirits of
the New World. It is exciting because it is perilous, for the hunted
animal will often turn upon his adversary, and in speed he can outstrip
the swiftest horse. He finds a formidable enemy in the white wolf.
Hunting in packs of one or two hundred, the latter fling themselves
upon two or three solitary bisons, and, surrounding them, worry the
huge brutes to death. Never have they courage enough, however, to
attack a herd, though the latter, when they catch sight of wolves,
manifest the greatest alarm, form into battle array, and are only pre-
vented by excess of terror from taking to flight. This panic-stricken
feeling the Indian often turns to his advantage. He clothes himself
in the skin of a white wolf, and with bow and arrows in his hands,
boldly faces a herd, crawling towards them on his hands and knees;
the affrighted buffaloes press closely together to receive the supposed

BUFFALO-GRASS. 389

wolf, who, on arriving at a convenient proximity, suddenly springs
to his feet, and utters an unearthly yell. They fall into a frenzy of
terror which enables him to select several victims.

The Indians also capture great numbers by setting fire to the
grass of the prairies ; the flames compel them to retire to the centre,
where they are easily slain. Or they endeavour to throw them into
a panic of alarm, in which case they seem possessed with a sudden
madness, and, if driven towards a precipice, will dash themselves head-
long over it, falling crushed and bleeding into the chasm beneath.

The American bison is similar to the European, but his tail and
limbs are shorter ; the horns are shorter and more blunt ; the tail has
fewer vertebrse; and the mane is fuller and shaggier. His flesh is
excellent eating, having a flavour like that of venison. The tallow
forms an important article of trade, one bull sometimes yielding
150 pounds. The skins are much used by the Indians for blankets,
and when tanned they employ them as coverings for their beds and
wigwams. Spread upon frames of wicker-work, they make admirable
canoes. The long hair or fleece, of which a male bison yields six to
eight pounds, is spun and woven into cloth.

The favourite nourishment of the bison, says Humboldt, is the
Tripsacum dactyloides, called " Buffalo-Grass " in North Carolina,
and a species of trefoil, resembling Trifolium repens, which Bui-ton
has named Trifolium bisonicum. It is remarkable, he continues,
that the Buffalo, or Bison of the North, has exercised an influence
upon geographical discovery in the mountainous regions where no
road is laid down. Assembled in herds of several thousands, and
seeking a milder climate, they migrate at the approach of winter into
the countries situated south of Arkansas. Their massive form and
size render it difficult for them to cross the mountains ; and, conse-
quently, wherever the traveller finds a track beaten out by numerous
hoofs — a " buffalo-path," in fact — he may confidently adopt it as the
most convenient route for himself and his steed. In this manner
have been discovered the best passes in the Cumberland Mountains,
the "Rocky Mountains, from the sources of the Yellow-Stone to the

340

CERVUS MEXICAN US.

River La Plata ; and, finally, from the southern branch of the River
Columbia to the Rio Colorado of California,

The animals which we most frequently meet with in the Steppes
of South America are the small spotted Stag (Cervus Mexicanus) ; the
mailed Armadillos ; some species of Tatous, which glide like rats into
the burrows of the hares ; troops of indolent Cobiais ; of Civets
agreeably striped, but infecting the air with their emanations ; and
the great maneless Lion, the Jaguar or American Tiger, whoso

2. Capybara.

strength is sufficient to slay the young bulls and carry them off to
the summits of the hills.

The Cervuis Mexicanus wanders in numerous troops in the grassy
Llanos of the Caraccas. He is only spotted while young; and
varieties completely white have been discovered. On the slopes of
the Andes he is never found at a greater elevation than 1600 to 1900
feet. At 3000 feet he is replaced by a much larger variety, slightly
differing from the European stag.

THE AMERICAN EODENTS. 341

The Rodents of the genera Capybara, Agouti, and Paca, are
widely diffused over the plains of Tropical America. Of the three,
the Capybara (Hydrochcerus capybarci) is the largest. He attains the
size of a sheep, has a voluminous head, small round ears, eyes large
and black, a thick divided nose flanked by formidable whiskers, a
short neck, a thick body covered with short, coarse, russet hair, and
short legs ; altogether, not a " thing of beauty." Like the peccary,
he is tailless, and in a manner web-footed, being thus adapted for a
semi-aquatic life.

These great Rodents, says the illustrious author of " The Origin of
Species," in one of his earlier works,* are generally called " Car-
pinchos ; " they occasionally frequent the islands in the mouth of the
Plata, where the water is quite salt, but are more abundant on the
borders of fresh- water lakes and rivers. In the day-time they either
lie among the aquatic plants, or openly feed on the turf plain. When
viewed at a distance, from their manner of walking and colour, they
resemble pigs ; but when seated on their haunches, and attentively
watching any object with one eye, they re- assume the appearance of
their congeners, the Caries. Both the front and side view of their
head wears quite a ludicrous aspect, from the great depth of
their jaw.

The Capybara leads no joyous life apparently, for in the water he
is perseveringly pursued by the crocodile, and in the plain by the
jaguar. He runs so awkwardly as to be easily caught by hand, and
the South Americans profess to relish his flesh.

The Paca (Ccelogenys) differs from the Capybara in the complex
structure of his molar teeth. He inhabits the woody regions of South
America, where he is generally found in the vicinity of water, con-
cealing himself in burrows so near the surface, that the pedestrian's
foot often intrudes within them. His form is thick and clumsy,
spotted with white on the sides, and intermediate in size and appear-
ance between a hog and a hare.^f He is about a foot in height and

* Dr. Darwin, " Journal of a Naturalist " (Voyage of the Beagle. 3rd vol.)
t H. W. Bates, " The Naturalist on the River Amazons."

342 NEW WORLD RODENTS.

two feet in length, with hind limbs much longer than the fore, but
considerably bent. The claws are thick, strong, and conical ; the
eyes large, prominent, and of a brownish hue ; the ears nearly naked,
and whiskers rigid. The paca is heavy and corpulent, but swims
and dives with remarkable agility. As he feeds only on fruits and
tender plants, his flesh is exceedingly savoury, and a staple dish in
many parts of America. His burrow is provided with three aper-
tures, and his capture is managed by closing up two of these, and
digging up the third.

The Agouti (Dasyprocta Agouti) is another South American
Rodent, about one-third the size of the Paca ; he swims, but does not
dive. He has sometimes been named "the rabbit of the South
American continent," but differs from it in many essential points,
and really belongs to the Cavidce, or guinea-pig tribe. He possesses
the voracious appetite of the hog, and devours indiscriminately every-
thing that comes in his way. He conveys his food to his mouth with
his fore-paws, like a squirrel, and: as he has long hind legs, runs, or
rather leaps, with considerable swiftness. He is hunted very perse-
veringly on account .of the devastation he causes among the sugar-
canes. There is a larger species called the Mara, or Pampas
Hare (Dasyprocta Patachonica), which will wander for miles away
from its home.

Among the most interesting Rodents of the New World must be
classed the Vizcacha and the Chinchilla, whose furs are so highly
valued. The Vizcacha, or Bizcacha (Galomys bizcacha), somewhat
resembles a rabbit, but his teeth are larger, and he has a long tail.
He lives, Jt is said, on roots, and never wanders far from his burrow.
His flesh, when cooked, is very white and savoury. The Chinchilla
(C. lanigera) inhabits the cold mountain- valleys, where his close,
fine gray fur is an invaluable protection. He is a prettjr animal,
much like the rabbit, but with a squirrel's tail ; of a mild and
sociable disposition ; and living with his kind on the most amicable
terms.

Nor must the Beaver be forgotten, the most industrial animal of

HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. -. - . 343

V.

the Rodentia, which has wholly disappeared from Eur.ope, and is
yearly growing scarcer in America.

The Beaver (Castor fiber} is specially recognizable by his broad
horizontally-flattened tail, which is of a nearly oval form, but slightly
convex on its upper surface, and covered with scales. His hind feet
are webbed, and together with the tail, which acts as a rudder,
propel him through the water with ease and swiftness. His length,'
exclusive of his tail, which measures one foot, is about three feet.;
colour, a deep chestnut ; hair, very fine, glossy, and smooth. The
incisor teeth are large, and so hard1, that the North American Indians
used them in fabricating their horn-tipped spears and cutting bone,
until iron tools were introduced from Europe.

The sagacity with which he constructs his habitation has long
been a theme of eulogy, and has furnished moralists with many an
apt image and pregnant illustration. Water is the necessity of his
life. It is indispensably necessary that the stream near which the
animal lives should never run dry ; and to prevent so dire a mis-
fortune, he is gifted with an instinct which teaches him to keep the
water at or about the same mark, by building a dam across the
channel.

In order to comprehend the art with which this dam is con-
structed, we must watch the beaver at his patient toil.*

When the animal has fixed upon a tree which he believes
suitable for his purpose, he sits upright, and with his chisel-like
teeth cuts a bold groove completely round the trunk. He then
widens the groove in exact proportion to its depth, so that when the
tree is nearly cut through, it somewhat resembles the "contracted
portion of an hour-glass." When this stage has been reached, he
looks anxiously at the tree, and views it on every side, as if to
measure the direction in which it should fall. Having settled this
question, he goes to the opposite side, and with two or three
powerful bites cuts away the wood, so that the overbalanced tree
comes to the ground.

* Rev. J. G. Wood, " Homes Without Hands."

344 THE BEAVER'S LODGE.

The beaver next proceeds to cut it up into lengths of about a
yard or so, employing a similar method of severing the wood. The
next part of the task is to make these rounded and pointed logs into
a dam. For this purpose the logs are laid horizontally, and covered
with stones and earth until they can resist the force of the water.
Vast numbers are thus laid ; and as fast as the water rises, fresh
materials are added, being obtained mostly from the trunks and
branches of trees which have been stripped of their bark by the
beavers.

In those places where the stream runs slowly the dam is carried
straight across the river ; but where the current is strong, a convex
shape is given to it, so as to resist the force of the rushing water.
The dam is frequently of great size, measuring two or three hundred
yards in length, and ten or twelve feet in thickness. In many
localities the streams have been diverted by these erections into
entirely different channels.

It is in this manner that the beavers keep the water to the required
level ; we must next see how they make use of it. They build their
houses close to the water, and communicating with it by means of
subterranean passages, one entrance of which passes into the house, or
"lodge," as it is technically named, and the other into the water, so
far below the surface that it cannot be closed by ice. It is, therefore,
always possible for the beaver to gain access to the provision stores,
and to return to its house, without being perceived from the land.

" The lodges," says Mr. Wood, " are nearly circular in form, and
much resemble the well-known snow-houses of the Esquimaux, being
domed, and about half as high as they are wide — the average height
being three feet, and the diameter six or seven feet. These are the
interior dominions, the exterior measurement being much greater, on
account of the great thickness of the walls, which are continually
strengthened with mud and branches, so that during the severe frosts
they are nearly as hard as solid stone. Each lodge will accommodate
several inhabitants, whose beds are arranged round the walls."

There is no animal, however, whose sagacity can foil human

INGENIOUS DEVICE OF THE TRAPPERS. 845

ingenuity. The trappers, who hunt the beaver for the sake of his
fur, and the peculiar odoriferous secretion called castor, are more than
a match for all his artifices. Not even in winter-time is he safe from
their pursuit. Striking the ice smartly, they judge from the sound
whether they are near an aperture ; and as soon as they are satisfied,
cut away the ice and stop up the opening, so that the beavers, if
alarmed, may not escape into the water. They then proceed to the
shore, and by i-epeated soundings trace the course of the beavers'
subterranean passage, which is sometimes eight or ten yards long, and
by closely watching the different apertures invariably catch the
inhabitants. While thus engaged, they must be careful not to spill
any blood, as in case of such a mishap the rest of the beavers take
alarm, retreat to the water, and cannot be captured. The trappers
entertain a superstitious notion, which leads them to remove a knee-
cap from each beaver and throw it into the fire.

The beavers generally quit their huts in the summer-time, though
one or two of the houses may be tenanted by a mother and her
young family. Those old beavers which are free from domestic ties
take to the water, and swim up and down the stream in bachelor-like
liberty until the month of August, when they return to a settled life.
There are, also, certain individuals called by the trappers " les
paresseux," or " the idlers," which do not live in houses, and construct
no dam, but dwell in subterranean tunnels like those of our common
water-rat. They are always males ; gay young bachelors, with no
incentives, we will suppose, to an industrious career. Neither in the
beaver nor in the human world, however, does idleness prosper, for
the capture of "les paresseux" is a comparatively easy task.

South America is the home of those singular Edentate Mammals,
with scaly shields, which the natives call Tatous, but which are better
known to Europeans by the name of Armadillos (Priodonta gig as}.
Cuvier has divided the whole genus into five groups, distinguished
from one another by the number and form of their teeth and claws :

— " Cachecames," "Apars," "Encouberts," "Cabassous," and " Prio-

22 a

846 IN ARMOUR SHEATHED.

dontes." Their general characteristics, however, are the same, and to
describe one is virtually to describe all

The body of the Armadillo has been invested by nature with a
complete suit of armour : thus the head is protected by an oval or
triangular plate, the shoulders by a large buckler, and the haunches
by a similar buckler ; while between these solid portions intervenes
a series of transverse bands, or zones of shell, which accommodate
this coat of mail to the various postures of the body ; the tail also is
covered by a series of calcareous rings, so that the animal exhibits a
peculiar and somewhat ungainly appearance. Like the hedgehog, he
can roll himself up into a ball, and present a solid impervious sub-
stance to the attacks of any adversary. The interior surface of the
body, not covered by the shell, is clothed with coarse scattered hairs,
some of which also emerge between the joints of the coat of mail.

This strange quadruped, like a mediaeval knight, —

" In armour sheathed from top to toe," —

has a rather pointed snout, long ears, short and thick limbs, and
stout claws. Nature has thus fitted him by a peculiarly admirable
organization for those habits of bun-owing, which he performs with
such astonishing rapidity that it is almost impossible to capture him
by digging. His hunters therefore smoke him out of his subter-
raneous lair ; as soon as he reaches the surface he rolls himself up,
and is easily taken prisoner. He is then roasted in his shell, and
devoured with avidity, his flesh being as great a dainty to a South
American Indian as turtle to a London alderman.

By the side of the armadillos we may place another individual of
the Edentata, not less strange in form : this is the Tamanoir, or
Great Ant-Eater (Myrmecophaga jubata), which feeds exclusively on
ants, digging open their hills with his powerful crooked claws, and
drawing his long flexible tongue, covered with viscous saliva, lightly
over the myriad insects that immediately sally forth to defend their
homes.

" The habits of the Myrmecophaga jubata are now pretty well

THE AXT-EATERS.

347

known. It is not uncommon in the drier forests of the Amazons
valley. The Brazilians call the species'the Tamandud bandeira, or
the Banner Ant-Eater; the term banner," says Mr. Bates,* "being
applied in allusion to the curious coloration of the animal, each side
of the body having a broad oblique stripe, half gray and half black,
which gives it some resemblance to a heraldic banner. It has an
excessively long, slender muzzle, and a warm-like extensile tongue.
Its jaws are destitute of teeth. The claws are much elongated, and

1. Armadillo Loricata. 2. Ant-Eater.

its gait is very awkward. It lives on the ground, but all the other
species of this singular genus are arboreal. I met with four species
altogether. One was the Myrmecophaga tetradactyla, or Little Ant-
Eater ; the two others, more curious and less known, were very
small kinds, called Tamandud-i (Myrmecophaga tamandua'). Both
are similar in size — ten inches in length, exclusive of the tail — and in
the number of the claws, having two of unequal length to the anterior
* H. W. Bates, " The Naturalist on the Amazons," pp. 112, 113.

348 THE LION Of AMERICA.

feet, and four to the hind feet. One species is clothed with grayish-
yellow silky hair ; this is of rare occurrence. The other has a fur
of a dingy brown colour, without silky lustre. One was brought to
me alive, having been caught by an Indian clinging motionless inside
a hollow tree. I kept it in the house about twenty-four hours. It
had a moderately long snout, curved downwards, and extremely
small eyes. It remained nearly all the time without motion, except
when irritated, in which case it reared itself on its hind-legs from
the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its fore-
paws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the
sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance to a sloth.
It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the spot where I had
placed it in the morning. The next day I put it on a tree in the
open air, and at night it escaped. These small Tamanduas are
nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those species of termites which
construct earthy nests, that look like ugly excrescences on the trunks
and branches of trees. The different kinds of ant-eaters are thus
adapted to various modes of life, terrestrial and arboreal."

In Tropical America the most remarkable representatives of the
Garni vora are two great species of Felidre: the Puma, or Cougouar
(Fells concolor), also called the Lion of America ; and the Jaguar, or
Ounce (Fells onca), sometimes distinguished as the American Tiger.

The Puma measures about five feet from nose to tail ; the tail
alone measuring two feet and a half. His colour is a brownish-red,
with small patches of deeper tint, only shown up by certain lights ;
the breast, belly, and inner flanks are of a reddish ash ; the lower
jaw and throat entirely white ; the tail of a dusky ferruginous tinge,
tipped with black. As he grows older, however, his general colour
becomes a silvery fawn. He has no mane. His manners — that is,
his habits and disposition — are rather those of the panther than the
lion. He climbs trees with cat-like expertness, whether in chase of
birds, or to secure a vantage-point from which he may pounce upon
some unsuspecting victim. He never attacks the larger quadrupeds,
confining himself to such "small deer" as young calves, colts, and

THE AMERICAN TIGER.

349

sheep. Men, children, dogs — these he suffers to pass by unmolested.
His depredations are nocturnal. When domesticated, he may well
be likened to the common cat, and he shows his pleasure at being
caressed by the same kind of gentle purring. But he is a ferocious
animal, and will kill fifty sheep or more in order to drink their blood.
A much more formidable animal is the Jaguar. In size and
strength he is but little inferior to the tiger. He has a large and
rounded head ; his pliant body is marked on the back with long

COUOOUARS, OK PUMAS.

uninterrupted stripes, on the legs and thighs with full black spots ;
his ground colour is a pale brownish -yellow; his legs are short, thick,
and robust. He extends his ravages over all Central and South
America, and over a considerable range of the northern continent.
Like the tiger, he loves the shade of hot swampy jungles, the neigh-
bourhood of the river and the lake. He generally preys on animals
of domestic origin, which have grown wild in the prairies and the
pampas, but he will also attack the bisons, and the other herbivora.

850

FIERCENESS OF THE JAGUAR.

Fish, too, he does not disdain to eat ; and in default of other food,
will even seize upon the caimans. It is rare that he attacks man ;
but if attacked by him, he defends himself courageously, and his
muscular strength renders him exceedingly formidable. Not even an
Ajax could maintain a combat with him as Fitz-James fought with
Roderick Dim, when —

" Foot, and point, and eye opposed,
In dubious strife they darkly closed ; ''

BlSON ATTACKED BY A JAGUAR.

if man would win, he must arm himself with bow and arrow, keen
spear, or unerring rifle. The hunter, thus provided, pursues him
with restless animosity to obtain his fur, which is much esteemed in
commerce, where it is improperly designated by the names of "Great
Panther," and "American Tiger."

According to Humboldt, the Pampas are colonized with dogs
grown wild, which gather in great numbers in subterranean caverns,
and oftentimes, when stimulated by hunger, fling themselves upon
man, in whose defence they originally displayed their courage.

THE PRAIRIE-DOGS.

351

In North America there exists a very curious species of Rodents,
belonging to the sub-genus Spermophilus, or Spermatophilus — that
is, " grain-eaters." They are better known by the hunter's name,
"Prairie Dogs." Mr. Murray remarks that it is difficult to say why
they obtained such an absurd appellation, for they do not bear the
slightest resemblance to the canine species, either in formation or

PRAIRIE WOLVES (Arctomys Ludorieianus}.

habits.* "In size," he says, "they vary extremely, but in general
they are not larger than a squirrel, and not unlike one in appearance,
except that they want his bushy tail ; the head is also somewhat
rounder. They burrow under the light soil, and throw it up round
the entrance to their dwelling like the English rabbit ; on this little
* Hon. C. A. Murray, " Travels in North America."

352 A WINTER-SLEEP.

mound they generally sit, chirping and chattering to one another,
like two neighbour gossips in a village. Their number is incredible,
and their cities (for they deserve no less a name) full of activity and
bustle. I do not know what their occupations are ; but I have seen
them constantly running from one hole to another, although they do
not ever pay any distant visits. They seem on the approach of danger
always to retire to their own homes ; but their great delight appar-
ently consists in braving it, with the usual insolence of cowardice
when secure from punishment ; for, as you approach, they wag their
little tails, elevate their heads, and chatter at you like a monkey,
louder and louder the nearer you come ; but no sooner is the hand
raised to any missile, whether gun, arrow, stick, or stone, than they
pop into the hole with a rapidity only equalled by that sudden dis-
appearance of Punch, with which, when a child, I have been so much
delighted in the streets and squares of London."

Captain Murray observes that as there is generally neither rain
nor dew on the plains which they inhabit, during the summer, while,
on the other hand, these little creatures never wander far from their
"towns," it seems reasonable to conclude they need no other liquid
than they can extract from the grass they eat. It is certain that
they pass the winter in a complete state of lethargy and torpor, for
they accumulate no supply of provisions against that season ; while
the herbage which thrives about their habitat dries up in autumn,
and soon afterwards the frosts render it impossible for them to pro-
cure their ordinary food. When the prairie dog feels the approach of
his time of somnolence — generally about the end of October — he
closes all the passages of his dormitory to protect him from the cold,
and wholly resigns himself to the pleasures of repose. He remains
thus immured and inert until awakened by the first warm airs of
spring, when he throws wide his gates and reappears on the surface
of the refreshened earth, in all his whilom e liveliness and gaiety.

THE AMERICAN OSTRICH. 353

CHAPTER XI.

ANIMAL LIFE IX THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD:

BIRDS AND REPTILES.

WE have seen in a preceding chapter that the great terrestrial and
aquatic birds ("Waders") of the wild plains of the Ancient World have
few analogues in America, and that the small number of genera which
are represented therein are represented by much smaller species. I
have cited the Ostrich and the Phenicopterus. The American Ostrich,
or Nandou (Rhea), is not above half the size of his African congener,
from which he differs in having the feet three-toed, and each toe
armed with a claw. Moreover, his head and neck are more fully
clothed with plumage ; the wings are plumed, and more perfectly
developed ; and he is tailless. The neck has sixteen vertebrae.
Though endowed with more perfect wings than the Ostrich of Africa,
he is nevertheless incapable of flight, representing another grade in
Nature's slow ascent from the wingless bird to the bird possessed of
full powers of flight. He inhabits the wide grassy plains of South
America below the Equator, and as far south as latitude 42 . He is
never seen across the Cordilleras, but roams in great numbers the
banks of La Plata and its tributaries. He is generally seen in small
troops.

There are at least three species : the Rhea Americana, about
five feet high ; the Rhea macrorhyncha, distinguished by its large
bill ; and the Rhea Darwinii, the smallest, which inhabits Patagonia.

The Flamingoes proper to the New World are : the Bed Flamingo,
all whose plumage glows with a more or less vivid red; and the
Fiery Flamingo, probably only a variety of the preceding. Both are
natives of the dreary Patagonian desert, of Chili, and some other
southern districts.

The order of Waders, and that of Palmipeds, include, in the low
23

354 NEW WORLD SCAVENGERS.

marshy levels of this continent, some characteristic species : notably,
the Jacanas and the Kamichis ; the Agami or Trumpet-Bird, remark-
able for its pastoral instinct, its domestic aptitudes, and the ringing
sound of its voice ; the Savacou, which, in the structure of its enor-
mous beak and its general habits, is allied to the African Balseniceps.
Here, as in Africa, a species of rapacious Grallator nourishes, the
Cariama, delivering " a war to the knife " against the reptile legions.
Raptores more accurately defined — such, for example, as the Falco
cachinnans, or Laughing Vulture — share in the destructive campaign
against frogs, toads, lizards, and small serpents. And in the New, as
in the Old World, Nature does not neglect the work of purification,
intrusting it in the savannahs and the pampas to various kinds
of Vulturidse, which devour the putrid carcasses that would otherwise
pollute the atmosphere. The Caihartes-Urubu and the Aura are the
most common species ; the Mexicans call them Zopilotes. They are
found in all Central and Southern America, and frequently range to
very high latitudes. They are of small size, very social, easy
familiarized with man, and may be seen in great numbers, not alone
in the deserts and plains, but in the great towns, where they effi-
ciently play the part of great sanitary reformers. They are gifted
with extraordinary delicacy of scent ; they detect the existence of
camon at great distances, and flock from the four quarters of heaven
to banquet upon it. The Sarcoramphus Papa, or "King of the
Vultures," a species closely allied to the great Condor of the Andes,
is likewise encountered very frequently in the plains of Tropical
America, but only where the herbage has been set on fire ; which is
a common enough occurrence, either through lightning, or by accident
or design on the part of the Indians. Then he arrives on rapid
pinion to prey upon the lizards, and frogs, and serpents which are
destroyed by the scathing and consuming flames. His attire is more
elegant than his mission in creation would seem to render necessary.
The plumage on the upper part of the body is of a reddish hue, the
neck and head of a delicate bluish-violet, the beak red, the crest
orange, the eyebrows white, and the wings black. He is about the

THE FALCOXID^: FAMILY.

855

size of the domestic Turkey. The tawny Caracara, a bird of the genus
Polyborus, as large as the common Kite, and with a tail nine inches
long ; and the Harpy Eagle (Thrasaetus), distinguished by its formi-
dable beak and legs, its erect crest and flashing eyes — both widely
distributed in all the hot regions of the New World — belong to the
Falconidce family (in the latest classification), as well as the great
white-headed Fishing Eagle, or Pygargue (Haliaetus Leucocephalus],
which inhabits the northern continent. The latter has been elo-

1. Cathartes-Urubu.

2. King of the Vultures.

quently described by the Paisley ornithologist, the celebrated
Wilson : * — "Elevated on the high dead branch of some gigantic tree
that commands a wide view of the neighbouring shore and ocean, he
seems calmly to contemplate the motions of the various feathered
tribes that pursue their busy avocations below; all the winged multi-
tudes that subsist by the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of
Nature. High over all these hovers one whose action instantly
* A. Wilson, " American Ornithology."

356 A STIRRING PICTURE.

arrests his attention. By his wide curvature of wing and sudden
suspension in the air, he knows him to be the Fish Hawk, settling
over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye kindles at the sight,
and, balancing himself with half-opened wings on the branch, he
watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, descends
the distant object of his attention, the roar of his wings reaching the
ear as he disappears in the deep, making the surges foam around !
At this moment, the eager looks of the eagle are all ardour, and,
levelling his neck for flight, he sees the fish hawk emerge struggling
with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of exultation.
These are the signals for our hero, who, launching into the air,
instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the hawk; each exerts his
utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencounters the
most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unencumbered
eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his
opponent, when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and
honest execration, the latter drops the fish ; the eagle, poising him-
self for a moment, as if to take a more certain aim, descends like a
whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches the water, and
bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods."

A similar picture, let me add, has been painted by the poet
Spenser, though he refers, of course, to the British Eagle : —

" Like to an eagle, in his kingly pride,
Soaring through his wide empire of the air
To weather his broad sails, by chance has spied
A goshawk, which hath seized for her share
Upon some fowl that should her feast prepare.
With dreadful force he flies at her again,
That with his voice which none endure or dare
Her from the quarry he away doth drive,
And from her griping pounce the greedy prey doth rive."'

The Reptilia are represented in America by a very great number
of species, many being remarkable for their great size or the terrible
venom with which they are provided. The crocodiles of the American
continent form a distinct genus, sometimes designated Alligator, and

ALLIGATORS, OR CAIMANS.

357

sometimes Caiman. The Alligators, or Caimans (Alligator Lucius'),
are Saurians of huge bulk ; with a long flat head, thick neck and
body, a cavernous mouth suggestive of infinite voracity, dull cruel
eyes, and a long taper tail, which, strongly compressed on the sides,
is surmounted with a double series of strong plates, that unite about
the middle, and form a single row to the extremity. It is this tail
that gives them most of their progressive power in the water, and
though it obstructs their movements on land, it is useful even then as

ALL

a powerful weapon of defence. Transverse rows of square bony plates,
rising in the centre into keel-shaped ridges, protect the body, and
render the hideous animal exceedingly formidable as an antagonist.
It frequently attains the length of eighteen, and is seldom less than
fifteen feet. Its teeth are numerous, sharp, and strong ; its claws
long and tenacious. It feeds generally on fish, turtle, fowl, or what-
ever other prey may fall within its reach ; and woe to the unfortunate
animal that comes to the river-bank in quest of water within the
range of this ferocious saurian.

358 AN AFFECTING INCIDENT.

The caiman never attacks man if his intended victim is on
his guard, but he is cunning enough to know when this may be done
with impunity. Mr. Bates records an affecting instance. The river
Amazons at Caigara had sunk one season to a very low point, so that
the port and bathing-place of the village now lay at the foot of a long
sloping bank, and a large caiman made his appearance in the shallow
and muddy water. "We were all obliged," says our traveller,* "to
be very careful in taking our bath ; most of the people simply using
a calabash, pouring the water over themselves while standing on the
brink. A large trading canoe, belonging to a Barra merchant, arrived
at this time, and the Indian crew, as usual, spent the first day or two
after their coming into port in drunkenness and debaucheiy ashore.
One of the men, during the greatest heat of the day, when almost
every one was enjoying his afternoon's nap, took it into his head
whilst in a tipsy state to go down and bathe. He was seen only by
the Suiz de Paz (Justice of Peace), a feeble old man who was lying in
his hammock, in the open verandah at the rear of his house on the
top of the bank, and who shouted to the besotted Indian to beware
of the alligator. Before he could repeat his warning the man stumbled,
and a pair of gaping jaws, appearing suddenly above the surface,
seized him round the waist and drew him under the water. A cry
of agony was the last sign made by the wretched victim. The village
was aroused ; the young men, with praiseworthy readiness, seized
their harpoons and hurried down to the bank ; but of course it was
too late, a winding track of blood on the surface of the water was all
that could be seen. They embarked, however, in light boats, deter-
mined on vengeance ; the monster was traced, and when, after a short
lapse of time, he came up to breathe, one leg sticking out from his
jaws, was dispatched with bitter curses."

In the temperate regions of North America, where crocodiles still

exist, these animals pass the entire winter in lethargic torpor. In

the Pampas of tropical America, on the contrary, it is during the hot

season that they remain inert in the mud of the dried-up marshes.

* H. W. Bates, " The Naturalist on the Amazons."

THE BOA-CONSTRICTOR. 359

" According to the statements of the natives," says Humboldt, " you
may sometimes see, on the return of the rainy season, the humid clay
slowly uplifted and loosened in great clods. A violent detonation
soon makes itself heard, and the earth is flung up into the air to a
great height, as in eruptions of small mud volcanoes. If you under-
stand the cause of this phenomenon you will quickly take to flight,
for from this retreat immediately emerges a monstrous water-serpent
or a plated crocodile, which the first shower has awakened from his
lethargy." The great water-serpent here spoken of is, in all proba-
bility, the gigantic Boa-Constrictor, one of the most dangerous denizens
of the marshy plains of equatorial America. Travellers of unimpeach-
able authority assert that this frightful reptile often attains the length
of thirty-six to forty-five feet. Day and night he lurks among the
tall rank herbage ; in the morning and the evening he places himself
in ambush on the border of some lake or water-course to surprise the
quadrupeds which flock thither to quench their thirst. By means of
his prehensile tail he suspends himself to a tree on the shore, and
patiently awaits the coming prey. When an animal passes within
his reach, he swiftly seizes it, enfolds it in his spiral coils, crushes it
against the tree which serves for his point d'appui, compresses its
bleeding mass into a convenient form, covers it with a glutinous
saliva, and swallows it. In this fashion the boa will devour a stag
or even an ox entire, nor does he fear to attack the puma and the
jaguar. Whether he is dangerous to man may reasonably be doubted ;
his immense size, at all events, renders it easy to avoid him. He
preys upon fish in default of other provision, and to catch his victims
often remains for a considerable time with his head and a portion of
his body plunged under water.

The true scourges of tropical America and the Antilles are the
Rattlesnake and the lance-headed Viper.

The Rattlesnake (Crotalus hon^idus) is one of the deadliest of
venomous serpents, is frequently six feet in length, and as thick as a
man's leg. But Providence has furnished it with an antidote
against its own poison, or, at least, with an instrument which makes

360

BANE AND ANTIDOTE.

it its own betrayer, and warns man involuntarily against its
formidable presence. This is the rattle to which it owes its vulgar
appellation. The rattle is situated at the end of the tail, and consists
of several hard, dry, bony processes. Imagine a string of hollow,
dry, semi-transparent bones, nearly of the same size and figure, and
resembling to some extent the shape of the human os sacrum :

CROTALUS, AND BOA-CONSTRICTOR.

imagine these so placed that the tip of every uppermost bone runs
within two of the bones below it ; imagine these constantly clattering
against each other, as the reptile moves, with a hoarse, dull, echoing
sound, and you will be able to form some idea of the permanent
warning of its approach which the Crotalus carries about with it.
The rattle is placed with the broad part perpendicular to the body,
and not horizontal ; and the first joint is attached to the last vertebra
of the tail by means of a thick muscle beneath it, no less than by the
membranes which unite it to the skin. The bony rings increase in
number with the reptile's age, and it gains an additional one, it is
said, at each casting of the skin.

THE LANCE-HEADED VIPER. 361

The Crotalus horridus is of a yellowish-brown colour, varied with
patches of a deeper hue, and from the head to some distance down
the neck run two or three longitudinal stripes of the same. Its
habits are sluggish ; it moves slowly, and only bites when angered,
or for the purpose of killing its prey. It is provided with two kinds
of teeth — viz., the smaller, which, planted in each jaw, serve to
catch and retain the food ; and secondly, the fangs or poisonous
teeth, which kill the prey, and are placed outside the upper jaw.
It feeds principally upon the smaller mammals and upon birds, which
it seems certain it possesses a peculiar power of fascinating — the effect,
it may be, of intense fear. " When the piercing eye of the rattle-
snake is fixed on them," says Mr. Murray, " terror and amazement
render them incapable of escaping ; and, while involuntarily keeping
their eyes fixed on those of the reptile, birds have been seen to drop
into its mouth, as if paralyzed, squirrels descend from their trees, and
leverets run into the jaws of the expecting devourer." Hogs and
peccaries, however, are unaffected by this panic, and feed greedily
upon the reptile which causes it, whose venomous fangs cannot
penetrate their formidable hide. Its poison, once imbibed, is very
fatal, acting upon man and the larger mammals, such as the horse or
ass, in a few hours.

The lance-headed Viperr or Trigonocephalus (Bothrops lanceolatus),
is most common in the West Indian Islands, where it is justly dreaded.
It has been computed that, at Martinique, fifty persons out of a
population of 125,000 souls die annually from the bite of these
odious reptiles. Their fecundity is frightful. Every female bears
sixty young, which on their very advent into the world are completely
formed and able to wound. This viper, moreover, carries no warning
rattle ; nothing indicates its presence ; and in the countries which
it inhabits, the wayfarer, if prudent, will beat the herbs and bushes
as he advances with a switch. Then the Trigonocephalus, if there be
one in the way, will take flight and reveal itself, for it is too large
to glide away unseen. Therefore, the negroes of Martinique, who, of
necessity, are assiduous reptile hunters, state as an incontrovertible

23 a

302

A WATCHFUL SENTINEL.

axiom, confirmed by immemorial experience, that " a serpent seen is
a serpent dead." In truth, the serpent is only formidable to man
when not perceived, and when one treads upon it accidentally. In
the open field its defeat and death are inevitable, however little
coolness or skill its assailant may possess. And to warn us of the
presence of the Trigonocephalus, Nature has supplied us with numerous
watchful sentinels in the small birds, whose not unreasonable hate

TRIQONOCEPHALUS PURSUED BY BIRDS.

against this serpent is a remarkable proof of their intelligence. If
ever your destiny conduct you to the Antilles, says a naturalist, cold-
blooded sportsman as you may be, do not slay the little bird which
the grateful negroes, though he sings but little, have wished to name
the nightingale ; for if you do so, they will regard you with suspicion
and dislike. He is their protector, and he watches also over you.
No sooner does he see, from his aerial station, the scales of the reptile

THE SURINAM TOAD. 363

gliding into the herbage or glittering among the large leaves, than he
can no longer control himself. He flies to and fro, he leaps from
branch to branch, summoning with a lamentable cry all the feathered
tribe from the neighbouring trees. From far and near the cry widens
and is repeated ; from all directions flock nightingales, and thrushes,
grosbeaks, and humming-birds, and hovering above the assassin,
furiously denounce it, and indicate its lurking-place to man.
Irritated by such a concert of maledictions, the serpent elevates its
crest, but, lo ! they are far beyond its reach ! And the cries, the
murmurs, the insults are redoubled ! It seeks to conceal itself,
but these cries persistently accompany it. Wherever it drags its
slimy shining bulk, they follow, they harass, and they denounce it.
Either night comes on, or it succeeds in completely hiding itself
from their watchful gaze, before they reluctantly leave it to its
own devices. Great the consternation if their enemy escape them !
But what joy, what triumphal sounds, if man appears upon the scene
and slays it !

I have previously alluded to the enormous toads found in South
America, and to the gigantic frog which belongs to the northern
continent. Among the former I may particularize as one of the
largest known species, the Agua ; and, as remarkable for its mode of
gestation, the Pipa. The Surinam Toad, or Pipa Surinamensis
(the Bufo Pipa of Linne), is distinguished by its large triangular
head, and horizontally flattened body, with a granulated back. It
is now ascertained that the female deposits her spawn at the brink
of some shallow or stagnant pool ; the male then collects the heap
and cautiously places it on the back of the female, where, after
impregnation, they are pressed into cellules produced by the tumefac-
tion of the skin. In rather less than three months the eggs are
hatched, and the young emerge in a complete state.

The Bull-Frog (Rana pipilus), of North America, is from six to
eight inches long and from three to four inches broad. When his
limbs are fully extended he measures about eighteen inches in length.

864

THE BULL-FKOG.

Its back is of a sombre green colour, varied with black ; the under-
parts being of a whitish hue, tinged with green, and thickly spotted.
The fore-feet have only four toes, and are unwebbecl ; the hind-feet
are large, long, and widely webbed. Its voice may be compared to
the distant lowing of a bull, and a chorus of them at night is sufficient
to arouse the soundest sleeper. They prey upon ducklings, goslings,
and small birds, drowning before devouring them. Spite of its size

1. Bufo Agua.

1'ipa Surinamensis.

and ungainliness, it is very nimble, and can accomplish a leap of
upwards of six feet in height.

Incomplete as is this rapid survey of the Fauna of the New
World Deserts, I cannot terminate it without referring to the strange
and formidable fish which haunt the pools, lakes, and marshes of
South America — those Gymnoti, or Electrical Eels, sometimes five,
six, and even eight feet long, which emit electrical discharges of suffi-
cient violence to strike down a man, a horse, or an ox. It is by
this singular property the gymnotus supports its existence ; its shocks

THE ELECTRICAL EEL.

365

stupify the smaller fishes and other animals that come within its
range, so that they fall an easy prey to its voracity. The electrical
organs consist of four bundles of parallel membranaceous laminse
arranged along the inner side of the tail, and constituting a remark-
ably powerful battery.

In hunting the gymnoti the Indians adopt a cruel expedient. They

FISHING FOR OYMXOTI.

drive a herd of horses and mules into the ponds which these eels in-
habit, and harpoon them when they have spent their electrical force
on the unhappy quadrupeds. The fish swim on the surface of the
water like serpents, and skilfully glide beneath the animal's body,
discharging the whole length of their electrical battery, and attacking
simultaneously the digestive viscera, and, above all, the gastric plexus

366 THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT.

of nerves. Fain would the horses escape their enemies' attacks, but
the Indians drive them back into the water with stout canes of
bamboo and long whips. After awhile the eels grow exhausted ; the
animals show less alarm ; and the Indians begin to ply their harpoons
with equal agility and success. There are several species of this re-
markable fish, and most, if not all, are valued as wholesome food.
The Gymnotus Electricus, however, is the only one which possesses
any electrical powers.

CHAPTER XII.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE AUSTRALIAN PRAIRIES.

THE first naturalists who explored the littoral of the Australian con-
tinent and its adjacent islands were struck with astonishment at the
sight of the strange and almost monstrous animals they discovered
there. Far more certainly than Columbus had they fallen in with a
New World ; a new world of zoology and botany ; a world apart,
peopled by beings wholly different from those they had elsewhere
studied, and some of which exhibited a complexity and originality of
organization and structure wholly antagonistic to the received theories
of fundamental characteristics belonging to the various classes of the
animal kingdom. The Australian Fauna, in this respect, can only be
compared to that of Madagascar, which equally bears an impress
peculiarly its own, and presents but a few features of kinship with
the Indian Fauna. It is the latter also that the Australian Fauna
most closely approaches, or, to speak more correctly, from which it
least widely diverges.

The great Herbivora — Pachyderms, Ruminants, and Solidungulates
— are absolutely wanting in Australia, as well as the Carnivora properly
so called — Apes and Lemuridse. The class of Mammals is only repre-

THE MARSUPIALS. 3C7

sented by a small number of Cheiroptera and Rodents ; by some
Amphibia, Phocse, and Otidse (Seals and Bustards), which inhabit the
bays carved out of its long line of coast ; by the Marsupials and a
very limited order of Monotremata. The two latter groups are pre-
eminently characteristic of the Australian Fauna ; the second belongs
exclusively to it. Little, indeed, is wanting to make it identical with
the sub-class of the Marsupials, represented only in South America
by the genera Opossum didelphis, Hemiurus, and Chironectes, and
elsewhere limited to New Holland, Tasmania, New Guinea, New
Zealand, and some other less important islands of Oceania.

The Marsupials (from the Greek ju.dp<rv7ro$, a purse) owe their
distinctive name to a very curious peculiarity in the organization of
the females. The latter bring their young into the world while still
very feeble, and of themselves fix them to their breasts, where they
remain attached until they have acquired that degree of development
which all other mammals possess at their birth. Generally the breasts
are covered with a loose skin, forming a sort of pouch or purse, in
which the young are concealed, which protects them against climatic
changes, and enables the mother conveniently to carry them every-
where about with her. Two particular bones, called the marsupial
bones, attached to the pubis, and placed amidst the abdominal muscles,
support this pouch. They assist, says Professor Owen, in producing
a compression of the mammary gland, necessary for the alimentation
of a peculiarly feeble offspring, and they defend the abdominal viscera
from the pressure of the young as they increase in size, during their
mammary or marsupial existence, and still more when they return to
the pouch for temporary shelter.

The marsupials present, moreover, in the different families com-
posing the order, a great diversity of organization. Most of them
are herbivorous or frugivorous ; but there are some which prefer
animal nourishment, and which, in their habits as well as in the
structure of their jaws and their digestive apparatus, closely approach
the carnivora.

The order of which I am speaking includes some animals of great

368 THE GREAT KANGAROO.

size. Such is the Great Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), which
generally measures about seven and a half feet in length from the
nose to the tip of the tail, the tail being rather more than three feet
in length, and fully twelve inches in circumference at the base. In
its erect sitting posture, when it rests on its hind-legs and the root
of its tail as on a tripod, its height amounts to about fifty inches ;
but when it rises on its toes to look around, its stature exceeds that
of a man. The great length of its hind-legs is a notable peculiarity ;
their feet are provided with only four toes, the central being very
long, of great strength, and terminated in a large and powerful hoof-
like nail or claw. The fore-legs, on the contrary, are very short, and
the feet divided into five toes, each furnished with a short and some-
what hooked claw. The animal's head is small, with rather pointed
ears, and large but placid eyes ; it has a thin and gracefully pro-
portioned neck ; so that a startling discrepancy is observable between
the fore and the posterior parts of the animal, though the general
effect is neither ungraceful nor unpleasing. It should be noticed that
the kangaroo never folds his tail between his legs, which, I may add,
are extraordinarily strong. The thighs are thick, the tarsi long and
robust. He only walks on all fours when hotly pressed, and then
his appearance is decidedly ungainly. In escaping from an enemy
he rears himself upright, skims the plain with bounding leaps, and in
a few minutes leaves behind him the swiftest horse or dog. But if
all avenues of retreat be closed to him, he plants himself firmly
against a tree or a rock and fights with obstinate courage, ripping up
his assailants with his potent hind-feet, like a stag with his horns or
a wild boar with his tusks.

The diet of the kangaroo is essentially "vegetarian;" he lives
upon leaves, herbs, and roots, and employs his fore-paws, like the
Rodents, to carry his food to his mouth. The animal's habits are
mild and inoffensive. They roamed very peacefully about the
Australian prairies before the new continent was opened up to Euro-
pean enterprise ; having no other enemies to fear than the natives,
who were scattered in small tribes over a few points of an immense

THE PHASCOLOMYS.

369

territory. Their chase is now -one of the favourite amusements of
the colonists, who destroy them in great numbers. They are easily
domesticated, and may be regarded as already acclimatized in Europe,
where, it is hoped, they may prove of great utility. The flesh of the
tame Kangaroo is very good, but that of the wild animal is still
better. Their skin, covered with a thick hair of an uniformly gray
colour, may be adapted to various purposes.

The genus comprehends several species of very different dimen-

I.AKOE-BRCWED WOMBAT Phascolow ij* latijrons}.

sions : as, the Great Kangaroo, already mentioned ; the Woolly or
Red Kangaroo (M. laniger), which rather exceeds it in size ; and the
Potoroo, which is larger than a rat.

I must cite, besides the Kangaroos, as the most remarkable types
of the Australian Marsupials, the Phascolomys, the Phascolarctos, the
Phalangas, and the Thylacynas.

The Phascolomys, like the kangaroo, has been introduced into
Europe, where he seems to be perfectly acclimatized, and specimens

24

370 WOMBAT AND KOALA.

may be seen both in the London Zoological Gardens and the Jardin
Zoologique of Paris. He is better known by his native name of the
Wombat (Phascolomys Wombat), and was first discovered by Bass,
the gallant explorer and surgeon, whose name is indissolubly con-
nected with the bright deeds of Australian discovery. The large-
browed wombat might, at first sight, be mistaken for a small bear.
His loins are thick, his limbs short, his hair coarse — thickly set on
the loins, back, and head, thinly scattered about the belly — and of a
light, shining sandy-brown. It is difficult to say why he is surnamed
latifrons, for his forehead is no larger than that of other animals of
his family ; and, at all events, he exhibits, by way of compensation,
an extraordinary extent of surface in the hinder parts, which, as they
are utterly deficient in tail, present a very grotesque appearance.
He burrows like the badger, and on the Australian continent never
quits his retreat until night sets in. He lives on herbs and roots.
The natives roast his flesh, and esteem it a viand of no ordinary
excellence.

The Phascolarctos, or Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), is closely
allied to the wombat. He is strongly but clumsily made, with
robust limbs and powerful claws, which he employs in clinging to
the branches of the trees where he chiefly makes his home. How-
ever, he frequently visits terra firma, and burrows with great ease ;
concealing himself in a torpid state in his subterranean retreat during
the cold season. His fore-feet have each five toes, of which two are
opposed to the other three — a circumstance noted in no other mammal.
He has no tail, like the wombat. His coat is a bluish-gray fur,
very thick and extremely soft, darkest on the back, and very pale
under the throat and belly. An elongated nose looks as if it were
tipped with black leather. The eyes are round and dark ; the ears
almost hidden in the plenitude of fur. By day he is a drowsy and,
sooth to say, a stupid animal ; but at night he wakes up into a more
active state. He feeds upon the fresh young tops of trees, selecting
their blossoms and young shoots ; and though in appearance resem-
bling the Phalanga, in habits seems closely allied to the Sloth.

THE TASMANIAN WOLF. 371

The Phalangas form the typical genus of the tribe of Phalan-
gistins, which comprehends, in addition, the genera Trichosura,
Pseudochira, and Dromicia. Several species are met with in
Malaysia, but they chiefly belong to the Australian Fauna. They
live chiefly in trees, feeding on various kinds of small animals, insects,
eggs, and fruits, which they grasp between their fore-paws, and so
bring to their mouth. Their appearance may be imagined by putting
together a rather short head with short ears and short woolly fur ;
a squirrel-like body and long prehensile tail, sometimes completely
covered with hair : the body measures about twenty-six inches, and
the tail about fifteen inches. The two principal species are the Sooty
Phalanga (Phalangista fuliginosa), found in Van Diemen's Land, and
named in reference to its smoky black fur ; and the Vulpine Phalanga,
or Vulpine Opossum (P. vulpina), widely distributed over Australia,
and having a fox-like character about his head. The Flying Phalangas
are also allied to this genus.

The Thylacyni are distinguished from the Opossums by the hind-
feet having no thumb, by a hairy and non-prehensile tail, and by
having two incisors less to each jaw. Only one species is known to
exist in Australia,* where it is called the " Tasmanian Wol£" and
sometimes " Tiger " and " Hysena." It resembles a wolf in many
respects, but its hinder parts are sensibly higher than its fore ; its
elongated muzzle is almost cylindrical in shape, and very thick ; and
his tail, broad at the base, tapers away to a fine point. The colour is
gray, striped with black across the hinder limbs.

Of the Thylacynus cynocephalus M. Paul Gervais furnishes the
following description : -f- —

" There exists in Tasmania an animal of carnivorous habits almost
as large as a wolf, and whose external forms at the first glance do
not differ sufficiently from those of the latter to prevent one from
including him in the family Canidce ; but this member of the
Carnivora, though he has also the wolfs appetite, and commits havoc

* Gould, " Quadrupeds of Australia," in loc.

t M. P. Gervais, " Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes," sub nom. Thylacynus.

372

THE DOG-HEADED-OPOSSUM.

in the same manner among the flocks of the colonists, belongs, like
most of the Australian Mammals, to the sub-class of Marsupials.
There is also much analogy, in many of its osteological characteristics,
with the extinct genera of the Hyenodons and Pterodons ; but the
latter are in reality Monodelphia, and should be ranged among the
Carnivora properly so called. The English settlers in Van Diemen's
Land give the thylacynus the name of Zebra Wolf, because it has, in
effect, the greater portion of the dorsal region and the base of the

THYLACYNUS CYNOCKPHAXUS.

This

tail marked with transversal brown lines, like zebra stripes,
carnivorous animal is also their Dog-headed Opossum.

"Allied to other Marsupials by the totality of its anatomical
characteristics, it is nevertheless easy to distinguish generically ; in
the first place, it is of great size, and its exterior recalls that of the
Wolf, though it has a longer head and a tail garnished with very
short hair ; the latter is, at the same time, a little depressed. More-
over, it numbers forty-six teeth, with wide intervals between each.

THE PORCUPINE ANT,EATER. 373

It is digitigrade : it has five toes on the fore, and four toes .on its
hinder feet ; its marsupial bones are simply rudimental."

If there be one group of animals more than another whose unfore-
seen discovery has succeeded in astonishing and embarrassing zoolo-
gists, it is assuredly that which has been designated by the name of
Monotremata. It is the lowest order of vertebrated animals, the
very bottom of the scale, approximating in many characteristic points
to the family of Birds. The pelvis, it is true, is furnished with
marsupial bones, but these animals possess no pouch. The skull is
smooth, the brain-case proportionately very small, the snout much
prolonged, while the jaws have neither teeth nor soft movable lips.
The shoulder-bones do not resemble those of a mammal, but in some
respects the scapular joint of the bird ; in other respects, that of the
reptiles. The feet have five toes, each armed with a long nail ; and,
in addition, the hind-feet are provided with a perforated spur-like
weapon, which is connected with a gland. The genus derives its
distinctive name from the circumstance that the orifices of the urinary
canals, the intestinal and the generative canals, open, as in birds, into
a common vent. The mammary glands, of which only one exists on
each side, are not furnished with nipples, but open by simple slits on
each side of the abdomen.

This order includes two families : the Ornithorhynchidce and the
Echidnidce, both belonging to Australia and Tasmania. The former
are aquatic in their habits, the latter terrestrial.

The Echidna (Echidna Hystiix}, or Porcupine Ant-Eater,
resembles the Porcupine in his general appearance and coat of spines,
the Ant-Eater in his snout, mouth, and long lubricated tongue. His
legs are very short and thick, and each is furnished with five broad
rounded toes ; the four toes are armed with a long blunt claw, but
on the hind-feet one toe is without a claw, two are short and blunt,
and one is of great length, rather curved, and sharp pointed. He
measures about twelve inches, and all over the upper-parts of the
body and tail is thickly beset with formidable spines, very sharp and
strong ; over the head, legs, and under-parts with bristly hair of a

374

AX ANIMAL CURIOSITY.

deep brown colour. His short tail is covered with perpendicular
spines. Digging up the ground with his keen claws he disburies a
host of insects, which he rolls over his long red cylindrical tongue.
He is very timid, and when any one approaches him, coils himself up
in a ball, like a hedgehog.

The Ornithorhynchus ("Bird-beaked"), or Duck-Silled Platypus,
is another extraordinary animal, which seems to serve as the connect-
ing link between the aquatic birds and the mammalia. His length

1. Ornithorhynchus. 2. Echidna.

is about twenty inches ; his body, long and flattened like an otter's,
is covered with a thick soft fur, moderately dark brown above and
whitish beneath ; his tail is flat and obtuse ; his feet are fur-
nished with a membrane that unites the toes ; and he has an elon-
gated, enlarged, and flattened muzzle like a duck's beak. It is
evident, therefore, that he can live only on soft food, and that his
habits must be aquatic ; and hence we find him burrowing in the
banks of the streams, and groping for his food, like a duck, among

SOME OLD INHABITANTS. 375

the mud and water. The settlers term him characteristically " the
River-Mole."

A word of allusion must now be permitted to the Petrogale, a
genus of the Kangaroo family, described by Dr. Gray. The Brush-
tailed Rock Wallaby (P. penicittata) has a rough long fur, of a
dusky brown hue, tinged with red and gray ; a white streak passes
down the middle of the throat ; his tail is very black, like a raven's
plumage, long, and furnished with thick hairs forming a brush. The
male is about three feet and a half long. Another species is called
the Short-Eared Rock Kangaroo (P. brachiotis). Both are excessively
wild and shy in their habits, frequenting in the day-time the most
inaccessible rocks and the loftiest mountain-peaks, and descending, at
the approach of twilight, to feed in the retired and grassy valleys.
They flock together in such numbers as to form well-beaten paths
along the mountain-sides, and leap from crag to crag with all the
agility of the chamois.

The Ornithological Fauna of Australia and the islands of Oceania
is incomparably richer than the Mammalogies! Fauna, and includes
several species of the most dazzling plumage ; but nearly all these
species inhabit the forests which cover a part of the littoral and
probably of the interior. However we must signalize, as peculiar to
the Prairies, a great number of the Brevipennes (i.e., Short-wings),
the Emu or Emeu (Dromaius Novce Hollandice) ; two Palmipeds,
the Black Swan and the Cereopsis ; and, finally, a bird, the only
one of its order, almost as much of a paradox among bipeds as is the
ornithorhynchus among quadrupeds, the Apteryx.

The Emu is allied to the cassowary ; he is nearly equal to the
ostrich in bulk, but has a thicker body, shorter legs, and a shorter
neck. He measures more than seven feet in length ; his plumage
exhibits a mixture of brown and gray ; his beak is black, his head
covered with feathers; he has real wings, though they are of so small
a size as to be useless for flight ; they are covered with feathers
like the rest of the body, from which, when the bird is not in motion,

376 A BLACK SWAX.

they can hardly be discerned. Internally, the emu differs, it is said,
from all other species, particularly in having no gizzard, and in the
extremely small size of his liver.

Emus are killed, according to Captain (now Sir George) Grey, in
precisely the same manner as kangaroos, but as they are more prized
by the natives, a greater degree of excitement prevails when an emu
is slain ; shout succeeds shout, and the distant natives take up the
cry until it is sometimes re-echoed for miles. The feast which
follows the death, however, is a very exclusive one, for the flesh is
much too delicious to be made a common article of food. Heavy
penaltievS are accordingly pronounced against young men, and
unauthorized persons, who venture to touch it ; and these, invariably,
are rigidly enforced.*

Every schoolboy knows the famous quotation in his Latin
grammar which tells of a

" Kara avis, simillimaque nigro cygno."

A Black Swan is no longer a "rara avis." The species (Cygnus
atratus) belongs to New Holland and Tasmania, and is of the same
size as the common swan. His plumage is wholly black, with the
exception of the primary pens, which are white ; his beak is red, and
so is the featherless skin surrounding it at the base. He has been
successfully acclimatized in Europe, and ornaments the lakes and
streams of many English parks.

The Cereopsis, or Cerefaced Goose, of New Holland, is a Palmiped
genus, about the size of a common goose, which, in general appear-
ance, he resembles, except that his legs are longer, averaging from two
and a half to three feet. The plumage is of a dingy gray. A large
patch of dull white occupies the top of the head ; the quill-feathers,
both of the wings and tail, are of a dusty black. His voice has a
hoarse deep clang, like that of a storm-bell. He usually weighs from
seven to ten pounds, and makes an excellent dish for an Australian

* Sir. G. Grey, " Expeditions of Discovery in North-Western and Western Australia "
(1840).

BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS.

377

Christmas table. Specimens may be seen both in the Zoological
Gardens of London and Paris.

The Apteryx Australia, or Wingless Emu — the Kiwi of the New
Zealanders — somewhat resembles a penguin in form, and stands about
two feet in height. The only living specimen in Europe lives, I
believe, in the London Zoological Gardens. As it does not appear to
rank, in scientific classification, with any other family or genus,

APTERYX AUSTRALIA

naturalists have erected it into a distinct order — the Nullipennes, or
Wingless. The wings of the apteryx are literally rudiments ; a mere
stump, terminated by a hook. None of his bones are hollow ; he
has no abdominal air-cells ; his feathers have no accessory plume ;
his feet have a short and elevated hind-toe ; his eyes are small ;
he feeds on insects ; and his habits are nocturnal. He is a bird of
great physical power, and runs with ostrich-like swiftness ; taking

378 A GENUS OF LIZARDS.

refuge, when pursued, in burrows, hollow trees, and the clefts of the
rocks. His ciy resembles a loud whistle, and the natives entrap the
bird by imitating it. When the female has been taken, the male is
easily caught, owing to his reluctance to leave her. He will, how-
ever, defend himself vigorously with his spurs.

The Erpetological Fauna of Australia, and, in general, of Oceania,
is very poor, and comprehends no great species. I may notice a
genus of lizards, the Chlamydosaurus, discovered by Allan Cunning-
ham, the naturalist attached to Captain King's expedition, about
1820. It measures about seventeen inches in length, of whicli
twelve inches are apportioned to the tail ; is of a yellowish-brown
colour ; has a large head, with prominent eyes ; and a membraneous
ruff or tippet round its neck, covering its shoulders, and when
expanded spreading about five inches in the form of an open
umbrella. If attacked or terrified, it elevates the frill or ruff and
makes for a tree ; where, if overtaken, it throws itself upon a stem,
raising its head and chest as high as it can upon the fore-legs, then
doubling its tail underneath the body, and displaying a very formid-
able set of teeth from the concavity of its large frill, it boldly faces
any opponent, biting fiercely whatever is presented to it, and even
venturing so far in its rage as to fairly make a fierce charge at its
enemy.

Venomous serpents are numerous : particularly the Hydrophis,
or Water-Snake, very common in the neighbouring seas, where it
feeds on fishes. The back part of the body and tail being much
compressed, and vertically raised, endows it with the capacity of
swimming.

BOOK IV.

THE FORESTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE VIRGIN FORESTS.

'; The noonday sun

Now shone upon the Forest, one vast mass
Of mingling shade ....

Like restless serpents, clothed
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
The gray trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes,
With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that lovo,
These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs
Uniting their close union ; the woven leaves
Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
As shapes in the weird clouds."

SHELLEY.

N all parts of the world some regions exist where, owing to
a concourse of favourable circumstances, the productive
forces of Nature have been able to manifest themselves
with an exceptional energy — where vegetable life, in particular, has
acquired an extraordinary development. The rich soil is covered,
over more or less extensive areas, with vivacious plants, robust and
of great stature, which closely rooted, one against another, with inter-

380 MISSION OF THE FOREST.

twining and overarching boughs, sustaining by their bulk and shading
with their foliage other and weaker plants, have formed in the course
of innumerable ages those masses of umbrageous gloom called Forests.

These, undoubtedly, are one of the grandest and most impressive
monuments of the Creative Power ; one, I may add, of the most
eloquent, for there is nothing in all Nature whose study better repays
the student, or which more largely abounds in important lessons.

The virgin forest, moreover, is one of the sanctuaries of Nature,
where her mysteries are seldom profaned by man. There life reveals
itself, and moves at liberty, under an infinite variety of forms. It is
the asylum of a multitude of animals of all classes, which find therein,
united, the two essential conditions of existence — shelter and nourish-
ment. Without the difficult approaches, the obscurity and the pro-
found depth of the forests, says a naturalist, wjaat would become
of the species of mammals, birds, and reptiles, against which man
wages incessant war ? Nature, then, seems to have provided these
immense reservoirs to prevent their species from being totally annihi-
lated. Independently of the trees which constitute the forests, a
host of other plants make them their exclusive habitat ; thence the
specific and eminently characteristic names — such as Sylvestns,
Sylvaticus, Nemorosus — imposed upon a great number among them.
Such plants are distinguished from their congeners by the great
dimensions of their stems ; but, on the other hand, they do not
possess the brilliantly-coloured flowers which adorn the plants of the
mountains and the plains always exposed to the action of the solar
light.

The forests, moreover, offer for the botanist this remarkable and
singularly precious circumstance, that they form natural collections of
trees of the same species, or of several species of the same genus, or at
least of the same family; so that their limits circumscribe the habitat
of these grand vegetables, and permit us to determine with ease their
geographical distribution.

The forests fill an important function in the general economy of
the globe, by the influence which they exercise upon the mean

THE VIRGIN FOREST OF THE GABOON.

USEFULNESS AND BEAUTY. 383

temperature and the other meteorological conditions of the regions
they shelter. All other things being equal, the temperature of well-
wooded countries is perceptibly less elevated and more uniform than
that of dry and open districts. The amount of humidity which is
retained on the surface of the soil by wide-spread woods is consider-
able ; it results from the lesser evaporation of the waters, the abundant
transpiration of the leaves, and the heavy rains which inundate the
forests during the tropical summer. Forests, like mountains, seem to
attract the clouds. So the plains which lie on their borders are ever
better watered and fertile than those whose horizon no obstacle
encumbers.

Thus, then, in the forests, in 'this bright and beautiful world of
vegetation, most of the pleasures which man can derive from external
nature are garnered up, and most of the lessons he requires are written.
All kinds of precious grace and teaching, says Mr. Ruskin,* are united
in this link between the Earth and the Stars : wonderful in universal
adaptation to his need, desire, and discipline ; God's daily preparation
of the earth for him, Avith beautiful means of life. " First, a carpet
to make it soft for him ; then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery
thereon ; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade him from sun heat,
and shade also the fallen rain, that it may not dry quickly back into
the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout
wood to bear this leafage : easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to
make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough handle,
according to his temper) ; useless it had been, if harder ; useless, if
less fibrous ; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of
leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth ; the strong boughs
remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds which are
to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made
beautiful and palatable, varied into' infinitude of appeal to the
fancy of man, or provision for his service : cold juice, or glowing
spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of
styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm — and all these presented in forms

* Ruskin, •' Modern Painters,'' vol. v., pt. vi., c. i., g 3, 4.

384 DECREASE OF FORESTS.

of endless change. Fragility and force, softness find strength, in all
degrees of aspects ; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or
undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground ; mighty resist-
ances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and
fro with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the
strength of rock, or binding the transience of the sand ; crests bask-
ing in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and light-
less cave ; foliage for tossing in entangled fields beneath every wave
of ocean — clothing with variegated, everlasting fibres, the peaks of
the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every
gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity."

Considered in their physiological aspect, it is evident that the forests
have played, from the remotest ages of our planet, a pre-eminently
useful part, by absorbing the carbonic acid with which the atmosphere
was surcharged, fixing the carbon, and restoring to the air a quantity
of oxygen sufficient for the support of animal life, impossible or rudi-
mentary previous to their creation. And they still serve to maintain
the chemical equilibrium of the atmosphere, by incessantly refeeding
it with the oxygen which the respiration of animals and the pheno-
mena of combustion have transformed into carbonic acid.

Forests formerly abounded in Europe. In Gallia, Germania,
Illyria, Sarmatia, whole provinces were covered with immense woods
of ancient and patriarchal trees. Civilization has destroyed them in
great part, and often without discernment. At the present day few
forests in Europe remain untouched. They are rare in Western Asia,
in" Central Asia, and in Northern Asia ; rarer still in the Chinese
empire, where the population is denser than in any other country of
the world, and where it is the great object of the policy of the State
that not a rood of land shall be lost for the culture of plants valuable
as food or for industrial purposes. It is only to the south of the
Himalaya Mountains, in the still savage and scantily peopled regions
of India and Indo-China, that one sees the great vegetables of the
Tropical Zone agglomerated in compact masses of considerable extent.

THE PRIMEVAL FOREST. 383

Iii Africa, forests of any size or density only exist in the moun-
tainous countries and towards the western littoral ; as, notably, in
the Soudan, the Senegal, in Guinea, at the Gaboon, and on the coasts
of Angola and Benguela. In North America, civilization has accom-
plished, in less than three centuries, the work which in Europe
occupied a much longer period. The magnificent forests which spread
their awful shades — their vast luxuriance of gloom — over the surface
of this continent have fallen before the axe of the pioneer. Only at
a few points is realized the fine picture of the poet ; only in a few
untrodden recesses still flourishes the primeval forest, where —

"The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms."*

When Captain Palliser's expedition attempted to reach the head
waters of the North Thompson from the sources of the North
Saskatchewan River, the leader encountered a forest-growth so dense,
and so encumbered with fallen timber, that it proved an insurmount-
able obstacle. Viscount Milton and Mr. Cheadle, in their adventurous
journey across the Rocky Mountains to British Columbia, were in-
volved in one of these wildernesses, and with difficulty effected a
passage. " No one," they remark,-}- " who has not seen a primeval
forest, where trees of gigantic size have grown and fallen undisturbed
for ages, can form any idea of the collection of timber, or the im-
penetrable character of such a region. There were pines and thujas
of every size — the patriarch of 300 feet in height standing alone, or
thickly-clustering groups of young ones struggling for the vacant place
of some prostrate giant. The fallen trees lay piled around, forming
barriers often six or eight feet high on every side : trunks of huge
cedars, moss-grown and decayed, lay half-buried in the ground on
which others as mighty had recently fallen; trees still green and living,
recently blown down, blocking the view with the walls of earth held

* Longfellow, " Poetical Works " — Evangeline.

f Milton and Cheadle, " North-West Passage by Land," chap. xv.

25

386 ON THE BANKS OF THE AMAZON.

in their matted roots ; living trunks, dead trunks, rotten trunks ; dry,
barkless trunks, and trunks moist and green with moss ; bare trunks,
and trunks with branches — prostrate, reclining, horizontal, propped
up at different angles ; timber of every size, in every stage of growth
and decay, in every possible position, entangled in every pos-
sible combination. The swampy ground was densely covered with
American dog-wood, and elsewhere with thickets of the aralea, a tough-
stemmed trailer, with leaves as large as those of the rhubarb-plant, and
growing in many places as high as a man's shoulders. Both stem
and leaves are covered with sharp spines, which pierce your clothes
as you force your way through the tangled growth, and make the legs
and hands of the pioneers scarlet from the inflammation of myriads of
punctures."

Far grander the scene, however — far richer in form and colour —
which meets our gaze in the stupendous forest growth still covering the
basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco. As a companion to the fore-
going picture, we borrow one of this brighter and more wonderful
region as painted with equal truth and vigour by Mr. Bates: — *

" The ground was thickly carpeted with Lycopodiums,f but it
was also encumbered with masses of vegetable d^bi^is and a thick
coating of dead leaves. Fruits of many kinds were scattered about,
amongst which were numerous species of beans, some of the pods a
foot long, flat and leathery in texture, others hard as stone. In one
place might be seen a quantity of large empty wooden vessels ; such
they appeared to be, but in reality they had fallen from the Sapucaya
tree. They are called Monkey's Drinking-cups (Cuyas de Macaco),
and are the capsules of the nuts sold under this appellation in Covent
Garden Market. The top of the vessel is pierced with a circular hole,
in which a natural lid fits easily. When the nuts ripen this lid
becomes loosened, and down falls the heavy shell with a crash, scat-
tering the nuts over the ground. The tree J which bears this extra-

* H. "W. Bates, " The Naturalist on the River Amazons."
t Order, Lycopodiacex ; club-mosses.
% Lecythis Ollaria (order, Lecythidacex) .

GIANTS OF THE FOREST. 387

ordinary burthen is of immense height. It is closely allied to the
Brazil-nut tree,* whose seeds are likewise enclosed in large wooden
vessels, but these are without lids, and fall entire to the ground. It is at
least 120 feet high, and rises to the noble stature of 100 feet before
it throws off any branches. From twelve to twenty of these sweet
edible nuts lie in a pod. The monkeys are very partial to them, and
will patiently sit for hours hammering at a capsule with a stone, in
order to open it ; and as soon as they have succeeded, the on-lookers
rush to the spot, to purloin as many as they can. The natives assail
the quarreling party with stones, a proceeding which incites the
monkeys to revenge themselves by a discharge of nuts. By this
means the Indians load their boats without trouble, and the monkeys
are left to make a fresh foray."

In his forest wanderings, Mr. Bates was especially attracted by
the colossal trees. He says that, on the whole, they had not remark-
ably thick stems ; the great and uniform height to which they grow
without throwing off a branch is a much more noticeable feature than
their thickness ; but at intervals he paused before a veritable giant.
Only one of these huge patriarchs of the woods can flourish within a
given space ; it monopolizes the domain, and none but humble indi-
viduals can nestle within its shadow. The cylindrical trunks of these
larger trees were generally about twenty to twenty-five feet in cir-
cumference. Von Martius, another Brazilian traveller, mentions
having measured trees in the Para district, belonging to various
species (Symphonia coccinea, Lecythis spirula, and Cratseva Tapia),
which were fifty to sixty feet in girth at the point where they become
cylindrical ! The height of the vast column-like stems could not be
less than 100 feet from the ground to their lowest branch. The total
height of the Pao d'Ano t and the Massaranduba, stem and crown
together, may be computed at from 180 to 200 feet. Where one of
them stands, the vast canopy of leafiness rises above the other forest
trees like a domed cathedral above the minor buildings of a city.

A very curious feature in these trees is the growth of buttress-
* Bertholletia Excelsa (Lecythidacex). t Order, Bignoniacex.

388 SOME NOTABLE TREES.

shaped projections around the lower part of their stems. The spaces
between these buttresses, which may be compared to thin walls of
wood, form spacious chambers, like stalls in a stable ; some of them
large enough to hold half-a-dozen persons. " The purpose of these
structures," says Mr. Bates, " is as obvious at the first glance, as that
of the similar props of brickwork which support a high wall. They
are not peculiar to one species, but are common to most of the larger
forest trees. Their nature and manner of growth are explained when
a series of young trees of different ages is examined. It is then seen
that they are the roots, which have raised themselves ridge-like out
of the earth ; growing gradually upwards as the increasing height of
the tree required augmented support. Thus they are plainly intended
to sustain the massive crown and trunk in these crowded forests,
where lateral growth of the roots in the earth is rendered difficult by
the number of competitors."

Among other remarkable inhabitants of the Brazilian wilderness,
we may name the lofty Moira-tingu,* the Samauma,-f and the Mas-
saranduba or Cow tree.* The Eriodendron Samaiima, or Silk-cotton
tree, holds in the New World the same position as the Bombax in the
Old. It rises to an enormous stature without branches, and then
spreads out a glorious mass of foliage. The bark is light in colour;
and the capsule pod contains a large quantity of down, of a brown
tint, and exquisite silky softness. The Massaranduba is also called
the Palo de Vacca, the Arbor de Lacte, the Galactodendron utile, or
the Cow tree. Its bark furnishes an abundant supply of milk as
pleasant to drink as that of the cow. If exposed to the air it thickens
into a glue, which is excessively tenacious, and often employed to
cement broken crockery. The tree has a wild, strange appearance,
owing to its deeply scored, reddish, and rugged bark, a decoction of
which is used as a red dye for cloth.

Did our readers ever hear of the Pashiuba, or bulging-stemmed
palm ? § It is not one of the tallest kinds, for its height, when full

* Order, Leguminosx ; tribe, Mimosa?, f Order, Sterculiacese.

I Order, Urticaccx. '6 Iriartea Ventricosa.

HUMBOLDT ON THE VIRGIN FOREST. 389

grown, seldom exceeds forty feet ; the leaves are somewhat less droop-
ing, and the leaflets broader, than in other species ; but if less beauti-
ful, it is, perhaps, far more remarkable. Its roots grow above ground,
radiating from the trunk at an elevation of ten or twelve feet, so that
the tree seems to be supported on stilts ; and when it is old, a person
can stand upright amongst the roots with the perpendicular stem
wholly above his head ! About midway, this stem bulges out in a
circular swelling, which gives it its distinctive name. The roots
closely resemble straight rods, but they are studded with stout thorns,
whilst the trunk of the Pashiuba is perfectly smooth.

It is in the vast primeval forests of Central and Southern America,
and in the leafy wildernesses of the great East Indian islands — Borneo,
Sumatra, Java, Madagascar — that man may still contemplate in all its
savage majesty the prodigious Flora of the Tropics. These, too, are
the haunts of many remarkable animals — mammals, and birds, and
reptiles — which are there comparatively safe from the pitiless perse-
cution of the hunter and the trapper.

To obtain an idea — which, however, can only be very vague and
imperfect — of the strange and imposing spectacle and the unexpected
scenes which at every step astonish the traveller in the great Tropical
woodlands, we must study the descriptions of those few but richly
endowed adventurers who, after exploring them with the enlightened
curiosity of science, have been able to embody the results in language
worthy of the subject.

In the foremost rank of those who have possessed the twofold
qualification of scientific knowledge and descriptive power, we must
place the illustrious Humboldt. His works are a rich store-house
from which later writers have freely borrowed the materials of their
essays. In reference to the phrases " Virgin Forest/' " Primeval
Forest," he has some judicious observations : — Ought we to call, he
says, by either of these appellations every kind of wild thick wood,
encumbered with vigorous trees, upon which man has never laid his
destructive hand? In that case they would be appropriate in a
number of very different countries, under the Temperate, ay, and

390 REMOTE LEAFY WILDERNESSES.

even under the Frigid Zone. But if we intend them to designate the
impenetrability of an almost boundless forest, the impossibility of
clearing a path with the pioneer's axe between serried ranks of trees,
not one of which is less than from eight to ten feet in diameter, such
virgin forests belong exclusively to tropical regions. We must not
believe, however, according to the ordinary story in Europe, in the
creeping parasitical lianas which, by the interlacement and entangle-
ment of their branches, render the equatorial forests impenetrable.
The lianas form but a comparatively insignificant portion of the un-
derwood. The principal obstacle is found in the arborescent plants,
which leave not a space uncovered, and this, too, in a country where
all vegetables spreading over the soil become ligneous. If a traveller,
as soon as he arrives in a tropical clime, whether in the continent or
the islands, believes, even before he has penetrated inland, that he is
transported to the heart of the virgin forests, his error simply origi-
nates in his impatience to realize a long-cherished desire. All Tropical
forests are not virgin forests.

The true virgin forests, notwithstanding the recent explorations
of Wallace, Bates, and Agassiz, are very imperfectly known ; because
it is, in truth, perfectly impossible to survey them in every direction,
on account of their vast extent and astonishing impenetrability.
When we are told by the traveller that he opened for himself a path
with his trusty hatchet, we readily understand that he achieved his
boasted victory in places where the obstacles were reduced to feeble
lianas and brushwood of no great density, and that he turned aside
from the massive barriers formed by the closely-planted trunks of
colossal trees. Than these mighty vegetable Anakim, nothing, says a
naturalist, is more imperfectly known in botany. The stems of most
being bare and branchless up to a considerable height, their fructifica-
tion is frequently beyond the reach of man. In vain would he level
them by their base : their summits remain suspended by the inter-
tanglement of the neighbouring summits, and like so many Tantaluses,
our travellers see themselves shunned by the fruits which their eyes
devour. The 'rivers, those " tracks which march " through the leafy,

THE VIRGIN FOREST IN BRAZIL.

FLORA OF THE FOREST REGION. 393

woody depths, and the tortuous paths trodden down by generations
of wild beasts in their quest after new pastures, after fresh hunting-
grounds, or fountains to slake their thirst, are the only roads which
can be pursued by the explorer.

As far as concerns their botanical composition, the virgin forests
of the Tropics are distinguished from those of cold and temperate
regions by general characters which it will, perhaps, be useful to indi-
cate. If, for example, we adopt as our standard of comparison the
European forest, we there remark, in the first place, the complete
absence of trees belonging to the important groups of Acotyledons and
Monocotyledons, and, in consequence, of the superb palms and elegant
arboreal ferns of tropical countries. Or, considering only the Dicoty-
ledonous plants, we see again that, in lands bordering on the Equator,
there is scarcely a family of this class which does not furnish its con-
tingent of woody plants, offering most frequently, with forms of infinite
variety, clearly displayed and brilliant flowers, remarkable either for
their beauty or their fragrance, —

" Sweet as Sabsean odours from the shores
Of Araby the Blest ; "

while our trees are comprised in a small number of natural groups,
and present in general very opposite features ; as, for instance, an
almost uniform character or aspect, and flowers scarcely visible and of
little elegance.

It suffices to name the families of the Coniferse and the Amen-
tacese, which compose the greater portion of the Flora of our forests.
Moreover, as Humboldt observes, in the Temperate Zone, particularly
in Europe and the north of Asia, certain species of trees (plantw
sociales) grow together, and form of themselves forests which we may
designate by their specific name. In the forests of oaks, firs, and
birches which cover the countries of the North, in the forests of
limes of the East, one unique species of Amentaceae, Conifene, or
Tiliaceas generally prevails. This uniform society is foreign to the
Tropical forests. The infinite variety of flowers which expand in
these Hylceoe do not permit us to ask of what the virgin forests

894 " PLACES OF NESTLING GREEN."

are composed. An innumerable quantity of different families stand
side by side ; even in the most confined spaces it is rare to see trees
of the same nature re-united. Every day, as the traveller advances,
he discovers new forms ; oftentimes the outline of the leaf and the
ramification of a tree attract his attention, without his being able
to distinguish the flowers.

There is yet another feature, more striking still, and more general
than those previously mentioned, which broadly distinguishes the
arborescent vegetation of the Tropics from that of northern climates.
Here the plants, exposed annually to an often intense degree of cold
which lasts for several months, experience a kind of suspension of
their vital activity, cease to flower and to fructify, and entirely shed
their foliage; the resinous species are the only exceptions to this rule.
In the neighbourhood of the Equator, on the contrary, it is during
the hottest, driest season that vegetation suffers; then the herbaceous
plants and bushes of the plains die down ; but the great trees of the
virgin forests are hardly affected ; their foliage incessantly renews
itself; their branches are at all times loaded with fruits and flowers,
and to the wayfarer's eyes they present the glorious spectacle of an
eternal freshness, of a life which never wanes.

Compared with these great points of difference, common to all
the virgin forests of the Tropics, the peculiar features resulting from
the botanical constitution which distinguishes more or less exactly one
region from another, have, as the reader will understand, but a
secondary importance.

With the exception of a few countries which possess a Flora sui
generis — such, for example, as Madagascar and Australia — the same
aspects, the same general forms are almost everywhere reproduced.

More distinctive differences may be remarked, at the first glance,
in the animal life which peoples the forests of the different quarters
of the world; but yet these animals everywhere display the same
habits. The great majority of the insects and the birds, the apes,
the squirrels, and, in general, all the arboreal animals, awake and put
themselves in motion at the first glimpse of day, and animate the

A DAY'S PHENOMENA. 395

forest with their murmurs, their songs, their utterances, their lively
sports and frolicsome gambols.

I borrow from the entertaining pages of an English traveller the
following description of the diurnal cycle of phenomena which revolves
in the depths of a virgin forest.*

In the early dawn the sky is invariably cloudless ; the heavy dew
or the previous night's rain, which lay on the moist foliage, becoming
quickly dissipated by the glowing sun, which, rising straight out of
the east, mounts rapidly towards the zenith. All nature is fresh,
new leaves and flower-buds expanding rapidly. Some mornings a single
tree will appear in flower amidst what was the preceding evening a
uniform green mass of forest — a dome of blossom suddenly created as
if by magic. The birds are all active; from the wild fruit trees, not
far off, we hear the shrill yelping of the Tucano (Ramphctstos vitd-
linus). Small flocks of parrots flow over on most mornings at a
great height, appearing in distinct relief against the blue sky, always
two by two chattering to each other, the pairs being separated by
regular intervals. Their bright colours, however, are not discernible
at such a height.

Towards two o'clock the heat rapidly increases, and every voice
of bird or mammal grows hushed ; only in the trees sounds at intervals
the harsh whirr of a cicada. The leaves, so moist and fresh in early
morning, now become lax and drooping ; the flowers shed their petals.
On most days in June or July a heavy shower will fall some time
in the afternoon, producing a most welcome coolness. The approach
of the rain clouds takes place after a uniform fashion very interesting
to observe. First, the cool sea-breeze, which commenced to blow
about ten o'clock, and which increases in force with the increasing
power of the sun, flags, and finally dies away. The heat and electric
tension of the atmosphere then grows almost insupportable. Languor
and uneasiness seize on every one; even the denizens of the forest
betraying it by their motions. White clouds rising in the east gather
into cumuli, with an increasing blackness along their lower portions.
* II. W. Bates, " The Naturalist on the Amazons," pp. 33, 35.

396 CERTAIN NATURAL MEMORABILIA.

The whole eastern horizon becomes almost suddenly black, and this
darkness spreads upwards, obscuring the " orb of day."

Then through the forest hurtles a mighty wind, swaying the
lofty tree- tops; a vivid flash of lightning bursts forth, then breaks a
crash of thunder, and down streams the deluging rain. Such storms
soon cease, leaving bluish-black motionless clouds in the sky until
night. Meantime all nature is refreshed; but heaps of flower-leaves
and fallen petals lie under the trees. Towards evening life revives
again, and the ringing uproar is resumed from bush and tree. The
following morning the sun again rises in a cloudless sky, and so the
cycle is completed ; spring, summer, and autumn, as it were, in one
tropical day. The days are more or less like this throughout the
year in this country. A little difference exists between the dry and
wet seasons ; but generally the dry season, which lasts from July to
December, is varied with showers ; and the wet, from January to
June, with sunny days.

" It results from this," says Mr. Bates, '• that the periodical
phenomena of plants and animals do not take place at about the same
time in all species, or in the individuals of any given species, as they
do in temperate countries. Of course there is no hybemation, nor,
as the dry season is not excessive, is there any summer torpidity as
in some tropical countries. Plants do not flower or shed their leaves,
nor do birds moult, pair, or breed simultaneously. In Europe, a
woodland scene has its spring, its summer, its autumnal, and its
winter aspects. In the equatorial forests the aspect is the same, or
nearly so, every day in the year — budding, flowering, fruiting, and
leaf-shedding are always going on in one species or other. The
activity of birds and insects proceeds without interruption, each
species having its own separate times. The colonies of wasps, for
instance, do not die off annually, leaving only the queens, as in cold
climates ; but the succession of generations and colonies goes on
incessantly. It is never either spring, summer, or autumn, but each
day is a combination of all three. With the day and night always
of equal length, the atmospheric disturbances of each day neutralizing

NIGHT IX THE FORESTS. 397

themselves before each succeeding morn ; with the sun in its course
proceeding mid- way across the sky, and the daily temperature the
same within two or three degrees throughout the year, how grand
in its perfect equilibrium and simplicity is the march of Nature under
the equator!"

Now night comes on, not, as in temperate climes, with a hush and
a silence that are almost breathless, but with a thousand strange and
formidable sounds. In Asia, in Africa, in America, as well as in the
great islands of the Pacific Ocean, the forests and the savannahs
re-echo all night with discordant cries. The branches are torn down
with a crash as the beasts of prey sweep past, and earth resounds
beneath their headlong steps. It is no longer the gay, fresh move-
ment of happy life which in the golden noon of day converts the
forest into a veritable Eden; it is the rush to and fro of scattered
animals, pressed by hunger and thirst, either in flight or pursuit ; it
is the roar of rage or the wail of agony ; it is, in a word, the mele'e
of sharpened appetites; it is the " Witches' Sabbath" of the savage
world, at which no European, however hardened by the perils of an
adventurous career, can be present for the first time without experi-
encing a deep emotion of melancholy and apprehension.

CHAPTER IL

VEGETABLE LIFE IX THE FORESTS OF THE OLD WORLD.

I DO not think that in all Europe, nor, indeed, in the entire Temperate
Zone of the Old World, exists such an agglomeration of plants and
trees as may merit the appellation of " primeval" or " virgin forest."
At all events, this forest, if it really exists, will assuredly be composed
of the very trees which we see every day in our own woods, our
fields, our parks, and even in our towns, and which have long ceased

398 A GLANCE AT THE WOODLAND.

to awaken in us the idea of wild nature. With the woods of Great
Britain, France, or Spain we are all familiar: —

" The beam

Of noon is broken there by chestnut boughs
Down the steep verdant sides ; the air
So freshened by the leaping stream, which throws
Eternal showers of spray on the mossed roots
Of trees, and veins of turf, and long dark shoots
Of ivy-plants, and fragrant hanging bells
Of hyacinths, and on late anemones
That muffle its wet banks." *

Our poets have sung of the murmurous groves of pines, and the deep
dark beech-woods that clothe with shadows the rounded forms of the
chalk-hills, and the long alleys of blossoming chestnut, fragrant lime,
or sombre yew. Therefore, without losing valuable time in these
familiar shades, without pausing before the oak which the history of
a thousand years has made immortal, let us rapidly traverse the
Corsican forests, where among the twisted leaves of the elms nourishes
the gigantic Larician pine ; those of Greece, where thrive the pines
of Cephaloaia and Apollo, and the oaks sacred also to the divinity of
Delphi and Dodona — those oaks, dumb to-day, which formerly gave
utterance to oracles not less reverend than those of the Pythoness.
We will not even suffer ourselves to be delayed among the forests of
Eastern Europe, of Asia Minor, and of Persia, where dominate such
species as the pine, the beech, and the chestnut. It is not until we
have crossed the Indus — that mighty river on whose banks halted
the legions of Alexander — that the exuberant vegetation of the
Tropical world breaks upon us in all its glorious verdure and pro-
digious richness, though confined to a comparatively limited area.

The wooded region of the western Ghauts, from Goa to Cape
Camorin, exhibits the greatest abundance of plants peculiar to
Southern Asia.

To form an idea of the variety and potency of the Flora of this
region, says M. Lanoye,*f- we must contemplate the specimens immured

* Matthew Arnold, New Poems : " Empedocles on Etna," p. 16.
t F. de Lanoye, " L'Inde Contemporaine," c. ler-

TROPICAL VEGETATION.

1. Calamus Eotang.
•2. Hamboos.

3. Borassus flabelliformii

4. Diospyros ebentun.

THE INDIAN FLORA. 401

in our European gardens, and augment tenfold their etiolated propor-
tions; we must bring together, in the dazzling confusion of Nature,
the Mimosas, the Musas, the odorous Screw-pines, the Mangoes, and
the Orange trees; twine around their trunks the many-branched
stems of the Bignonias, the Nagatelly, the Dictantes-Sambas, and the
Lianas which furnish pepper and the betel-nut; group under their
shade the most beautiful varieties of Azaleas, Jasmines, and Gardenias;
unite those Laurels whence we extract camphor, cassia, and cinnamon,
with the red Santul, the Nopals, and the Dragon trees which supply
the costly gum-lacs ; the Shrubs which give us spikenard, cardamoms,
and amome, with those Canes which secrete sugar. Above these
masses of flowers, above these sources of honey and perfume, we must
next display the immense leaves of the Talipot and the Bourbon-
palm, must spread in undulations the aerial palm-crests of the Cocoa-
nut and the gigantic Bamboo ; must accumulate the sombre verdure
of the Teaks and the Tamarinds, and the impenetrable branches of the
consecrated Pines. Then, all this being accomplished, we shall still
have but a vague and colourless perception of the Indian Flora, and
notably of that which clothes the base of the Western Ghauts to the
east and to the south of the city of Goa.

The difficulty of picturing to ourselves the entirety of so glorious
and rich a scene reveals the impossibility of seizing all its details, of
studying one by one all its elements. Our attention, however, will
be arrested by a small number of species remarkable above all others
by their extraordinary dimensions, the elegance of their bearing, the
beauty of their flowers and foliage, or by some peculiar and destruc-
tive property.

We notice in the first place several trees whose close relationship
cannot be mistaken to the date trees which we have already met with
in the open Desert, and which, we may remember, constituted the
entire wealth of the inhabitants of the oases. We find representatives
of the immense family of palms in every tropical country, and even
in the coral islands of the great ocean. India possesses several
species. I shall refer only to the Borassus flabelliformis, whose

26

402 THE BAMBOO DESCRIBED.

trunk, 90 to 120 feet in height, is surmounted by a crown of great
fan-shaped leaves, folded longitudinally in their first half, cut in the
other, and sustained by prickly supports. The other half is made
use of by the Hindus in the shape of paper, or rather tablets, on
which they write with the point of a stylet. The spadices (clustered
flowers), if incised before reaching maturity, yield a liquid which,
after fermentation, forms the favourite Indian beverage of " palm
wine."

The Bamboo, the most gigantic of the tropical Graminese, is
plentifully distributed over India, Indo-China, and China, where it
frequently nourishes in considerable masses. In height it equals the
loftiest palms. Its culm is smooth, glittering, straight, and flexible,
of a beautiful yellow colour, and regularly intersected by annular
rings marked by so many brown streaks. It wavers gently to and
fro with the impulse of the wind, as if to refresh with its breath the
light undulating foliage.

Almost innumerable are the services which this heaven-sent plant
renders to the inhabitants of the countries where it flourishes. In
hedges or plantations it forms around their abodes a formidable
defence. With its stems sawn either in accordance with their
diameter, or split longitudinally, the natives not only fabricate a host
of utensils and articles of furniture, but build their barks and
construct their houses. They extract from the spaces between the
joints of the young plant a feculent substance which supplies them
with an agreeable nutriment, analogous to sago. A saccharine juice
flows spontaneously from the joints formed by the knots ; when
fermented it becomes alcoholic and heady like hydromel. The
bamboo also proves serviceable in the manufacture of mats and cordage.
The slender stems are split into thin strips, which are probably
softened in water. These strips, woven together, form mats or
carpets of extreme solidity.

The Banana,* like the Bamboo and most of the palms, is a cosmo-
* Order, Musactx.

TWO SPECIES OF BAXAXAS. 403

politan plant throughout the tropic world. Its native habitat is
supposed to be Asia. The Oriental Christians have a tradition that
this tree, which they call the Lignum Vitcc, was that whose fruit
was forbidden to our first parents. Hence the name of Musa para-
disiaca, given by botanists to one of the two species of the genus ;
the other is the Banana of the wise men, Musa sapientum. However
this may be, it is certain that if the use of the banana was at any
time interdicted to man, the prohibition has been annulled for many
generations ; and its fruits form one of the most wholesome and most
general articles of food in tropical countries. Although the wild
banana maintains its place honourably in the forests of these regions,
it is not a tree, but an herbaceous plant. It propagates itself through
its suckers, and its stem perishes immediately after fructification.
Its mode of vegetation is analogous to that of the Liliaceae. From a
bulbous and fleshy platform issue, beneath, its fibrous roots ; above,
enormous leaves, often nearly a yard wide and two to three yards long.
The petioles of these leaves are adhesive. By folding themselves one
over another, and successively drying up, they grow into a stem which
sometimes attains the dimensions of the trunk of an ordinary tree
(about seven feet) and the stature of twelve to sixteen feet, and which
is traversed throughout its centre by a stalk springing from the bulb.
This stalk rises again several inches above the terminal leaf, then
bends, sinks towards the ground, and terminates in a stem which
carries at its extremity the male flowers, and at its base the female
flowers, then the fruit. The latter, collected in clusters of twelve to
fourteen, are elongated, of a prismatic triangular form, enveloped in
a rind, green at first, then yellow, and internally consist of a soft,
feculent, sugary pulp, very nutritious, and agreeable to the taste.

In its native clime the banana is born, grows, flourishes, fructifies,
and dies in the space of twelve or eighteen months. In the climates
most akin to ours, and in our European gardens, its development is
not only on a smaller scale, but occupies a longer period, and it has
been known to reach the age of ten or a dozen years.

By the side of these weak-stemmed plants, with their soft and

404

THE MULTIPLYING FIG-TREE.

spongy contexture, grow hosts of robust trees, whose timber is com-
pact and sometimes exceedingly hard, and whose branches are of
immense span. My readers will probably remember the lines in
which Southey so admirably describes one of the most majestic and
most singular of these : the Banyan, or Indian Fig-tree (Ficus Indicd}*

THE BAJSYAN TREE (Ficus Indica}.

also designated the " Multiplying Fig-tree," the " Admirable Fig-tree,'
and " Tree of Life." The passage will bear transcription : -f- —

" It was a goodly sight to see

That venerable tree,
For o'er the lawn, irregularly spread,
Fifty straight columns propped its lofty head ;

* Order, Moracex. f Southey, " Poetical Works "—The Curse of Kehama.

A LEAFY ASYLUM. 405

And many a long depending shoot

Seeking to strike its root,

Straight, like a plummet, grew towards the ground.
Some on the lower boughs, which crossed their way.
Fixing their bearded fibres, round and round,
With many a ring and wild contortion wound;
Some to the passing wind, at times with sway

Of gentle motion swung ;

Others of younger growth, unmoved, were hung
Like stone-drops from the cavern's fretted height.

Beneath was smooth and fair to sight,
Nor weeds nor briars deformed the natural floor ;
And through the leafy cope which bowered it o'er,
Came gleams of chequered light."

The Banyan surpasses in diameter the finest oaks of Europe, and
throws off numerous branches, of which several redescend towards
the earth, force their way into it, take root therein, and in their turn
develop into new trunks, whence spring other boughs that go through
the same process of fructification ; so that a single stem spreads in
time into a kind of forest, and the canopy formed by the outgrowth of a
solitary tree will frequently overshadow an area of 1700 square yards.

The evergreen foliage of this beautiful tree forms an immense vault,
which has justly been compared to the domed roof of a stately edifice
supported by a host of columns. Here a myriad birds raise their
songs of joy ; underneath, the weary pilgrim finds a delightful asylum ;
from branch to branch leap the mocking ape and the nimble squirrel.
The Hindus hold their " Pagod tree " in great veneration. It is to
them one of the emblems of their god Siva, and in its dense deep
shade they assemble to celebrate their sacrificial rites, whether in
honour of this potent deity, or whether in honour of Ganesha, a
niral divinity, analogous in his attributes to the Pan of the Greeks
and Latins.

Several other tropical trees possess, like the banyan, the property
of producing adventitious roots which spring from the trunk or
branches which implant themselves in the soil ; but not one enjoys
an equal power of reproduction and multiplication.

One of the greatest trees of southern Asia, and possibly one of

406 VARIETIES OF TEAK.

the greatest in the world, is the Teak or Indian Oak (Tectona grandis},
which covers vast areas of ground in Hindostan. It flourishes also
in Pegu, Ava, Siam, Java, and the Burman Empire. It works
easily, and though porous, is permanent arid strong ; is readily
seasoned, and shrinks but little ; is of an oleaginous character, and
therefore does not corrode iron. It is as strong as oak, and more
buoyant. Its durability is more uniform and decided ; and to insure
that durability it needs less care and preparation ; for it may be
taken into use almost green from the forest, without danger of dry
or wet rot. It will endure all climates and all alternations of
climate.*

The teak of Malabar, grown on the high table-lands in the south
of India, is esteemed the best, because it is the heaviest, the most
durable, contains the most oil, and is the closest in its fibre. Next
in quality ranks that of Java, and inferior to these in some respects
is the teak of Burmah, Rangoon, and Siam ; which, however, is the
most buoyant, and the best fitted for masts and spars.

African teak, let me note, is not teak properly so called, but the
timber of the Oldfieldia Afrimna. It is largely imported from the
west coast of Africa, and though an useful wood, lacks the most
valuable properties of the genuine teak.

The teak is a handsome and even stately tree, often attaining
the noble stature of 130 to 150 feet, with a trunk of proportionate
diameter, upright, well-shaped, and surmounted by wide - spread
branches. Its large leaves are oval, of a velvety under-surface, and
besprinkled on the upper with whitish spots. Its flowers cluster at
the extremity of the branch in an ample and beautiful panicle. The
poisonous properties of its wood preserve it from the attacks of vermin,
but render it dangerous to work, for men who are but lightly
wounded by its splinters die after a very brief interval.

A less useful timber than the teak, but much esteemed for the
manufacture of articles of luxury, is furnished by the Diospyros
ebenum and the Santalum album.

* Craufurd, " The Eastern Archipelago.''

CROWNED WITH LAURELS. 407

In the Flora of tropical Asia a very important position is occupied
by the Laurel family. Several species of this family deserve to be
particularized on account of their commercial value : thus, from the
Laurus camphora comes the camphor most esteemed by British
physicians, while the aromatic rinds of the Laurus cinnamomum,
Culilawan, Malabathrum, and Cassia, constitute the various kinds
of cinnamon. The Laurus cassia is not to be confounded with
another Indian tree, one of the Leguminosse, the Cassia fistula,
whose enormous cods formerly played an important role under the
name of Cassia in therapeutic science. While speaking of trees
which produce aromatic substances, I must not forget to mention the
Styrax benzoin, and the Boswellia serrata. The former is a member
of the family Styracacece, whose trees or shrubs, chiefly tropical, are
known by their monopetalous flowers, their epipetalous stamens,
their long radicle, leafy cotyledons, and by a part at least of the
ovules being suspended. The Styrax benzoin, a native of the Indian
islands, yields the resin called benzoin. The juice exudes from
incisions made in the bark, and when dried, is removed by a knife or
chisel. Each tree yields about three pounds' weight annually, the
gum formed during the first three years being superior in quality to
that which subsequently exudes. It is largely employed by per-
fumers, and in medicine is esteemed a remedy for chronic pulmonary
disorders. Styrax officinale, a native of the Levant, furnishes the
balsamic resinous substance known as storax, which is also one of the
materials manipulated by perfumers, and in medicine is used as a
stimulating expectorant.

The Boswellia serrata supplies the fragrant incense whose vapours
were anciently supposed to be peculiarly agreeable to the gods made
by man's hands or conceived by his imagination.

India is also the native country and home-land of the Indigo
plants (Indigofera tinctoria, and Indigofera anil, of the Leguminosse
family), and the Gossypiums, from whose expanded fruits is obtained
the all-powerful cotton ; and in Cochin-China we meet with the
Croton sebiferum or Stillingia sebifera (family of the Euphorbiacese),

408 AN IMPENETRABLE BARRIER.

whose berries contain a rich concrete substance called "tree-tallow,"
employed, in the far East, in the manufacture of tapers. The latter
tree, popularly known as the "Tallow Tree," has rhomboid leaves,
with two prominent glands at the point of attachment between the
stalk and the leaf ; and its flower catkins are from two to four inches
long. " Its fruits contain three seeds thickly coated with a fatty
substance which yields the tallow. This is obtained by steaming the
seeds in large caldrons, and then bruising them sufficiently to loosen
the fat without breaking the seeds, which are removed by sifting.
The fat is afterwards made into flat circular cakes, and pressed in a
wedge-press, when the pure tallow exudes in a liquid state, and soon
hardens into a white brittle mass. This tallow is very extensively
used for candle-making in China ; but as the candles made of it
become soft in hot weather, they generally receive a coating of insect
wax. A liquid oil is obtained from the seeds by pressing. The tree
yields a hard wood used by the Chinese for printing blocks, and its
leaves are employed for dyeing black."*

Climbing and epiphytous*}- plants are very numerous in India ;
but there are none, perhaps, which in vegetative force and tenacity
can be compared to those of the Calamus, and particularly of the
Calamus rotang (family of the Palmaceai). These Lianas are all
remarkable for their flexible stem, which attaches itself to the
trees, and frequently attains the prodigious length of 200, 250, 300,
and even 350 yards. This stem is formed of a series of internodes,
or jointed pieces, more or less wide apart, each of which bears a
feathery flower, with elongated sheath. The Calami frequently render
the forests which they inhabit virtually impenetrable, through their
long, flexible, and tenacious arms, stretching across from tree to
tree, or crawling over the ground, and bristling with formidable
thorns. It is these stems which are imported into Europe as bam-
boos, cut into different lengths, and there employed for various
industrial purposes.

* Brande, " Dictionary of Science. Literature, and Art," iii. 610.
t From the Greek tirl, upon, and QVTOV, a plant.

A VEGETABLE COLOSSUS.

409

But it is time we took our leave of India, and allowed " observa-
tion with extensive view '' to survey the far-spreading African forests.
There, in the first place, we are called upon to salute the patriarch of
the tropical Flora, the Baobab (Adansonia digitata), a gigantic genus
of the family Bombacece.

This colossus of the vegetable world was discovered in Senegal by

2. Klaeis Guinensis, or Guinea Pa

3. Acacia verek.

the French botanist Adanson, in 1749. He measured the trunks of
several individuals, and found them from Go to 78 feet in circum-
ference, with mighty branches, each of which was equal to a great oak
or magnificent chestnut. One baobab he computed at 90 feet in
girth, and its rounded crest extended over an area of upwards of 170
yards in circuit. A root which was exposed to view, through the

410 THE MAHOGANY TREE.

washing away of the superjacent soil, measured 110 feet in length.
Adanson estimated the age of some of these Anakim of trees at 1500
years. They were just shooting above, the ground, if this reckoning
be true, at the time that Constantine, the first Christian emperor,
removed the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople.

There are other gigantic trees in the forests of Senegambia, as, for
instance, the Khaya Senegalensis, which rears its crest to a height of
50 or 60 yards, whose hard reddish-coloured timber belongs to the
species known in commerce under the name of Mahogany. Another
kind of mahogany, but less valuable, called Senegal Mahogany, is
furnished by the Swietenia Senegalensis (family of Meliacece, tribe of
Cedrelacece), named after Baron von Swieten, a Dutch botanist. It
forms a stately tree, some 60 or 80 feet high. Swietenia Mahogani,
a native of the warmer regions of America and the West Indies,
yields the mahogany of commerce. The first discovery of the exist-
ence of this kind of wood is ascribed to the carpenter on board Sir
Walter Raleigh's vessel, when lying off Trinidad in 1595. It is not
considered to reach perfection under the venerable age of two hundred
years. The seeds prepared with oil are used by the modern Mexicans,
as they were by the ancient Aztecs, for cosmetic purposes ; and the
bark is considered a febrifuge.

Among the most curious trees of the Senegal, whose Flora has
quite a character of its own, travellers have singled out the Butter
Tree (Bassia butyracea, family of the Sapotacece), whose fruits contain
an edible fatty substance, used by the natives as a substitute for
butter ; and the Henna (Lawsonia inermis), which also flourishes on
the eastern coast and in Upper Egypt. The henna is a shrub from
six to seven feet high. Its flowers exhale a goat-like odour, which
seems much affected by the Orientals and the natives of Africa. Its
roots, of a deep red hue, are distinguished by a bitter taste and
astringent properties. Finally, its leaves supply an orange-red
colouring matter, with which the Arabs and negroes tint their hair,
beard, and nails.

Let us not pass over without the tribute of our respectful notice

THE WEST AFRICAN COAST. 411

the numerous tribe of Acacias, which form vast forests in the districts
north of the Senegal, and yield the gum-arabic of commerce. The
best known species of this important and useful group are the Acacia
Arabica, or Red Gum-tree, the Acacia Adansoni, the Acacia vera,
and the Acacia verek.

We also meet at Senegal with a tree which I ought, perhaps, to
have ranked of right among those of India, and which, like many
others, belong rather to the whole zone of the Tropics than to any
particular country ; I refer to the Tamarind (Tamarindus I-ndica}*
whose well-known name is supposed to be derived from the Arabic
Tamar, signifying "dates," and Indus, in allusion to its original habitat.
There is only one species of the genus, but .the East Indian variety
has long pods, with six to twelve seeds, while the West Indian has much
shorter pods, containing one to four seeds. It is a tree of graceful
appearance, with elegant pinnated foliage and numerous racemes of
fragrant flowers. The pods are slightly curved, and consist of a brittle
brown shell, enclosing a soft, acid, brown pulp, traversed by strong
woody fibres ; a thin membranous covering wraps up the seeds. The
pulp has a savour at once acid and sugary, and acts as a gentle
laxative. The timber is useful for building purposes, and furnishes
excellent charcoal for the manufacture of gunpowder.

The Sterculiacece have numerous representatives at the Senegal.
These tall and handsome trees remind the traveller in their appear-
ance of our English oaks. The seeds of the Sterculia acuminata
and tomentosa are masticated by the negroes until reduced to a
fluid paste, in which form they employ it to dye their cotton-
stuffs yellow. The dye is very bright, and, it is said, extremely
durable.

We know that a great part of the Gaboon is occupied by virgin
forests, where Fig-trees are predominant, and in marshy soils the
Mangle or Mangrove trees (Rhizophora mangle), which must not be
confounded with the savoury-fruited Mangoes of Eastern India. The
Mangroves form, in the family of the Rhizophoras, a genus distributed

* Order, Leguminosx.

412 THE AFRICAN PALMS.

in the moist localities of the Tropics, and we shall hereafter meet
with them in South America.

Equatorial Africa possesses several species of Palm-trees peculiar
to it. Such are the Thorny Date-tree, the Borassus of Ethiopia, the
Rapkia vinifera of Congo, which, as its name "wine-bearing" indi-
cates, furnishes a wine analogous to that extracted in other regions
from other trees of the same family ; the Elceis Guinensis, or Guinea
Palm, whence we obtain the well-known product of palm oil. This
oil, or palm-tree butter, forms an important article of food among
the Guinea negroes. It is imported into Europe in large quantities,
and employed in the manufacture of soap.

The forests of the Hottentot and Bechuana countries, and in
general of all those regions bordering on the Cape Colony, are frequently
of great extent, but mainly composed of trees of small stature, or even
of shrubs, such as the Cape Olive, a few Acacias, some Composites
and Conifers. Forests, as I have said, are rare in the explored
portions of the west African coast ; they become denser and more
numerous as we leave the great ocean in our rear, and penetrate into
that vast interior which for ages has been haunted by so many
mysteries. Their Flora, however, offers no special character, and does
not materially differ from that of Guinea and Senegambia.

CHAPTER TIL

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE GREAT ISLANDS.

I HAVE said that under the same parallels of latitude, or under neigh-
bouring parallels, the physiognomy of the virgin forests was every-
where nearly the same, and hence we must study from a point close at
hand the species which compose them, to determine the distinctive
characters of the great agglomerations of vegetables peculiar to differ-

" SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN." 413

ent countries. And yet the traveller who, after having explored the
primeval forests of Africa and Asia, should be transported to the wild
and wooded regions of the great Indian Archipelago and the Pacific
Ocean, could not fail to be struck with the novel spectacle presented
to his gaze. Undoubtedly he would meet, at first, with a great
number of plants not unknown to him ; but he would not fail to
discover many others which he had not hitherto observed, and especi-
ally would he contemplate with astonishment — perhaps with admira-
tion— the chaos of this rich, various, dense, but disordered vegetation.
It seems, in truth, as if within these " summer isles of Eden" Nature
had hastened to accumulate her choicest products, and feeling herself
restricted within narrow limits, had carefully laboured not to lose the
smallest particle of space — not even of the aerial territory, if I may so
speak — allotted to her. Not only are the trees set in the closest
possible array, but they struggle with wonderful effort to develop the
exuberance of their strength. Nearly all display an abundant and
persistent foliage ; their branches are, in general, thick and spongy,
and begin to shoot at the base of the trunk ; in such wise that the
lower boughs extend close to the ground, and by interlacing with
those of neighbouring trees, form impenetrable thickets. Many send
forth, from their trunk and their branches, frail flexible roots like
the lianas, which descend to the earth, plant themselves in the soil,
and contribute to render the forests absolutely impervious. Nor is
this all ; the plants grow there, literally, one upon another. Nowhere,
under the Tropics, does one see a similar profusion of epiphytous
plants ; not a single tree but is invaded by the close-clinging roots
•and flexible ramifications of these parasites, mingled with brightly-
blossoming lianas, whose multifold stems are of immeasurable length.
Species worthy of note, either on account of their beauty, their
various uses, or formidable poisonous properties, and belonging to
widely-differing families, abound, moreover, in these perennial forests.
Ceylon, which has justly been named by the Orientals " a pearl
detached from Hindostan," so admirable is its situation, so marvellous
is its fertility, so exhaustless its mineral wealth, is the native country

414 THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE.

of the Laurus cinnamomum — which was early transplanted to the
neighbouring continent — and of the Artocarpus, or Bread-fruit tree,
one of the most curious and most useful plants of this region.

The Bread-fruit Tree (Artocarpus incisa)is a tree of the family
Muriacece, some 45 to 55 feet high. Make an incision in its bark,
wherever you will, and it exudes a white lacteal fluid, which hardens

BREAD-FRUIT TREE OF CEYLON (Artocarpus incisa}.

on exposure to the air. Its branches are very numerous, and those
nearest its base attain a considerable length. Its leaves are large,
consistent, and somewhat deeply cut. It owes its name of " Bread-
fruit tree " to its ovoid or rounded fruit, about the size of an ostrich's
egg, which forms the staple food of the Cingalese. When fully ripe,
the pulp or flesh is white, firm, farinaceous, and very agreeable to the

ITS EXCEEDING VALUE. 415

taste. The natives boil it whole, or cut it into slices for roasting, and
prepare it for the table in numerous other modes. Two or three
trees, it is said, suffice for the provisioning of one man. My readers
will remember that its % introduction in the West Indian Islands was
signalized by the famous Mutiny of the Bounty, and led indirectly to
the settlement of Pitcairn's Island ; thus originating a strange and
sufficiently poetical romance.

In the forests of Ceylon also flourish the Cambogia Outtu, the
Stalagmites Cambogioides, and the Garcinia morella (family Gutti-
ferce), whence camboge is extracted. This substance, at once medici-
nal and tinctorial, exudes in a liquid state from wounds made in the
bark of the trees ; it solidifies spontaneously in the vessels wherein
it is collected.

Immense forests overspread the humid plains of Sumatra. They
are constituted in the main of numerous species of Fig-trees (Ficoidce),
whose abundant and persistent leaves form an obscure vault, impene-
trable by the sun's "golden arrows." Above this leafy dome shoot
the rigid trunks of trees of lofty stature. Of these, the most remark-
able, perhaps, is the Ipo-antiar (Antiaris toxicaria), whose juice, after
having undergone certain preparations, becomes one of the deadliest
known poisons. It was for a long time unknown with what sub-
stance the Malays envenomed their arrows and their famous kris, or
crease ; nor was it until the beginning of the present century that
the traveller Leschenault ascertained, not without difficulty, that it
had for its basis the juice of a very tall tree, with decaying leaves, to
which he gave the name of Antiaris toxicaria. This is the celebrated
Upas, whose deadly properties were formerly exaggerated in so many
wonderful fables. The poison is prepared in an earthen vessel, and
mixed up with certain quantities of the seed of the pimento and the
pepper tree, and the roots of various kinds of ginger. These are
mixed together slowly, except the pimento-grains, which are precipi-
tated one by one to the bottom of the vessel by means of a small
stick. Each grain produces a slight fermentation, and rises to the
surface. It is then extracted, to be plunged anew into the mixture,

416

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE.

and this process is eight or nine times repeated ; after which the
mixture is complete. It appears that the Upas-antiar, taken in-
ternally, acts at first as a purgative, hut afterwards its influence
extends to the brain, and produces death with frightful tetanic con-

1. Xipa fruticans. 2. Sugar Palm (Areca saccharifera}. 3. Ipo-Antiar (Antiaris toxitaria).

vulsions. Introduced into the blood through a wound, it kills small
animals in a few moments, and men in a few hours.

Marvel-loving writers formerly asserted that this deadly poison
was employed in the execution of criminals, who, however, received
a pardon if they contrived to reach a tree, and bring back a supply of
its venom. Birds, it was said, dropped dead while flying over it — as
was formerly told of the pestilential watei's of the Dead Sea — and

POISONOUS PROPERTIES OF STRYCHNINE. 417

the whole country around was desolated by its noxious effluvia. But
the fact is, the upas tree is merely a tree with poisonous secretions,
and in no way affects the atmosphere of the locality where it lives.

A not less terrible poison is furnished by the Liana Tieute' (Strych-
nos tieut^), a member of the family Loganiacece. It has an exceed-
ingly long stem, but does not yield, like the upas, a whitish milky*
juice. Its voluminous roots are covered with a thin reddish bark, of
a peculiarly bitter taste. By boiling these roots the Javanese obtain
the poisonous resin called in Malaysia Upas tieute, and which was at
one time supposed to be identical with the essential element intro-
duced by the Indians of South America into their famous Ourari or
Wourali. Sir Richard Schomburgk, however, has shown that the
latter is obtained from the Strychnos toxifera, a native of Guiana.

There are several other species of Strychnos ; all with flattened,
disc-like, and silky seeds, surrounded by pulp. S. nux vomica, a
moderate-sized tree, with fruit much like an orange in appearance,
furnishes the valuable medicine and fatal poison — for it is both —
called Nux vomica. The seeds have an intensely bitter taste, owing
to the presence of two most virulent poisons, Strychnia and Brucia ;
but the pulp is innocuous, and greedily devoured by birds. Strychnos
Colubrina, a native of Malabar, furnished a variety of Snakewood,
which in cases of bites by serpents is esteemed an infallible remedy.
8. Pseudo-quina, which flourishes in Brazil, yields a bark scarcely
inferior in value as a tonic and a febrifuge to quinine.

I have spoken of the abundance and variety of the epiphytous
plants which grow profusely in the islands of the Indian Ocean. In
Sumatra and in Borneo, the more venerable trees are clothed in a
rich garment of lycopodiums and ferns, and these often glow with
dazzling orchidaceous flowers, while by their side flourish strange
aroidacese, with clinYbing crawling stems, and aerial suckers. But of
all these brilliant parasites, the most extraordinary, without doubt, is
the Rafflesia Arnoldi — a plant without any stem, which grows along
the surface of the ground upon the roots of the lianas, and princi-

27

418 NATURE'S GIFTS TO MAN.

pally of the lissus, a species of vine peculiar to tropical countries.
It was discovered by Dr. Arnold, while in attendance upon Sir Stam-
ford Raffles, Governor of Java. It produces only a fleshy flower, of
a wine-like colour, with an intolerably disgusting odour ; but it
acquires extraordinary, and one might say monstrous dimensions, for
"it seldom measures less than a yard in diameter, and its weight fre-
quently exceeds four pounds.

Upon the humid coasts of Borneo and Sumatra, the Casuarinas
mingle their weeping branches with those of the mangroves and fig-
trees. Palms are common in these two great islands, as well as at
Ceylon and at Java. I may mention among the most useful the Nipa
fruticans and the Sugar Palm (Areca saccharifera). The transformed
leaves which accompany the inflorescence of the Nipa are brimful of a
sugared and effervescent liquid, which is extracted by pressure, and
converted into a palm wine of indifferent quality, consumed in great
quantities in the Sunda Archipelago. A very sweet liquid, a species of
syrup fit for the confection of dainty sweetmeats, escapes from inci-
sions made into the floral envelopes of the Areca saccharifera. A
tree-wax, analogous to that of the Croton sebiferum, is furnished by
the tree which the natives of Borneo designate Pallagrar-Minjok (Dip-
terocarpus trinervis). And, finally, it is at Borneo and at Sumatra
we meet with the Dryobabanops camphora, whence is procured a
species of camphor preferred by the Chinese to that of the Lauras
camphora; the Urceola elastica, whose milky sap indurates into a
kind of caoutchouc, called Suitawan ; and the Isonandra-Percha
(genus Bassia butyracea, family of the Sapotacese), which of recent
years has become the staple of an extensive commerce. It is from
this tree we obtain the valuable product of gutta-percha, which has
received such various and ingenious applications, and is scarcely less
useful in the arts than in the sciences.

Java is perhaps the most fertile of the Sunda Islands. Immense
forests extend over its plains, and climb up its mountain-slopes to an
elevation of upwards of 6500 feet. The damp localities are peopled
with Clusiacese, and with other trees of thick soft trunks and

FLORA OF THE EAST INDIAN ISLANDS: —

1. Rafflesia Arnoldia.

2. Niphobolus pubescens.

3. Phalamopsis amabilis.

4. brides suaveolens.

5. Cycas circinnalis.

6. Nepenthes distillatori:i

7. Scindapsus pertusus.

A LAND OF SPICES. 421

branches. Mangroves and Avicennias thrive upon the littoral. The
latter are specially noticeable on account of their roots, which climb to
a great distance above the muddy soil, and throw off a number of
suckers, not unlike gigantic water-pipes (asperges}. Among the
palms most abundant at Java, I confine myself to naming the Borras-
sus, the Corypha, and the Areca, The Vaquois (a species of Pan-
danus), which in stature and appearance resemble the palms, are also
widely diffused in that rich and fertile island. In the forests of its
interior swarm such splendid Ferns as the Niphobolus pubescens, and
such graceful Archids as the Aei^ides suaveolens, with its far-shooting
fronds and flowers, and the Phalcenopsis amabilis. There, too, the
traveller pauses before the Cyeas circinnalis, whose trunk, upright
and cylindrical as a Grecian column, is surmounted by a crest of
feathery leaves, each six to seven feet in length, stiff, and cut into
numerous strips, somewhat like our native bracken ; or he refreshes
himself with the pure liquid which the winding Nepenthes distilla-
toria, or Pitcher plant, collects in its horn-shaped leaves, as a constant
source of nutriment for its active life ; or, finally, he gazes wonder-
ingly at the Scindapsus pertusus, an epiphytous plant, whose cartila-
ginous leaves are perforated with an infinity of small circular holes,
and which twines itself round the tallest forest-trees in an embrace as
close as love's !

The forest-flora of the Moluccas differs but little from that of the
Sunda Islands. It presents, however, a few plants particularly
calculated ta excite our interest. Thus, at Amboyna, the Sago-Palms,
with other trees of the same family, accumulate in immense woods,
spreading over hundreds of acres. Everybody knows that the pith
of this palm is a white farinaceous substance, called sago, which not
only enters largely into the daily food of the natives, but forms an
important item in the European bill of fare, at least for children and
invalids. Amboyna, moreover, is the classic land of spices. The air
is thick with " Sabsean odours." Every breeze comes laden with per-
fumes. The Nutmeg (Myristica aromatica), the Clove (Caryophyllus
aromaticus), and the Pepper-plants grow there in a wild state.

422 THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.

In the Philippines vegetation is singularly favoured by the
humidity of the climate and the elevation of the temperature, so that
the Flora of these richly-endowed islands displays a prodigious variety.
Not a single family of tropical plants but is here represented by
several species. Hill and valley and plain alike are characterized by
the exuberant growth of leaf and fruit and flower ; the graceful forms
might have enchanted an ancient Greek, the wealth of glowing and
intense colour would have fired the imagination of Turner, and defied
the palette of Titian or Tintoretto. There are landscapes of such
beauty and fertility as the fancy of artist or poet never conceived.
Ferns and Orchids are, perhaps, even more abundant here than in the
forests of Java, Borneo, or Sumatra. The Bamboo attains to unusual
proportions ; the Areca (Areca catechu} raises to the sky its tall
shapely stem, crested with plume-like leaves ; and the Betel-nut tree
supplies in profusion the grains which, mixed with the fruits of the
gigantic palm, constitute the Pinangue ; a kind of quid, which the
Orientals chew delightedly, and to which they attribute very valuable
stomachic and digestive properties. Under the dense shade of the
great forests we are amazed by untold numbers of various kinds of
plants, all adorned by richly coloured leaves, which invest the scene
with a singular charm, nay, with something of a fairy character ; and
amongst these we single out the Dracaena terminalis, with its blood-
empurpled foliage, which, recently introduced into Europe, has already-
become one of the greatest ornaments of our parks and gardens.

I have previously had occasion to remark the singularity of char-
acter which in Australia distinguishes almost every member either of
the vegetable or the animal kingdom. I have already said that this
immense island-continent seems to have been the chosen theatre for a
distinct creative display, where every type differs from the representa-
tives of our scientific classifications in other parts of the globe. The
reader has been able to form some idea of the fancifulness of the
vegetable forms peculiar to the Australian savannahs. Nor are those
which constitute the so-called forests less strangely fantastic. On the
southern coast, which is the coolest, the forests are of very moderate

GUM-TREES OF AUSTRALIA. 423

extent. In fact, they may be more correctly described as enormous
thickets scattered in tolerably sheltered localities. Most of the trees
which compose them have trunks of great feebleness compared with
their height, which is often prodigious, and they do not begin to
ramify until near their summits. Their bark is smooth, and usually
of a grayish- white. Of all their species it can only be said that two —
the Stadmannia austral and the Alectryon — bear fruit which men can
eat even under the pressure of hunger. Finally — and this without
doubt is the most singular feature of a truly exceptional vegetation —
while all the trees and herbaceous plants of the Old and New Worlds
develop their leaves horizontally, or on a plane tangent to the cylin-
drical surface of the trunk or stem, in Australia the leaves of the trees
are disposed vertically ; in such wise that they give scarcely any
shade, and yet are themselves exposed in the very slightest degree to
the action of the solar rays. It is owing to this latter circumstance
they are always weakly coloured ; and thus they give to the densest
forests and the most robust trees a sickly tint, a sort of pallor of disease,
which saddens the gaze accustomed to the varied tones and vivid
hues of the verdure of tropical forests, or to the bold contrasts of light
and shade exhibited by the woods of Europe and North America.

The Australian species are comprised in a small number of families,
notably in those of the Coniferse and Myrtaceas. Certain forests are
wholly composed of Casuarinas ; others, of Acacias ; others again, of
Eucalypti. Some of the latter trees may be ranged among the greatest
with which botanists are acquainted. The Blue Gum (Eucalyptus
globulus] attains, for instance, the extraordinary stature of upwards
of 300 feet, and does not send out a single branch until half this dis-
tance from the ground. Its upright cylindrical trunk furnishes a
timber much appreciated by ship-wrights, and especially makes ad-
mirable masts. The Eucalypti secrete in abundance a white, sugary,
and aromatic substance ; whence they derive their popular name of
" gum trees" — a name which is also bestowed very frequently upon
the gum-bearing Acacias.

The family of Conifers exhibit themselves in Australia, like every

424

A VEGETABLE SHAFT.

other group of plants, under strange and novel forms. The shape of
those trees is generally fusiform and pyramidal ; their leaves are some-
times extraordinarily small, sometimes large and flattened. Many are
of great size ; none, however, attaining the gigantic proportions of the
celebrated columnar Pine of New Caledonia, which Cook's companions
mistook for a colossal mass of basaltic pillars, and which Moore, like

1. Kavenala Madagascariensis. 2. Heritiera argentea. 3. Tanghin.

a true son of industrious Albion, compared to an enormous factory-
chimney. This tree exceeds 160 feet in height, and its ramifications,
all of the same height, radiate regularly around its trunk, from the
base even to the summit.

I have now to ask the reader's companionship on an excursion

A FOREST IN MADAGASCAR.

27 a

POISONOUS PLANTS. 427

into the forests of the great African island of Madagascar. The in-
salubrity of the climate and the jealous inhospitality of the inhabitants
will not permit us to penetrate far into their luxuriant depths ; but
the most superficial glance will satisfy us upon their wild magnificence
and the original variety of their superb flora.*

We should seek in vain among their leafy, blossoming glades, for
the famous Manchineal, a member of the American Euphorbiacece,
which holds a high place in the records of vegetable poisons ; but the
toxicological amateur will find ample compensation in examining the
formidable Tanghin,-f- whose deadly juice, mixed with some other sub-
stances, plays an important part in the judicial ordeals popular among
the Malagasy.

The Tangiiin, or Tanguen (T. venenifera), is the only plant of its
genus, and is confined to Madagascar. It is described as a tree with
smooth alternate leaves of moderate thickness, clustered towards the
points of the branches, with large terminal cymes of flowers, having a
salver-shaped carolla, with rose-coloured lobes. The ovary is twofold,
with a long style and thick stigma ; but usually only one attains to
perfection, and forms an ellipsoid fruit, somewhat pointed at the ends,
invested in a smooth purplish-green skin, and containing a hard stone
surrounded by a thick fibrous pulp. The poisonous seed of the Tan-
ghin is esteemed by the natives an infallible criterion of guilt or
innocence. After being pounded, a small piece is swallowed by the
supposed criminal. If he be cursed with a strong stomach, which
retains the poison, he speedily dies, and is held guilty ; if his feeble
digestion rejects it, he necessarily escapes, and his innocence is con-
sidered proven.

Beneficent Nature has planted by the side of this fatal tree a
species of infinite value, the Ravenala Madagascariensis, or " Tra-
veller's-Tree," which derives the latter designation from the base of
the petiole of its large leaves, expanded and hollowed out into a kind
of gutter, being constantly filled with fresh water, and serving as a
reservoir for the thirsty wayfarer. The Vacquois, or Vacoa (Pan-

* Piev. W. Ellis, " Three Visits to Madagascar." f Ortkr, Apocynacex.

428 THE MALAGASY FORESTS.

danus utilis'), one of the Screw-Pines, is of much utility to the natives,
who fabricate sacks and bags out of its tenacious leaves. The manu-
facture of these bags is a source of comparative wealth for the poorer
inhabitants of Madagascar, and to a still greater extent for those of
Re'union and the Mauritius, whence they are exported annually by
millions.

The Malagasy forests also include several resinous species ; among
others, the Copal-Tree, which furnishes the well-known gum used in
Europe as a varnish ; and the Vahea, a genus of Apocynacese, yielding
caoutchouc, which will hereafter figure largely in the exports from this
magnificent island. There are two species, namely, Vahea Mada-
fjascariensis — the " Voua Heri" of the natives — and Vahea gum-
mifera. Numerous lianas, and a multitude of epiphytous plants,
ferns, and orchids, envelop and intertangle the trunks of the great
trees. I shall specify only the Beaded Liana (Abrus precatorius),
whose small hard fruits, rounded and of a scarlet red, make graceful
wreaths and necklaces ; the Angrcecum sesquipedale (an orchid), with
bright irregular flowers ; and the Angrcecum fragrans, whose per-
fumed leaves supply a wholesome and savoury infusion. Finally,
the Heritiera argentea, a tree about as large as our lindens, which
certain botanists place among the Byttneriacese, and others among the
Sterculiaceee, is noticeable on account of its abundant foliage glittering
silver-white.

CHAPTER IV.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE NEW WORLD.

NATURE, said Linne", is admirable above all in the smallest things :
Natura maxime miranda in minimis. He might, perhaps, have
more justly said, Natura non minus miranda in minimis quam in
maximis: Nature is not less wonderful in the least than in the

OX THE STUDY OF NATURE. 429

greatest. "Whether any created thing occupies a more or less con-
siderable space, or contains a greater or lesser quantity of matter, is
of no importance to the naturalist, who only studies the structure of
the organs, the springs of life, and the different forces which set them
in motion ; and considered from this point of view, a vibrio* and an
elephant, a penicillium and a baobab, possess for him the same im-
portance, the same amount of interest. It would, however, be unjust
not to recognize the fact that there is something very legitimate in
the kind of reverential admiration which every man is conscious of in
the presence of those things that symbolize, to a certain extent,
power, strength, majesty, endurance — of those that possess in a high
degree the two valuable qualities of force and greatness. Coleridge
tells us that we admire the cataract because it is the type of power.
Probably our feelings for the oak are connected with its emblematic
properties of permanency, vigour, and durability. All the logic of
logicians, and all the sentiment of natural philosophers, will never induce
the mass of men to regard with the same interest an ant and a lion,
a tuft of moss and a forest of oaks, a grain of sand and an Alpine
peak. I do not think, therefore, that I am stooping to a merely
vulgar prejudice in signalling out to the reader, among the vegetables
of the forests, those whose exceptional dimensions and venerable
antiquity are for every traveller an object of astonishment and curio-
sity. The truth is, that from their contemplation we derive a more
vivid conception of Almighty Power than from the examination of
even the most wonderful microscopical mechanism. To the still small
voice of Nature our ears are deafened by the clash and clang of an
ever-active world ; but we cannot refuse to listen to the roar of the
ocean or the reverberation of the thunder. As we move swiftly
onward in the press of the crowd and the race of life, we ignore the
tiny blade and the delicate organism beneath our feet ; but our eyes

* The genus Vibris is the type of a tribe of animalcules commonly known as micro-
propie eels, remarkable for their extraordinary minuteness. One species is parasitic upon
wheat, and when full grown attains a quarter of an inch in length ; but the young are so
microscopically small that 30,000 might be contained in a single grain of wheat.

430 GIGANTIC CONIFERS.

must perforce be opened to the splendours of the sea, the undulating
summits of snow-crowned mountains, the sapphire vault of the starry
heavens. Those things realize to us, at once and with impressive
force, the ubiquitous majesty of the Divine Builder. And it is well
that they should lift us for a while above the materialism of our daily
lives into a purer atmosphere of thought and feeling — should bid us,
while still lingering in the dusty track, expand our souls to hear

" The mighty waters rolling evermore."

It is not only in tropical regions that we meet with the giants of
the vegetable world. Europe possesses a few of them ; isolated, it is
true, but comparable in their stature to the most robust denizens of
the Torrid Zone : such are the chestnut-tree of Etna, and the plane of
Boudjoukdere', near Constantinople, of which so many travellers have
spoken. The remains of the virgin forests of North America also
abound in species analogous to our own, and capable of attaining, with
an almost incalculable longivity, truly extraordinary proportions.

The lofty table-lands of California (the Rocky Mountains) nourish
an entire tribe of gigantic Coniferse, frequently assembled in immense
forests. The Pinus Lambertiana, the Pinus Sabiniana, and the
Pinus insignis, are not less than 160 to 180 feet in height; the
Dous/las Fir boasts of an almost equal stature, with a circumference
which varies from 18 to 36 feet. Yet these colossal trees are sur-
passed by the Sequoia sempervirens, which is 240 to 260 feet high,
and by the Titan of Titans, the huge Wellingtonia gigantea, which
is also a Sequoia. I shall mention a few individuals of the latter
species, whose dimensions may defy all comparison with the greatest
trees of the Tropics.

According to Miiller, about ninety-four of these Coniferae flourish
on a plateau of the Sierra Nevada, at an altitude of 5400 feet. They
are distributed in small groups over a fertile soil. The gold-seekers
have named one of them the " Miner's Cabin." Its trunk, 320 feet
in height, presents an excavation 16 feet in width. The "Three

THE WELLIXGTOXIA GIGAXTEA.

431

Sisters" are individuals springing from one root; the "Old Bachelor,"
stripped of its branches by successive hurricanes, stands in solitary
desolation; the "Family" consists of two aged trees around which
four-and-twenty scions have sprung up. The "Riding-School" is
an enormous hollow trunk, prostrate on the ground, into which a
man on horseback may enter as far as thirty yards. Another

1 Large-leaved Magnolia.

2. Virginian Catalpa.

3. Pinus Sabiniana.

hollow trunk has been exhibited at San Francisco, where they have
constructed out of it a saloon, adorned with tapestry and furniture,
capable of accommodating forty persons.

Other resinous trees of smaller dimensions grow in the more or
less humid localities of North America ; such are the Chamcecyparis
sphceroidea, which does not exceed 80 feet in height, and the Western

432 THE MEXICAN FLORA.

Thuya of pyramidal outline. Nor must I forget to name, among the
Conifers of this continent, the Cypress of Louisiana, a tree of hand-
some appearance, about 100 feet high and 12 to 15 feet in circum-
ference, which lives, it is said, 5500 to 6000 years. Its leaves are
shrunken like those of the larch ; and from its roots, somewhat
deeply buried, spring several protuberances, or rounded conical
exostoses, which sometimes grow to the height of three feet without
bourgeoning.

The forests of the West and of the South which have hitherto
escaped the torch and the axe of the pioneer present to the traveller's
admiring gaze those magnificent species described so eloquently by
Chateaubriand and Cooper, and which are even less remarkable for
their gigantic stature than for the majestic elegance of their port, the
beauty of their foliage, and the dazzling splendour of their flowers.
Some of these forests are partly formed of Oaks whose leaves assume
in autumn a purple tint, like the " pupureum lumen " of the Latin
poet. In others the dominant trees are the Plane of the West, the
Maple, the round-crested Tulip, the large-leaved Catalpa, the Magnolia
with white and scented blossoms. To their trunks clings a whole
world of climbing, creeping, and parasitic plants ; as the Virgin Vine,
the Sumach, and the Virginian Jasmine.

Mexico, as far as relates to its climate and productions, has been
divided into three distinctly marked regions, defined not by latitude,
but by the elevation of various portions of its territory. The upper
region, or Cold Lands, is that of the lofty mountains ; the mean
region, or Temperate Lftnds, that of the intermediate plateaus ; the
inferior region, or Hot Lands, is that of the low plains, sometimes
arid, sometimes marshy or wooded.

The arborescent Flora of the first two regions very nearly
approximates to that of our noi-thern countries; it principally consists
of Pines, Firs, Oaks, and Arbute Trees. But in the Hot Lands the
vegetation generally assumes, as we descend towards the south, all
the characteristics of the tropical Flora. The feathery and graceful
Palm trees re-appear, mingled with Coryphas, Oreodoxas, Malpighiaceite,

COCOA AND VANILLA. 433

and Bignoniacese. There also grows the Crescentia cujete, or Calabash-
tree, which is likewise found in the Antilles; it has a tortuous trunk,
long branches extended horizontally, and ovoid fruits, clothed with a
hard woody bark, which the Indians fabricate into vessels of divers
forms, painting them in the liveliest colours.

Mexico is the country of the Morus tinctoria and the Hcema-
toxylon Oampechianum. These two trees furnish the dye-wood
which forms so important an article of commerce : the first, under
the name of the " yellow wood of Tampico " or " Tuspan ; " the
second, under that of " Campeachy wood." It is in the hottest and
most humid parts of the southern provinces of this Republic that we
meet, for the first time, with one of the most precious trees of the
Equinoctial Zone, the Cacao-tree (Theobroma cacao), whose bruised
and roasted seeds, mixed with variable amounts of sugar and starch,
form the different kinds of Cocoa; or, sweetened and flavoured with
vanilla or other substances, the article known as Chocolate. It is
but a small tree, with large entire leaves, and clustered flowers grow-
ing from the sides of the old stems and branches. Its large pen-
tagonal fruits vary from six to ten inches in length and three to five
in breadth, and contain between fifty and a hundred seeds.

The Vanilla planifolia, another Mexican native, famous for its
succulent fruit, is a plant of the Orchidaceous order, which climbs
about other trees in the manner of ivy. It is the only genus of the
family which possesses any economical value. The delicate perfume
of its fruit is due to the presence of benzoic acid, which forms in
crystals upon the pod, if left undisturbed.

Already, in Central America, we encounter the first ranks, the
vanguard, as it were, of those vast impenetrable forests which spread
over the whole northern region of South America to the banks of the
Amazon, and cover with dense foliage immense areas in Guiana and
Brazil. If we would pause again to wonder at the Giants of the
Vegetable Kingdom, we shall find many well worthy of our considera-
tion. Such, for example, is the Bertholletia excelsa, a colossal Lecy-

28

434 COLOSSAL TREES.

thidacean on the borders of the Orinoco, whose large fruits are known
in Europe as " Brazil nuts," the seeds being enclosed in large woody
vessels. The Sapucaya (Lecythis ollaria) is scarcely less abundant,
and of immense height. Its fruit, popularly called " Monkey's
Drinking-cups " (Cuyas de Macaco), consists of a cup-like vessel, with
a circular hole at the top, in which a natural lid fits neatly. When
the nuts are ripe this lid becomes loosened, and the heavy cup falls
with a crash, scattering the nuts over the ground.

" What attracted us chiefly," says a traveller in the virgin forests,*
" were the colossal trees. The general run had not remarkably thick
stems ; the great and uniform height to which they grow without
emitting a branch, was a much more noticeable feature than their
thickness; but at intervals of a furlong or so a veritable giant towered
up. Only one of these monstrous trees can grow within a given
Bpace ; it monopolises the domain, and none but individuals of much
inferior size can find a footing near it. The cylindrical trunks of
these larger trees were generally 20 to 25 feet in circumference. Von
Martius mentions having measured trees in the Para district belong-
ing to various species (Symphonia coccinea, Lecythis spirula, and
Crataeva Tagia), which were 50 to 60 feet in girth at the point where
they become cylindrical. The height of the vast column-like stems
could not be less than 100 feet from the ground to their lowest
branch. Mr. Leavens, at the saw-mills, told me they frequently
squared logs for sawing 100 feet long, of the Pas d'Arco and the
Massaranduba. The total height of these trees, stem and crown
together, may be estimated at from 180 to 200 feet: where one of
them stands, the vast dome of foliage rises above the other forest trees
as a domed cathedral does above the other buildings in a city.

"A very remarkable feature in these trees," says Mr. Bates, "is
the growth of buttressed-shaped projections around the lower part of
their stems. The spaces between these buttresses, which are gener-
ally thin walls of wood, form spacious chambers, and may be com-
pared to stalls in a stable : some of them are large enough to hold
* H. W. Bates, " The Naturalist on the Amazons," pp. 37-39.

THE VIRGIN FOREST 430

half-a-dozen persons. The purpose of these structures is as obvious,
at the first glance, as that of the similar props of brickwork which
support. a high wall. They are not peculiar to one species, but are
common to most of the larger forest trees. Their nature and manner
of growth are explained when a series of young trees of different ages
is examined. It is then seen that they are the roots which have
raised themselves ridge-like out of the earth ; growing gradually
upwards as the increasing height of the tree required augmented
support. Thus they are plainly intended to sustain the massive
crown and trunk in these crowded forests, whose lateral growth of
the roots in the earth is rendered difficult by the multitude of
competitors."

Scarcely less remarkable, and certainly not less useful, than the
Traveller's Tree of Madagascar is the Massaranduba, or Cow Tree, of
these grand Brazilian wildernesses. It is one of the largest of the
forest monarchs, but rather reminds you of monarchy in its decay
than of regal pomp, owing to its deeply-scored reddish and ragged
back. A decoction of this bark is used as a red dye for cloth. The
copious milk-like fluid which the tree supplies, and which may even
be drawn from dry logs that have stood for days in the sun, is
wholesome and nutritious, if taken in moderate quantities. On
exposure to the air it soon thickens into an excessively tenacious
glue.

But, apart from these monstrous trees, the virgin forest possesses
an abundance of interest for even the least observant traveller, while
in its various phases it is adapted to astonish, to impress, and to awe a
thoughtful mind. • It is true that it does not boast of that profusion of
floral ornament, of those gay and exquisite buds and blossoms, which
make the charm of our English woods ; but in its infinite variety of
foliage the grace of colour and beauty of form are ever present. What
most seizes upon the soul, however, is its intense silence — which the
occasional scream of some wild animal, or the infrequent song of some
pensive bird, or the sudden crash of some over-toppling tree, does but
render the more significant and appalling. The hush is like that

436

SILENCE IN THE FORESTS.

which prevails on a battle-field before the dread voices of the cannon
speak of death and carnage, but, unlike that hush, it is never inter-
rupted. Morning comes with its cold gray lights, noon .with its
warmth and radiance and splendour, night with its orbed noon and
pearly dews, but the hush still reigns undisturbed, and it seems to
the traveller as it' it would never be broken but by the sounds which
shall proclaim the end of all things !

It is rather by the varied characteristics of the species which

-•

]. Blechnum Brasilieuse. :>. Alscphila horrida. 3. Panicum plicatum.

4. Maranta. 5. Caladiura violaceuni.

compose it, by their fantastic structures and useful properties, than
by its gigantic outcomes, that the wild flora of these forest-regions
appeals to our admiration. We are struck at first by the infinite
variety, richness, and elegance of the vegetable forms. Especially do
we pause in wonder before those glorious Tree-Ferns which I take to

THE TREE-FERNS. 437

be the finest growth of the tropical wilderness. These Ferns, from
36 to 50 feet in height, are not unlike Palms in their physiognomy;
their stem is only less upright, shorter, and more scaly ; their foliage,
slightly dentated on the edges, is more delicate, of a looser and more
transparent texture. To this family belong the Blechnum Brasiliense
and the AUophila Jwrnda. Not less attractive in appearance are
the Clusia rosea or the Carolines insignis. The former of these
trees belong to a family (that of the Clusiacese) nearly all whose
representatives throw off from every point of their branches long
aerial roots. The traveller reposes with a feeling of Sybaritic delight
under its thick and evergreen foliage, enriched with brilliant flowers.
The second, with its shrunken leaves, owes the specific epithet (insignis,
" remarkable ") which botanists have imposed upon it, to the peculiar
structure of its flowers. The latter bear in the centre of their chalice
a great number of stamens, which form a silken tuft of the' most
graceful design.

The Gramineae, like the Ferns, — to use an expression of Hum-
boldt's, — " ennoble themselves " under the Tropics : witness the
Bamboo, the Sugar-Cane, the Sorgho, and the great Panicums. Of
the latter genus we have already seen in Africa numerous species.
America in its turn offers to our attention the Panicum maximum
and plicatum. wood-inhabiting Graminese, which without attaining
to the dimensions of the bamboo, or even to that of the cane, far
surpass that of their European congener, the millet.

The graceful palms abound in South America. The greatest of
all, the Cocoa-tree, seems there to have discovered its true home, for
it nowhere else acquires a greater development. There, too, the
Banana flourishes marvellously, no less than the Cocoa-tree, in a
wild state, and, like the latter, is carefully cultivated on account of
its nourishing and savoury fruits. A multitude of lianas and epiphy-
tous plants twine round the trunks and branches of the trees, and
frequently choke up their failing life. Some are indigenous to all
tropical countries : the Calamus Rotang, for example ; others are
more particularly, or even exclusively, proper to the New World.

438 THE PASSION-FLOWERS.

The family of Aroidese is there represented by the Pothos, whose
fleshy and herbaceous stems are surmounted by leaves sometimes
arrow-headed, sometimes digitate or elongated, and always divided by
thick cord-like nerves. We know that the Aroidese alone possess, in
the vegetable kingdom, the property of disengaging, while flowering,
a heat appreciable by the thermometer. To this family belong the

,„ vvtfPl

1. Banana. 2. Carolinea insignis. 3. Clusia rosea.

Caladiums, a genus closely allied to the Pothos. With these lianas
mingle the branching stems of the Passiflorse, or Passion-Flowers, so
named because Pierre de Ceza, in his " Histoire du Pe'rou," asserted
that he had recognized in the fantastic flowers of this genus of plants
all the instruments of our Saviour's Passion — an idea which could
only have been conceived by an imaginative and credulous Spaniard.

MEDICINAL PLANTS. 439

Elsewhere the Bignonias open by hundreds their large and richly-
coloured flowers ; the Bauhinias stretch along the trees their long
leafless branches, often 40 to 45 feet in length, which sometimes
hang vertically from the lofty summits of the Swietenias, or Maho-
gany trees, and sometimes extend obliquely from one huge trunk to
another, like the ropes of a ship. The Tiger-Cats, says Humboldt,
display a wonderful agility in mounting or descending these graceful
vegetable shrouds.

Upon the umbrageous banks of the Rio Magdalena grows a creep-
ing Aristolochus, whose flowers in their extraordinary development sur-
pass those of the Rafflesia Arnoldi, measuring often three feet and a
half in circumference. The forests of which we are now speaking
also nourish numerous species of Convolvulus ; I may particularize
the Convolvulus batatas, a climbing plant, whose roots produce the
feculent and saccharine tubercules known over the wide world by the
name of " Patates," and frequently but erroneously confounded with
that most useful vegetable, the Potato. The root of another Convol-
vulus, a native of Mexico, constitutes the Jalap officinalis, which
figures in the veterinary pharmacopoeia as an important purgative.

Certain lianas, common enough in the South American forests,
belong to the family of Sapindacece, which, like the orders Loganicese
and Euphorbiacese, owe their reputation chiefly to the medicinal or
poisonous substances extracted from them. Among the Sapindaceae
I shall mention only the genus Paullinia, which includes several
species endowed with narcotic properties. These properties appear
especially developed in the Paullinia pinnata. Its bark, leaves, and
fruit contain an abundant acrid principle with which the Indians of
Brazil prepare a slow but certain poison. The Indians of Guiana
extract from the Paullinia cururu another substance with which
they envenom their arrows, and which was long supposed to be the
veritable Wourali. But Sir Richard Schomburgk has shown that
the latter formidable poison is really extracted, as I have already
recorded, from the Strychnos toxifera, a shrub of the family Logani-
acece, which flourishes in Guiana and Brazil. To the same family and

440 THE MANCHINEAL.

the same countries belong the Ignatia amara, whose seeds are known
by the name of " St. Ignatius' Beans." These beans contain two
alkaloids, Strychnine and Brudne, which we also extract from the
Nux vomica, and which must be classed among the most violent
poisons known to the toxicologist.

While speaking of the poisonous plants of South America, a few
words in reference to the Manchineal (Hippomane Mancenilla) will
not be inappropriate. This tree thrives best, it is said, on the sea-
shore. It bears a profusion of very pretty fruit, resembling in colour
and form the Red Apple (the Spanish Manzanilla), and exhaling an
agreeable, lemon-like odour. They are, therefore, scarcely less be-
guiling than Dead Sea fruits ; but they are also very poisonous, yet
less deadly than the milky juice which flows from the slightest in-
cision made in the tree's thick and grayish bark. This juice, received
into the stomach, or introduced into the blood through a wound, slays
the victim with awful quickness. If it do but touch the skin, it
excites a violent irritation, and raises swellings or boils of the worst
description. The very vapour which it emits causes a painful itching
in the eyes, the lips, and the nostrils. It was formerly asserted that
to sleep under the shade of a Manchineal tree was certain death ;
but the naturalist Jacquin, in the interests of science, courageously
made the experiment, and proved the falsity of the story.

The Manchineal is not unfrequently confounded with other poi-
sonous Euphorbiacese, as the Sapium aucuparium and the Exccecaria
agallochia, which flourish in very nearly the same regions. The
Exccecaria, it is said, is not less dangerous than the Manchineal. It
owes its name (ex, and ccecus, " blind ") to the circumstance (or the
fable) that some European sailors, while felling wood in the forest,
having accidentally struck with their axe a tree of this species, were
blinded by the milky juice which sprang into their eyes.

By a kind of compensation, the Tropical Forests, which contain so
many poisonous plants, produce also a great number of the highest
utility to man. Some offer him efficient remedies against the
diseases which beset his frame ; others nourish him with the fecula

EVERYTHING HAS ITS USE. 441

of their roots or the delicious substance of their fruits ; others again
supply him with textile fibres, dyeing or resinous materials, and
woods which the artist and the artisan convert to numerous uses.
This vegetable wealth has been widely distributed over South America.
It will suffice to indicate a few of its more notable sources.

If we direct our attention to medicinal plants, we shall probably
find none more precious than the Quinquina, whose bark is the most
effective of all febrifuges, and which is endowed, moreover, with very
valuable tonic and depuratory properties. Sir Samuel Baker, in his
recent address to the British Association at Dundee, pronounced it
the traveller's best friend, the powerful weapon with which he could
securely enter the African wilderness, and successfully contend against
its demon-host of fevers and agues. The Quinquinas (genus, Cin-
chona; family, Rubiacece) are trees or evergreen shrubs with large
and handsome leaves, and flowers whose form and fragrance remind
one of the lilac. They are diffused over the two slopes, but chiefly
along the eastern slope, of the Andean Cordilleras, in the republics of
Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The traveller
meets them occasionally in picturesque groups or thickets which the
Peruvians call Manchas (spots) ; but they are more frequently scat-
tered in immense forests.

What of the lactiferous and resinous plants ? South America is
the native land of the trees whence we extract the resinous gums
called " Anime d'Amerique," " White Amber," and " Soft Brazilian
Copal," and the " Hevea Guyanensis," which furnishes the greater
portion of the caoutchouc imported into Europe.

Caoutchouc was described for the first time in 1736, by the scien-
tific travellers Bouguer and La Condamine, members of a Commission
despatched to Peru by the Parisian " Academie des Sciences," to
measure an arc of the meridian. A few years later, the engineer
Fresneau, who resided for a long time in Guiana, collected, with the
assistance of a native, ample information in reference to caoutchouc
and the tree which produced it. Finally, in 1768, was found in a
work by the traveller Aublet on the Flora of Guiana, the description

442 THE PAPAW TREE.

and figure of the Hevea. This tree attains a height of 50 to 70 feet.
The almond enclosed in the kernels of its fruits is white, of a very
agreeable taste, and much esteemed by the Indians, who also extract
from it an oil for seasoning their food.

The Banana, the American Agave, the Bamboo, and divers
Palm-trees supply the inhabitants of South America with suitable
materials for the fabrication of various tissues, from the finest and
most brilliant linen cloth to the rude mats which ornament the cabin
of the savage. Trees bearing fruits or edible roots are innumerable.
To the Bananas and Cocoa-trees which I have already mentioned, we
may add, as the most useful, the Maranteas or Canneas, especially the
Maranta arundinacea, M. alloya, and M. nobilis, whose roots, rasped
and washed, constitute the popular and valuable farina so widely
known as Arrow-root ; the Guavas (Psidium pyriferum, and P.
pomiferum), whose gilded fruits contain a succulent and perfumed
pulp ; the Papaw tree (Carica papaya), resembling the Palm in its
port and aspect, and also loaded with large yellowish fruit, whose flesh
is exceedingly savoury and aromatic. The Papaw, moreover, enjoys
some extremely remarkable properties ; thus, its milky juice exhales,
when burnt, an ammoniacal odour, and chemical analysis has recog-
nized therein the presence of fibrine. Mix some of this juice in
water, plunge into the mixture fresh hard meat, and in a few moments
it will become exquisitely tender. The very exhalations of the tree
operate in the same manner, and the inhabitants of the regions where
it nourishes suspend to its branches such meat and poultry as they
wish to soften.

The immense forests of Brazil and Guiana are for the whole world
an inexhaustible storehouse of woods for dyeing and cabinet work.
They spread their dense masses of foliage along the borders of the
sea, where the Mangroves (Kkizopkora mangle) plunge their adventi-
tious roots into the mud inundated by the surging tides of those
regions, and form a kind of impenetrable palisade, behind which grow
in infinite variety trees of the costliest timber. Such are the Swietenice,

FLORA OF THE NEW WORLD.

1. Papa-n- Tree (Papaya Sativa\ 2. Great American Cocoa-Nut Tree.

3. Mangrove (Ithizophora mangle}.

WOODS OF GREAT UTILITY. 445

or .Mahogany trees ; the Ferolia Guyanensis, which supplies the
wfell-known rose or satin wood ; the Jacaranda Brasiliensis, and
the Dalbergia, which yield the violet ebony ; the Stereidia, acumi-
nata, whose flowers exhale a foetid odour, and whose timber, called
" stinkwood," is nevertheless held in high esteem on account of its
durability, the fineness of its texture, and the excellent polish of
which it is susceptible. Nor must we forget the Ccesalpinece, whose
woods are impregnated with a red colouring matter which varies in
tint according to the species, and which are largely employed by the
dyer under the names of " Brazil wood " and " Pernambuco wood."
A great number of other woods which we procure from these countries,
and which are in daily use in cabinet work, toys, marquetry, and
dyeing, belong to vegetable species as yet undetermined. We might,
however, almost venture to assert that whatever tree you accidentally
and at haphazard struck down in these forests, either its timber, bark,
or roots would be found capable of being utilized.

I have not mentioned, among the species proper to the Forests of
the New World, those which are common with our own, and which
abound upon elevated lands. The extraordinary height to which not
only isolated mountains, but whole districts rise, in the vicinity of
the Equator, and the low temperature which is the consequence of
this elevation, provide the inhabitant of the Torrid Zone with a
remarkable spectacle. For while, as Humboldt remarks, he may look
around him upon groves of palms and bananas, he also sees those
vegetable forms which are regarded as more particularly belonging to
the countries of the North. Cypresses, firs, and oaks, barberries and
alders, closely resembling our own, cover the table-lands of Southern
Mexico and that part of the Andes which the Equator traverses. Thus
Nature allows the denizen of the Torrid Zone to see, without quitting
his native land, all the vegetable forms of the earth, at the same time
that from one pole to the other the entire vault of heaven reveals to
his gaze its luminous worlds.

I conclude my account of the South American Forests with a

4-10 THE BANK OF A STREAM.

picture taken from the interesting volume of Mr. Bates, and drawn
on the bank of a forest stream flowing into the Murncupe. " A glo-
rious vegetation," he says, " piled up to an immense height, clothes
the banks of the creek, which traverses a broad tract of semi-culti-
vated ground, and the varied masses of greenery are lighted up with
the sunny glow. Open palm- thatched huts peep forth at intervals
from amidst groves of banana, mango, cotton, and papaw trees and
palms. Both banks are masked by lofty walls of green drapery, here
and there a break occurring. The projecting boughs of the trees are
hung with natural garlands and festoons, and an endless variety of
creeping plants clothe the water frontage, some of which, especially
the Bignonias, are ornamented with large, gaily-coloured flowers. Art
could not have assorted together beautiful vegetable forms so har-
moniously as is here done by Nature. Palms, as usual, form a large
proportion of the lower trees ; some of them, however, shoot up their
slim stems to a height of sixty feet or more, and wave their branches
of nodding plumes between you and the sky. One kind of palm, the
Pashiuba (Iriartea Exorhiza), which grows here in greater abundance
than elsewhere, is especially attractive. It is not one of the tallest
kinds, for when full-grown its height is not more, perhaps, than forty
feet ; the leaves are somewhat less drooping, and the leaflets much
broader than in other species, so that they have not that feathery
appearance which those of some palms have, but still they possess
their own peculiar beauty."

Probably there is no richer field on earth for the naturalist, the
poet, or the artist than the virgin forest ; —

" To mark the structure of a plant or tree,
And all fair things of earth, how fair they be ! "

THE PRIMEVAL WORLD. 447

CHAPTER V.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS : THE ELEPHANT —

THE RHINOCEROS.

SOME thousands of years ago — no long period in the history of
creation, though so far outstripping the written records of man —
gigantic animals, with huge trunks and ivory tusks, forming the
family of Proboscidese, were distributed throughout all the northern
regions of Europe, Asia, and America.

Of this family the most ancient and colossal representative is the
Dinotherium, which appears to have flourished in the Miocene period
of the Tertiary epoch, and a skull of which was disinterred at Eppel-
sheim, in Hesse Darmstadt, in 1836, measuring about four feet in
length and three in breadth ; whence Cuvier inferred that the total
length of the animal was probably eighteen feet. This pachyderm,
which far surpassed in size the largest living elephant, had a com-
paratively short trunk, and tusks inserted in front of the lower jaw.
Such a lower jaw could hardly have been otherwise than cumbrous
and inconvenient to the quadruped if he lived on land. No such
disadvantage, as Dr. Buckland remarks,* would have attended this
structure in a large animal destined to live in water ; and the aquatic
habits of the family of Tapirs, to which the Dinotherium was most
nearly allied, render it probable that, like them, it was an inhabitant
of fresh- water lakes and rivers.

Two other kinds of Proboscidians, the Mastodon and the Mam-
moth, belong to the Pleiocene period, the last of the Tertiary epoch, and
to the Intermediate or Glacial deposits, which immediately preceded
the modern epoch. The Mastodon only differed essentially from the
Elephant in his dental apparatus. His molar teeth were covered
with conical projections, whence his name ; he had two small tusks,
* Dr. Buckland, Bridgewater Treatise, " On Geology and Palaeontology," &c.

443 EXTINCT QUADRUPEDS.

planted in the lower jaw like those of the Dinotherium, but bent for-
ward, and two others in the upper jaw, having the same direction,
but being of a prodigious length. Buffon named it the " Animal of
the Ohio," because its fossil remains were discovered on the banks of
that great river. They have also been found in other parts of North
America, and particularly in the saline morass known as Big-bone
Lick, in the northern districts of Kentucky. Several skeletons, almost
perfect, have been excavated at a moderate depth, and some of them
in a vertical position, as if the animals had been stricken with death
while standing, and suddenly engulfed in the mud.

Many curious fables are told by the Indians in reference to this
extinct quadruped. The Shawnee Indians believe that contemporary
with them lived a race of men of proportionate dimensions, and that
the Great Being destroyed both the one and the other with thunder-
bolts. Those of Virginia state that the " Great Man on High " slew
this colossal genus, because it was exterminating the animals created
for the use of man, and that none escaped but the hugest bull, who,
having been wounded by the celestial bolts, fled towards the great
lakes, in whose solitudes he wanders to this very day. The Indians
of Canada and Louisiana designate the Mastodon by the name of
" Father of the Bulls," probably on account of the bones of cattle
disinterred with his own.

The Mammoth (Elephas primigenius) is known to us only by the
fossil remains which have been discovered embedded in the glacial
deposits of the Intermediate epoch. The first discovery took place
in 1799, under circumstances which are thus recorded in the
Zoologist.

In 1799, a lungusian fisherman observed, in a bank on the
shore of the Frozen Ocean, at the mouth of the river Lena, a shape-
less mass almost enveloped in ice, and he was quite unable to deter-
mine what it might be. In the following year a larger portion of
this mass became visible, but the fisherman was still unable to dis-
cover its nature. Towards the end of the following summer, how-
ever, one of the tusks and an entire side of a fossilized animal were

THE MAMMOTH. 449

exposed. But it was not until the fifth year from its discovery,
when the ice had melted sooner than usual, that the enormous animal
became entirely detached from the bank or cliff in which it was first
observed, and came thundering down upon a sand-bank below. In
the month of March 1804, the fisherman extracted the tusks, which
were nine feet six inches long, and together weighed 360 pounds, and
sold them at Yakoutsk for fifty roubles. Two years afterwards, Mr.
Adams, a traveller, visited the animal, and found it much-mutilated.
The Yakoutes residing in the neighbourhood had cut away the flesh
to feed their dogs ; wild beasts had also eaten a great quantity of it.
Nevertheless, with the exception of a fore-leg, the skeleton was entire ;
the other bones being still held together by ligaments and portions of
skin. The head was covered with dried skin ; one of the ears was
entire, and furnished with a tuft of hairs ; the pupil of the eye was
still to be distinguished ; the brain was in the skull, but somewhat
dried ; the lower lip had been gnawed by animals, the upper one was
entirely gone, and the teeth were consequently exposed ; the neck
was furnished with a long mane ; the skin was covered with long
hair and a reddish wool ; the portion of skin still remaining was so
heavy that two men could scarcely carry it ; according to Mr. Adams,
more than thirty pounds' weight of hair and wool was collected from
the wet sand into which it had been trodden by the white bears
while devouring the flesh. This skeleton is now preserved in the
Museum of the Academy of St. Petersburg. The height of the
creature is about nine feet, and its extreme length to the tip of the
tail about sixteen feet.

A second carcass was afterwards discovered on the bank of the
Asalei'a, which empties its waters into the Frozen Sea, by the
traveller Sarytcheff. It was standing upright, and wholly covered
with its skin and fur. Finally, a third has been recently found
in the same region, and the Museum at Paris possesses a portion
of its skin, with a tuft of wool, and some relics of the mane.

The Mammoth, therefore, would seem to be a link connecting the
past and the present worlds, a being whose body has outlived its

29

450 THE MODERN ELEPHANT.

destination. Evidently it was adapted to brave the winters of a
boreal clime ; its long, warm, and woolly coat forming an admirable
defence against the severest cold. It probably inhabited the icy
plains, and the banks of the lakes and rivers ; its food consisting of
lichens, reeds, and the young shoots of the willows and other trees
which thrive in moist situations.

The Mammoth naturally leads us to an examination of his
descendant and congener, the Elephant ; the largest and strongest,
the most sagacious and docile of all living animals.

Elephants, of which only two species at present exist, the Asiatic
and African, are natives of tropical regions, where they prefer to
inhabit the depths of the forests, quitting their umbrageous recesses
only at night, in search of food, or to quench their thirst in the
nearest stream.

The whole form of the animal suggests the idea of unwieldy
strength. His head is large, with extremely small eyes, and very
large and pendulous ears ; he has an arched back, and a huge thick
body, which rests upon clumsy and shapeless legs ; his feet are
slightly divided into five rounded heaps ; the upper jaw is armed
with two enormous projecting tusks, which measure in many instances
six or seven feet ; and he is endowed with an extraordinary proboscis
or trunk, of such strength that it can uproot trees, and of such deli-
cacy that it can gather grass. This organ, nearly eight feet in
length, conveys the food to the mouth, and pumps up the enormous
draughts of water, which by its recurvature are turned into and
driven down the capacious throat, or showered over the body. Its
length supplies the place of a long neck, which would have been
incompatible with the support of the large head and weighty tusks.
A glance at the head will show the thickness and strength of the
trunk at its insertion ; and the massy arched bones of the face and
thick masculine neck, are wonderfully adapted for supporting and
working this powerful and marvellous instrument.

The Asiatic Elephant (Elephas maximus of Linne, Elephas
Indicus of Cuvier) has small ears and tusks. A head elongated in

AFRICAN HERDS. 451

height, and terminating in a kind of double pyramid. His hide is a
clear brown colour. This species includes several varieties ; that of
Indo-China is remarkable for its prodigious height, which sometimes
attains fifteen feet, and for a skin marked with brown spots upon a
clear gray ground. The islands of the Indian Archipelago likewise
contain several varieties of elephants, which experts can easily distin-
guish from one another. In every species are found the albinos, or
white elephants, which receive the marked veneration of every Indian
race, and particularly of those of Siam and Pegu.

The African Elephant (Elephas Africanus) differs from the pre-
ceding in the structure of his grinder teeth, in the length of his tusks,
which are enormous, and in his ears, whose trumpet is also of great
dimensions. He was formerly met with throughout all the African
continent, and was much employed in war by the Carthaginians and
Egyptians. From the northern regions of Africa he has now disap-
peared, but large herds still haunt the whole southern division, from
the Senegal to the Cape, and the eastern districts, as far north as
Abyssinia. He is also found in all the African interior, whose
inhabitants deal in ivory as the staple of their commerce. His height
is equal to that of the Asiatic elephant, and the habits of the two
species are identical

Elephants live in the forests, gathering in troops of from thirty
to about one hundred individuals, and as they require a very exten-
sive area of pasturage, it is said that they pitilessly expel from their
domains all other animals which trespass therein to share the product.

Each herd marches under the guidance of an acknowledged chief.
When they sally forth from their retreats to devastate a field, or to
wander in quest of fresh pastures, they observe a very regular order
of march ; the young and the females occupying the centre, the males
assemble round them in a circle. If danger threatens, the little ones
take refuge under the breast of their mothers, who fold their trunks
about them.

The young elephant is suckled for two years, and during that
period attains the stature of four feet and a half. At the end of the

452 MAN AT WAR WITH THE ELEPHANT.

third year he is nearly six feet high. He continues to grow, but less
rapidly, until twenty-two or twenty-four years old. The female
adults measure generally from seven to nine feet in height, and the
males from ten feet and a half to twelve. As may be inferred from
the tardiness of his growth, the elephant enjoys the privilege of longe-
vity. He has been known to live in captivity to the age of 120 or
130 years; but Cuvier was of opinion that in his free and wild con-
dition he might well number nearly a couple of centuries.

The Africans hunt the elephant for the sake of his ivory and
flesh ; in India, and the isles of the Indian Ocean, to reduce them to
subjection. In Africa, for many negro populations, ivory and " ebony
wood " (an euphuism by which the slave-dealers designate their
black slaves) are the sole articles of commerce, and the majority of
the English, Dutch, and French colonists carry on a considerable
traffic in elephants' teeth. The negroes excavate wide pits, which they
cover over with branches ; and the elephants falling into them
are precipitated headlong upon sharpened stakes ; or they kill them
either with arrows, assegays, or musketry. Hunting them with spears
is truly a ferocious pastime. The poor elephant only succumbs after
receiving so great a number of projectiles that his body resembles an
enormous porcupine. He rarely turns upon his aggressors ; he seeks
to fly ; he fills the air with plaintive wailings ; the female throws
her huge bulk between her young ones and the enemy ; the male
sometimes rushes furiously upon his assailants, and woe to the latter
if he overtake them ; he crushes them under his hoofs, he pierces
them with his tusks, or seizes them with his trunk, and dashes them
upon the earth a shapeless and bleeding mass. But nimble and
experienced hunters easily elude his charge, whose onset he is pre-
vented from moderating by his weight, or from rapidly changing its
direction.

But firearms, and especially the recently perfected rifles, are
assuredly the best weapons to employ against the leviathan. With
a Westley-Kichards, for instance, a good marksman, aiming at the
shoulder-joint or the ear, is certain to bring down his game ; he may

THE CORRALS OF CEYLON. 455

post himself at a distance, and avoid exposure, while the victim is
saved from a cruel agony.

Ivory is not the only valuable product which the elephant yields ;
his hide, very thick and very tenacious, can be utilized for many
purposes. The bucklers made of it by the negroes are scarcely less
precious than the shield of Ajax, which was formed of a bull's hide
sevenfold. The animal's flesh is also eaten, although too tough and
too strongly flavoured for an European palate.

In India and the Indian islands the chase is carried on to make
prisoners, and not victims. Its most remarkable feature is the
important and almost indispensable assistance which the tame
elephants render man against their wild brethren, zealously aiding to
reduce them into slavery; now serving as baits to beguile and attract,
and now as gendarmes, or rather as convict-warders, to compel their
obedience. In Ceylon, elephant-hunting is almgst an affair of
State ; it is like a national war, in which the Government appeals
to the goodwill of the population generally, both Europeans and
natives.

As soon as it is known that a troop or horde of elephants has
assembled in a forest, the natives set to work, and with trunks of trees
fixed in the ground and supported by transversal bars and buttresses,
construct a vast palisaded enclosure, or corral, whose entrance forms
a kind of gullet so narrow that the animals can only enter one by
one, and once drawn into it are unable to return. This being accom-
plished, a thousand men, Europeans or Cingalese, surround the forest ;
they enclose the herd in a circle which incessantly contracts, and
drive them before them by waving their torches, and keeping up a
grand tintamarre of tamtams, trumpets, and musket-shots. The
frightened animals can find no other avenue of escape than the
entrance to the corral, where are placed, moreover, as an attraction,
some females trained to act as decoys.

When all, or nearly all the herd, has been driven into the
enclosure, the entrance is strongly and firmly closed with ropes and
beams. The elephants, perceiving themselves caught in a trap,

456 THE ELEPHANT TAMED.

naturally endeavour to effect their escape by the way they entered.
A sufficient number of hunters then place themselves along each side
of the avenue, and a few, mounted on the decoys, are stationed at its
extremity. The moment that one of the captives has got entangled
in it, his retreat is cut off by means of thick planks piled across the
palisade, and he is allowed to make his way towards the entrance,
which is also blocked up. There he encounters the decoys, which force
him, by striking him with their trunks, to fall back against a neigh-
bouring tree, to which he is speedily bound with ropes. This first
operation accomplished, the females are led back to the corral, and
the game is renewed, until all the animals have undergone the same
fate, and each of them is thralled to a tree in the forest. Nothing
now remains but to accustom them to a life of servitude ; and this
is done by depriving them of food for a short time, then administering
it in small quantifies, and proceeding from the articles they like the
least to those they prize the most. The privation at first enfeebles
them, and consequently calms their irritation, while they feel the
greater gratitude afterwards for the alleviation which is so readily
afforded them. This gratitude, and, still more, the dependaiice in
which they find themselves upon man, who at his supreme pleasure
grants or refuses their food, renders them in a few days docile and
tractable. Thus their docility, and the important services which they
render, mainly arise in the overmastering fear which man inspires in
them.

" It is remarkable," says Boitard, " that the elephant is not and
never has been a domestic animal, but a captive who only obeys
through terror. However tame he may be, he never fails to escape
into the woods to resume his savage life if an opportunity arises.
The need, therefbre, arises that on a long march he shall have his
driver, or mahoud, on his back, to guide him, threaten him, and
prevent him from taking to flight. His love of liberty is as great as
that of the wildest animals, and in the female elephants it even over-
powers maternal love ; therefore, when suckling their young, they
are never released from their chains, for experience has proved that

29 a

THE RHINOCEROS. 459

they will abandon them without regret if circumstances should enable
them to effect their escape."

The moral and intellectual qualities of the elephant have been
greatly exaggerated. As far as his morality is concerned, we must
pronounce him a cowardly, pettish, and rancorous animal, which retains
a much livelier recollection of every injury done him than of the
benefits he may have received. In an intellectual point of view he
is certainly inferior to the ape and the dog, but he is superior to the
Carnaria, as well as to most of the Herbivora. His faculties, perhaps,
may be most justly compared to those of the horse, which would
certainly have exhibited as much intelligence if Nature had gifted
him with a trunk ; for we must never forget that the development of
an animal's faculties greatly depends upon the perfection of his
organs. Again, the horse is susceptible of a complete domestication,
while the elephant, as Boitard has remarked, is a captive, ever dreading,
never loving his master, and eagerly awaiting a favourable moment
to escape from him.

After the Elephant, the chief of the animals inhabiting the forests
is the Rhinoceros, ranged with him by Linne in the order of Belluce
(or enormous beasts), by Cuvier in that of Pachyderms, and by De
Blainville in that of Gravigrades.

The name Rhinoceros (piv, nose, and Kepas, horn) indicates at
once the peculiarity which at the first glance distinguishes him from
the other Pachyderms. He carries, in fact, upon the arch formed
by his nasal bones one or two solid, curved, and sharp-pointed horns,
which serve him as very formidable weapons. His ears are upright,
pointed, and moderately large ; the eyes small and half closed. The
coarse thick skin, knotty or granulated on its surface, is of such
tenacity and impenetrability about the short thick legs and ungainly
body, that it resists the claws of the lion or the tiger, the sword or
the shot of the hunter. It hangs about the neck in several large
plaits or folds ; another fold passes from the shoulders to the fore-
]egs, and another from the hind part of the back to the thighs. He

460 THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS.

has a moderately large and long head, a protruding upper lip, and a
depressed skull His manners are fierce, but not aggressive ; he leads
a lethargic life, and wallows on the marshy banks of lakes and rivers,
where grows the vegetable food on which he exclusively feeds. He
usually measures about twelve feet in length from the tip of the nose
to the insertion of the tail ; his height is about seven feet ; and the
girth of his body is nearly equal to its length !

The appearance of the Rhinoceros upon the globe was probably
contemporaneous with that of the Proboscidese. Fossil remains of
the animal have been discovered in the temperate, and even the cold
countries of Asia and Europe. In 1772 an entire rhinoceros, admir-
ably preserved, was found embedded on the banks of a Siberian river,
in the ancient frozen soil. Now-a-days he is exclusively confined to
the tropical regions of the Old World. He lives a solitary life in the
dense jungles of India, the Sunda Islands, Central and Austral Africa.
Naturalists distinguish six varieties — the Rhinoceros of India, the
one-horned Rhinoceros of Java, the two-horned Rhinoceros of Sumatra,
the unarmed Rhinoceros, the two-horned Rhinoceros of Africa, and
the Rhinoceros of Bruce.

The Indian Rhinoceros attains the height of five to six feet, and
the length of seven to nine feet. He confines his wanderings in the
main to the Trans-Gangetic peninsula. He has but one horn, and
some dim tradition of this animal may probably have suggested the
long popular fable of the mysterious Unicorn. His skin, of a dusky
brown, is so singularly thick that it would have rendered all move-
ment impossible on the part of the quadruped, if Nature had not dis-
posed it in deep folds corresponding to the principal articulations.
Thus he seems to the eye caparisoned in a body-armour of thick
leather, formed in several pieces ; and in truth his impervious hide
constitutes a cuirass against which even musket-balls strike innocu-
ously. Hence he dreads not the attacks of any of the Carnivora.

The Rhinoceros of Java is undoubtedly but a variety of the Indian
species. That of Sumatra differs from the preceding in the possession
of two horns — one, the anterior, of great length ; the other, much

THE AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.

461

shorter. His skin is moderately thick, very much wrinkled, in deep
folds, and garnished with a quantity of long hair.

The unarmed Rhinoceros, who inhabits the islands of the Ganges,
has but one rudimentary horn.

The African Rhinoceros is the king of his race. He wears a
naked, smooth, and tenacious skin. Two horns are mounted on his

KAFFIR HUNTER CARRIED OFF BY A RHINOCEROS.

upper jaw ; the front one measures more than eighteen inches in
length. In all Southern and Western Africa this huge ungainly
quadruped is found.

The Rhinoceros of Bruce inhabits Abyssinia. His supreme idea
of happiness, of the summum bonum, as viewed from a Proboscidean
point of view, is to wallow luxuriously in the mud and slime, and

462 A STRANGE STORY.

while abandoning himself to this anti-Sybaritic indulgence, he heaves
a hoarse groan of satisfaction, which conducts the hunter to his
retreat. The Abyssinians pursue him on horseback. Some attack
him with arrows or with musketry ; others, and these are the boldest,
leap from their steeds at the moment the rhinoceros leaps upon him,
and hamstring him with their sabres. The huge quadruped falls
immediately, and becomes an easy prey to his aggressors.* In South
Africa the Kaffirs and the Hottentots display an equal audacity in
attacking this formidable foe. They dare to confront him with their
sharp knives alone, and generally with success, though a weak thrust
or a wrong aim would entail upon them a sudden, swift, and terrible
death.

Mr. Cooper Rose, in his " Sketch of South Africa," celebrates an
aged chief who had won a well-deserved renown by the most extra-
ordinary instance of courage and presence of mind. He was out
a-hunting. A rhinoceros broke abruptly from the covert of a dense
thicket, and so near to him, that the Kaffir easily leaped upon his back.
The furious animal immediately dashed through the jungle, beat the
earth with his horn, roared with rage, and used his utmost exertions
to dismount his unwelcome rider. In this he would have undoubtedly
succeeded, and the negro must have perished, if happily the kross, or
sheepskin mantle of the latter, had not been caught in the bushes.
Mad with fury, the rhinoceros threw himself upon it, and while he was
busy rending it in fragments the Kaffir leaped lightly to the ground,
and saved himself in the deep recesses of the forest.

* Mansfield Parkyns, " Life in Abyssinia." See some interesting details in Major
Harris's " Sport in the Western Highlands of Ethiopia."

THE ORDER QUADRUMANA. 463

CHAPTER VI.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE VIRGIN FORESTS : THE GREAT APES.

IT is of their own free choice, to shelter themselves from the burning
arrows of the sun, to enjoy the dense shadows and delicious coolness
of the great trees, and, without doubt, to avoid the attacks of men,
that the elephant and the rhinoceros are denizens of the forest. But
a certain number of Mammals Nature seems to have specially designed
to people the forests, and for whom their general organization, and,
above all, the structure of their locomotive organs, appear to have left
the selection of no other abode. Such are, in the first place, the
genera, so numerous and so diverse, which compose the great order
of Quadrumana (" four-handed "), indistinctly comprehended, in
popular phraseology, under the denomination of Apes; such, too, are
the curious arboreal animals called Sloths ; and such, finally, in the
order Rodentia, are the Squirrels.

In occupying ourselves, primarily, with the Apes, we do but
conform to the scientific classifications, all of which place these Mam-
mals immediately next to Man in the zoological series.

Linne' originally proposed to designate, under the name of Primates
— that is, the first, or chief of animals — Man, in the first place ; next,
the Apes ; then the Galeopitheci (or Lemurs) ; and, finally, the
Cheiroptera (or Bats). This order of Primates, established by the
great Swedish naturalist, has been admitted by the majority of con-
temporary authors, who, however, have separated the Cheiroptera
from it. Many have also separated Man, and, as I think, have more
correctly placed him as a distinct genus in the order Bimana (or two-
handed).

The Apes, or Quadrumana, are divided into two families — that of
Apes, properly so called, and that of the Lemuridre, or Lemurs.

464 TAILLESS BABOONS.

Both belong exclusively to the hottest regions of the globe. The
latter are found only in India, Africa, and Madagascar. The Apes,
on the other hand, are also spread through South America ; but it is
in the Old World we encounter the most numerous, the most varied,
and the most remarkable species.

Those writers who are so much addicted to tracing analogies
between Man and the Ape, should explain how and why it is the
latter attains his greatest development precisely in those regions
where Man's intellect is dwarfed, " cribbed, cabined, and confined."

To the ancient continent especially belong the great apes without
tail, or with very short and rudimentary tail — Anthropomorphes,
Baboons, Macaucos, and the Cynocephali.

Apes, as well as the other Primates, are all inhabitants of tropical
countries. They do not exist in Europe, in Upper Asia, or in North
America.

A single genus seems able to adapt itself to the climate and con-
ditions of the Temperate Zone, and still reigns in the Mediterranean
region — in Africa, to the north of the Atlas ; in Spain, on the rock
and in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar — this is the genus Baboon
(the Pithecus of the classical writers), included in the family Macau-
cos. It differs from other genera of the same family in being tailless.
This organ is rudimentary in some species of Macaucos, properly so
called — as in the Red-faced Macauco of Japan ; in others, its length
never exceeds that of the animal's body. It is the same with the
genus Mangabey. Among the Cynocephali, the tail is usually short.
These apes are remarkable, as their name indicates, for their promi-
nent muzzle, which resembles that of a dog ; and, moreover, for the
naked callosities, more or less extensive and of a bluish or vivid red
colour, which exist on the upper part of their thighs, immediately
beneath the tail.

The Macaucos and the Cynocephali are, in general, of tall
stature. When standing upright, they will be about two and a half
to three feet in height, but this posture is not natural to them, and
they rarely adopt it unless constrained. For their hinder limbs being

A FORTUNATE RACE. 4fi5

of nearly the same length as the fore, the quadrupedal mode of
progression is easy and habitual, either when they move on the
ground or traverse the horizontal branches of the trees among which
they live. These apes are endowed with surprising strength, and
several, especially among the Cynocephali, render themselves formid-
able by their ferocity and their aggressive audacity. In captivity
they show, while young, a mildness of disposition which, joined to
their keen intelligence, would seem to render them capable of being
greatly improved by careful training. But these good inclinations
do not long endure : arrived at the adult age, the Macaucos and Cyno-
cephali soon allow all their malignity, mischievousness, brutality, and
vicious instincts to peep out, and as they grow older become com-
pletely intractable.

In the time of Desfoiitaines baboons were so common in the
forests of the Atlas, that in the environs of Stora the trees were
frequently covered with them. "They feed," says that author, "on
pine apples, sweet nuts, Indian figs, melons, water-melons, and the
vegetables which they pilfer from the gardens of the Arabs, whatever
cares the latter may exercise to keep these ill-doing animals at a
distance. While engaged in their thieving operations, two or three
mount to the top of the tallest trees and loftiest rocks to keep watch,
and when they perceive any person approaching, or hear any noise,
they give a cry of alarm ; whereupon the whole troop immediately
take flight, carrying with them all they have been able to seize."
Despite of these predatory habits, the baboons at Gibraltar have been
fortunate enough to find powerful protectors in the officers of the
British garrison, without whom they would have been destroyed. A
prohibition against hunting them exists throughout the territory
under British rule.

At the Cape of Good Hope, and at other points of Southern
Africa, Europeans are far from displaying the same amount of good-
will towards the Cynocephali. It is true that they are formidable
enemies to man through their malignity, their strength, and the
dangers incurred from their bite. Their mouth is armed, in fact,

30

160

THE MAX-TIGER.

with canine teeth comparable to those of the most powerful Carnivora.
The wounds, therefore, says M. Paul Gervais, which they inflict,
either in defence, or, as is more customary with them, in attack, are
deep, and consequently very dangerous. These apes are fiercer in
disposition than the Macaucos, and inspire so much fear when grown

BABOONS PLUNDERING A GAKDE>

up that one of their species is popularly known by the expressive
name of the " Man-Tiger."

We must not confound the Cynocephali with the Cynopitheci, an
intermediate genus between the Apes and the Macaucos, which con-
nects both the former and the latter with the Anthropomorphes.
The Cynopitheci have no tail ; their face is moderately elongated ;
their ears are round and rimmed. The type-species of this genus is

THE BLACK CYNOPITHECUS.

467

the Negro Cynopithecus, who is wholly black, and a little smaller
than the Baboon. His head is crowned with a kind of head-dress
raised to a point on the forehead ; and his face surrounded with a
fringe of long hair. His habitat is the Celebes, and some other islands
situated between Borneo and Mindanaos. He possesses a mild and
lively disposition. Quoy and Gaymard, naturalists on board the
French exploring-ship L' Astrolabe, obtained an individual who was
readily tamed, and played in the gayest and best-tempered manner
possible with the first person he encountered.

THE BLACK CYXOPITHECUS'.

I may here pause to indicate a few of the more remarkable varie-
ties of the Baboon and the Monkey : premising that by a recent
classification the Apes, or Simise, are divided into four sections — viz. :
Apes, or such as are tailless ; Baboons, with elongated muzzles and
short tails ; Monkeys, generally with long tails ; and Sapajous, or
Monkeys with prehensile tails. For the pressnt, I limit my remarks
to members of the second and third sections.

468 HOWLING MONKEYS.

Among the Monkeys of the Old Continent a prominent place
should be given to the Proboscis Monkey (Nasalis larvatus}, who is
endowed — I may not say, ornamented — with a nose of the most
grotesque character and formidable dimensions. This species mea-
sures two feet from the tip of the nose to the tail, which is longer
than the body. His colour is a dark chestnut, but the face is marked
with blue and red. He belongs to Borneo and Cochin-China, where
he assembles in large troops, and feeds wholly on fruit.

To Cochin-China also belongs the DOUG, a very large species, remark-
able for their eoat of many colours. Back, belly, and sides are of a
yellowish-gray ; feet black : lower part of the arms and tail, white ; a
collar of brown ish-purple encircles the neck ; long yellowish hairs fringe
the sides of the face, which is rather flat and of a yellowish bay hue.
He measures, when standing upright, three feet and a half to four feet.

In South America are found the Howling Monkeys. Mr. Bates
describes one species, the Mycetes strumineus, which measures sixteen
inches in length, exclusive of the tail ; the whole body is covered
with rather long and shining dingy-white hair, the whiskers and beard
only being of a tawny hue. "The one of which I am speaking,"
says Mr. Bates,* ''was not quite full grown. When it first arrived,
it occasionally made a gruff subdued howling noise early in the morn-
ing. The deep volume of sound in the voice of the howling monkeys,
as is well known, is produced by a drum-shaped expansion of the
laiynx. It was curious to watch the animal whilst venting its
hollow cavernous roar, and observe how small was the muscular
exertion employed. When Howlers are seen in the forest, there are
generally three or four of them mounted on the topmost branches of
a tree. It does not appear that their harrowing roar is emitted from
sudden alarm -, at least, it was not so in captive individuals. It is
probable, however, that the noise serves to intimidate their enemies."

Another species of Howlers is the Preacher Monkey (Mycetes
Beelzebub}, an animal about the size of a fox, with long black glossy
hair, a round beard beneath the chin and throat, black glistening eyes,
* H. W. Bates. "The Naturalist on tlie Amazons," p. 175.

THE VARIEGATED BABOON. 469

short round ears, and a long tail. A native of Brazil and Guiana,
he derives his name from the following circumstance : one of these
creatures will climb to the summit of a lofty tree, while numbers
gather about the lower branches. The monkey perched above the
rest then raises a loud howl — a howl so shrill and keen that it is
audible at a very great distance ; after a while he pauses, and gives
a signal with his hand, whereupon the entire assembly join in chorus ;
another signal, and the discord ceases, while the preacher or singer
concludes his inharmonious exercitation.* It is said that this howl-
ing faculty is due to the peculiar conformation of the os hyoides, or
throat-bone, which, communicating with the larynx, increases the
resonance of the voice.

The Paters, or Red Monkey (Cercopithecus ruber), so called from
the bright bay colour of his upper parts, is a native of Senegal.

In Congo and Guinea is found the frolicsome Spotted or Diana
Monkey (Cercopithecus Dianci), the upper parts of whose body are of
a reddish colour, besprinkled with white spots.

The Mandrill, or Variegated Baboon (Cynocephalus maimori), is,
undoubtedly, the most notable of his genus, for various and brilliant
colours. When standing upright he measures fully five feet. His
body is thick and robust, his limbs are firm and muscular; scarcely
any forehead relieves the flatness of his long face ; the eyes are small
and deeply sunken in the large head ; the projecting cheek-bones are
marked with several deep furrows of purple, scarlet, and violet blue ;
both the abrupt muzzle and the lips are large and protuberant. The
hair of the forehead and temples rises in a kind of pyramid, which
gives to the head a triangular appearance; and from the chin hangs a
small pointed orange-yellow beard. His strength, moroseness, and
ferocity, render him a formidable opponent ; and as he prowls about
in large bands, it is dangerous for the natives to penetrate into the
woods, unless well-armed, and in numerous companies.

* According to Humboldt, this is an exaggeration : the Howlers assemble in large
numbers, morning and evening, and join in a chorus of discords, but do not obey a presi-
dent or leader.

470 THE CYNOCEPHALI.

The Derrias (Cynocephalus kamadryas), a native of the mountains
of Arabia and Abyssinia, measures upwards of four feet when standing
erect, and about two feet and a half in a sitting posture. The hair
of the head and neck gathers in a long mane, which falls back over
the shoulders ; the broad whiskers incline backwards so as to cover
the ears. The long face is of a dirty flesh-colour ; long, shaggy,
brownish hair covers the head, neck, shoulders, and all the fore-part
of the body. The tail terminates in a long tuft of brown hair.

Equal in size to, but much stronger than, an English mastiff is
the Chacma, or Pig-faced Baboon (Cynocephalus porcarius), of the
Cape of Good Hope, where he inhabits the mountains, and makes fre-
quent forays in the gardens and plantations around Cape Town. His
yells and screams make night hideous. He wears a sober livery of
an uniform dark brown colour, with long shaggy mane-like hair about
his neck and shoulders. His skull is contracted and flattened, his
muzzle extremely prolonged, and the cheeks of both sexes are orna-
mented with small grayish whiskers.

We must now direct our attention to the Anthropomorphes, or
Apes with a semi-human form, which, of all the Quadrumana, approach
nearest to man in form, stature, internal and external conformation,
manners, instinct, and development of intelligence. They have no
tail, and the Gibbons (Pitkecus lar), which occupy the lowest rank
among them, possess only the rudiments of ischiatic callosities. Nor
are they provided with those dilatable pouches worn by a great
number of other Primates on each side of the mouth, and named
by French naturalists abajoues. Their position, when they move
along the ground, is bent rather than erect, and they assist themselves
by their extraordinarily long anterior arms. These arms, in fact, are
much longer than their legs ; their thumbs, at the four extremities,
are opposed to the other fingers ; the palm of their hands and the
sole of their feet are naked, as well as their face. The sternum is
large and flat ; the clavicles are short and well articulated.

The analogies between the Apes and Man are so striking and so

ARE MAN AND THE APE AKIN ? 471

numerous, and their intelligence, at least in the largest genera, is so
superior to that of other animals, that, without admitting the opinion
of the ancient naturalists who considered them to be degraded or
degenerate men, nor that of certain modern writers, who look upon
Man as an improved Ape, one cannot fail to recognize between them
and us a species of kinship— though it may be very difficult to dis-
tinguish the character and the degree — which imposes itself upon
the understanding and the sentiment of every impartial and attentive
observer. The most impassive hunters who have killed Orangs,
Gibbons, Chimpanzees, and Gorillas, acknowledge that they have
never been able to conquer a painful impression — almost, as it were,
a feeling of remorse — when contemplating the semi-human agony
of their victims. This impression, though they may have succeeded
in persuading themselves to the contrary, is not the effect of an
empty or ridiculous sensibility. Everything in nature has its raison
d'etre — its motive of existence ; the relations between the organ-
ism and the faculties are constant and undeniable ; and I find it
difficult to believe that the Creator can have formed without object
or purpose beings so extraordinarily similar to man, unless this
physical resemblance corresponds to a more or less definite moral
analogy.

The illustrious and devout Linne, whom no one will suspect either
of materialism, or of forgetfulness of the dignity of man, has ranked
the Anthropomorphes in his genus Homo, with MAN, whom he speci-
fically distinguishes by his wholly exceptional faculties, and whom
he denominates Homo sapiens, that is, "the wise," or more correctly
speaking, the "thinking man." I must add that Linne7 at a later
period renounced this quasi-assimilation, and that modern zoologists
have unanimously rejected it.*

* In the foregoing paragraphs I have allowed the French author, M. Mangin, to
express his opinions in his own language. I must guard myself, however, from being
supposed to endorse them as a whole. Between the most intelligent Simise and Man a
wide gulf exists, which I see no reason for supposing the Ape will ever cross. And I
believe that his physical likeness to Man may be satisfactorily referred to that genrral
progressiveness in creation which we may trace from the lowest to the highest types.

472 OUR KNOWLEDGE LIMITED.

In the age of Linne, the apes of which we speak were but imper-
fectly known. Even now-a-days our information upon the subjects
of their intelligence, manners, and habits, is defective and fragmen-
tary. The individuals whom we have retained in captivity have
died while very young, and it is impossible to say whether their
early mildness and intelligence would have proved as transitory in
them as in the Macaucos and the Cynocephali, who, as they advance
in years, display the most brutal instincts. In their adult state, the
Anthropomorphic Apes have not been really studied. Travellers have
penetrated into their forests only to attack them with rifle-balls, and
have told us but little of the manner in which they comport them-
selves. As for the details collected from natives inhabiting their
vicinity, they are so contradictory, and mixed up with so much
which is fabulous, that it is impossible to draw any conclusions from
them in reference to the habits of these animals.

Four distinct genera of the Anthropomorphic Apes are now
recognized by naturalists : two belonging to Southern Asia, or rather
the great Indian Archipelago — viz., the Orang and the Gibbon ; two
to Tropical Africa — viz., the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla. I shall
describe their peculiarities in my next chapter.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC APES : ORANGS, GIBBONS, CHIMPANZEES,

AND GORILLAS.

THE genus Orang-Outang (Simla Satyrus), or " Wild Man of the
Woods," is a native of the islands of Borneo, Sumatra, and Java, and
of a limited portion of the Malayan peninsula. We must dismiss as
travellers' fables the exaggerated recitals which attribute to this Ape
a gigantic stature (six to seven feet). The tallest specimens which

THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC APES. 473

have reached Europe have not exceeded four feet in height. The
Orang has short and feeble lower limbs ; but his arms, on the con-
trary, are very robust, and of such a length that he can touch the
ground while standing upright — a posture, however, which is neither
natural nor convenient for him. His ordinary mode of locomotion
consists in passing from one tree to another by swinging himself from
branch to branch, his progress being as rapid as that of a swift horse,
and his agility not less wonderful than that of our Leotards and Blon-
dins. His body is covered with coarse reddish hair, whose shade varies
according to his age. It is thick on the head, shoulders, and body,
but thin about the fore-parts. The face has a bluish cast, and is
partty naked ; but the eyes sink under bushy, prominent eye-brows,
and the upper lip, chin, and cheeks are garnished with a sort of longish
beard. Naked are the exterior face and palm of the hands. Where
the skin is deprived of hair, its colour is of a hodden gray.

The Orang-Outang has a large protuberant belly, a flat nose, small
ears, projecting muzzle, long, thin, and very extensible lips. In
youth the forehead projects ; but as the creature grows older, it
becomes depressed at the same time that the face lengthens ; the face
assumes a more decided bestial type ; and the intelligence, lively and
quick at first, declines into obtuseness and atrophy. The head inclines
forward ; the neck is short, thick, and seemingly afflicted with goitre,
which is due to the presence of the pouch called thyroidiari. This
pouch, placed above the sternum, extends beneath the arm-holes, and
communicates with the larnyx. When expanded, it is capable of
receiving a great quantity of air, which, being afterwards expelled
very slowly, and passing anew through the vocal organ, produces a dull
and prolonged murmur.

The Orangs have now disappeared from Continental India, and
even, we are assured, from Java, so that their chief habitats at pre-
sent are Borneo and Sumatra ; and here too they are few in number.
The genus is rapidly dying out. Those which remain seek in the
dense and marshy forests an asylum from the attacks of man, and
a shelter against the climate. During the day, they traverse the

30 a

474 THE ORANG-OUTANG.

summits of the trees in quest of food, for they subsist exclusively
upon leaves, young shoots, tender bark, and fruits. At nightfall they
conceal themselves amid the foliage of some moderately tall tree, or
in the great tufts of orchids which flourish about the arboreal giants.
There they make for themselves a couch like an even floor or plat-
form, garnish it with leaves and interwoven branches, and stretch
themselves upon it, or sit crouching, to enjoy their slumbers. It is said
that when the necessity arises they spread over themselves a similarly-
fashioned canopy as a shelter from the rain.

The Orang-Outang is timid and inoffensive ; he rarely engages in
a combat with his enemies. At times, however, when driven to
extremities, he resorts to his great muscular strength in self-defence,
and if he can succeed in grappling with his antagonist, he rends him
to pieces with his tenacious hands ; never using his teeth, although
his jaws are very powerful, and armed with canine teeth capable of
inflicting dangerous wounds. In general, when he feels himself sorely
stricken, he hurriedly climbs to the summit of the loftiest tree within
his reach, and if he finds himself still pursued, he passes on to another.
Meanwhile he utters the most dolorous cries, and vents his impotent
rage upon the tree which serves him for a refuge. One after another
he breaks the greatest branches ; but they immediately escape from
his grasp, and fall to the ground. It is this circumstance which has
originated the assertions of many travellers, that the Orang defends
himself by hurling boughs at his aggressors, and even by striking
them heavy blows with a stick. The truth is, that far from pro-
tracting his defence by the expedient his fury prompts him to adopt,
he does but expose himself the more fully to the projectiles directed
at him. The stripped tree is no longer available as a shelter. The
Malay hunters, therefore, take no heed of all this fracas, but patiently
wait until the Orang has exposed himself, to aim their arrows or rifle-
balls with the greater certainty.

Several tribes of Borneo manifest a strange partiality for the flesh
of the Orangs, and eat it as a great dainty, either roasting it over a
fire, or cutting it into steaks and drying it in the sun. The Indians

DEATH OF AN ORANG-OUTANG.

HABITS OF THE GIBBONS. 477

make use of his skin for helmets and caps of fantastic device, which
they don upon festival days, or to give themselves, when necessary,
a formidable air.

The habitat of the Gibbons (Hylobates) is more extensive in range
than that of the Orangs. They are found not only in Sumatra, in
Borneo, in the Celebes and Philippine Islands, but in considerable
portions of the two peninsulas within and beyond the Ganges. In
size they are inferior to the Anthropomorphes, their stature not
exceeding three feet. Their head is small and rounded, their muzzle
does but slightly project, and their face wears a pleasanter expression
than that of the great apes of the same group. A sort of thick black
or very dark fur, with occasionally patches of white, enwraps their
entire body. They have arms and hands of extraordinary length, but
a slightly developed belly. They live upon the forest-trees, which
they traverse without ever descending to the ground, exhibiting a
marvellous agility and suppleness. They are completely frugivorous ;
their manners are gentle ; their intelligence they retain, and even
develop, after they have attained maturity. Although they should
be captured after they have passed their youth, they easily becomo
domesticated, and display a loyal affection towards their masters.
Unfortunately the climate of Europe, and pei-haps, in particular, the
atmosphere of menageries, proves fatal to them, and those individuals
placed in the Zoological Gardens of London and Paris succumb, after
a brief residence, to dysentery or pulmonary disease.

The genus Gibbon comprises several species : the Gibbon- Siamang
(Hylobates syndactylus) is the greatest of which we have any knowledge.
Black is he as ebony, both in face and hair. His thyroidian pouch
is very large, and of great expansive powers. By means of this
ungainly organ he utters the most horrible, deafening, and prolonged
cries, which, it is said, can be heard for several leagues around. He
is common enough in Sumatra, inhabiting the dense wild woods
which lie to the north of Bencoolen. He owes his characteristic
epithet of syndactylus to the fact that the index and middle finger
of his hind-feet (or shall I say, hands ?) are united (<rvv) by a

478

THE GIBBONS DESCRIBED.

narrow membrane, which extends even to the base of the ungueal
phalange.

The Gibbon- Lar (Hylobates or Pythecus Lar) is smaller than the
preceding. His skin is of a blackish-brown, with the four extremities
and the framing of the face white. He ranges over the peninsula of
Malacca, and, according to some travellers, the kingdom of Siam.

GlBBOX-SlAMANU AND MOURSIXG GlBBOX.

The \You-Wou, or Silvery Gibbon (Hylobates leuciscus), another
Malayan species, commends himself to our notice by the silvery gray
of his skin on the upper parts of the body and the outer sides of the
anus and legs. His name of " Wou-Wou" is intended to describe his
peculiar uttei^ance — a kind of clucking totally unlike the howlings of
the other gibbons.

Ashen-gray is the colour of the skin of the Mourning Gibbon

THE MAN OF THE WOODS. 479

(Hylobates funereus] on the external sides of his limbs, while the
belly and contour of the face, and the inner parts, are of a blackish hue.
The Hylobates cinereus is of an uniform cindery-gray. He in-
habits the Sunda Islands, and principally Java, and numerous indi-
viduals of his species have been imported into Europe. His disposition
is gentle and affectionate ; he quickly familiarizes himself with the
persons who approach him.

The genus Chimpanzee (Pithecus troglodytes) is by some later
naturalists preferred to that foremost place among the Quadrumana
in which Cuvier had installed the orang-outang. He certainly
approaches the nearest — though longo intervallo — to man, of all his
race. He was long confounded with other Anthropomorphous genera,
under the vague name of " Man of the Woods" (Homo sylvestris}.
It would appear to have been the Chimpanzee that Buffon had in his
" mind's eye" when describing his Jocko ; although that ideal variety
of shaggy men, with flat, oval visage, long legs, tall and erect figure,
which stands before us in the great naturalist's pages, bears but little
resemblance to the animal we have seen in the Zoological Gardens, or
the more faithful and judicious portrait drawn by modern travellers.
But the name of Jocko is evidently a corruption of that of Enge-eko,
which the negroes of the Gaboon bestow upon the Chimpanzee, just
as the latter appellation is an imperfect reproduction of that of Quim-
peze, in use among the negroes of Angola.

Putting aside these speculations, we see that the only well-defined
species of this genus is the black Chimpanzee (Troglodytes niger of
the present nomenclature, Pygmea of Tyson). His home is the forests
of the Gaboon, the coast of Angola, and Guinea. His face is larger and
flatter than that of the orang. He has large ears, but shaped like
those of men. On the head, shoulders, and back, he wears a coat of
long black hair ; his legs are short, and his arms very long ; yet he
is better able to walk like a biped than the macaucos, or even the
orangs and the gibbons. Of all the Simidae, he alone has calves to his
legs. He has neither tail, ischiatic callosities, abajoues, nor thyroidian

480 ALL ABOUT THE CHIMPANZEE.

pouch. The hair of his head is parted on the summit, and falls down
on either side, surrounding the ear and jaws, and mingling with that
of the neck. His bare, wrinkled face is of a light copper colour ; so
are the palms of his hands, and his fingers, but his nails are generally
black.

The highest stature to which the Chimpanzee can attain is about
four and a half feet ; but as he never stands absolutely erect, he appears
much shorter. His small eyes, deep sunken in their orbits, are of a
dark hazel colour. The cranium, even in young specimens, is depressed,
and presents, in advance of a low receding forehead, a projecting
superciliary ridge. As the animal advances in years, his muzzle
lengthens, his jaws develop, his skull grows more depressed : at the
same time his intelligence gradually disappears, his manners become
fiercer, and his disposition less tractable ; in a word, the instincts of
the brute regain their supremacy. Such, at least, is the statement of
the best accredited authorities ; as for the individuals imported into
Europe, they invariably die at too early an age for any one to study
their habits and character in maturity.

The Chimpanzees live, it is said, in troops in the forests, or at
least they congregate for the purpose of repelling the attacks made upon
them by the carnaria, and to drive from their domains such other
animals as may attempt to install themselves therein to their disad-
vantage. Their weapons are ready to their, hand — stones and the
branches of trees. Their diet is essentially a frugivorous one ; yet
they will occasionally indulge in a lizard or two, or any other reptile.
Like the orangs, they construct rude beds or couches, of interwoven
boughs stripped of their greenery. The negroes of Guinea, scarcely
much higher in the scale of intelligence than themselves, look upon
them as a nation, and believe that if these Men of the Woods do not
speak, it is because they fear to be condemned to work or carried off
into slavery, and not from incapacity.

A recent traveller, whose adventures have been the subject of
much discussion, and who for a considerable period enjoyed the reputa-
tion of a Mendez Pinto or a Munchausen, asserts that he discovered

THE KOOLOO-KAMBA. 481

at the Gaboon two new species of Chimpanzees. One, called by the
natives NshUgo-Mbouve', and to which he gave the scientific name of
Troglodytes calvus, builds for himself some leafy screens of quite
artistic construction upon isolated trees. He is smaller than the
ordinary Chimpanzee, and bald.

The other species distinguished by M. Du Chaillu* is the Kooloo-
Kamba. He is distinguished from all his congeners by a very pecu-
liar cry. While offering a general resemblance to man, he approaches
him more nearly in certain respects than all the other known apes.
His head is very remarkable, and presents a curious analogy to that of
an Esquimaux or a Chinese. His face is hairless, and wholly black.
The forehead is loftier than that of any of his congeners, and the
capacity of his skull is also greater in proportion to his height. A
wider space occurs between his eyes than is customary with the
great Simiadse. He has a flattened nose, high projecting cheek-bones,
hollow cheeks, and a well-marked orbitary arch. The muzzle is less
prominent, and larger in proportion than that of other apes. Both
sides of his face are ornamented with straight tufts of hair, which,
joining below the chin like whiskers, communicate a strange human
character to the whole countenance. His arms descend below his
knees. All the body is hairy. The shoulders are broad, the hands long
and narrow, and well adapted for climbing trees. Both arm and hand
are exceedingly muscular ; the abdomen is very prominent. The ample
ears rather resemble those of a man than the ears of any other ape.

Our peregrinations now bring us to the giant of the Quadrumana,
the true king of the forests of Equatorial Africa ; in a word, to the
Gorilla, whom Buffon has described under the name of Pongo, almost
as exactly as he pictured the Chimpanzee under that of Jocko.

We cannot be said to have known the Gorilla for more than a
quarter of a century.

It was in 1847 that Dr. Savage, an American missionary, recog-
nized the Pongo as a species of the genus Troglodytes, distinct from

* Du Chaillu, "Travels and Adventures in Equatorial Africa" (London, 1863).
31

482 A MYSTERIOUS QUADBUMANE.

the Chimpanzee, and named him Troglodytes Gorilla, in allusion to
the celebrated narrative of the Carthaginian Hanno relative to the
pretended female Gorillas which that navigator professed to have seen
in an island of the Gulf of Guinea. Since that period the Gorilla has
been carefully studied by the eminent naturalist Professor Owen.
Messieurs Gautier and Franquet, French naval surgeons, collected
some important information upon the habits and physiology of this
great ape, and M. Franquet procured for the Paris Museum the
skeleton of an adult Gorilla. Other dead and preserved specimens
have since been imported into England and France, and the anatomy
of this African Troglodytes is accurately known. And, finally, M.
Du Chaillu, in the work already quoted, has supplied numerous
strange and interesting details, which, if at first discredited and
contested, are now very generally accepted as strictly accurate.

The name of " Pongo," applied to the Gorilla by Battel and
BufFon, is clearly a modification or corruption of that of the tribe of
Mpongwess, who dwell on the banks of the Gaboon, not far from the
forests tenanted by this mysterious Quadrumane.

The Mpongwess negroes call the Chimpanzee Enge-eko, and the
Gorilla Etige-ena ; whence the surname of "Gina," linked to the
zoological appellation of "Gorilla" — Gm^itta-Gina.

The Gorilla appears to be confined in the dense wooded regions
of Lower Guinea, where he shuns, and, if needs be, repels the
approach of man and that of the carnivorous animals, as well as of
all those who attempt to penetrate into his retreats. Fierce and
Savage is he in his every custom ; but it has never been satisfactorily
demonstrated that he acts on the aggressive. He is not the less an
object of extreme terror to his negro neighbours, on account of his
extraordinaiy strength ; and much more, perhaps, owing to the
fantastic legends that have grown up about his name. His stature
exceeds four, and sometimes attains, it is said, to upwards of six feet.
The most salient characteristics of his head are the great width
and elongation of the face, the development of the lower jaw, and the
smallness of the osseous framework, which surrounded by a very

A MAX-MOXSTER. 483

elevated orbitary arch, whence proceeds a second ridge dominating
over all the upper part of the skull. The nose is flat, the eye deep-
sunken in its orbit, the ear small, the mouth very large. The
lips, especially the lower one, are long and veiy extensible. The
expression of the face is terrible, reminding one of Coleridge's painful
picture of a man-monster ; and especially terrible when the animal
raises the shaggy skin, and reveals the enormous fangs which bristle
in his jaws.

His neck is thick, and so short, that the head seems grafted
directly upon the shoulders. The latter are of formidable breadth,
and his vast chest resounds like a drum when he beats it with his
powerful fists, raising himself upright on his feet — an action which is
with him a sign of mistrust, hatred, and indignation. He has a large
expanded belly, like that of the orang and chimpanzee. His skin is
of a deep black, naked on the face and on the palm of the hands, but
elsewhere clothed with a rough iron-gray or brown-black hair.

The breast of the male adult is hairless, like that of the female.
With the former the hair of the back is worn off, owing to his habit
of sleeping on the ground supported against a tree. This peculiarity,
according to M. Du Chaillu, is only seen in the female when she has
attained an advanced age, in which, case it would seem to be owing
to the fact that, having no longer her infants to shelter among the
branches, she sleeps in the same fashion as the male.

The natural walk of the Gorilla is not upon two feet, but upon
four paws. In this posture, owing to the length of his arms, his
head and chest are much elevated. When he runs, his hind-legs are
brought up under the body. The arm and the leg on the same side
move simultaneously, which gives the animal a curious and awkward
gait. He runs, however, with extreme swiftness.

Despite the strength of his jaws, despite his enormous canine
teeth, the Gorilla is exclusively frugivorous ; but as he stands in need
of abundant nourishment, he is compelled to change his quarters
incessantly. His habits, therefore, are essentially nomadic. He is
not gregarious. M. Du Chaillu affirms that he has never seen but a

484 COMBAT BETWEEN MAN AND THE GORILLA.

couple of adults together, the male and the female ; sometimes an
aged male wanders about alone. Of the young, as many as five will
occasionally be found in company. It is a difficult matter to
approach them, for their hearing is very keen, and when alarmed
they immediately take to flight, while the nature of the ground
embarrasses the hunter in his pursuit.

Every hunter who understands his metier will reserve his fire,
when chasing the Gorilla, until the last moment. Whether the
furious beast takes the report for a threatening defiance, or from some
other unknown cause, if the hunter fires and misses, the Gorilla
immediately pounces upon him, and no one can withstand the force
of his attack. A single blow of his enormous foot, armed as it is with
most formidable claws, eviscerates a man, smashes in his chest, or
batters his skull. Negroes in a like situation have been seen, reduced
to despair by terror, to turn upon the Gorilla and aim at him their
discharged musket ; but they have not even the time to level an
inoffensive blow ; the arm of their antagonist falls upon them with all
its weight, shattering at once both arm and gun. I know of no
animal whose attack is so fatal to man, for the reason that he dares
to confront him face to face, with his arms for weapons of offence,
exactly like a boxer, with the exception that he has the advantage of
longer arms, and a vigour far surpassing that of any athlete who has
ever claimed the suffrages, of the ring. Fortunately, the Gorilla dies
as easily as a man. A blow in the chest, if well-directed, immedi-
ately lays him low. He falls forward on his face, his arms widely
extended, and heaving with his last breath a frightful dying cry,
half roar, half wail, which though a signal of safety for the hunter,
nevertheless resounds painfully in his ear, like the supreme utter-
ance of human agony.*

The negroes of the Gaboon are generally very partial to the flesh

of the Gorilla, as well as to that of the other great apes, although it

is, in sooth, of a leathery character. This partiality need not surprise

us on the part of a race which too frequently indulge in a horrible

* Du Chaillu, " Travels and Adventures in Equatorial Africa."

A GORILLA KILLING A NEGRO.

SOME CHARACTERISTIC DIFFERENCES. 487

banquet off their own kind. It has been observed that those tribes
which are not cannibal do not share the liking of their neighbours
for the flesh of the Gorilla or the Chimpanzee ; many even shrink
from it with peculiar horror, on account of the kinship existing,
as they believe, between these apes and man, — and the superstitious
creed which represent these animals as supernatural beings, whose
bodies are the refuge of the souls of their relatives, or of their friends,
labouring for their crimes under an eternal curse !

CHAPTER VIII.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE FORESTS : THE CEBID^, OR MONKEYS OF

AMERICA THE LEMURS THE SLOTHS THE SQUIRRELS.

THE Ancient Continent possesses, in addition to the great apes of
which I have already spoken, the Macaucos, the Cynocephali, and
the Anthropomorphes, other apes of more erect, and one might even
say more elegant figures, essentially climbers, and provided with a
long, but not prehensile tail. Such are the Semnopitheci and the
Monkeys of the African forests, of India and Indo-China, of Japan
and the Indian Archipelago. These two latter groups approximate,
by their external forms, to the apes of the New World ; divided by
Buffon into Sagouins and Sapajous, but re-united in the new classifi-
cation of naturalists under one single family, named Cebidce. These
— one genus, the Brachiura, excepted — have all a very long, and,
generally, a prehensile tail. They differ, moreover, from the Simidse
of the Old World in the disposition of their nostrils, which are
always open laterally, and separated by a thick depressed membrane ;
in such wise, that it might also be affirmed they were gifted with
two noses ! By nature they are of a gentle and placable disposition,

488

THE HOWLING MONKEYS.

readily domesticate themselves with man, and do not become in their
old age more impracticable or malicious than in youth.

The Cebidse are divided into several genera, such as the Hoivlers,
the Atelce, the Sajous, the Saimris, the Nyctipitheci, or Nocturnal
Apes ; to which we may add, perhaps, the tribe of the Hapalidce
(Ouistitis and Tamarins).

ixo MONK I:YS.

To the Howling Monkeys we have found it convenient to refer in
a preceding chapter, and it is almost needless to remind the reader
that they owe their distinctive name to their habit of assembling in
the woods, and startling the echoes with a chorus of unearthly
noises. They chiefly inhabit New Grenada, Guiana, Brazil, and

THE SPIDER MONKEY. 480

Paraguay, where, night and morning, their discordant orchestra
strikes terror to the soul of the unaccustomed traveller.

I have already said that the tail of nearly all the American Cebidae
is long and prehensile ; that is, endowed with a peculiar faculty of
winding or clinging round any object.

In the genus Ateles, or "Spider Monkey," for example, it virtually
forms a fifth limb, by whose agency the animal suspends himself in

ATELES CROSSING A RIVER.

the air, and darts from one tree to another with more than the agility
of a Leotard. It amply compensates for the imperfection with which
Nature has afflicted him by leaving his fore-paws deprived of thumbs.
He owes his popular designation of the Spider Monkey to his long
slender limbs and sprawling gestures. In the colour of his skin, his

31 a

490 THE MONKEY TRIBE.

methodical slowness, and the suppleness of his movements, he
resembles the gibbons. Of all animals he alone has the biceps of the
thigh resembling that of man. He is fond of the society of his kind,
and mainly subsists on insects, small fish, and molluscs, which he
catches with all the address of a practised angler. Travellers affirm
that he frequently crosses the wide American rivers without descend-
ing to the ground. He and his comrades form a living chain, which
hangs suspended from a lofty branch, and, by a series of more or less
nimble movements, succeeds in hooking itself on to a tree on the other
side. This chain serves at first as a flying bridge for the whole troop ;
then it accomplishes its own passage, by detaching itself from its point
of suspension to fall back on the opposite bank. The tale, however,
has an improbable air about it, which makes a large demand on
the reader's belief.

It is from South America, and notably from Brazil and Guiana,
that we import into Europe the apes most valued by our itinerant
mountebanks and by zoological amateurs, on account of their gentle-
ness, their domesticity, their intelligence, and their singular instinct
of imitation — almost amounting to genius — which renders them
wonderfully apt in the performance of all kinds of tricks and amusing
exercises. Nearly all these apes belong to the very numerous genus
of Sajous, or Sapajous.

Thus we have the Squirrel Monkey (Callithrix sciurus), not
much larger than the animal whose name he bears, and infinitely
more nimble and diverting. He is of a bright golden yellow colour,
with feet and hands of a deeper yellow. His head is round, with a
blackish nose, and hairy ears. His tail is very long, and tipped with
black. The nails of his hands are flat, while those of his feet resemble
claws.

The Ouistitis, which are frequently imported into Europe, are
very pretty animals, clad in a soft kind of fur, and with their ears
ornamented by long brush-like tufts of black or white hairs. They
are very easily tamed, are mild and intelligent, and, owing to their
small size, conveniently kept in apartments ; but they do not acclima-

THE LIONS OF HINDOSTAX. 491

tize in Europe, and, even if they survive the voyage, die very shortly
after their arrival.

Linnd has given the name of Lemurs, which modern naturalists
have also adopted, to a race of quadrumanous animals approximating
in many particulars to the Monkey tribe, but forming, nevertheless,
a perfectly distinct zoological family. It comprises five genera : one,
that of the Galagos, belongs to Africa ; two inhabit India and the
neighbouring islands — namely, the Loris and the Tarsii ; and, finally,
two others, the Makis and the Indris, are exclusively confined to
Madagascar, where they occupy the same position as the Apes properly
so called on the continent.

The Galagos are distinguished by their great eyes, their large
membranous ears, which double down when the animal is at rest,
their extraordinary long hind limbs, and their long and tufted tail.
In size they vary from that of a rat to that of a rabbit. The Senegal
Galagos, or Gum animals of Senegal (Galago Senegalensis), have, at
night, all the activity of birds, hopping from bough to bough on their
hind limbs only. They watch the insects flitting among the leaves,
listen to the fluttering moth as it darts through the air, and leap
upon it with arrow-like rapidity, seldom missing their prize, which is
caught by the hands. Their nests are made in the branches of the
trees, and they cover a bed for their young with grass and leaves.

What shall I say of the Loris ? Two species only are known,
and both are natives of the East Indian world : the Short-limbed
Loris (Lemur tardigradus), and the Slender Loris (Lemur gracilis\
the latter being readily recognized by the disproportionate length of
his limbs, and, especially, of his fore-arms. They live in the trees ;
feeding on insects, or, as a relish, on small birds and quadrupeds; and
going forth at night in search of their prey. They have a short muzzle,
slender body, no tail, rough tongue, and large staring eyes, placed
very near each other. Their ears are short, scarcely rising through
the hair in which they are embedded ; the nostrils project beyond the
mouth, and are surrounded by a naked muzzle ; and the thumbs are
widely separated from the fingers, both on the fore and hinder hands.

492 GRACEFUL LITTLE ANIMALS.

Of the Tarsii it is enough to say that they are insectivorous, like
the loris, and that their hind limbs are similarly disproportionate.
The tail is long and tufted ; the large, fixed, glaring eyes mark them
out as addicted to nocturnal habits. They leap about two feet at a
' spring, and by day conceal themselves under the roots of trees. Two
species are distinguished : the Tarsius fuscomanus of Fischer, and
the Tarsius bancanus of Horsfield.

The Makis approach the nearest of all the Lemuridse to the
superior Quadrumana. They have, however, like their congeners,
opposite fingers on the hind feet. The Short-tailed Indri bears
even some slight resemblance to man, in the shortness of his tail, the
length of his legs, and his altitude. The Malagasy call him the
"Man of the Woods," although he has a pointed muzzle and trumpet-
shaped ears on the summit of the head. He is the largest of the
Lemuridae, attaining, when erect, the height of three feet. His skin
is soft, and clothed in long fine hair ; whence naturalists have
named him Indris laniger. Very gentle in disposition, he is easily
tamed, although endowed with only moderate intelligence. It is said
that he can be trained to the chase.

The Maki, like the Short-tailed Indri, has a thin elongated
muzzle ; otherwise, in form, he approximates more closely to the
Ratans or the Coatis than to the Apes. Their ears are small arid
round, lateral, and almost entirely hidden in the hair ; they carry a
tail of notable length ; their fur is thick and soft. The thumb of
their anterior paws is nearly as " opposable " as that of the posterior.
To sum up : they are graceful little animals, precisely because we do
not find in them those grotesque features and that eccentric conforma-
tion which render the apes, even the most favoured by Nature, offen-
sive caricatures of man. They are lively and agile ; they climb, run,
and leap with as much grace as nimbleness. Their habits are noctur-
nal, as the development of their eyes sufficiently indicates. They
subsist on fruits and insects. Their manners are gentle ; they
accustom themselves to captivity with great readiness, and soon grow
familiar ; but they do not equal the apes in intelligence. This

RED AND WHITE MAKIS.

493

genus comprehends several species. I shall specify the Maki-Mocoas,
which is of a cindery-gray, with the cheeks and throat white, and
the tail marked with regular black rings ; the White-Mantled Maki,
whose muzzle, shoulders, and tail are black, and the rest of the body
of a pure white ; the Red Maid, very remarkable for the brightness
of his colours, for his body is of a lively red, the upper part of his
neck and head white, as well as the extremities of his legs; and,

1. Maki-Mocoas.

2. White-Mantled Maki.

finally, his belly and tail are black. Other species have been dis-
tinguished, as the Red-bellied Maki, the Yellow-bellied, the Maki
with the white forehead, and the like.

To the Fauna of the Madagascar forests also belongs an
extremely rare animal, few specimens of which have been brought
into Europe. After some hesitation our naturalists have agreed to

494 THE AYE-AYE.

refer it to the order of Primates, although its general appearance and
its system of dentition caused it at first to be taken for a kind of
large squirrel ; while, on the other hand, the form and disposition of
its thin fingers, and the development of its nails, liken it to the sloths.
This animal is the Aye-Aye, or Cheiromys Madagascariensis. The
characters which have determined its annexations to the order of
Primates are, principally, the presence of opposable thumbs on the
hind-paws ; the terminal position of the nostrils ; the oblique direc-
tion of the eyes, and the absence of a vertical fissure on the upper
lip. Its habits are not well known ; but it is a burrowing animal,
very slothful, and goes abroad at night. It has large flat ears, like a
bat's, and a tail like a squirrel's ; but its peculiarity is the middle
toe or finger of the fore-foot, whose two last joints are very long,
slender, and destitute of hair. From nose to tail it measures about
eighteen inches, and its general colour is a pale ferruginous brown,
mixed with gray.

Sonnerat, who discovered the aye-aye in his expedition to
Madagascar, at the close of the last century, succeeded in obtaining a
couple of specimens, which he kept alive for two months. "I
nourished them," he says, "upon cooked rice, and they make use, in
eating, of the thin fingers of their fore-feet, just as the Chinese do of
their chopsticks. They seemed always drowsy, resting with the head
placed between the fore-paws, and it was only by shaking them
several times we could get them to move." This torpid condition,
however, was it the effect of confinement or of natural apathy ? If
due to the latter, it would be another point of approximation between
the aye-aye and the sloths, which some naturalists have also
inclined to rank among the Primates.

Other authors have placed those latter quadrupeds in an order
apart, under the name of " Tardigrades ; " but most scientific zoolo-
gists now classify them with the Edentata, and form them into the
family of Bradypes or Bradypidre. Undoubtedly the sloth, or ai', is
an animal of curious and uncouth appearance ; in general conforma-
tion not unlike the bear, to which he also approaches in the form of

THE SLOTH MISNAMED.

495

his head, and in deficiency of tail, while his long rough hair,
coarse and shaggy, like dry withered grass, recalls the fur of the
ant-eater. The most singular peculiarity of his organization is the
structure of the feet, whose strong crooked claws, to the number of
three or more in each limb, are so linked together that they cannot
be moved separately.

The name of "Sloth" popularly bestowed on this animal is not

CHEIROMYS, OK AYE-AYE OF MADAGASCAR.

so well-deserved as some writers of Zoology made Easy have repre-
sented. It is true that his progress on the ground is made with
difficulty and slowness ; but in the trees, his customary sojourn, he
displays considerable address, and transports himself easily from tree
to tree. " He moves suspended from the branch," says Waterton ;
"he rests suspended from the branch, and he sleeps suspended from
the branch. Hence his seemingly bungled composition is at once

49C THE THREE-TOED SLOTH.

accounted for ; and in lieu of the sloth leading a painful life, and
entailing a miserable existence upon his progeny, it is but fair to
conclude that he just enjoys life as much as any other animal, and
that his extraordinary formation and singular habits are but further
proofs to engage us to admire the wonderful works of Omnipotence."

Dr. Lund says of the Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus torquatus) that
he climbs with remarkable sureness and aptitude. The manner in
which he moves is thus : — Lying on his belly, with all his four
extremities stretched out from his body, he first presses one of his
hind-feet with all its might against the ground, whereby the corre-
sponding side of the body is slightly raised. The fore-leg on the same
side thus becomes sufficiently free for the animal to move it a little in
advance. He then hooks his powerful claws fast in the earth, and
so drags his body a little onwards. The same manoeuvre is next
repeated on the opposite side ; and thus the poor animal progresses
in the slowest and most laborious manner. But though his organiza-
tion unfits him for terrestrial locomotion, it is wonderfully adapted,
as I have said, to climbing trees. With his long arms he reaches
high up, and clings fast to the bough with crooked claws. The
inverted position of the soles of his hind-feet gives him a power of
clutching the trunk of the tree which no other mammal possesses ;
so that truly when we see him climbing a tree, we can scarcely
believe it to be the same animal that lies so helpless on the ground
Hence we see that the sloth's organization is .wholly adapted for
living in trees. Compared with the slowness of his motions, he is
the best climber among mammals, while he is the worst walker ; or
rather, he is the only mammal that can neither walk nor stand.

The Bradypes family is peculiar to South America. It includes
but two genera, whose types are the CJialypus-Unau and the Brady-
pus-Ai. The Unau, or Two-toed Sloth, is found in the forests of
Peru, Guiana, and Columbia. His length is from twenty to thirty
inches. He has a large head; long and dry hair, of a grayish-brown.
During the day he sees very imperfectly, and therefore passes most
of his time asleep upon a tree, where he may be seen clinging by three

THE TWO-TOED SLOTH.

497

of his feet to a bough, and making use of the fourth to reach and
convey to his mouth the food on which he lives. The Ai is more
indolent in his habits than the Unau, from which he differs rather in his
anatomical and osteological characteristics than in his aspect and con-
formation. He may, however, be recognized by his rudimentary tail,
his flattened visage, and the long frizzled hair which covers certain
parts of the body.

1. Ai (Two-toed Sloth).

2. Unau (Three-toed Sloth).

We have seen that the aye-aye may be considered as connecting
the Quadrumana with the Bradypes, on the one hand, and the
squirrels on the other. These two groups, however, exhibit a very
striking contrast between their habits and disposition; and since to
animals of the former the name has been given of " Sloths," the latter
might justly be designated "the Active." If there exist, indeed, any
animals for whom movement is a vital necessity, these, assuredly, are

32

498

EUROPEAN SQUIRRELS.

the squirrels. They climb trees with great agility, and leap from one
branch to another with a marvellous vigour and precision. On the
ground, they trot rather than run. They are essentially gramini-
vorous and frugivorous; nuts, fruits, seeds, the young stems of trees,
forming their chief nourishment, though at times they plunder birds'
nests, and regale themselves with the eggs or even the "callow
brood."

COMMON EUROPEAN SQUIRRELS.

The Squirrel (Sdurua) belongs to the family Sciuridce, in the order
Rodentia. Their special characteristics may be enumerated as a long
bushy tail, generally carried curved over the body, whence the Greek
name Skiouros (enact, a shade, and ovpa, a. tail), fore-paws furnished
with four toes, which have curved claws, and a tubercular thumb ;
long hind-legs, the feet provided with five toes; two incisors in each
jaw; and four molar teeth on each side of each jaw, simple, with

THEIR HABITS AND MANNERS. 499

tuberculous crowns, and a fifth in front of the upper jaw, which soon
falls out. The squirrel's fur, thick and soft, is of a bright reddish-
brown colour, more or less varied with gray; with a snow-white belly
and breast, and a tail brown, or almost black. The ears are
ornamented with long tufts of hair. The eyes, directed laterally,
are black and lively, shining with subdued mischief; the legs
are short and muscular; and when on the ground the animal
moves by a succession of leaps, the tail being undulating and ex-
tended. He lives constantly in the forest, selecting a particular tree,
where he builds his nest, either in a hollow of the trunk or among
the branches. In the latter case he builds himself a sort of cabin,
with twigs and stems, artfully concealed beneath a covering of moss
and fragments of bark. There he lives "by his ain fireside," in the
company of his mate and their young ones, collecting an abundant
magazine of nuts and acorns for their winter provision. In the spring
and summer he loves to gambol among the leafy boughs, climbing up
and down the forest trees, and uttering a short quick stuccato cry,
like the sound which we produce by clacking the tongue against the
palate. If you attempt to seize him, he bites sharply, and scratches
like a cat. He is nevertheless easily tamed, and his engaging man-
ners, his amusing gambols, and constant liveliness, make him a great
favourite among our " domestic pets." He soon grows accustomed to his
cage, and after a brief interval of liberty returns to it of his own accord.

The Common Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) is found all over Europe,
North America, and the Northern and Temperate regions of Asia.
He is about eight inches and a-half in length, without the tail, which
measures fully six inches long. In Lapland and Sweden his colour
changes to gray in the winter season ; in the snowy wastes of Siberia,
he is frequently seen of a pure white.

The only other European species is the Alpine Squirrel (Sciurus
Alpinus), a native of the Alps and Pyrenees, of a deep brown colour,
speckled with yellowish-white.

To North America belongs the Gray Squirrel (Sciurus Carolin-
ensis), where he enjoys his free and sportive life in the great forests of

600 SQUIRRELS EVERYWHERE.

hickory, oak, maple, and chestnut. His whole length, including the
tail, is about two feet. As he forays plentifully among the corn-fields,
the inhabitants regard him as a scourge, and wage deadly war against
him. Like the lemming, he migrates about autumn, in immense
hosts ; advancing in a straight course, which no obstacle is permitted to
interrupt, and spreading desolation, like the course of an invading army.

The large species of the Fox Squirrel (Sciurus vulpinus) belongs
exclusively to the " murmurous pine-woods" of South America. The
Cat Squirrel (Sciurus cinereus) is remarkable for the exquisite fine-
ness of his fur. In the neighbourhood of Hudson's Bay dwells the
Red or Hudson's Bay Squirrel (Sciunig Hudsonius), marked along the
middle of the back by a ferruginous line from head to tail, with the
belly of a pale ash-colour, mottled with black.

In the northern districts of Africa we meet with the Barbary
Squirrel (Sciurus getulus), which dwells among the palm-trees, and is
of a grayish-brown colour, lightly shaded with red, with two white
longitudinal bands separated by a brown streak. Cross to the eastern
coast, and there we find the Abyssinian Squirrel, which has a greenish-
gray back, white belly, and tail ringed with black and white; on the
western side, the Ivory-eating Squirrel, which nibbles the tusks of
elephants killed by hunters ; and the Kendo Squirrel, one of the
smallest known. The two latter species were discovered and speci-
fied by M. Du Chaillu, who has named the former Sciurus eborivorus,
and the latter Sciurus minutus.

Among the Indian Squirrels I may name the great Malabar
Squirrel (Sciurus maximus), less remarkable for his size, which is
more than double that of the European Squirrel, than for the variety
and vivacity of his colours. On the upper part of the head, the
flanks, and thighs are of a chestnut purple; the shoulders, hind-
quarters, and tail of a glossy black; the belly and inner sides of the
limbs, a pale yellow.

Zoologists have classified in two genera, distinct from the true
Squirrels, under the names of Pteromys and Sciuroptera, the animals
popularly called " Flying Squirrels." The first of these genera is

FLYING SQUIRREL. 601

proper to Southern Asia; the second comprehends the species common
to Asia and Eastern Europe, others which are exclusively Asiatic, and
others which are only met with in North America.

These Sciuridae have no wings and no capacity of flight ; but their
anterior and posterior limbs are connected on either side by a
membrane, which is really nothing but a fold of skin, and which they
extend by spreading out their paws so as to present to the air a con-
siderable surface. By means of this kind of parachute, they can cross,
by leaping from one tree to another, an extensive area. My space
only permits me to allude to the Virginian Flying Squirrel (Pteromys
volucella), and the Common Flying Squirrel (Pteromys volans). The
former is about five inches long, with a tail four inches ; of a subfer-
ruginous brown colour above, and a yellowish- white beneath ; the
edges of the flying membrane are of a deeper tint than the rest of the
fur, contrasting with the white border of the under part. He is
naturally of a gregarious disposition, and ten or twelve may be seen
in company, flying from tree to tree. In case of need he can swim
like other quadrupeds, and yet, on quitting the water, can resume his
aerial motion. He feeds on fruits, nuts, and young leaves and twigs;
is of an affectionate nature, and easily domesticated.

The Common Flying Squirrel (Pteromys volans) belongs to the
northernmost regions, and his favourite haunt is the pine and birch
woods of Siberia, On the upper parts his colour is a pale gray, on
the under a milky white. Measured from the nose to the tail, his
length is six inches ; and the tail, which is thickly furred and slightly
flattened, is somewhat shorter than the body. He flies, or rather
springs, through the agency of an expansile furry membrane, reach-
ing, as I have stated, from the fore-feet to the hind. He builds his
nest of the finest mosses in the hollows of the old forest trees ; is a
solitary animal emerging from his retreat only at the approach of the
gloaming; feeds on young buds and catkins; and springs from one
tree to another with astonishing velocity.

The Pteromys splendens belongs to Java and Borneo : his body
is clothed in fur of a warm red hue. The Sciuroptera Polatouche,

502 THE CHIPPING "SQUIRREL

which inhabits the north of Europe and Asia, is of an ashen gray on
the upper, and of a snowy white on the inferior parts.

Some species of Sciuridce seldom ascend trees, but burrow on the
ground, and are further distinguished by their possession of cheek-
pouches. They form the genus Tamias. The best known is the
Chipping Squirrel, Hacker, or Chipmuck (Tamias Lysteri}, which
abounds in the United States as far north as the fiftieth parallel, and
derives his name from his peculiar chipping or cheeping cry, like that
of a young chicken. He burrows near the roots of trees, and several
squirrels frequently tenant one burrow, where they lay up stores of
nuts and grain for winter supply. His length is fully ten inches;
the general colour gray, longitudinally striped with yellowish-white
and black.

CHAPTER IX.

MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS. ANTHROPOPHAGY.

IN the Steppes and Deserts of Sand we have seen men ignorant and
wild, semi-brutalized in manner and tastes, and miserable in condition :
some sedentary and peaceful, cultivating with laborious care an
ungrateful soil; others, and by far the greater number, nomadic and
pastoral in their habits; and others, again, living partly on the pro-
duct of their herds, partly on the plunder obtained by a life of piracy.
But between these races and civilized nations there still exist some
analogies of belief, of polity, of social economy. In the sacred codes
which fill, for them, the place of our elaborate legal and political
systems, lofty precepts of justice and charity, salutary rules of morality
and hygiene, mingle with barbarous customs and absurd or super-
stitious practices. Their religions, founded, like Christianity itself, on
the idea of a Divine unity, a God of mercy and punishment, they hold
in common with peoples who have left their mark on the history of

PLEASURES OF SAVAGE MAN. 503

the world, and to whom, moreover, they are attached by close ties of
consanguinity.

Widely different is the man of the Prairies and the Forests, the
Savage, who even to our own days has remained plunged in the
lowest depths of social, intellectual, and moral development. Differing
the one from the other, according to the country which they inhabit,
the colour of the skin, the features of the countenance, and sometimes
the forms and outlines of the body, savages everywhere approximate
very closely in the general character of their instincts, sentiments, and
ideas, and represent to us that early condition of humanity from which
it has only been elevated by the Divine impulse and for the Divine
purposes.

Assuredly it is not these whom Bonald has in view when he
defines Man as "an intelligence served by organs;" for with them the
respective parts of the mind and the body are inverted, and the first
is the very humble servant of the second; its sphere of activity,
accordingly, is very much restricted. War, the chase, the coarse
pleasures of the banquet, the dance — and what a wild, barbarous,
sensual dance it is ! — the recital and glorification of the deeds of their
ancestors, their nation, and themselves, mingled with marvellous im-
probabilities which he readily accepts for authentic histories, _ and
finally, gambling — these are the only pleasures of the savage.

The chase is almost his sole means of existence ; for he is no
shepherd, and still less is he a tiller of the ground. He contents
himself with gathering those alimentary substances which Nature
spontaneously pours out at his feet ; and as, among these, the flesh
of animals is that which he prefers, he exerts all his physical faculties,
and all the resources of his intelligence, to procure it. He fashions
for himself arms ; he learns to handle them skilfully, as well as to
follow up the scent of the game, to contend with the wild beast in
agility or cunning ; and he displays in this exercise a courage, a
patience, and an ardour augmented by the stimulus of vanity, which
prompts every tribe and every individual to claim the crown of
superior bravery and the prize of sm-passing skill.

504 SANGUINARY INSTINCTS.

From emulation to rivalry, from the chase to the campaign, there
is but one step. War, for the savage, is but a more dangerous and
a more glorious chase ; a chase more productive and more fertile in
pleasures than the ordinary chase. Therein his self-love, as well as
his fierce sanguinary instincts, can be amply gratified ; and he feels a
keener delight than in the pursuit of the lion or the tiger. He also
derives from it far greater advantages, realizes far more considerable
profits ; the likeness is moreover all the closer, since he looks upon
his vanquished enemy sometimes as a prey, sometimes as a slave or
a thing for sale or barter. He may either kill him and eat him, or
constrain him to labour for him ; or finally sell him for money, or
exchange him against other "goods and chattels." If he does not
cut him down on the battle-field, and it should not suit him to let
his captive live, he may enjoy the pleasure of varying and mul-
tiplying his tortures before he deals the death-blow. Among all
savage races no banquet is more eagerly enjoyed than the torture of
their prisoners. It is generally round the stake to which the
shuddering victims are confined, or their throbbing and bleeding
remains, just about to be devoured, that the conquerors execute
fantastic dances, and surrender themselves to noisy manifestations of
joy, making the air re-echo with their discordant songs and the not
less discordant sounds of their rude musical instruments ; then after
the hideous banquet — accursed as that which Pelops offered to the
gods — seated around the glowing embers, and in the midst of the
frightful fragments of the feast, they love to recall their achievements
in the battle and the chase, or beguile the time with some rude game
of chance. Gambling, like war and the chase, seems to be an innate
passion with savages ; and, sooth to say, it is a vice worthy of them
and of their brutalized nature. Rightly does the poet exclaim. —

" What meaner vice

Crawls there than that which no affections urge,
And no delights refine ; which from the soul
Steals mounting impulses which might inspire
Its noblest ventures, for the arid quest
Of wealth 'mid ruin ; changes enterprise

WANT OF A LITERATURE. COS

To squalid greediness, makes heaven-born hope
A shivering fever, and in vile collapse
Leaves the exhausted heart, without one fibre
Impelled by generous passion ? " *

The " shivering fever " consumes the savage's very life-blood ; he
gives himself up to it with unrestrained frenzy, and stakes, upon a
throw of the dice, his weapons, his possessions, his women, and even
his liberty.

Scarcely less violent is the passion which plunges him into
drunkenness. With the fermented juices of various plants he is
skilful in compounding intoxicating liquors, though he greatly prefers
to these raw preparations the subtle mixtures introduced by Euro-
peans. There is nothing which you cannot obtain from him for a
few bottles of rum, of whisky, or brandy. And it is to the shame of
our merchants that they do not scruple to stimulate, for their own
sordid benefit, this vile passion to the utmost, against which the
efforts of all our missionaries have proved almost powerless ; so that,
in truth, the commerce of the savage with civilized men, far from
contributing to raise the former out of their abject, slothful, and
degraded condition, has, on the contrary, 'proved for the majority of
them a new source of embrutization and depravity.

Savages have no other literature than the traditions, myths, and
marvels to which I have already alluded. They have no written
language ; and here we are at once provided with a means of
distinguishing the wholly savage from the partly civilized races. The
reduction of speech to a definite system, the acknowledgment of
certain laws and principles as affecting the formation of a language,
is the first great step out of barbarism which a barbarous people
accomplishes.

Their science is limited to some acquaintance with the properties

of the plants which they make use of, either as food, medicine, or

poison. Medicine, indeed, as practised by "medicine-men," priests,

or "sorcerers," consists practically of superstitious formulas, whose

* T. Noon Talfourd," Dramatic Works."

32 a

506 INTELLECTUAL DEFICIENCIES.

object is to expel the "evil spirit" which the savage supposes to be
the cause of all his maladies.

The logical faculties are invariably those which in man are
developed the most slowly and with the greatest difficulty. But they
are also those which constitute the intellectual power of great nations.
Without Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, what had been ancient Hellas ?
Without Bacon, Locke, Newton, and Stuart Mill, what were modern
England ? Or Italy, without Galileo ? And France, without Pascal,
Descartes, Diderot, and Montesquieu ? And Germany, without Fichte,
Hegel, Kant, and Schlegel ? The savage, however, possesses these
faculties in a purely rudimentary condition. Analysis, synthesis,
abstraction, generalization, are mental achievements which they
cannot accomplish. They show themselves incapable, in fact, of the
simplest calculations, of resolving easy arithmetical problems which
are no mystery to the infants in our European infant-schools. Their
numeration never goes beyond the safe and certain limit of their ten
fingers ; often they cannot compute above five, three, and even two.
The Guarinis employ the expression "one hand" and "two hands" to
designate jive and ten ; other American tribes say " two men " instead
of forty, because each man tias twenty toes and fingers. Among most
of the African negroes, numeration is quinary ; it is ternary, or even
binary, among the Australian aborigines. The savage knows nothing
of art, nor of that feeling for beauty which is the essence of art.
If he cultivates music, it is of so discordant a character, and so incon-
gruous a medley of sounds, that no European can listen to it with
patience. The gods which they fashion out of wood or clay, and to
which they frequently offer human sacrifices, are of the utmost
hideousness ; and it is with difficulty the spectator can recognize in
their rude outlines any likeness, however imperfect, to the models in
man or beast which the sculptor has pretended to imitate. The want,
or rather the depravation of taste, is shown in the choice of the
ornaments with which they decorate their persons ; in the tatooings
with which they bespatter their bodies ; in the unbecoming ornaments
of every kind which they suspend to the nose, the lips, the ears,

THE " GKEAT SPIRIT." 507

and which render monstrous the visage already ugly enough by
nature.

The savage has no "industries" in the sense which we attach to
that comprehensive word; the terms "trade," "business," "pro-
fession," possess no equivalents in his language. He builds himself a
hut, a cabin, or a wigwam; and he fabricates for his use a few
indispensable implements, weapons, and utensils. The only profession
recognized among savage peoples is that of the priesthood. Priests,
indeed, are everywhere found as the teachers and ministers of a
religion — if we are willing to bestow that sacred word on an incon-
gruous mass of superstitious practices and beliefs, founded upon some
dim idea of the existence of a Supreme Being. And this idea exists,
though very faintly and rudely, and mingled with many atrocious or
absurd aberrations, among most of the red-skins of North America
and the islanders of Polynesia. These races believe in the power of
a superior God, whom the former denominate the "Great Spirit,"
Kitchi Manitou, and the latter Taoroa or Tangara ; as well as in
another life, a coarse and sensual immortality, wherein they hope to
enjoy the full measure of those animal delights which constitute their
ideal of perfect happiness. The conception which the savage forms
of his God is, nevertheless, a very poor and imperfect one. He never
connects him with his thoughts, his emotions, his moral or intellectual
nature ; but only with the material world — with the thunder and the
lightning, the sunshine and the cloud. " Who is it," says the
Indian, " that causes the rain to rise in the high mountains, and to
empty itself into the ocean ? Who is it that causes to blow the loud
winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer ? Who
is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them
with the quick lightning at his pleasure ? " And so the Polynesian
employs his priest to propitiate his God with sacrifices when the storm
rages ; and the African, after a prolonged drought, engages the inter-
cession of his "rain-maker " to obtain the desired showers. It is not
a moral and a spiritual, but a maternal God, of whom the savage
conceives, and before whose anger he trembles.

508 SUN-WORSHIP.

In some regions of South America, and principally in Peru, man
worships the sun as his supreme divinity, and it is easy to understand
the awe and wonder with which the uncultivated mind would
necessarily look upon the orb of day, the master and ruler of the
year. With Southey, I find myself ready to exclaim : —

" I marvel not, 0 Sun, that unto thee
In adoration man should bow the knee.
And pour the prayer of mingled awe and love ;
For like a god thou art, and on thy way
Of glory sheddest, with benignant ray,
. Beauty, and life, and joyaunce from above."

We know, too, that sun-worship has prevailed among the most
highly civilized races, and that it was the basis of Greek, Egyptian,
Celtic, and Oriental mythologies. "Our northern natures," says Mr.
Helps,* referring to the influence of this religion of the outer world,
" can hardly comprehend how the sun and the moon and the stars
were imaged in the heart of a Peruvian, and dwelt there ; how the
changes in these luminaries were combined with all his feelings and
his fortunes ; how the dawn was hope to him ; how the fierce mid-
day brightness was power to him ; how the declining sun was death to
him ; and how the new morning was a resurrection to him : nay, more,
how the sun and the moon and the stars were his personal friends, as
well as his deities ; how he held communion with them, and thought
that they regarded every act and word ; how, in his solitude, he
fondly imagined that they sympathized with him ; and how, with
outstretched arms, he appealed to them against their own unkindness,
or against the injustice of his fellow-man." But such a creed as this
is indicative of some degree of advancement, of some modicum of
civilization, and may not be compared with the monstrous fetichism
prevailing in Melanesia, Australia, Africa, and the Polar Deserts. In
these regions the savage takes for the objects of his veneration beasts
and inanimate objects ; or is without any definite belief, and shows
himself refractory to all religious teaching. Such is the case, according
* Arthur Helps, " Spanish Conquest in America."

A PICTURE OF SUPERSTITION. 500

to Sir John Ross, among the Eskimos ; while the Australians,
according to Latham, have not even succeeded in formulating the
rudest elements of a mythology ; and the negroes of Equatorial
Africa indulge in horrible superstitions which are a hundredfold worse
than the absence of all belief.

The individuals, therefore, who act as priests among these ignorant
and stupid savages are, in reality, only miserable sorcerers, to whom
they attribute the power of predicting the future, of controlling wind
and rain, the sun and the moon, of curing disease, either by magic
potions, incantations, or amulets ; but they fear without respecting
them, and never hesitate to put them to death when the effect of
their juggleries or their prophecies does not respond to the hopes
cherished by the worshippers.

Among these credulous and cruel peoples we find the realization
of all those terrible dreams embodied by the poet in his picture of
the influences and consequences of superstition. For a vivid com-
mentary on the following lines of Pope, the reader should turn to
the pages of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Du Chaillu, William Ellis,
John Williams, or Admiral Wilkes. Of superstition, the poet says :*—

" She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray
To powers unseen, and mightier far than they:
She, from the rending earth and bursting skies,
Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise ;
Here fixed the dreadful, there the blessed abodes ;
Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods :
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust ;
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
Zeal, then, not charity, became the guide ;
And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride.
Then sacred seemed the ethereal vault no more ;
Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore ;
Then first the flamen tasted living food ;
Next his grim idol smeared with human blood ;
With heaven's own thunders shook the world below,
And played the god an engine on his foe."

* Pope, " Poetical Works" — Essay on Man.

510 ANTHROPOPHAGY.

The savage has only rudimentary notions of the justice, the
respect, and the good-will which man owes to his fellows. Never-
theless, if in some parts of the world he appears an intractable, cruel,
and perfidious being, in others his manners are gentle, inoffensive,
and hospitable. And nearly everywhere he seems capable of grati-
tude, devotion, and even of veritable heroism. But, in general, the
law of the strongest is the only law which he recognizes ; the fear
of an immediate and corporeal chastisement is the sole restraint upon
his passions ; and the material instincts are the most powerful
impulses of his actions. The want or narrowness of the moral
sense induces as its natural consequences among the unfortunate
savages every form of debauchery — the absolute and brutal tyranny
of the chief over his tribe, of man over woman, of the father over
his children, of the conqueror over the conquered ; murder on the
slightest occasion, and with incredible refinements of cruelty ; and,
finally, anthropophagy — that hideous custom which lowers man below
the most ferocious beasts, and which, nevertheless is not always, as
might be supposed, the sign of the lowest abasement.

Anthropophagy springs from different causes, and clothes itself in
various forms. Sometimes it is but the expression of a sanguinary
instinct, of an atrocious sentiment of vengeance ; sometimes it
is the consequence of a state of misery and of famine almost per-
manent ; often, also, it is closely connected with the usage of human
sacrifices, and those who practise it consider it as a sacred duty,
as an act of piety, agreeable to their divinities or to the manes of
the victims whose very flesh they devour.

Unknown to the stupid Eskimos, and in general to all hyper-
borean races, anthropophagy rages with intensity among peoples
comparatively civilized. The Ghoiids of Hindostan, peaceful and
laborious cultivators, are not exactly cannibals, but every year they
immolate to their divinities a multitude of children, whom they flay
and cut to pieces while alive, and whose flesh they distribute in
fragments over the fields they are about to sow.

In Sumatra there exists a tribe, that of the Battas, which has

IX POLYNESIA. sis

not only a religion and a worship, but a kind of constitution, a litera-
ture, and a penal code. This code condemns certain classes of
criminals to be eaten alive. After the sentence has been pronounced
by the competent tribunal, two or three days are suffered to elapse
in order to give the people time to assemble. On the appointed day
the criminal is led to the place of execution, and bound to a stake.
The offended party, or his nearest relation, if he has been murdered,
advances and chooses the choicest morsel ; the others follow in their
turn, and with their own hands cut off such pieces as please their
fancy. Finally, the unfortunate wretch is relieved from his sufferings
by the chief, who strikes off his head. The flesh is eaten on the
spot, raw or cooked, according to each man's taste.

The natives of some of the Polynesian Islands consider that they
render a service to their aged parents by slaying them, and that, by
eating them, they provide the most honourable mode of sepulture.
Others believe that a man, by devouring his enemy, infiltrates into
his blood all the virtues with which the latter was endowed. A
similar prejudice exists among certain tribes on the Amazon.

It is beyond doubt that, in a majority of cases, anthropophagy
originates in scarcity of food, in the lack of cattle and game, while,
in others, many cannibals are attracted by the delicious savour of
human flesh, which they prefer to every other. Among the Cohens
of the Uanpes, says Maury, man is considered as veritable game, and
these savages declare war against the neighbouring tribes only with
the object of procuring a supply of human flesh. When they have
more than they require for present needs, they dry it, smoke it, and
store it away as provision.

In the Viti Islands, whose natives are eulogized by Dumont-
d'Urville as the most intelligent in Melanesia, great festivals are
celebrated at different epochs of the year, which require a certain
number of victims. Prisoners of war are the first to be immolated ;
then all those unfortunates who are without an asylum are hunted
and collected ; and if this inhuman chase should not be sufficiently
productive, the purveyors eke out the supplies by adding some

33

514 THE BENEFIT OF MISSIONS.

wretched women, who are eaten by their own relatives. Dumont-
d'Urville speaks of a chief, named Tanoa, who, for a public banquet,
caused thirty women to be slain, and their kin, far from murmuring
or lamenting, took part in the hideous feast.

In Africa, Captain Burton saw, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika,
a cannibal people, named the Vouabembes, who feed upon carrion,
vermin, larvse, and insects, and carry their sluggishness and brutality
to such an extreme as to eat raw and putrid human flesh. Although
you may see on every countenance, says this adventurous traveller,*
the expression of chronic hunger, the poor wretches, timid, fuliginous,
stunted, degraded, seem far more dangerous enemies to the dead than
to the living.

Owing to the exertions of our missionaries, this horrible practice,
against which our better nature instinctively rebels, is rapidly dying
out in every region where their beneficial influence extends. In
Polynesia and New Zealand, for instance, cannibalism is almost
extinct. And if we owed no other service to the self-denying exer-
tions of the soldiers of the Cross, this alone would entitle them to
our gratitude, for the extermination of anthropophagy is the first step
towards teaching man to reverence man.

CHAPTER X.

MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS THE SAVAGE RACES

THE NEGROES.

" When wild in woods the untutored savage ran."

SAVAGERY is evidently the primitive condition of man. But while
for certain races it has only been the first period of a more or less
rapid progressive evolution, a movement in advance more or less com-
plete, for others it seems to be a perpetual infancy, an incurable
* Capt. R. F. Burton, " Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa. '

EARLY HISTORY OF MAN. 515

atrophy of the noble faculties which are the privilege of our species.
It is not the province of the present writer to determine the causes,
undoubtedly very complex, which have operated in the formation of
the various races composing the human genus, to allot to each the
physiological and psychological characteristics which distinguish them,
and to explain their distribution in the different regions of the globe.
These are problems, indeed, which science has only begun to inves-
tigate, and in whose discussion scientific men exhibit the widest
discrepancies of opinion. While one authority contends for man's
unity of origin, another believes that he has sprung from several
independent sources. All at present is hypothesis and conjecture;
nor do there apparently exist any well-approved facts on which a
satisfactory theory can be erected apart from the brief and succinct
details recorded in Holy Writ. Why one race has emerged from
barbarism while another remains sunk in its lowest depths, we can
only explain by admitting the exercise of a superhuman power. No
evidence can be given that any people has achieved civilization by
its own unassisted efforts. But in these pages I am not called upon
to enter into any philosophical speculations. I have only to deal
with facts ; and with one incontestable fact, the superiority of those
races which have acquired civilization over those which are incapable
of so grand a work, and which show little, if any, aptitude to profit
by the examples and the lessons brought within their reach.

Whether it is due to wholly external circumstances, such as
climate, geographical situation, geological constitution of the soil, its
nature and that of its productions, that such differences should exist
between different races, that some should reign as sovereigns over
the earth, while others, in their pretended liberty, are given up to
all the horrors of slavery, ignorance, misery, and cannibalism, I am
not called upon to determine. It seems both probable and possible.
"To understand any people thoroughly," says Mr. Helps, "we must
know something of the country in which they live, or at least of
that part inhabited by the dominant race. The insects partake the
colour of the trees they dwell upon, and man is not less affected by

516 THE SAVAGE RACES.

the place of his habitation on the earth." We cannot pretend to
undervalue the importance of race. We cannot deny that one is the
ruler, the other the ruled. As Emerson says,* "It is race, is it not ?
that puts the hundred millions of India under the dominion of a
remote island in the north of Europe. Race is a controlling influence
in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has pre-
served the same character and employments." It is race that has
planted the Anglo-Saxon on every shore, and that for ages has sub-
jected the negro to the yoke of bondage. At all events, it is certain
that, even in the present day, savagery is the exclusive portion of
certain races, perfectly distinct in a physiological point of view from
the white and yellow races (the Caucasian and Mongolian), which,
either in antiquity or the modern age, have arrived at more or less
advanced degrees of civilization.

The savage races may be divided into four great groups : —

The Negro, in Africa and North America ;

The Malayo-Polynesian, in Polynesia and the Indian islands.

The American, or Red Indians ; and

The Hyperborean, chiefly represented by the Eskimos.

The Negro or Black races are distributed over the whole of Africa,
from the Cape of Good Hope to the frontiers of the Saharan region.
The name of Negro is also given to the natives of Australia and
Papouasia. But most anthropologists agree in considering the Aus-
tralian branch wholly distinct from, and independent of, the African
branch ; which, nevertheless, it resembles in several organic pecu-
liarities, and especially in the deep colour of the skin.

This characteristic, which is the most conspicuous at the first
glance, is, however of secondary importance : it is extremely marked
on the east African coast, among the Nubians and the Abyssinians ;
on the banks of the Cuzamance, not far from the Sierra Leone coast,
among the Feloupas, and on the Guinea coast, among the Aminas.
All these peoples are black as ebony ; but their oval countenances,
* R. W. Emerson. " Essays " (Collected Works, Bell & Daldy, 2 vols.)

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEGRO. 517

their regular features, the elegance of their forms and the development
of their faculties, evidently connect them, some with the Semites,
others with the Aryan-Hindus.

On the other hand, several varieties of Negroes properly so-called
wear but a fuliginous or reddish-brown tint. It is, therefore, by less
superficial peculiarities that we distinguish the true Negro. His skull
is elongated, and laterally compressed. Sometimes his jaw projects,
a characteristic scientifically designated by the name of prognathism ;
sometimes it is more vertically disposed, but then the cheek-bones (or
" zygomathic arches ") are extremely prominent. His teeth project ;
that is, they are inclined outward, and always long and white. The
skeleton, whiter than our own, is also heavier and more massive.
The abdomen is exceedingly narrow, and with a conical cavity ; the
legs are bowed. Short the neck, broad the thorax, and convex, and
generally well made. The muscles, but slightly developed in propor-
tion to the dimensions of the osseous framework, have not the vivid
red colour which distinguishes the flesh of the European ; the blood
is black, thick, and circulates slowly. The body is always deprived
of hair ; there is little or no beard ; the hair of the head is black,
woolly, and frizzled. The eyes are of the deepest black, but inexpres-
sive. The forehead is low, the chin short, the mouth large, the lips are
long and thick. Finally, and this is the most remarkable sign of the
Negro's inferiority, the type of the face, in the same race, is so uni-
form that it is difficult to distinguish one individual from another.
To this physical uniformity corresponds a moral and intellectual
uniformity, which effaces, so to speak, all individuality. In Africa
we meet with numerous tribes more or less intelligent and capable
of being educated, many sanguinary and fierce, others benevolent and
inoffensive ; but the character and dispositions of a tribe are repro-
duced among all the individuals who compose it with scarcely per-
ceptible differences.

The Negroes of Africa may be divided into three principal
varieties : the pure Negroes, the Kaffirs, and the Hottentots. The
former comprehends all the populations of the east, centre, and west

518 AFRICAN SAVAGES.

of Africa. Its primitive stock is supposed to be the people called
Mandinke' or Malinke' (Maiidingue), formerly established at Mencle,
in the delta of the Nile, but who emigrated towards the western
coast, and now inhabit the mountainous countries bordering on
the Upper Senegal. Between this river and the Niger are grouped
some tribes in whom the Berber or Semitic blood appears mingled
with the Negro blood ; such are the Yolofs, the Foulahs, and the
Peulas, or Fellatahs. The latter are of a sooty black, with a well-
shaped head, a square frontal development, thick and woolly hair.
They have founded powerful states, and are considered as the true
civilizers of the Soudan, wliere they have introduced Islamisrn.

Further south, at the Gaboon, we meet with the wholly savage
nations of the Mpongwes, the Shekianis, and the Fans. The Mpon-
gwes inhabit the right bank of the Gaboon, spreading over an extent
of seventy to eighty miles. They are of a medium height, and
comparatively agreeable physiognomy. The men are clothed in a
calico shirt, and wrap themselves in an ample piece of stuff as a
mantle. Their head-dress is a simple straw-hat ; but the king, as a
sign of his dignity, wears a hat of silk. The women have no other
garment than close-fitting drawers descending to the knee ; but they
decorate their arms and legs with copper rings. Great amateurs are
both sexes of tinsel and perfumery, and they besprinkle themselves
with all kinds of essences. According to Du Chaillu, their character-
istic trait is their passionate ardour for trade. Their principal wares
are ivory, precious woods, and slaves. They display in their commer-
cial manoeuvres great ability jointed to the most signal bad faith.

The Shekianis occupy, between the banks of the Muni and La
Mondah, and those of the Ogobay, a territory which stretches to
within some two hundred miles of the sea. Their appearance is less
prepossessing than that of the Mpongwes. Perfidious warriors, artful
traders, bold and astute hunters ; such are the salient traits of their
character. As for the Fans, they are cannibals of the worst species,
whose appetite for human flesh leads them even to eat individuals
who have died of disease, and to disinter the dead in order to roast

THE FAN NATIONS. 519

or smoke them. When human flesh fails amongst them, they buy
or steal it from their neighbours. They are, however, according to
M. Du Chaillu, the handsomest and most gallant-looking negroes of
the interior, and their horrible diet seems to fatten and strengthen
them. Living in the mountains, they have that bold free air which
distinguishes all mountaineers.

NEOROES — NATIVES OF KIDI, AFRICA

The Negro type is seen in all its purity among the populations of
Congo, Nigritia, the Soudan, Dahomey, and Timbuctu, as well as
among those of the eastern coast, below the tenth parallel of north
latitude. In the region of the great lakes, between the coast of Zaii-
guebar and the Lakes Yictoria-Nyanza and Tanganyika, lie the king-
doms of Ugogo, Unyamezi, Unyoro, Kidi, and others, visited by

520

KAFFIR WABEIOR8.

Grant and Speke in their celebrated journey to the sources of the
Nile. The inhabitants of these countries are "darkly, deeply, beauti-
fully " black, with prominent jaws, thick lips, and oblique eyes.
Some of them, as, for instance, those of Unyoro, show a certain
amount of taste in their accoutrements, and drape themselves in the

KAFFIR WARRIORS.

Romanesque manner with folds of cotton or calico. Those of Kidi
wear no other clothing than an apron round the loins ; they carry
large rings on the arms, legs, and neck ; and arrange their hair in
sufficiently complicated tresses.

The Kaffir and Hottentot races are spread over all Southern
Africa, below the fourteenth degree of south latitude ; the former on
the east, the latter on the west coast.

In the hierarchy of races, the Kaffirs occupy a rank superior to

THE HOTTENTOTS.

521

that of the Negroes of Equatorial Africa. They have neither the
pronounced tint nor the broad flat nose of the blacks of Guinea and
the Soudan. They form great nations, build towns, cultivate the
land, and work in metals. Their stock throws off four branches : the
handsomest and most cultured is that of the Zulus, whose hue is not

HOTTENTOTS — A MAX AND WOMAN.

darker than that of the Arabs, and of whom the Wanikas offer the
most conspicuous type. Then follow the south Kaffir branch, includ-
ing the Amacondas and the Ama-Hupubas ; the Sofaloa branch, whose
type most nearly approaches the pure Negro race ; finally, the Kaffir-
Hottentot branch, which comprehends the Makololos, the Bakonis,
the Basoutos, the Batouas, the Damaras, people of a clear brown hue,
who have migrated from the north to the south, driving before them
or subjugating the Hottentots, with whom they have intermixed.

522 AUSTRALIAN NEGROES.

The Hottentot race, or Quaiqua, is characteristic of Southern
Africa. Its origin appears of remote antiquity ; but it formerly
dwelt further to the north, and has been driven back towards the
south by the progress of the more warlike Kaffirs. The Hottentots
are of low stature ; their skin is a yellowish-brown. Their head is
long, with projecting forehead and cheek-bones ; flat nose, thick lips.
Their women are hideous in face and deformed in body ; as they
grow old they grow stout, and a truly monstrous embonpoint invades
the posterior part of their person. Morally, they are in an abject
condition, which must be attributed rather to their sloth and wretched-
ness than to any lack of intelligence. Their sole garment is the
carross, a kind of sheepskin mantle. They live in such low huts that
they can only enter them by crawling. Some Hottentot tribes culti-
vate the soil, or depasture herds of cattle ; such are the Baydyds,
established on the banks of Lake Ngami ; the Namaquas, who are
distinguished into "the great" and ''the little;" and the Koranas,
who roam along the Orange River. The most miserable members
of this family are the Sosjesmans, or Bushmen, who inhabit
the Kalahari Deserts, between the Cape Colony and Kaffraria.
The total number of the Hottentot race probably does not exceed
150,000.

I have said that the Negroes of Australia and Papouasia were
wholly distinct from those of Africa. And, in fact, I can hardly admit
that it could ever have been possible for the latter to colonize the
Australian continent and the adjacent islands. What, then, is the
origin of the Australians and the Papuans ? According to some
anthropologists, they are descended from that strange race of savages
which still exists in Hindostan, in the Nielgherries, and the Te'rai,
between Palmoco, Sumbhulpoor, and the sources of the Nerbudda.
But whence came the latter ? On this subject all historical tradi-
tion is dumb, and science knows not what to think of those black-
skinned savages, with the face of an ape, a body covered with red
hair, disproportionably long arms, a protuberant belly, and who
live in the trees like the orangs and the gibbons.

THE PELAGIAN RACE.

523

Whatever may be its origin, the Pelagian Negro race now-a-days
occupies New Holland, Tasmania, New Caledonia, New Britain, New
Guinea, the Fiji Islands, and the Andaman. It comprehends the
Australians, the Papuans, the Andamanese, the Alfourous, and some
other secondary branches. We often, but erroneously, confound the
Australians and Papuans. While both are black, they differ markedly

AUSTRALIAN

from one another, and the latter are superior to the former. The
Australians are puny and wretched in appearance. They have a pro-
tuberant belly, feeble limbs, a long but not projecting face, a depressed
skull, long black frizzled hair. Their attire is remarkable for its
simplicity : a kangaroo skin flung over the right shoulder ! The
custom of painting and tatooing the body is generally adopted among
them, as well as among all savages, to whatever race they belong,

524

DECAY OF ABORIGINES.

and whatever part of the world they inhabit. The tribes are distin-
guished by the colours they make use of, and by the number and
arrangement of the incisions which the warriors make on their limbs,
their chest, and their shoulders. Their arms are spears pointed with
heads of jagged flint, and hatchets of the same material. The indi-
genous population of Australia is rapidly decreasing ; it does not

exceed a total of 3000 souls. In Tasmania the aborigines are
reduced to four, three aged women, and a young man, who has
recently visited England.*

The Papuans have not woolly hair, like the Australians. Their
hair grows in separate plaits, which twine one in another, and form,
* This was written in September 1807.

THE AXDAMANESE. 525

when of some length, a voluminous and characteristic coiffure. The
Papuans of New Guinea, according to Dumont d'Urville, are men of
medium stature, with elegant forms, oval countenance, and tolerably
regular features. Their skin is of a dark brown colour. They appear
to be of a timid and unenterprising character. Their residence they
have* planted on the shores of the sea, where they dwell in long
wooden huts, raised upon piles which are plunged deep in the very
waters of ocean. It does not seem that they acknowledge the autho-
rity of any chiefs. They know only a few words of the Malayan
language, and speak the papoua, which differs from it essentially.

The Andamanese, or Andamans, are of a jet-black colour. Their
stature rarely exceeds four and a half to five feet. Their head is
large, and sunken between the shoulders ; their hair woolly ; most of
them are disfigured by protuberant stomach and meagre lower limbs.
They go about in an absolute nudeness, for we cannot regard as any
species of clothing the coat of clay or yellow ochre which they plaster
over their bodies to protect them against the stings of insects ; the
red ochre which the earth supplies them they make use of to powder
their hair and paint their face. According to the latest estimates,
the total population of the Andaman Islands does not exceed 2000
individuals.

The Alfourous, or Harfourous, inhabit Borneo, the Celebes, the
Moluccas, Mindanao, and some other isles. Their type has no very
definite peculiarity, and ethnologists seem agreed to consider them a
mixed race, resulting from a cross between the Papuans and the
Malays, and forming the transition between the two races.

526 THE MALAYO-POLYNESIAN RACE.

CHAPTER XL

MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS : THE MALAYO-POLYNESIANS

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

THE Malayo-Polynesian race has also been designated, and much
more felicitously, the Neptunian or Pelagian, because it peoples
exclusively the peninsulas and islands of the great Southern Ocean.
It is, to speak the truth, an ill-defined, heterogeneous, and com-
posite race, presenting very diverse types. Ethnologists, however,
divide it into two original branches — the Malayan and the Poly-
nesian.

The Malays have the skull flattened in the inferior portion, the
malar bones very wide apart, a flat nose, an exceedingly wide mouth,
thick lips, and eyes raised in the direction of the temples ; their
yellow skin embrowns by exposure to the sun, but if sheltered from
its rays, grows almost white, especially with the females. Generally
speaking, they are corrupt, sanguinary, and perfidious, as our seamen
wrecked upon their shores have too frequently experienced ; but they
are intelligent, and capable of a certain degree of civilization. The
best marked types of this race are found in Sumatra, among the
anthropophagous Battas already spoken otj the Orang-Lobous, and
the Pagais. The latter tatoo the body, says Maury,* and like the
Nagas of Assam, make new marks every time they have killed a foe ;
thus bearing about on their own persons the evidences and glorifica-
tion of their prowess. Like the Michmis of Assam, they expose their
dead on rudely-constructed scaffolds or platforms, where they leave
them to decay ; a custom which prevails amongst nearly all the Poly-
nesian populations, as well as among the Redskins of North America.
We must therefore conclude that the Malayan race was, at the outset,
extremely barbarous. It owes its civilization to the influence of the
* Alfred Maury, " La Terre et 1'Homme," ch. vii.

IN MADAGASCAR.

527

Hindus, and especially to that of the inhabitants of the Malabar
coast.

This civilization, in all its conditions, the Malays appear to have
transported to Madagascar, where they have formed, by intermixture
with the Negroes of Africa, two new races — the Hovas, who still
preserve distinctly visible affinities with the Negroes properly so
called, and the Sakalaves, who approximate towards the Kaffirs.

These two mixed races comprise in themselves several varieties, but
all bear the common denomination of Malagasy or Madecassy.*

According to M. Maury, the populations of Polynesia depart the
more completely from the Malayan type as we advance in an east-

* For information, as entertaining as it is valuable, respecting the history, people, and
products of Madagascar, see the Rev. "William Ellis's " Three Visits to Madagascar," and
M. Octave Sachot's " Madagascar et les Madecasses " (Paris, 1864).

528 ISLAND OF OMBAI.

ward direction ; so that, from the Caroline Islands to the Marquesas,
and from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand, they constitute a
sufficiently homogeneous race, the Polynesians or Kanaka* This
race is represented in the Sandwich Islands by an almost white
variety, whose type very closely approaches the Caucasian race ; in
New Zealand, on the other hand, by tribes of a dark brown. In the
island of Ombai', situated at the extremity of that vast archipelago
which seems in some remote age to have formed an isthmus connect-

HOVAS OF MADAGASCAR— MEN, WOMAN, AND CHILD.

ing the Australian with the Asiatic continent, the natives are of a
more or less decided olive-brown. Their eyes are deep-set and bril-
liant, their lips thick, the mouth is large, and the nose generally flat,
yet sometimes tolerably well made. They are of medium height,
robust, and good figures. They wear a scanty beard, if any ; but

* In the language of the Sandwich Islanders. Kanak or Kanaqve signifies " a man."

ITS WARRIORS.

529

their hair is long and thick ; sometimes they suffer it to flow freely
about their shoulders, sometimes they gather it on the top of the
head with pieces of vari-coloured stuffs. These savages have a fierce
and martial air, are abrupt in their manners, and rapid in their
movements. They display extraordinary skill in the management of
the bow, and also make use of the Malayan kris or crease, whicli

RRIORS OF THE ISLAND OF O.MBAI.

they carry in their girdle. In battle they protect their persons with
a breast-plate and a buckler of buffalo hide ; these two pieces of
armour are ornamented with shells in regular and pleasing designs.
The people of Ombai are anthropophagic.

If now we transport ourselves to the eastern extremity of Poly-
nesia, the Marquesas Islands, occupied by France in 1842, we shall'

34

530 THE NOUKAHIVIAX.

find there the Pelagian race under one of its handsomest and most
amiable types. The Kanaks of this group are not exempt from can-
nibalism. Nevertheless, before the commerce, civilization, and vices
of Europe intruded upon their savage Eden, they lived in a condition
of comparative innocence ; and the corruption which has since invaded
them preserves that open and simple character proper to people in
whom the capacity of discerning good from evil is but imperfectly
developed.

A traveller, who possesses the threefold merit of being an elegant
writer, a judicious observer, and an accurate narrator, M. Max Radi-
guet, has embodied in an agreeable volume, entitled " The Last
Savages," some lively impressions of a sojourn of several years in the
Marquesas, and principally at Noukahiva. It is from his pages that
I borrow the following sketch of the islanders of this group.

" If you would wish," he says, " to see the Noukahivian in all his
purity, in all his native elegance, it is not among the Tees, it is
among the Tai'pis, and in the other less frequented islands of the
group, that you must seek him.

" Of lofty stature, well-spread shoulders, swelling chest, a shapely
figure, the body lightly set upon the haunches, the Noukahivian
advances with proud and sometimes arrogant bearing, but always
with a confident mien, a free and hardy manner. He seems fitted
for the race and the escalade rather than for the struggle. He has
more the character of the gymnast than of the athlete. His features
are regular and handsome, his nose straight or aquiline, sometimes
short or slightly flattened, never ill-shaped. The mouth is neither
large nor thick-lipped ; the forehead, rather low and somewhat reced-
ing, is shaved on the upper portion, whence arises the common saying
that the Kanaks have a high forehead.

"We may* easily portray the physical form of an inhabitant of
the Marquesas ; but it is more difficult to define the eccentricities of
his fantastic nature. There is much of the child in his disposition ;
he is as insensible, or nearly so, to the emotions of gratitude, and

A HAXDS01IE RACE.

531

has the same irascible caprice. He is nervous, restless, impatient.
Superstition is one of his prominent failings. He is hospitable ; his
first advances are warm, earnest, playful ; then, at the least chill,
and from motives which a stranger cannot always appreciate, an
abrupt revolution takes place, and he becomes wayward and moody.
" The women are of medium stature, their contours frequently

ISLANDERS OF ^SOUKAHIVA.

modelled with a purity which the sculptor has revealed to us almost
alone in France. . . . Few women of fashion are more graceful, if not
in their movements, at least in their attitudes ; and the women of
the neighbouring archipelagoes, the so much eulogized Tahitians,*

* Compare the narratives of the early voyagers, especially those of De Bougainville,
Cook, and Wallis.

632 THE RED MEN OF AMERICA.

appear awkward, unwieldy, and sunburnt peasants compared with
the exquisitely elegant daughters of Noukahiva.

"The Kanaks talk but little. Frequently they convey their
thoughts to one another by a play of the physiognomy which Euro-
peans find it difficult to seize. Seated face to face, the back sup-
ported against a stone, the arms crossed beneath the head, they
regard each other for whole hours without exchanging a single word.
In direct contrast to the negro, they are very sparing both in words
and gestures, when even their dearest interests are involved. Slow,
indolent, averse to labour, not knowing how to submit themselves to
any regular work, they pass the greatest part of their time stretched
in the shadow of the trees on their mats, sleeping, singing, or weaving
garlands. And yet, though they are sensual, gluttonous, and care-
less of the morrow, they are gifted with a quick wit, a sound judg-
ment, and a veiy accurate conception of right and justice."

We do not remark among the numerous tribes scattered over the
immense territory of the two American continents, and vaguely com-
prehended under the denomination of the Red or American race,
differences less profound or characteristic than among the different
fractions of the Negro or Malayo-Polynesian race. Just as, in speak-
ing of the New World, we formerly made use of the expression " the
West Indies," or the "Great Indies," we also call by the term
" Indians " all the aboriginal peoples of this portion of the globe, and
the use of this term, incorrect as it is, writers as well as readers seem
indisposed to surrender. In fact, it possesses the twofold advantage
of being short, and of not attributing to the peoples which it desig-
nates an unity of origin which is doubtful, or a similitude of colour
which does not exist.

" From the North Pole even to Tierra del Fuego," says Maury,
" there is scarcely a shade of human colouring which is not mani-
fested, from the black to the yellow. The aborigines, according to
their nation, are of a brown-olive, a dark brown, bronze, pale yellow,
copper yellow, red, white, brown, &c. Their stature does not vary

KINSHIP OF AMERICAN RACES. 533

less. Between the stature, not gigantic but very tull, of the Pata-
gonians and the dwarf-like proportions of the Changes, we meet with
a host of intermediary ' sizes.' The proportions of the body present
the same diversity ; some peoples have the bust very long, like the
tribes of the Pampas ; others, short and broad, like the inhabitants
of the Peruvian Andes ; the same is the case with the shape and

INDIANS OF NORTH As

:A. — THE KED SKINS

size of the head. Yet we recognize between the various American
populations an air of kinship, certain general features which dis-
tinguish them from the races of the Old World. Among these
features must be placed, in the front rank, the pyramidal form of the
head and the narrowness of the forehead — characteristics of great
antiquity among the American populations, since they belong to

534 THE NORTH AMERICAN TRIBES.

skulls discovered by Mr. Lund in the caves of Brazil associated with
the bones of extinct animals."

Spite of this diversity of type, we may divide the Indians of
America into two races, of which one at least, the Red Skins, is
remarkable for its complete homogeneity. The Red Skins were
formerly distributed over all the upper portion of the American con-
tinent— -that is, over the territory of Canada and the United States,
and the northern districts of Mexico. In the sixteenth century they
numbered a million and a half of souls. They are now reduced to a
few thousand families. A few years more, and American rifles,
brandy, and poverty, will have completed the extermination of this
indomitable race, which has deserved at least the respect and the
recognition due to honourable courage of those who have dispossessed
them from the immense territories they formerly enjoyed. It is true,
however, that we must not take our estimate of the Red Skins from
the romantic pages of Chateaubriand or Fenimore Cooper. We
must not delude ourselves into a belief that the North American
tribes are or were composed of Deerskins, Hawkeyes, and Leather-
stockings. Yet we cannot refuse to them a character of real grandeur
and true nobility. Their contempt of death and suffering, their
stoical composure under the severest tortures, their disdain of civiliza-
tion, their horror of foreign supremacy, their haughtiness, and even
their cold and reflective ferocity, are so many traits which place them,
in a moral sense, far above the majority of the other savage races.
A hundred times in romance, song, and drama have been described
the manners of the Red Skins, their stratagems in war and the chase,
the perseverance with which they hunt down their enemy or their
prey, their cunning, their impassiveness, their vengeance. Who
among us has not eagerly followed them in their long journeys
across the rolling savannahs and through the primeval forests ? Who
has not listened eagerly, when, seated round the watch-fire, with the
calumet to their lips, they have deliberated gravely on peace and
war ? Who has not seen them with alarm dashing to the combat on
their nimble chargers, brandishing the tomahawk and scalping their

DECAY OF THE SAVAGE. 535

conquered victims, whose scalps they hung up in their wigwams as
trophies to their prowess ? Who has not followed them breathlessly
when on the trail of a flying foe, or winding serpent-like through the
thick brush-wood in escape from some persistent pursuer ? Assuredly
these men were well worthy of study ; and it is impossible to peruse
their history or the narrative of their adventures without a breathless
interest. There was poetry in their faith, in their customs, in their
language at once laconic and picturesque, and even in the names
which they bestowed on each tribe, each chief, each warrior. One can
hardly suppress a feeling of regret that so much wild romance should
have been swept from the face of the earth, unless we call to mind
the shadows of the picture — the Indian's cruelty, perfidiousness, and
savage lust. Even then our humanity revolts from the treatment
to which he has been subjected by the " white man." Tracked and
hunted like wild beasts, driven back from one hunting-ground to another,
embruted by misery or drunkenness, incapable of labour, the poor
Indians have vainly struggled against the all-devouring influence of
a civilization without bowels, ill adapted to attract and persuade
them, and far less solicitous to assimilate than to destroy them. The
great nations which were formerly the valued allies or dreaded
enemies of the European settlers, the Hurons, Algonquins, the
Iroquois, the Natchez, the Leni-Lenapes, have entirely disappeared.
The wrecks of other but less important nations still exist on the
shores of the great northern lakes, in the Far West, at the base of
the Rocky Mountains, in California, in Texas, in Arkansas, and in
the northern provinces and deserts of Mexico. Such are the Sioux,
the Dacotahs, the Flatheads, the Big-Bellies, the Blackfoot, the
Apaches, the Comanches. The two latter people have, above all,
preserved a certain vitality. Their characteristics, it is said,
are very diverse. The Comanches are of a mild, gentle nature,
and eager to live on .peaceable terms with the Whites. The
Apaches, on the contrary, have vowed a relentless hatred against the
Pale Faces ; they are the terror of the hacienderos * and golcl-

* Hacienda, a farm ; haciendero, a farm-proprietor.

536

THE FLAT-HEADS.

seekers of Upper Mexico, and the American journals frequently con-
tain accounts of their incursions, their acts of brigandage, and cruelty.
The most characteristic features of the Red Skin type are, in
addition to the colour of the skin and the pyramidal form of the
head, the prominency and arched outline of the nose, the greatness
of the nasal openings, corresponding to a singular development of the

INDIAN WOMEN- OK NORTH AMERICA.

olfactory nerve, and the absence of beard. Several tribes subject
the head of the new-born to a systematic mis-shapement by compress-
ing it. Hence has arisen the nickname of Flat-heads, popularly
bestowed on the Choctaws. The same custom existed among the
Atacapas, the Creeks, the Muskogis, and the Catawhas, and is found
among most tribes of the Californian stock.

SAVAGE MAN IN MEXICO.

537

The peoples who have alternately dominated in Mexico and
Central America, and who are now in great part destroyed — the
Chichinequas, the Toltequas, and the Aztecs — are allied to the Red
Man by their physical peculiarities as well as by their moral charac-
teristics. The comparatively advanced civilization which the Spanish
conquerors found established in Mexico had not effaced among the

THE APACHES ATTACKING AN EMIGRANT TRAIN.

Indians the sanguinary instincts and vindictive propensities of their
savage ancestors.

The race, or rather races which people South America are very
far from offering the same homogeneity as the populations of North
America. These races are four in number, each of which may be

subdivided into several distinct branches.

34 a

538

IN SOUTH AMERICA.

The Guarani, or Carib race, formerly occupied the Antilles, and
on the mainland extended as far as Paraguay. It is principally dis-
tinguished by the yellow colour of its skin, by the rounded contour
of its visage, by the flatness of the nose, and the oblique disposition
of the eyes. It comprises three branches : that of the Caribs properly
so called, that of the Guaranis, and that of the Botocoudos.

The Cai'ibs, whose name has become in our common parlance a

GUARAXI INDIANS (SOUTH AMERICA).

synonyme with cannibal, formed at the epoch of the discovery of the
New World the anthropophagic population of the islands of the
Mexican Gulf. To-day, however, it is completely annihilated ; but a
few scattered offshoots of the same race inhabit the banks of the
Orinoco. The Caribs are tall and robust, and are included among the
most ferocious tribes of South America,

The Guaranis, in their physiognomy, the colour of their skin, and

BRAZIL AND THE PAMPAS.

639

their manners, approximate closely to the Red Skins. They show
the same love of independence and the same antipathy to the tram-
mels of civilization. They are dispersed in the Brazilian forests, and
principally in the province of Maranhao or Maragnan.

The Botocoudos are the least intelligent scions of the Brazilo-
Guarani branch. So great is the resemblance between their features
and those of the Chinese, that Auguste St. Hilaire relates that the

PATAGONIANS.

Botocoudos, having encountered some natives of " the Celestial Em-
pire " in a part of Brazil, joyqusly saluted them with all kinds of
amicable demonstrations, and christened them " their uncles."

The Pampas Indians form a mass of tribes dwelling east of the
great Cordillera range, from the river Paraguay to the extreme south
of the continent. Most of these tribes are nomades ; but, thanks to
the persevering efforts of the Roman Catholic missionaries, they have

540 PATAGOXIAX CHARACTERISTICS.

attained a certain degree of civilization. Their type varies according
to the climate of the country which they inhabit, and according to
their mode of life. In general they have a large head, flat on the
top, with small eyes, a big nose, large mouth, and thick lips. They
are tall in stature, and robust-limbed. To this group belong the
Patagonians, who wander, almost constantly on horseback, over the
grassy Pampas of the southern extremity of the continent, where
they depasture immense herds of cattle. Former travellers repre-
sented the Patagonians as giants upwards of six and seven feet high,
and wonderful accounts of them figure in the pages of Drake, Caven-
dish, and the early navigators. But these are violent exaggerations.
The Patagonians are certainly tall and athletic, but their stature
does not exceed that of most Europeans, and assuredly not that of the
corps d'tflite of the armies of England, France, Prussia, and Austria.
Their arms and legs are veiy long. Their forehead is exceedingly
low ; the eyes are sunken ; the nose, very thin at the root, widens
greatly at the base ; the lips are very thick ; the complexion is of a
reddish-brown tint. They suffer their long black rough hair to grow
unchecked, and to fall over the face in " admired disorder." Their
manners are fierce, brutal, and intractable. The Chiquitos, who
inhabit a wooded and well-watered country, lead a more sedentary
and social life ; they have embraced Christianity, and dwell on
friendly terms with the Whites. The Tohas, nomades like the Pata-
gonians, form a still numerous nation. Their skin is copper-hued,
but they have straight eyes, an aquiline nose, a free and haughty
physiognomy.

The Ando-Peruvian race inhabits the forests which clothe the
plateau on the eastern slope of the Andes. It is characterized by an
olive tint, a medium height, a receding forehead, and horizontal eyes.
The Aymaras and the Quichuas are its principal representatives.
The latter, according to Orbigny, do not the least resemble the Caribs
or the Pampas Indians, and approximate much nearer to the Mexicans.
Their head is large, oblong from front to back ; the forehead low and
receding, the face broad, the nose prominent and aquiline, the mouth

TIERRA DEL FUEGO. 541

large, the chin small, but not retreating. They had attained, at the
time of the Spanish invasion, an elevated degree of civilization.
They support with difficulty the yoke of the stranger, and the melan-
choly with which the remembrance of their past greatness inspires
them — the recollection of their vanished independence — is reflected
in their grave physiognomy and the sombre and mistrustful expres-
sion of their gaze.

The fourth South American race may be considered as a more
southernly expansion of the preceding. Ethnologists designate it
the Araucanian. The region which it occupies stretches from the
30th parallel of south latitude to the vicinity of Tierra del Fuego.
The Araucanians properly so called form three tribes — that of the
Ranquels, the Huilliches, and the Aucas. They are warriors and
nomades. It was in Araucania that a French adventurer, some few
years ago, was declared king under the title of Orelie Antoine I.
Overthrown and captured by the Chilian Government, with whom
he had embroiled himself in hostilities, he succeeded in effecting his
escape and returning to Europe, where his adventures became a
" nine days' wonder."

To the Araucanian branch belong the Pecherais, an ichthyophagous
tribe of Tierra del Fuego.

The natives of these islands, says Admiral Wilkes,* are not more
than five feet high, of a light copper colour, which is much concealed
by smut and dirt, particularly on their faces, which they mark ver-
tically with charcoal. They have short faces, narrow foreheads, and
high cheek-bones. Their eyes are small and usually black, the upper
lids in the inner corner overlapping the under one, and bear a strong
resemblance to those of the Chinese. The nose is broad and flat,
with wide-spread nostrils, mouth large, teeth white, large, and regular.
The hair is long, lank, and black, hanging over the face, and is
covered with white ashes, which give them a hideous appearance.
The whole face is compressed. Their bodies are remarkable from the
* Admiral Wilkes, " Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition."

542 AN UNATTRACTIVE RACE.

great development of the chest, shoulders, and vertebral column ;
their arms are long, and out of proportion ; their legs small, and ill-
made. There is, in fact, little difference between the size of the
ankle and the leg ; and, when standing, the skin at the knee hangs
in a large loose fold. In some individuals the muscles of the leg
appear almost wanting, and possess very little strength. This want
of muscular development is owing to their constant sitting posture,
both in their huts and canoes. Their skin is sensibly colder than
ours. It is impossible to fancy anything in human nature more
filthy. They are an ill-shapen and ugly race.

The Pecherais build their huts on the shore of boughs or small
trees planted in the earth, their tops woven together, and roofed with
grass or bark. Circular in form, they have generally a diameter of
seven to eight feet, and measure four or five feet in height, with an
oval aperture to serve for an entrance. The fire is built up in a
central excavation in the clay floor. The sole, or at all events the
principal, food of this people is shell-fish. They strike the fish, or
defend themselves, with rudely-fashioned spears and slings. The
women generally paddle the canoes.

We also encounter, in the southern provinces of America, in the
midst of the copper-coloured races of whom I have already spoken, a
group of Indians, almost black, whom Prichard, the illustrious ethno-
logist, has designated the Mediterranean, and whose features recall in
a striking manner those of some of the Califoriiian tribes. Is this
resemblance a sign of the close relationship existing between two
peoples placed, as it were, at the two extremities of the world ? We
can hardly admit the supposition. It seems more probable that it
results from the analogy of the climates, and perhaps still more surely
from that of the soils, which appear to exercise a mysterious but a
powerful influence upon the modification of species and races.

BOOK V.

THE POLAR DESERTS— TUE MOUNTAINS.

CHAPTER I.

THE POLAR DESERTS.

countries which enjoy an always elevated temperature, the
excess of their fertility is not much more favourable than
extreme dryness to the material and moral development
of man. There can be no doubt that the exuberant vegetation is
a potent cause of the insalubrity of the atmosphere. And thus it
comes that civilization, commerce, industry, labour, have only been
able to establish themselves and to make any considerable progress in
temperate or even cold countries, where man has found a climate more
healthy, but at the same time sufficiently unequal, and often
sufficiently inclement, to compel him to defend himself by various
means against the rigour of the atmosphere, and a soil capable
of furnishing him abundantly with the products necessary for his
wants, but on the condition that he gains them by intelligent and
persistent toil — by the " sweat of his brow."

When we arrive under a latitude or a thermometrical mean which
exceeds by some degrees that of England or France, we find the
inhabitants giving way to sloth and indolence ; their manners are at
once softer and yet fiercer, their passions more violent and their tastes
more fertile ; arts and poesy occupy them to the neglect of the exact

544 CLIMATE AND CIVILIZATION.

sciences ; industry and commerce languish, agriculture is despised.
But if, on the contrary, we proceed towards the north, we discover a
greater degree of civilization, a warmer devotion to labour. The
most industrious peoples of the world, the English and the Dutch,
inherit a cold, humid, and even foggy atmosphere. In Canada and
the northernmost States of the American Union, the Anglo-Saxon race
has lost nothing of its laborious habits and its enterprising audacity.
In Sweden and in Norway, in Russia, even in Siberia, the traveller
meets with towns and villages in a nourishing condition up to the
60th parallel of north latitude and beyond, under a climate whose
mean annual temperature is inferior to the mean winter temperature
of France, and where the thermometer frequently descends in winter
below — 40° R. Thus, then, we see that the warm bland tropical air
enervates the mind as well as the body, while the cold of the north
seems to increase their energy. It is also true that cold climates, all
things considered, are healthier than hot countries, where disease is
more rapid and fatal in its inroads ; and that, finally, civilization
furnishes man with the means of protecting himself against the
injurious effects of a very low temperature, while it leaves him
without defence against those of excessive heat. We shall see here-
after that the human organism modifies itself, in the Polar regions, in
such a manner as to support, without too great suffering, a degree of
cold which at the outset it appears to us must be absolutely
intolerable.

We may place between the isothermal lines of -f- 5° and of 0° the
limit where commences the territory which, in the northern hemisphere,
merits the name of the Region of the Polar Deserts. Already, in
effect, under this glacial latitude, the landscape assumes a sombre
and desolate aspect, which seems to indicate the propinquity of the
" funereal glaciers " of the Pole. The daring traveller who beards the
Winter-king in his own realms meets no more with massive and lofty
mountain-crests ; a few only of the great chains of Europe and Asia
— here the Scandinavian Alps, there the Oural Mountains ; still
further, at the easternmost extremity of Asia, some scattered summits,

A DREARY WILDERNESS. 545

which we may consider as belonging to the elevation of the Altai,
prolong even to the Arctic shores their cantled and snow-shrouded
peaks. Everywhere, also, immense steppes, intersected by swamps
and relieved with woods of fir and birch, spread for leagues upon
leagues in the dull light of a wintry sky, until they merge into those
rent and rocky plains, bare of all vegetation except a few lichens and
mosses, which are almost always encrusted in glittering snow and ice,
and mingle in the distance with the frost-bound waters of the Arctic
Sea.

It is in America that these icy deserts are most extensive ; not
only because that continent stretches much nearer the Pole than does
the Old World, but because, owing to its geographical disposition and
geological structure, it is much more exposed, even towards the south,
to that combined action of the atmosphere, land, and water, whose
effects constitute the Arctic climate.*

This climate, then, prevails over nearly the whole of Danish
America, the recently-acquired possessions of the United States, the
Hudson's Bay Territory, and Labrador, down to that inconsiderable
watershed which separates from the tributaries of Hudson's Bay, the
three basins of the St. Lawrence, the five great lakes, and the
Mississippi. This line of watershed undulates between the 52nd
and 49th parallel of latitude, from Belle-Isle Strait to the sources
of the Saskatchewan, in the Rocky Mountains, where it inflects
towards the Pacific Ocean, skirting on the north the basin of the
Columbia.

"Thus circumscribed on the side of the south," say Messieurs
Herve7 and F. de Lanoye,-f- "the Arctic lands of America, including the
archipelagoes of the north and north-east, cannot measure less than
560,000 square leagues. They therefore greatly exceed in super-
ficies the mass of the European lands, estimated at about 490,000
square leagues."

* The isothermal line of 0°, which in Europe scarcely touches the North Cape of Lapland
(about 72°), descends in America fully 20 degrees lower, even to the south of James Bay.
f Herve and Lanoyo, " Voyages dans les Glaces du Pole Arctique," chap. i. (Paris, 1854) .

35

546 THE REALM OF WINTER.

The same authors divide the Arctic lands into three regions, of
which one — they name it " the Province of the North-West " — belongs
rather to those undulating Prairies described in Book III. than to the
Polar Deserts. The two others are the "Middle or Wooded Region,"
and the "Barren Landes." The Wooded Region comprehends the
basins of the Upper Mackenzie, the Churchill, the Nelson, and the
Severn. Hudson's Bay cuts into it on the east with its deep anfrac-
tuosities. The navigation of this Mediterranean of the North, open
to the currents and to the drift of the Polar ices, begins only in the
month of June, to close in that of September ; yet in this interval the
obstruction of the ices is so great that it occupies a stout vessel two
months to traverse the diameter of the bay. Along the littoral of
this sea the soil never thaws below the surface, and it often freezes
on the very surface in the middle of summer.

Like a fierce and despotic tyrant does Winter reign on these
shores for from eight to nine months. From the end of September
the earth, the rivers which flow into the bay, their affluents, and the
chaplet of lakes which connect them with one another, all disappear
under a layer of hoar-frost. " The provinces of New Wales and of
Maine do not enjoy for a longer period than three months the tem-
perature of -f- 11° (centigrades), necessary for the development of
vegetation. The southern shores of the Great Bear and Slave Lakes
possess that temperature for only two months at the most." It is not
until the month of May that the thermometer rises ever so little above
zero in the Wooded Region, and that a breath of life passes into the
plants. Then only the reddish shoots of the willows, the poplar trees,
and the birches attire themselves in their long cottony pods ; the
thickets grow green ; the dandelion, the burdock, and the saxifrages
nourish at the foot of the rocks ; then the sweet-brier, the gooseberry,
and the strawberry put forth their fruity burden ; and above these
dwarf shrubs the pines, the larches, the thuyas display all the luxury
of their sombre verdure. But at the same time the melted snows
have transformed the soil, recently so hard and polished like marble,
into peaty bogs, where myriads of mosquitoes swarm — an intolerable

THE BARREN LAXDES. 649

scourge, which the traveller can only escape by surrounding himself
with clouds of smoke.

The commencement of the region of " Barren Landes " is marked
by a line drawn from the mouth of the Churchill in Hudson's Bay to
Mount St. Elias on the Pacific coast, and passing by the southern
shores of the Bear and the Slave Lakes. To the north of this region
it loses itself in the eternal ices, with the last shores of the Parry
Archipelago ; to the east and to the north-east, the conformity of the
soil and the identity of the climate include within it the greatest part
of Labrador and all Greenland, from which it is only separated acci-
dentally by the breaking up of the ices which constantly solidify
Baffin's Bay, and renders so difficult, in those districts, the distinction
between land and water. " In these vast countries," say the writers
already quoted, " the primitive crust of the globe preserves still the
chaotic character which it assumed at the moment that its fluid elements
congealed. Except at the bottom of the ravines and hollows, where
each winter's thaw has accumulated long tracts of moss and the
wrecks of dwarf willows — the embryo vegetation of the Polar clime —
the slow action of the ages has nowhere oxidized this rough rude
surface to the extent of clothing with a layer of mould its abrupt
nakedness. There no transitionary stratum extends between the
primeval granite and the erupted rocks. There, prolonged chains of
trachyte, and gigantic causeways of basalt, display again their strata
as regular, their ridges as keen, their rents as deep, as on the morrow
of that day when they emerged from the original chaos. At a great
number of points, as at the bottom of Repulse Bay and in the interior
of Melville Island, whole skeletons of whales elevated from the depths
of ocean, with the submarine layer wherein death had ensepulchred
them, have not received in all the ages that have passed by since
their exposure to the day any other shroud than the snows of
successive winters, which, melting before the suns of successive
summers, annually uncovers their whitened bones, irrefragable proofs
of a great geological law."

In Asia, the isothermal line of 0° descends even towards the

560 NOVA ZEMBLA.

55th parallel of latitude — that is to say, a little lower than in
America; but beyond this line we meet again, as I have already said,
with towns of some importance, such as Tobolsk, the capital of
Siberia, in lat. 58° 11' north; Irkutsk, in lat. 58° 16' north; and
lakutsk, in lat. 62°. All this northern part of Siberia is only dis-
tinguished by the greater rigour of its climate, and by a more and
more scanty vegetation from the great Steppes, of which it is the
continuation. However, the north-eastern extremity, comprising the
peninsula of Kamtschatka, bristles with volcanic mountains which
still exhibit some craters in activity, notably those of Avatcha and
Klioutchevsko'i, or Klutschew. The latter belches forth its fires from
one of the loftiest summits of the globe.

In Continental Europe, the only Polar Lands, properly so called,
are Russian Lapland and the deeply-indented coast of Northern
Russia. To the north of the most advanced point of that coast, and
separated from the continent by a narrow arm of the sea, lie three
almost contiguous islands, which form Nova Zembla (lat. 68° 50' to
76° north) ; desert islands, inhabited by a few fishermen, and con-
taining a few vegetables and animals. The western side of the group
is traversed by a mountain-range 2000 feet in height. Finally,
almost in the centre of the Frozen Sea, and at nearly equal distances
from the Old and the New World, rises the gloomy archipelago of
Spitzbergen (that is, the Peaked Mountains), first visited by Barentz
in 1596, and lying between the parallels of 77° and 81°, and the
meridians of 10° and 24° east of Greenwich. Their summits, I need
hardly tell you, are shrouded in eternal ice and snow, and separated
by narrow valleys, or rather ravines, mostly occupied with those
slowly-moving ice-rivers called glaciers. The surrounding seas swarm
with fish, and the frozen wastes of the islands are haunted by the
Arctic fox, the reindeer, and the white bear. The walrus and the
seal live upon their shores, which bristle everywhere with lofty
granitic rocks, and glaciers that plunge down into the very waters.
Their extremities are constantly throwing off huge masses of ice,
which float out to sea, and in the shape of icebergs appal and

GLACIER AND ICEBERG. 651

threaten the mariner. Except during a brief interval of summer, the
access to Spitzbergen is barred by a formidable barrier of ice, and the
channels between the different islands are so blocked up by the same
material, that it was long doubted whether Spitzbergen was not one
large island deeply fissured and intersected by creek and gulf. It is
wholly uninhabited, but the voyager landing at certain points of the
coast — in Madeleine Bay, for example— treads at every step upon
human bones thickly scattered over the snow, pell-mell with the
bones of bears and seals, and upon the ghastly memorials of empty
or half-open coffins. These are the remains, the last relics, of unfortu-
nate seamen slain by cold and hunger in these desolate regions. For
want of strength to dig decent graves, on account of the thickness of
the ice, the survivors load the coffins with pieces of rock to act as a
rampart against the wild beasts. But " the great man in a pelisse,"
as the Norwegian hunters denominate the white bear, has stout arms,
and, impelled by famine, he frequently succeeds in displacing the
stones, and making a hideous banquet off the frozen bodies.

The very ocean which washes this gloomy coast shows us the
Arctic Desert under a form which is at once more imposing, more
majestic, and more terrible. On its surface float vast fields, moun-
tains, and banks of ice, far more formidable to the mariner than the
typhoons and cyclones of the Torrid Zone. These floating ice-
mountains proceed, as I have said, from the terrestrial glaciers which,
in these latitudes, descend to the margin of the sea, frequently
project a considerable distance beyond the coast, and, loosened by
their own weight or by the incessant clash and collision of the waves,
splinter into enormous fragments. Hence it is that their ice, when
liquefied, supplies a fresh, sweet, and wholesome water for drinking
purposes. Their outlines are of the most fantastic, and often of the
most beautiful character ; old ruined keeps of Norman castles, long
lines of frowning battlements, minarets and domes of Moorish mosques,
and the tapering spires, arched roofs, and flying buttresses of mediaeval
cathedrals. Lit up by the radiance of an Arctic sun, they wear a

552 A MARVELLOUS PICTURE.

most singular and weird beauty, and probably the time may come
when the artist will gain that inspiration from their sublime or
graceful shapes which he now seeks in the forest, on the sea-shore, or
in the pine-clad mountain-glen.

Masses of ice rise every year from the bosom, so to speak, of the
Polar Sea, and accumulating together, and with the ruins of half-
dissolved icebergs, gradually develop into immense ice-fields, which
have often an area of several thousand square yards. Their thick-
ness varies, but is always considerably inferior to that of the icebergs.
It is not uncommon, however, for them to attain an elevation of
300 feet, and you can form an idea of their gigantic dimensions by
recollecting that the submerged portion will be from four to eight
times the height of that which rises above the waves. During the
winter, mountains and fields of ice congeal together in such wise as
to spread over the ocean a compact and impenetrable crust, an
immense desert of snow, broken up by walls and columns — I should
rather say, by monuments — of fantastic design, whose radiant glittering
surfaces reflect in changing lights of amethyst, azure, vermilion, gold,
and emerald, the wondrous fires of the northern auroras. When,
after a long absence, the sun returns to dart obliquely his rays upon
the Pole, all this crust splits up and becomes dislocated ; the confu-
sion spreads ; the ocean-currents carry off to sea the blocks and floes
of ice which roll, and glide, and chase, and cross each other, hurtling
together in an indescribable mel^e, and with a fearful tempest of
sounds !

This is not the place to speak of the dangers which beset the
seaman who dares to penetrate into the silent recesses of the Polar
Seas. And, indeed, a tale so often told would have little interest for
the English reader, who cannot fail to be familiar with the adven-
tures of the Arctic explorers, from Hudson to M'Clure, through the
long list of honoured and immortal names — Parry, Ross, Franklin,
Scoresby, Davis, M'Clintock, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Too many,
alas ! have fallen victims to their heroic courage, and the most fortu-
nate have not returned in safety without accomplishing prodigies of

HUMAN ENTERPRISE. 553

valour and energy, without undergoing the severest privations and
most terrible sufferings.

Their efforts and their sacrifices, let us add, have not been barren.
Not only has the great North- West Passage from the Atlantic to the
Pacific been finally explored, but the discovery of an open and com-
paratively warm sea around the geographical pole of our globe — the
discovery, too, of the magnetic pole, and of the double pole of
cold — ought to be ranked with the most brilliant scientific achieve-
ments on which our age can pride itself. Thanks to those heroes of
science, the Arctic Polar region is now extensively known and very
generally surveyed. It is not possible to say so much of the Antarctic
Polar region. There the approach is not facilitated by any conti-
nent, or, indeed, any fraction of a continent. The " Land of Fire "
(Tierra del Fuego), which is the nearest point, is not calculated
to brighten the hopes of the explorer, and the difficulties and
perils which oppose themselves to his southward progress seem
insurmountable. Three illustrious travellers — sons of England, France,
and America respectively — Sir James Ross, Dumont D'Urville, and
Rear-Admiral Charles "Wilkes, attempted, however, in the first half
of the present century, to penetrate the mystery which enshrouds this
extremity of our globe.

After sailing for many days amongst prodigious icebergs, which
sometimes threatened to crush his ships, and sometimes to immure
them in a gloomy prison, Dumont D'Urville considered himself fortu-
nate in sighting, on the very line of the Antarctic Circle, a range of
black rocky cliffs which he named Clarie Coast and Adelie Land.
About the same time Rear-Admiral Wilkes discovered, in 67° 4' south
latitude, and 147° 30' east longitude, a bay which he called the Bay
of Disappointment, because he found himself there stopped short by
impassable ice, and deceived in his hope of reaching the Austral Con-
tinent. The same navigator, in 65° 59' south latitude, and 105° 18'
east longitude, saw, or thought he saw, an extent of coast which he
computed at 65 miles in length, and 3000 feet in elevation above
the sea-level. This coast appeared to him entirely covered with

35 a

554

SUPPOSED ANTARCTIC CONTINENT.

snow. Disembarking at the point mentioned, lie ascertained the
presence, under the snow, of clay, red granite, and basalt, but no
sign of stratification. On the beach, frequented by the Cachalot
whale, the seal, and legions of sea-birds, were found numerous
zoophytes and some small crustaceans.

The accuracy of the American navigator's observations has been,

however, disputed by geographers, and in 1841 Sir James Ross
demonstrated that the threshold of this problematical continent was,
at least in certain places, much more distant than Wilkes had sup-
posed. Sir James himself discovered, between 70° and 78° south
latitude, an extensive tract of land which he named South Victoria,

THE ARCTIC FLORA. 555

and which extends nearer the South Pole than any other yet known.
Its shores are rendered imposing by a line of lofty and snow-crowned
mountains, some of which are volcanic. To two of the more majestic
of these the English voyager gave the names of his two ships — Mount
Erebus and Mount Terror. The former is 12,400 feet in height.*

Sir James Ross traced the continents of this desolate icy coast
for seven hundred miles, until his progress was arrested by a solid
impenetrable barrier of lofty ice. He reached, however, on another
meridian, the latitude of 78° 4' south, the nearest approach yet made
to the Antarctic Pole.

CHAPTER II.

ANIMAL LIFE AND VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE POLAR DESERTS.

THE mantle which Flora has spread over the naked body of this
earth is, says Humboldt, unequally woven. Thickest in those places
where the sun soars to a great altitude in a cloudless sky, it is of
thinner texture towards the poles, where Nature seems benumbed
and torpid, where the precipitate return of frost leaves no time for
the buds to unfold, and surprises the fruits before they have attained
maturity.

The number of plants capable of withstanding the prolonged and
terrible Arctic winters, and of contenting themselves with the scanty
heat and light which the pale sun of those regions pours upon them
during his brief stay above the horizon, is, in effect, very limited.
We have seen, in the preceding chapter, how restricted is the flora
of that part of the American polar lands which has received the
somewhat ambitious appellation of the " Wooded Region." This flora,
so poor and stunted, is nevertheless the flora of a comparatively
fortunate zone. We find it, with some variations, to the north of
* Sir James C. Ross " Voyages of Discovery ancl Research " (London, 1847).

556 THE ARCTIC FLORA.

Sweden, Russia, and Siberia. There we encounter those ultimate
masses of foliage which have any pretensions to the title of Forests —
Pines, Firs, Elms, and Birches are the only species which compose
them. Further north these trees form but small woods, alternating with
clumps of poplars and dwarf willows. The Myrtle of our sub- Alpine
forests, and a small winding Honeysuckle, with rounded leaves, rosy
and fragrant flowers, cover in certain places considerable surfaces.
Still further north the arborescent species are completely wanting ;
but vivacious plants, belonging to the families of Ranunculacere, Saxi-
fragacese, Cruciferse, and Gramineae, spread out their flowers on the
surface of the rocks. To the firs and birches, already so stinted, suc-
ceed, in the same localities, a, few scattered shrubs ; among others,
the thorny Gooseberry bush, the common Strawberry, the Raspberry-
pseudo-Mulberry (Rubus Chamcemoriis) — exclusively indigenous to
these regions — and the Oleander of Lapland (Rhododendron Laponi-
cum). Still advancing northward, we meet, on the extreme confines
of the continent, some Dravas (Cruciferai), Potentillas (Rosacece),
Bur-weeds and Rushes (Cyperacece), and, finally, a few Mosses and
Lichens. The commonest mosses are the Splechnum, which resemble
small umbels ; and, in moist localities, the Sphagnum, or Bog-Moss,
whose successive accumulation, from a very remote epoch, has formed,
with the detritus of some Cyperacecs, extensive breadths of peat,
which might be utilized as a combustible. The lichens and the
mosses are the last plants which, owing to the simplicity of their
organization, are able to develop and reproduce themselves on the
Arctic rocks and under the dense layer of snow which covers them.
Their abundance in almost all the polar wastes, where every other
nutritious plant is wanting, proves an inestimable benefit for the few
inhabitants of those deserts. It will suffice to mention, as representa-
tives of the singular family of Cryptogams, the Iceland Moss, which
medical science employs in the treatment of pulmonary diseases ; and
the Reindeer Moss, whose foliaceous expansions frequently cover vast
extents of soil, and form veritable pasture-grounds where the reindeer
find almost their only nutriment.

THE MUSK-OX. f>r,7

But if the Polar Flora offers few details of interest, it is otherwise
with the Polar Fauna. The most important orders of the Animal
Kingdom, and particularly of the class Mammalia, are there repre-
sented by species not less worthy of attention than those that people
the savage countries of the torrid and temperate zones.

Among the Rufmnantia we may mention the Eland and the
Stag of Canada, which range — the former in the Old and New
Continents, the latter in the New World only — to a very high
latitude ; but, to confine myself to the characteristic species of the
Hyperborean Fauna, I shall here speak only of the Musk-Ox and the
Reindeer.

The Musk-Ox, or Ovibos (Ovibos Mosckatus'), is, as its zoolo-
gical name indicates, an intermediate animal between the ox and
the sheep. Smaller than the former, larger than the latter, he
reminds us equally of both in his form and appearance. He has an
obtuse nose ; horns broad at the base, covering the forehead and
crown of the head, and curving downwards between the eye and ear
until about the level of the mouth, where they turn upwards ; the
tail is short, and almost lost in the thickness of the hair, which is
generally of a dark brown, and of two kinds, as with all the animals
of Polar regions, — a long hair, which on some parts of the body is
thick and curled, and, beneath it, a fine kind of soft, ash-coloured
wool ; the legs are short and thick, and furnished with narrow hoofs,
resembling those of the moose. The female is smaller than the male,
and has also smaller horns. Her general colour is black, except that
the legs are whitish ; and along the back runs an elevated ridge or
mane of dusky hair.

The musk-ox, as might be inferred from his name, exhales a
strong odour of musk, with which his very flesh is impregnated, and
which communicates itself to the knife employed in cutting him up.
Not the less is he esteemed a precious prey by the Indians and
Eskimos, who hunt him actively. He wanders in small herds over
the rocky prairies which stretch to the north of the great lakes of

558 ABOUT THE REINDEER.

North America. He is an irascible animal, and will fight desperately
in defence of the female.

The Reindeer (Cervus Turandus) is about the size of our English
stag, but of a squatter and less graceful form. He stands about
four feet six inches high. His head is crowned with remarkably
long and slender horns ; and they have branched, recurved, and
round antlers, whose summits are palmated. His colour is brown
above and white beneath ; but as the animal advances in age, it
changes into a grayish- white, and is sometimes almost wholly white.
The nether part of the neck droops like a kind of hanging beard.
His hoofs are large, long, and black ; and so are the secondary hoofs
behind. The latter, while the reindeer is running, make by their
collision a curious clattering sound, which may be heard at a con-
siderable distance.

This species formerly spread over Europe and Asia to a tolerably
low latitude. Csesar particularizes it among the animals of the
Hercynian Forest. Even at the present day troops of wild reindeer
traverse the wooded summits of the prolongation of the Ural Moun-
tains. They advance between the Don and the Volga to the 46th
parallel of latitude ; and they extend their wanderings even to the
foot of the Caucasus, on the banks of the Kouma. But their true
habitat is that belt of ice and snow bounded by the Arctic polar
circle, or, more properly, by the isothermal line of 0° centigrade.
" Both the wild and the tame reindeer," says Desmoulins, " change
their feeding-grounds with the seasons. In winter they descend into
the plains and valleys ; in summer they take refuge upon the moun-
tains, where the wild herds gain the loftiest terraces, the more easily
to escape the attacks of gadflies and other insect enemies. It is
very remarkable that each species of animal has, so to speak,
his insect parasite. The cestre so terrifies the reindeer that the
mere appearance of one in the air will infuriate a herd of a
thousand animals. As it is then the moulting season, these
insects deposit their eggs in the skin, where the larvas lodge

ARCTIC RODENTS. 561

and multiply ad infinitum, incessantly renewing centres of sup-
puration."

To the natives of North America, says a zoologist, the reindeer is
only known as a beast of chase, but he is a most important one.
There is hardly a part of the animal which is not made available to
some useful purpose. Clothing made of the skin is, according to Sir
J. Richardson, so impervious to the cold, that, with the addition of a
blanket of the same material, any one so clothed may bivouac on the
snow with safety in the most intense cold of an Arctic winter's night.
The venison, when in high condition, has several inches of fat on the
haunches, and said to equal that of the fallow-deer in our best
English parks : the tongue and some of the tripe are reckoned most
delicious morsels. Pemmican is formed by pouring one-third part of
melted fat over the pounded meat, and incorporating them well together.
The Eskimos and Greenlanders consider the stomach or paunch, with
its contents, a great delicacy ; and Captain Sir James Ross says that
these contents form the only vegetable food which the natives of
Boothia ever taste.*

The order of Rodents has no other representatives in the Arctic
Deserts than the Arctic Hare and the Alpine Lagomys. The former
is a little larger than our European hare. His abundant fur,
gray in summer, grows white in winter, and affords him protection,
by a merciful provision of nature, against the carnivorous beasts of
prey. It becomes impossible to discern him from the snowy mantle
which covers all the earth. He is a native of Labrador and Green-
land.

The Lagomys are small animals, scarcely exceeding the Guinea-
pig in size, and measuring only nine inches in length. His long
head is ornamented with a pair of short, broad, and rounded ears.
He inhabits the Altai Mountains, but extends even into Kamtschatka,
seeking an asylum in the wooded tracts among the mossy rocks and
flashing waterfalls, lodging in the fissures or burrowing in the most
* Sir J. Richardson, " Fauna Boreal! Americana."

3G

562 THE MARTENS OF THE NORTH.

sequestered corners. During the autumn he lays up a store of winter
provision by collecting the finest grass and moss and herbs. These
he dries in the sun, and disposes in small heaps or hayricks, which
vary in size according to the number of animals employed, and fre-
quently furnish the sable-hunter with provender for his horse in the
hour of direst emergency.

The group of Arctic Garni vora, more numerous than the reader
would at the first glance suppose, includes those animals which fur-
nish commerce with the costliest furs.

Except the Fox and the White Bear, of which I shall presently
speak, all these Carnivora belong to the family which has for its
type the " long-spined animal" — the common European "Weasel
(Mustela) — and which borrows from it its zoological appellation of
Mustelidce.

In this family the most remarkable genera are undoubtedly the
Martens, the Polecats, the Gluttons, and the Otters.

The Martens of the North are cousins-german of the weasels, so
justly feared by our farmers and villagers on account of the exten-
sive depredations which they commit in the poultry-yard. The mar-
tens are not less ferocious ; but in the fir and birch forests which
they inhabit, it is upon the small rodents, the birds, and, when
necessity prompts, upon the reptiles, that they exercise their
sanguinary tyranny. They scale trees as nimbly as cats ; and their
flexible body enables them to introduce themselves into the smallest
openings, where a cat could not pass, and into the burrows and
fissures of the trees or rocks which serve as an asylum for their
victims. They are, moreover, very pretty animals, with lively manners,
a cunning physiognomy, and a rich furry attire. Besides the ordi-
nary marten, which is found in all the north of Europe, zoologists
distinguish in this genus several species exclusively indigenous to the
coldest regions of the two continents. The most renowned for the
beauty of his coat is the Zibelline, or Sable, which we must look for

THE ERMIXES OF THE NORTH.

563

in Northern Russia and Siberia. Its hairs, whose general shade is a
grayish-brown, possess this singular property, which distinguishes
them from every other kind of fur — they have no particular inclina-
tion, and consequently may be laid down indifferently in any direction
whatever.

The genus Polecat (Mustela putarius) comprehends the smallest

ERMIXE AXI> SABLE-MARTEN.

of ah1 known Carnivora — the Weasel, the Ferret, and the Ermine.
The temperate countries of Europe possess one variety of the latter
species ; but the ermines of the extreme north have a much fuller
and softer fur. These animals, like many others, change their garb
according to the season. The ermine, which poets have adopted as
the emblem of purity, on account of his spotless whiteness, in
reality only merits that dangerous honour in the winter ; it is

564 THE SEA-OTTER.

then only that he assumes that immaculate robe which the proudest
monarchs are content to wear. In summer its colour is a clear maroon.
His tail alone remains at all times of a beautiful shining black.

The Glutton (Gulo Arcticus) is a carnivorous quadruped of a very
voracious nature, about the size of a large badger, between which
and the polecat he appears to form a link. His legs are short and
robust ; he has a compact body, large head, and unwieldy gait. His
ears are small ; his tail is short and tufted. His skin is a black
brown on the top of the head and back ; a white line extends along
each flank, from the shoulder to the root of the tail. The muzzle is
black ; the remainder of the body a deep brown. Like most of the
mammals of the Polar region, he has two kinds of hair — the upper
long and coarse, the lower soft, fine, and of an uniform brown colour.
The glutton owes his name to his extreme voracity. He does not
fear to attack animals of the size of the reindeer ; he leaps upon
them, fastens his claws in them, rends them to pieces, until at length
they fall exhausted. After having gorged himself on their flesh and
blood, he hides the remainder for another repast.

The genus Otter (Lutra vulgai*is) comprehends several species,
distributed over nearly all the countries of the world. I shall here
speak only of the Otter of Kamtschatka, or Sea Otter (Enhydra
lutris), so named on account of his essentially aquatic habits. He
weighs from seventy to eighty pounds. In full season his colour is
perfectly black ; at other times, of a dark brown. He attains the
length of three feet, including his tail ; has hind-feet resembling those
of a seal ; the upper jaw is armed with six, and the lower with four
incisors. The grinders are broad, and well adapted for crunching
crustaceous animals. He runs with great rapidity, and swims with
astonishing ease and swiftness. Of late years, however, he has been
the object of so murderous a chase on the part of the Russian and
American hunters that he has almost disappeared from the Polar
shores. The skins of the sea otter are much prized by the Chinese,

FOXES IX THE NORTH. 565

who pay for them from seventy to one hundred roubles a-piece.
Very few ever reach the European market.

Among those Carnivora which are able to accommodate themselves
to the severest climates, I may mention the Foxes. These animals
attire themselves, under the Polar latitudes, in a fur of sufficient
thickness to endure the intense cold they are required to support ;
and this fur is esteemed among the most precious varieties, under the
names of Isatis skin, White Fox, Black, Blue, and Tricoloured Fox-
skins. The shades vary according to Reynard's habitat, his age, and
also the season ; they correspond in like manner to the differences of
race, but not to the differences of species. The most valuable skins
are obtained from those foxes which belong to very cold countries ;
and it seems that as they recede from a certain latitude, they lose
their value. "Some Blue Foxes were killed by our hunters," says
Madame Leonie d'Aunet, " which were stunted and ugly. The
Spitzbergen foxes do not in any respect resemble the foxes of Iceland
or Siberia, whose fur is so beautiful and in such high repute. That
they may be thoroughly protected from the cold, they do not wear
upon their bodies a fur so much as several thick folds or layers of
veiy thick hair, so intermingled and threaded that it is rather a
mattress than a coat of fur. Moreover, instead of being of a some-
what tawny colour, like the Iceland foxes, they are of an ashen-gray.
Their skin, nevertheless, is excellently adapted for making carpets."

I see no intermediaries between the small Carnivora we have just
passed in review, and the formidable tyrant of the icy Deserts, the
Polar or Marine Bear ( Ursus marinus), popularly known as ( the
White Bear ; an improper appellation, as it confounds the Bear of the
Arctic Seas with the Albino variety of the Common Bear.

The former constitutes a perfectly distinct species, whose charac-
teristics, apart from the yellowish-white colour of his rich soft fur,
are a flattened and elongated head, a long neck, high legs, and feet
whose conformation is admirably adapted to the habitat and amphi-
bious existence of the animal. In fact, the sole of each foot is gar-

566 THE POLAR BEAR.

nished with a thick fleece, which permits the Arctic bear to walk on
the ice as on a carpet, and the toes are connected by a membrane
which renders them eminently fit for natatory purposes.

The Arctic bear seldom visits the land ; his favourite sojourn is
the floating ice-field, and his diet the corpses of whales and seals, or
even living Phocce, which he fearlessly attacks at the impulse of
hunger. "On seeing his intended prey," says Captain Lyon, "he
gets quietly into the water, and swims until to leeward of him, from
whence, by frequent short dives, he silently makes his approaches,
and so arranges his distances that at the last dive he comes to the
spot where the seal is lying. If the poor animal attempts to escape
by rolling into the water, he falls into the bear's clutches ; if, on the
contrary, he lies still, his destroyer makes a powerful spring, kills him
on the ice, and devours him at leisure."

In cases of urgency the bear does not scruple to make a prey of
man, and he is assuredly a formidable antagonist. His dimensions
are enormous ; he is endowed with prodigious strength. Some
individuals have been met with who measured nine to ten feet in
length. Their average size is about six feet in length, and about
three in height, to the top of the shoulder. Spite of their ferocity,
which with them, as with nearly all the Carnivora, is a natural
consequence of their appetite, the white bears are sociable in their
habits : they frequently wander about in small troops, and those of a
family invariably "flock together." The male, the mother, and their
young are united by the ties of an affection which is capable of the
most intrepid devotion. The female especially watches over her cubs
with the most anxious solicitude, and defends them to the last
extremity. Of this philoprogenitiveness a voyager relates what seems
to me a truly pathetic example : —

A vessel belonging to a small squadron commanded by Captain
Philippe was caught in the Polar ice. One morning, the look-out
man signalled the approach of three bears, which were advancing
rapidly towards the vessel, attracted by the odour of some seal's flesh
roasted on the previous evening. The three consisted of a she bear and

PHILOPROGENITIYEXESS OF THE BEAK.

567

her t\vo cubs. The seamen at a suitable moment fired at the latter,
and killed them. The mother was also wounded, but not mortally.
It was a spectacle which drew tears from the least susceptible to see
the marks of sorrow and tenderness lavished by this poor beast upon
her young. She carried to them a piece of the flesh which she had
taken possession of, and divided it into two portions, which she placed
before them. Seeing that they did not eat, she touched them alter-
nately with her fore-paws, and endeavoured to raise them, uttering
at the same time the most lamentable groans. Then she withdrew,

THE WHITE BEAR AXD HER CUBS.

halted a few paces, and summoned her little ones by a low sad cry.
As they remained insensible to her appeal, she returned to them,
moved them anew, smelt them on every side, dragged them some
distance, again returned, still moaning and bewailing, licked their
wounds, called them ; and finally, when assured that they had ceased
to live, and understanding what had transpired, she stood half erect
by a great effort, turned towards the ship, and gave vent to a roar of
agony and rage, an unmistakable imprecation against her murderers.

6C8 THE SEAL AND THE WALRUS.

The latter replied with a discharge of musketry. The poor bear fell
smitten between her two little ones, and died licking their wounds.

Among other Mammiferous animals belonging to the Polar regions,
my space only permits me a brief allusion to the Seal and the Walrus.
The Seal (Phoca vitulina) seems to the eye a compound of the fish
and the quadruped ; having the tail of the former, the head, spine,
and body of the latter. Its physiognomy is remarkable for its
peculiarly mild and intelligent expression. Its elongated, conical
body tapers from the shoulders to the tail. Its feet are of singular
construction. They are covered with a membrane, and so united to
the body that they might be mistaken for fins, but for the sharp
strong claws that terminate them.

Seals swim with great rapidity, and can remain under water for
a considerable period. The species are very numerous. The Green-
land or Harp Seal (Phoca Greenlandica) measures about six feet in
length. The Bearded Seal (P. barbata) is from seven to ten feet
long. The largest known, species is the Elephant Seal or Sea-
Elephant (Macrorhinus proboscideus), whose girth at the largest part
of the body is from fifteen to eighteen feet, and its length from
twenty-five to thirty feet. It is a native of the Antarctic Seas.
The Sea-Lion (Platyrhynchus leoninus), so called from its long full
mane, inhabits both the northern and southern coasts of the Pacific.
The Sea-Bear (Arctocephalus ursinus) derives its name from the fur
and shape of the head.

The Walrus or Morse (Trichecus) is a genus of the Phociclse, or
Seal family, distinguished by its widely different cranium and teeth.
In the adult lower jaw are neither incisors nor canines, while the
upper bristles with two enormous tusks, which are directed down-
wards, and are sometimes two feet long. It chiefly feeds upon
molluscs and marine vegetables, and its flesh in its turn affords a
dainty repast to the inhabitants of the Polar Deserts.

HYPERBOREAN RACES. CG9

CHAPTER TIL

THE INHABITANTS OF THE ARCTIC WILDERNESSES : THE LAPLANDERS

SAMOIEDES OSTIAKS — KAMTSCHATDALES ESKIMOS, OR ESQUI-
MAUX.

To the various populations which occupy tne Arctic regions of both
the Old and the New World, the general appellation of Hyperboreans
is sometimes given. Do these populations truly form, as some eth-
nologists assert, a distinct and homogeneous race ; or are they not
rather independent offshoots of the Japhetic race in Europe, of the
Mongolian in Asia, of the Redskins in America ? To this question I
can give no satisfactory reply. I will only say that if the different
fractions of this great group exhibit among themselves external
differences of a very marked character, they are drawn together, on
the other hand, by no less striking resemblances. In truth, these
resemblances are markedly physiological, and should, I think, be
exclusively attributed to the powerful and irresistible action of ex-
ternal agencies. If there be, indeed, one region where the influence
of climate on the constitution of man is manifest, that region is
assuredly the Polar Zone. There the conditions of life differ wholly
from those which prevail in all other parts of the globe, and it neces-
sarily results that modifications take place in the. organism of the
men subject to those conditions, which ought to be regarded as
wholly independent of the origin of races and of their ethnographic
characters properly so called.

The Hyperboreans are small, squat, ugly, and deformed. Their
legs are short and sufficiently straight, but so thick, says Bory de St.
Vincent, that to the spectator they seem swollen and diseased. Their
head is generally of large size. The}r have long, coarse, straight ha.ir,
a thin beard, a broad countenance, a great mouth, high cheek-bones,
and half-closed eyes, of a light colour, as gray or yellowish, but never

36 a

570 MAN'S ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE.

blue. Their complexion is sometimes of a yellowish-white, as with
the Laplanders ; sometimes of a deep yellow or reddish-brown, as
with the Eskimos and the Greenlanders. The latter peculiarity may
be invoked as a very plausible argument in support of the opinion
which gives to the Arctic peoples different origins. It shows also,
once more, that the more or less intense colouring of the skin among
the African races is not an effect of the solar heat, as was commonly
supposed.

Considered from a physiological point of view, the Hyperboreans
are distinguished by a remarkable uniformity of characteristics, which
deserve to be specified. The sanguine temperament predominates
among them. Their nervous system is but slightly developed, their
sensibility blunted, their intelligence slow, their imagination feeble.
Their external perspiration is almost null, and they are accustomed
to suppress it entirely by induing their bodies in oily substances.
On the other hand, their organs of nutrition and respiration are
endowed with an extraordinary activity ; and in this lies the secret
of the extreme facility with which they support for several successive
months the most rigorous cold. We know, indeed, that man and the
warm-blooded animals possess, in their respiratory apparatus, a posi-
tive internal furnace, where a notable part of the carbon and the
hydrogen contained in their venous blood is consumed in contact
with the air. But to maintain this furnace at such a degree of heat
as shall always preserve the temperature of the body at its normal
standard (39° C.), the inhabitants of Arctic climes need constantly
feed it with fuel, that is, with substances rich in carbon and hydrogen.
Hence the keen appetite of the Hyperboreans for oil, fat, and flesh ;
hence, too, their voracity. The inhabitants of torrid or temperate
regions, while sojourning among the icy wastes of the Pole, quickly
become sensible of the same necessity, and eagerly feed upon aliments
which elsewhere would inspire them with insurmountable disgust.

It is a remarkable fact that most of the diseases so frequent and
so murderous in civilized countries are unknown in the Polar lands.
But, on the other hand, ophthalmia" is endemic, and the cutaneous

MANNERS OF THE LAPLANDERS. 571

affections, as well as cerebral and pulmonary congestion, are of
common occurrence. To sum up: the already scattered and scanty
population of the Arctic Zone is daily decreasing, and will probably
be extinct in a few generations.

The manners of all the Hyperboreans present the same general
features : they are peaceable, inoffensive, and reduced, if I may use
the expression, to the utmost possible minimum of physical and
intellectual activity. This race, or group of races, is represented on
the two continents by several distinct peoples. Those most clearly
defined are : —

In Europe, the Laplanders (or Lapps), and the Samoiedes ;

In Asia, the Ostiaks, Yakouts, and Kamtschatdales ; and,

In North America, the Eskimos (or Esquimaux).

The Laplanders inhabit the northernmost coasts of the Scandi-
navian peninsula. They are ignorant, uncultivated, and torpid, rather
than savage. In spite of their frequent contact "with the Russians
and the Swedes, they have no industrial resources, no art, no other
commerce than that which is afforded by the products of the chase,
of their fisheries, or their herds of reindeer. Christianity, to which
they were converted about two centuries ago, has not aroused them
as yet from their moral and intellectual lethargy. All religion being
reduced, so far as they are concerned, to oral tradition, the devotion
of each is in proportion to his memory. Education among them has
attained to this standard, that a Laplander who knows his alphabet
corresponds to a young man among us who has graduated at Oxford
or Cambridge.

A French traveller, M. de Saint-Blaize, furnishes some details
respecting this people : —

"The race of Laplanders is constantly diminishing in numbers.
It is of Asiatic origin, as may be clearly discerned in their language
and the type of their physiognomy. Some are fishers, and dwell
upon the coast ; others are shepherds, who traverse the mountains in
every direction, pasturing their reindeer on the white moss. During

572

A LIFE WITHIN LIFE.

the three months' summer the Laplander leads his herd into the
elevated regions, to withdraw them from the excessive heats and the
mosquito-plagues : in winter, he brings them near the dwellings of
men, principally for the sake of protecting them more effectually from
his bitter enemies, the wolves, of whom he never speaks but with a
sentiment of profound hatred. The Laplander's wealth is his herd.

LAPLAKD FISHERS.

which feeds him, clothes him, and procures him, by way of barter,
brandy and tobacco, the only objects of his desire.

" The independent life of this nomadic people is not without its
charm. Accustomed from his infancy to privations and fatigues of
every kind, the Laplander suffers little. His body acquires an
extraordinary vigour, and most of our maladies are unknown to him.

A PATENT CRADLE. 573

If during a journey a Lapland woman gives birth to a child, she
places the new-born in a piece of hollow wood, where a hole has been
cut out to receive the little one's head ; then slings this cradle on
her back, and resumes her journey. When she halts, she suspends
her wooden chrysalid to a tree, and the wire-work protects it from
the teeth of ferocious beasts. The reverse of this simple medal is an
old age almost inevitably very unhappy. It is said that when a
Laplander has no longer the strength to render himself useful, his
children abandon him by the roadside, with just provisions enough to
support him for a few days. The traveller frequently encounters in
the forest the skeletons of old men who have thus perished in gloomy
solitude."

The cradle to which our authority refers is described by Professor
Forbes as cut out of solid wood and covered with leather, in flaps so
arranged as to lace across the top with leathern thongs ; the inside
and the little pillow are rendered tolerably soft with reindeer moss,
and the infant fits the space so exactly, that it can neither stir hand
nor foot.

The Lapp hut, says Professor Forbes,* is formed interiorly of
wood, by means of curved ribs uniting near the centre in a ring,
which is open, and allows free escape for the smoke ; the fire being
lighted in the centre of the fioor. The exterior is covered with turf.
The door is of wood on one side. The inmates recline on skins on
the floor, with their feet towards the fire ; and behind them, on a
row of stones near the wall of the hut, are their various utensils.
Their clothing — chiefly of tanned skins and woollen stuffs — looked
very dirty.

The Samoiedes (or Samoyedes) are scattered, to the number of
about a thousand families, along the coasts of the Frozen Sea, in the
government of Archangel, and, in Siberia, in the governments of
Tobolsk and Tomsk. Ethnologists generally consider them to have
a common origin with the Finns of Europe. In stature they are
* Professor Forbes, " Norway and its Glaciers" (Edinburgh, 1858).

57-i THE SAMOIEDES.

somewhat taller than the Lapps, and their colour is more of a tawny.
The marked features of their countenance recall the Hindu type.
The forehead is high, the hair black, the nose long, the mouth well-
formed ; but the sunken eye, veiled by a heavy lid, expresses a cniel
and perfidious nature. The manners of the Samoiedes are brutal.
In character they are wily, fierce, and cunning. They arc shepherds.

A SAMOIEDE FAMII.V.

hunters, traders, and, when opportunity serves, robbers. They clothe
themselves in reindeer-skins, like the other Hyperboreans of the old
continent. They shave off their hair, except a tolerably large tuft
which they allow to flourish on the top of the head, and they pluck
out the beard as fast as it grows. The women adorn themselves with
a belt of gilded copper, and with a profusion of ornaments in glass

THE OSTIAKS. 575

beads and metal. They are heathens, worshipping the sun and moon,
the water and the trees ; in fact, whatever object meets their eyes
they convert into a deity; and, above all, they adore the bear, offering
prayers and sacrifices to him before venturing on an expedition to
hunt him down !

The Ostiaks and the Yakouts are established in the northernmost
districts of Siberia, from the Oural Mountains to Kamtschatka. I
borrow from a Polish lady, Madame Felinska, long exiled in Siberia,
some curious details relative to the Ostiaks, whom, during her banish-
ment, she had numerous opportunities of studying. Seeking one day
a pathway through a wood, she encountered a couple of Ostiaks on
the point of performing their religious duties. These consist in
placing themselves before a tree — a larch in preference — in the
wildest and densest part of the forest, and there executing a series of
epileptic contortions. Such pagan demonstrations are forbidden them,
says Madame Felinska ; but, despite the Christianity which they
have professed to accept, they are and will remain pagans.

Nearly every Ostiak carries about his person a rude image of the
divinities which he adores under the name of Schaitan ; but this does
not prevent him from wearing on his breast a small copper crucifix.
The Schaitan represents the human figure, carved in wood, or, rather,
cut out of a small fragment of wood. It is of different sizes, accord*
ing to the price and the various uses for which it is intended : if for
carrying on the person, it is small ; images for decorating the hut are
much larger ; but in every case the god is clothed in seven pearl-
embroidered chemises, and suspended to the neck by a chaplet of silver
coins. The wooden deity occupies the place of honour in the huts
and cottages, and before commencing a repast, they take care to offer
him the daintiest morsel, smearing his lips with fish or raw game ;
when this sacred duty is performed, they eat in contentment.

The priests of the Ostiaks are called Scha-mans ; they enjoy
immense influence, which they employ in furtherance of the basest
superstition and in promotion of their own personal interest. Ambi-

576

THE YAKOUTS.

tion and egotism dispense with knowledge and science in order to
corrupt mankind.

The Ostiaks and the Samoiedes are great hunters of the white bear.
It is the same with the Yakouts, a people dwelling near the Bouriats,
and approaching, like them, to the Mongol type. It seems that the
object of the chase is not always to kill the animal, but to catch him
alive. Madame Felinska relates that she saw one day a considerable

YAKOUT HUNTER WORRIED BV A WHITE BEAR.

troop of bears conducted to BeVezov like a herd of tame cattle, and
apparently quite as inoffensive. She neglects to inform us, however,
by what means they had been reduced to this state of passive obedience.
The Ostiaks and the Yakouts frequently attack the white bears body
to body, without any other weapon than a hatchet or a long cutlass.
They need to strike the animal with extreme skill and vigour, to slay
him at the first blow, or otherwise they incur extreme peril. If he

THE KAMTSC HAT DALES.

577

misses his stroke, the hunter's only resource is to fling himself on the
ground and lie motionless, until the bear, while smelling his body and
turning him over, incautiously offers himself again to his attack.

The Yakouts are nearly of average height. They are robust and
brave, honest and hospitable, but addicted to idolatry and polygamy.

KAMTSCHATJ>ALF.S.

The Kamtschatdales are smaller and shorter than the Yakouts.
They have a round flat face, a broad depressed nose, and prominent
cheek-bones. They are of a friendly, mild, and peaceable character.
They have a strong partiality for the song and the dance, and their
amusements frequently degenerate into orgies. Small-pox and excessive
brandy-drinking have reduced to a few hundred families a population
which numbered, a century ago, fully 15,000 souls.

37

578 THE ESKIMOS.

One sole population inhabits the immense icy plains which extend
into America even beyond the Polar circle. I refer to the Eskimos,
who are found — encamped in summer under tents made of reindeer or
seal-skin, hidden in winter in their snow-huts — from Behring's Strait
even to Cape Farewell. This race has the reddish-brown tint of the
North American Indians. In its small stature and physical forms it
does not differ from other Hyperboreans ; but in physiognomy and the
flattened skull it singularly recalls the men of lofty stature who
inhabit the other extremity of the American continent, the Pata-
gonians. The physiognomy, the character, and the manners of the
Eskimos have been frequently described. The courageous navigators
who have explored the Polar Sea in quest of a North-west Passage
have held frequent intercourse with these poor people, and all agree
in eulogizing their gentleness, their patriarchal life, their eagerness to
succour strangers. An American, Captain Hall, the last adventurer
who has set himself the task of discovering the wrecks of Franklin's
ill-fated expedition, spent a whole year in the midst of the Eskimos,
whose amiability and generosity he praises in no stinted terms.
Exclusively hunters and fishers, the Eskimos have no other domestic
animal than the dog ; they harness it to their sledges, and also
train it to chase the seal, the walrus, and the reindeer. It is in the
summer only that they hunt the latter animal. In that genial season
there is no lack of other game, terrestrial and marine. It is for them
a season of abundance, wherein they gorge themselves with flesh,
blood, and fat. During the winter they often fast several days at a
time, and remain immured in their huts like hybernating animals ;
but at length, driven by famine and by want of oil, they go forth
upon the ice in search of the seals which come up to breathe.
When they have been fortunate enough to kill one, the}?- divide it
amongst them amicably, and regale themselves upon it until only the
bones remain, after which they endure a new period of privation.
Thus they live from day to day, in continual alternations of gluttony
and abstinence, without injury to their health, and without shortening
their lives. And it is worthy of notice that Europeans who once

THE SAGALIEN TRIBE. 579

consent to adopt this regime — to drink the warm blood and eat the
raw flesh and fat of seals — soon accept of it without the slightest
repugnance, and become capable of enduring, like true Hyperboreans,
the terrible cold of the long Polar winters.

The inhabitants of Sagalien, one of the northerly Asiatic islands,
are a race called the Anios, the same people who form the aboriginal
population of Jesso, and some tribes of whom also dwell on the oppo-
site shores of Manchooria. They are uncultured and pagan savages,
who dwell in huts built of rough logs, and live upon the proceeds of
their fishery and the chase. Their women are ugly and little ; the
men are tall, lithe, straight, and strong, with flowing hair and un-
kempt beard and moustaches. Like the Samoiedes they worship the
bear ; feasting the living animals on the choicest dried fish, and plant-
ing young pines round the cages in which they are kept. Their
graves they regard with similar feelings of veneration.

The other Hyperborean races do not widely differ in character
and physical appearance from those already described.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MOUNTAINS.

' Blue, and baseless, and beautiful,
Did the boundless mountains bear
Their folded shadows into the golden air.
The comfortlessness of their chasms was full
Of orient cloud and undulating mist,
Which, when their silver cataracts hissed .
Quivered with panting colour."

RUSKIN.

FROM the Polar deserts to the icy crests of the mountains the transition
is natural. There are here, so to speak, two varieties of a single class

580 LAWS OF TEMPERATURE.

of deserts, which we might call the Deserts of Cold, since the coldness
of the climate is the dominant cause which in both renders the soil
more and more unproductive and uninhabitable. In effect, it is not
only in departing from the Tropic Zone that we see the mean tem-
perature gradually sinking even to the point whereat all liquids con-
geal and all terrestrial life becomes impossible. The same pheno-
menon occurs in proportion as we ascend in the atmosphere. It is
a consequence of the properties of the gaseous medium which envelops
our globe, and takes place in obedience to certain laws which science has
been able bo ascertain and define. We know now that the decline of
the temperature is always in proportion to the elevation of places or of
the atmospheric strata ; but the value of the relation which exists be-
tween the two terms may be modified by various circumstances— such
as the direction of the prevailing wind, the hygrometrical state of the
atmosphere, the hour of the day, and particularly the climate, or, to
speak more exactly, the thermic latitude. The warmer the climate,
the more sensible the difference between the temperature of the air
at the level of the sea and that which we observe at a certain height ;
greater, nevertheless, is the height to which we must rise to find the
region where the thermometer never descends below 0°, and where, con-
sequently, the snows and ices of the mountains do not melt in any season.
As a mean, we estimate every 580 feet of elevation in the Torrid
Zone as equal to one therm ometrical degree, and in the Temperate
Zone at one degree for every 450 feet, the cooling of the air. That
is, for every 580 feet in the one instance, and every 450 feet in the
other, as we ascend above the sea's level, the temperature decreases
one degree. In the Polar regions the decrease of temperature is
insensible up to a certain height, which has not yet been ascertained.
At Ingloolich, in 69° 21' north latitude, Captain Parry flew a kite to
a height of 400 feet, with an a minima thermometer attached. At
this elevation the temperature of the air was 31° below zero, or the
same as on the ice-fields of the sea. Humboldt counted one degree
of declination for every 550 feet on Chimborazo. De Saussure
obtained one degree for every 440 feet on Mont Blanc.

THE PERPETUAL SNOW-LINE.

581

The limit of eternal snows, or perpetual snow-line, which at the
Pole sinks to the very level 'of ocean, rises higher and higher as it
approaches the lower latitudes, and attains its maximum elevation
towards the Equinoctial Line. It follows, that in the countries bor-
dering on the Arctic Circle, mountains of very moderate altitude show
themselves all through the year in a shroud of radiant snow ; while,
under the Tropics, if we would meet with masses of eternal ice, we
must mount to a height of 13,500 feet and more. The limit of the per-
manent snows is, however, affected by a variety of local circumstances,
such as the neighbourhood of great seas or forests. The subjoined
table, therefore, which shows the height of the curve of congelation in
different latitudes, is founded upon the known law of the decrease of
heat by elevation, and must be regarded rather as approximatively
correct than strictly accurate.

TABLE OF SNOW-LINE.

LATI-
TUDE.

MEAN TEMPERATURE
AT THE LEVEL OF
THE SEA.

HEIGHT
OF THE
SNOW-
LINE.

Degrees
Centigrade.

Uegrtei
Fahrenheit.

Fe-t.

0

29 '00

84 "2

15,207

1

28'99

84'2

15,203

2

28 '96

84"!

15,189

4

28'86

83'9

15,135

5

2878

83 '8

15,095

6

28 '68

83 '6

15,047

7

28'57

83 '4

14,989

8

28 '44

83-2

14,923

9

28'29

82-9

14,848

10

28'13

82'6

14,764

15

27 '06

807

14,220

20

25-61

78 'I

13,478

25

23-82

74-9

12,557

30

2175

71'1

11.484

35

19-46

67'0

10,287

40

17-02

62'6

9,001

45

14-50

581

7,671

50

11-98

53'6

6,334

LATI-
TUDE.

MEAN TEMPERATURE
AT THE LEVEL OF
THE SEA.

HEIGHT
OF THE
SNOW-
LINE.

Cemigrade.

Degrees
Fahrenheit.

Feet

5ir

11'24

52-3

5,950

54

10-02

50'0

5,290

55

954

49'2

5,034

56

9-07

48'3

4,782

57

8 "60

47"5

4,534

58

8'14

46-6

4,291

CO

7 '25

45'0

3,818

65

518

41'3

2,722

70

3-39

38'1

1,778

75

1'94

35'5

1,016

80

'87

336

457

85

•22

32'4

117

86

"14

32 '3

76

87

'OS

322

44

•04

32"!

20

89

"01

32 '0

5

90

•oo

32"0

0

That the foregoing table needs considerable modification in par-
ticular localities is evident from the following facts : — In the Scan-
dinavian Alps, lat. 65° north, the snow-line occurs at an elevation of
5200 feet, instead of 2722 ; in the Alps of Savoy, lat. 45° north, it

* 51° 30' north latitude, the parallel of London.

582 " THE DIFFICULT AIR."

is found at 7650 feet, which is nearly that of the table. On the
southern slope of the Himalayas the traveller ascends to an elevation
of upwards of 15,000 feet before he enters the realms of snow and
ice, and on the northern slope to 12,750 feet. Finally, in the Andes
of Bolivia, according to Pentland, the curve of congelation lies between
14,400 and 14,800 feet.

Thus, then, in the mid Torrid Zone, we must accomplish a weary
ascent of 13,000 to 15,000 feet before we can find ourselves trans-
ported from the calcined plains whose sands scorch and blister our
feet, or the dense forests whose innermost depths teem with the most
exuberant and beautiful floral life, to the heart of icy deserts and the
sublime silence of the mountains. And in passing from one to the
other of these extremes, we traverse in a few hours all the climates
which succeed one another from the Equator to the Pole. Neverthe-
less, I must point out an important difference between the Polar
deserts and the snowy regions of the mountains, which is wholly to
the advantage of the former.

I have already shown that, under the highest latitudes, men find,
in the exceptional activity of their functions of nutrition, and, above
all, of respiration, a powerful re-agent against the intensity of the
external cold. This resource fails him on the mountain summit. In
vain will he attempt, as a succedaneum against the cold, to modify
his ordinary regimen, to drink warm blood, to eat fat and raw flesh ;
his stomach will reject such aliment, or digest it only with difficulty,
and he will not surfer less from the extreme rigour of the tempera-
ture. At the Pole air pours freely into our lungs, and its pressure
stoutly maintains the equilibrium of the fluids of our body. Such is
not the case when we soar, Icarus like, into the higher regions of the
atmosphere ; in proportion as we ascend, the air rarefies, and its pres-
sure diminishes. Consequently, respiration becomes difficult and
painful ; the quantity of oxygen designed to cherish animal heat by
the combustion of the carbon and hydrogen of the blood becomes in-
sufficient ; at the same time, the tissues and the liquids which they
enclose expand ; perspiration, instead of diminishing, experiences a

MOUNTAIN REGIONS. 683

relative augmentation ; if the atmospheric pressure is much too weak,
the blood extravasates, and forces itself out through the nose, the
ears, and the pores of the skin. In a word, that peculiar malady
which has been named the mal des montagnes, and which is not
always unattended with danger, attacks the hardiest traveller, and
compels him with all speed to return to lower and securer levels.

When, therefore, we speak of " the pure and living air" of the
mountains, of the vigour and health of their inhabitants — even as
the poet says —

" An iron race the mountain-cliffs maintain"—

we are really to understand those lofty hills which are decorated in
some places with the name of mountains, or the table -lands that
form the first steps of the great chains. Such, indeed, are the only
inhabited and inhabitable mountains. There only is the cultivation
of a few plants still possible ; there only can the wild beasts find an
asylum in wood or forest, and the cattle green fields of pasture ;
there may man plant his feet, build his dwellings, devote himself to
rearing his herds, to the chase, or to more sedentary industries. Let
us remember, moreover, that the salubrity of the air of elevated dis-
tricts has been greatly exaggerated, and that if we meet with many
mountaineers agile, robust, and intelligent, we also meet with a great
number affected by organic diseases either wholly unknown or very
rare in the plains, such as goitre, scrofula, and cretinism.

The structure of the mountains, their form, and the nature of
their soil, suffice, even without these meteorological conditions I have
just indicated, to render them impracticable as the dwelling-place of
man and of most animals. To ascend them is almost always an
enterprise of the most hazardous, frequently of the most perilous
character. To climb the lofty peaks of the Himalaya, to scale the
majestic brow of Chimborazo, to ascend the frozen sides of the Jung-
frau or Mont Blanc, is an achievement of which the boldest boast, as
if they had won a Waterloo or an Inkermann ! Only a keen longing
after that notoriety which for some minds fills the place of renown,

584 GEOLOGY OF MOUNTAINS.

or a passion for dangerous enterprise such as stimulates the pioneer
or the explorer, or a powerful scientific and artistic interest, can
impel the Alpine adventurer — can instigate a Saussure, a Forbes, a
Pentland, or a Tyndall, to mount the scarped ramparts of primeval
rocks, to tread warily along precipices which the chamois can scarcely
traverse, to escalade the savage cliffs and frozen pinnacles, and to

breathe

" The difficult air of the iced mountain-tops."

The annals of mountaineering are illuminated with many stirring
stories of human endurance, patience, and heroism ; but, alas ! the
page is too often robed in black, and too frequently records the death
of some unhappy explorer •

It is no part of my plan to trace the geological history of moun-
tains. We know that their formation has been attributed, according
to a satisfactory theory, to the upheavals and expansions of the
igneous matter which, in the primitive ages, boiled under the solid
crust produced by the superficial solidification of our planet, and
whose ebullition, though considerably decreased, even in our own
days is frequently made known in volcanic phenomena and earth-
quakes. At divers epochs the crust of the globe will have been rent
and dislocated, giving vent to floods of fused mineral matter ; these,
solidifying in their tunn, will have produced those inequalities of the
earth's surface which we call mountains; enormous inequalities, as
they appear to us ; mole-hills or grains of sand if we compare them
with the volume of the terresti'ial sphere.

The distribution of the mountains over the surface of the con-
tinents and islands, and the forms which they have assumed, seem,
at the first glance, altogether capricious and irregular. Yet an
attentive study speedily demonstrates that some higher law than that
of chance presided at the violent and tumultuous production of these
majestic masses. Thus, in the first place, it is evident that every
mountain not a volcano connects itself of necessity to other moun-
tains, and forms a chain of greater or less length, which departs a
little from the straight line, or rather from the arc of the great circle.

THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND CONFIGURATION. 585

The principal chains throw out branches, and by mountain knots, as
they are called, unite with other secondary chains — the whole com-
posing a mountain system; but the apparent irregularities of these
systems may always be referred to one common direction.

If from the disposition of mountains we pass to their distribution,
we perceive that all chains which have sprung from the same geolo-
gical convulsion are always distinctly parallel, and the successive
chains distinctly perpendicular among themselves ; so that the age of
a chain is known by its direction. Nor is there anything to astonish
us in this species of symmetry, when we recollect that every sub-
stance previously liquefied or diluted by heat, and which, while cooling,
becomes contracted by the closer compression of its atoms, splits
with a certain degree of regularity, generally following lines which
intersect each other at right angles. And it is through the crevices
of the cooled terrestrial crust that these fused matters have escaped,
according to the hypothesis generally admitted by geologists, which,
by solidifying in their turn, have created the mountains. I can only
indicate these considerations to the reader ; their development would
beguile us too far from our prescribed path.

If we direct our attention now to the configuration of mountains,
we shall see that this configuration depends essentially on the nature
of the rooks which constitute them. Granite, for example, is one of
those which offers the most varied outlines, as the reader may see
without quitting the United Kingdom, in the rugged, fantastic, broken
masses of the Argyllshire Highlands, that hem in the waters of Loch
Goil and Loch Long. Granite abounds in the tropical zone, and
seems to prefer chains of moderate elevation. Granite heights are
generally distinguished by abrupt and polished flanks, pointed or
dentelated summits, scarped approaches, deeply fissured slopes, and
narrow, wild, and profound valleys.

Gneiss, a felspathic and micaceous rock, of schistous structure, is
found in layers sometimes horizontal or gently inclined, sometimes
undulating and complicated towards the border. The contours of
the gneiss mountains are less cloven than those of mountains of

586

PORPIIYRIT1C MOUNTAINS.

granite ; but numerous fissures and indentations are still discover-
able.

Porphyry generally occurs in isolated peaks, with almost vertical
flanks ; seldom in continuous chains. Porphyritic mountains, says M.
Maury, imprint on the landscape a peculiarly picturesque character.
This rock sometimes appears under the form of tall pillars set in close

THE ORGAN MOUNTAINS OF Rio JANEIRO.

juxtaposition — it is then known as columnar porphyry; and to
groups of these columns have been given in some countries the name
of Orgues or Organs, on account of their resemblance to the organ
pipes which discourse solemn music in our cathedrals.

Thus : in Mexico two mountains occur distinguished by this ap-

THE OEGAX MOUNTAINS. 587

pellation, Los Organos ; one is that of Mamanchota, situated to the
north of the Indian village of Actapan. The portion soaring out of
the rock, says Humboldt, is three hundred feet in height ; but the ab-
solute elevation of the summit of the mountain, at the point where the
Organos begin to shoot aloft, is 1385 toises (about 5310 feet). The
other is the Jacal, which is nearly 9600 feet above the sea-level,
and crowned with forests of pine and cedar.

But the most celebrated Organ Mountains are those which rear
their glittering shafts at the extremity of the bay of Rio Janiero.
"It is not only the aspect of these pointed summits," says Dr. Yvan,
" that reminds the spectator of the sublime instrument of our
churches ; the strange sounds which escape from between these
cylinders of rock render the analogy still more striking, and complete
the illusion. The voice of the tempest, the lamentations of the
forests bowed by the passing winds, the doleful wails of the jaguars,
the cries of the howling monkeys passing between these sonorous peaks,
produce a harmony before which all human instrumentation loses its
grandeur. We feel that it is the universal soul which inspires the
chords of the majestic keys. The Serra dos Organos is clothed in
virgin forest over three-fourths of its extent ; it is only at long inter-
vals, and in obscure valleys, that we encounter any traces of human
industry, or that we traverse some circular treeless hollows, in which
an abundant herbage flourishes, and feeds the troops of horses and
oxen enclosed in these natural parks."

The Organ Mountains of Epailly (in the department of the Haute
Loire, in France) and of Bart (in the Correze), and the Colonnades
of Chenavari (in the Ardeche), belong to the basaltic formation, ren-
dered so remarkable by its frequent arrangement in prismatic
columns of extreme regularity. Basalt also gives birth to chains
which resemble vast walls, and sometimes appears in the form of
pyramids, plateaux, or simple mamelons.

Of the columnar arrangement the Palisades, on the banks of the
river Hudson, may be particularized as a noble example ; but a still
grander spectacle is presented on the river Columbia, west of the

588 THE SCANDINAVIAN ALPS.

Rocky Mountains, where the waters pour through a valley walled on
either side with tier upon tier of pillars, to the height of fully a
thousand feet.

The Trachytes, massive rocks of excessive roughness, occasionally
appear in the shape of cones, at times in that of domes or enormous
balloons, and at times as cupolas with spire-like points, like minarets.
The chalks, the sandstones, the diorites, have all their characteristic
aspect, and give to the mountains where they dominate, and to the
landscapes which surround them, an easily recognizable physiognomy.
And, finally, everybody knows the particular configuration affected
by the volcanic mountains.

The great mountain-chains are unequally distributed in different
parts of the world, and their disposition varies in a remarkable
manner in the two great continents. For the most part it agrees
with the direction of the principal land masses in each. Thus, in
the Old World, the chief ranges assume an easterly and westerly
course, following the parallels of latitude ; in the New, a northerly
and southerly direction, like that of the meridians of longitude.

In Europe, the mountains are numerous, but generally of very
moderate elevation. In the north, we find the Scandinavian Alps,
covering nearly the whole of Norway and some part of Sweden.
From the Naze, or Cape Lindesnaes, they roll far away, like foam-
crested billows, to the very shore of the Frozen Sea. The central and
highest part of the mass, between latitude 62° and 63°, is called the
Dover-feld ; the more northerly portion, the Koelin Mountains ; the
more southerly, Lang-feld and Hardanger-feld. Their summits are
comparatively flat — felds, or fields, as the name indicates ; on the
eastern side they slope gradually to the plains bordering the Gulf of
Bothnia, their sides clothed with dense forests of pine and fir ; on the
west they rise abruptly from the margin of the ocean, and their steep,
barren, and swarthy flanks are broken up by numerous inlets, or fiords,
where the waters lie cradled in gloom and desolation. Their highest
point is now known to be Skags-tol-tind, in the Lang-feld range,
upwards of 8000 feet. All the loftier summits rise above the snow-

THE ALPINE SYSTEM. 589

line, and wear night and day, winter and summer, a shroud of frost
and snow. The glaciers are often of great magnificence, and equal,
if they do not transcend in sublimity, those of the Alps of Switzer-
land and Savoy.

The Mountains of Scotland seldom exceed 3500 feet in height ;
the principal summits, however, Ben Mac-Dhui, and Ben Nevis, are
respectively, 4390 and 4368 feet. Ben Lawers, on the west side of
Loch Tay, reaches 3984 feet ; Ben More, in the south-west of Perth-
shire, 3818 feet; and Schehallion, 3514 feet. Ben Lomond, east of
the famous lake of that name, has an altitude of 3191 feet. The
characteristics of the Scotch mountains are their barren sides, only
relieved by patches of purple heather ; their originally fantastic and
broken outlines ; their deep, narrow, savage glens, which are often of
the gloomiest and most desolate aspect ; and their still deep tarns, or
lakes, mirroring each lofty height in their clear and glassy surface.

The most important of the European systems is that of the Alps,
whose majestic and glorious landscapes have been for ages the admira-
tion of the poet and the artist. They begin, on the west, near the
head of the Gulf of Savoy ; sweep round the upper portion of Italy,
as if to shut out that historic peninsula from the European mainland ;
bend to the south-east to approach the Adriatic ; and throw out a
spur, or prolongation, along the eastern shore of that sea, and parallel
with it. That portion of the system which borders the Medi-
terranean is distinguished as the Maritime Alps ; between Italy
on the one side, and France and Savoy on the other, lie the Cot-
tian and Graian Alps ; from Mont Blanc to Monte Rosa stretch
the Pennine Alps ; further to the eastward extend the Lepontine,
Rhetian, and Noric Alps ; and south-easterly, the Carnic, the Julian,
and the Dinaric Alps. The Bernese Alps form the northern barrier of
the Valley of the Rhone ; their direction is parallel to that of the
Pennine.*

* Compare Malte Erun, eel. by Lavallee, " Geographic Universelle ;" Mrs. Somerville,
'; Physical Geography;" and Sir J. Herschel, "Physical Geography" (Encycl. Britt.,
inh edit.)

590 MOUNTAINS OF ITALY.

The principal Alpine summits are : — Mont Blanc, the " monarch
of mountains," 15, 750 feet; Monte Rosa, 15, 150 feet; Finster-Aar-
horn, 14,109 ; the Jungfrau, 13,716 ; and the Ortler Spits, 12,852
feet. The scenery of the Alps is always of the grandest character ;
its more remarkable features being its huge glaciers, or ice-rivers, with
their brilliant and ever-changing hues.

" Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts !
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon '? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet."®

It is supposed that there are at least four hundred of the great
glaciers, varying from three to thirty miles in length, from a hundred
to six or seven hundred feet in thickness, and from a few yards to a
couple of miles in breadth. The total superficial area of the glaciers
in Switzerland, Savoy, Piedmont, and the Tyrol, has been estimated
at 1400 square miles.

The Apennines must be considered a subsidiary portion of the
Alps, rather than as an independent system. They branch off from
the Maritime Alps, and traverse the entire length of Italy. Several
peaks rise to an elevation of between 7000 and 8000 feet ; but the
average height scarcely exceeds 3000 feet. Monte Corna, the culmi-
nating point, is 9523 feet.

The south of Italy is occupied by a remarkable volcanic region,
where the subterranean fires still give awful signs of their intense
activity. Mount Vesuvius, which raises its conical mass, girdled
with vines and chestnuts, above the fair city of Naples, is 3978 feet
above the sea-level. Its sister volcano, Mount Etna, in the island of
Sicily, attains a far loftier elevation (10,872 feet),f and exhibits a
charming variety of picturesque scenery. The forest region on the
lower slopes is rich in glowing effects of colour, while near the summit

* Coleridge, Hymn in the Valley of Chamouni. For a glowing account of these phe-
nomena, see Professor Tyndall's " Glaciers of the Alps."
t Admiral Smyth, " The Mediterranean."

AN ETNEAN LANDSCAPE. 591

the landscapes wear a grander aspect. Mr. Matthew Arnold Las
painted an Etnean picture with marvellous force in the following
beautiful passage.*

" Tis the last

Of all the woody, high, well watered dells
On Etna ; and the beam
Of noon is broken there by chestnut boughs
Down its steep verdant sides ; the air
Is freshened by the leaping stream, which throws
Eternal showers of spray on the mossed roots
Of trees, and vines of turf, and long dark shoots
Of ivy-plants, and fragrant hanging bells
Of hyacinths, and on late anemones,
That muffle its wet banks ; but glade,
And stream, and sward, and chestnut trees,
End here ; Etna beyond, in the broad glare
Of the hot noon, without a shade,
Slope behind slope, up to the peak, lies bare ;
The peak, round which the white clouds play."
•

Between France and Spain lies the great system of the Pyrenees,
whose topmost peaks exceed 11,000 feet in altitude. Their entire
breadth averages between forty and fifty miles ; the southern slope is
exceedingly rugged and abrupt, and the passes or defiles exhibit a
character of exceeding savageness. The two loftiest crests are Mount
Maladetta, 11,426 feet, and Mont Perdu, 11,275 feet. The interior
of Spain consists of an elevated table-land, bordered by the wild
mountain-ranges of the Sierra Nevada and the Sierra Morena. The
average height of the snowy chain of the Nevada is 6000 feet, but
the Peak of Mulharen soars to the noble elevation of 11,678 feet.

In France, we meet with the chains of the Cevennes and the
Vosges, the former extending along the right bank of the Rhone, with
an average altitude of 3000 feet ; the latter stretching from north to
south along the right bank of the Rhine. The vine-clad slopes of the
latter offer many a romantic picture to the wayfarer in Rhineland.
Very curious in geological interest are the extinct volcanic mountains
of Auvergne ; so black, charred, scathed, and desolate, that one might
* Matthew Arnold, " New Poems" (1867)— Evipedocles on Etna.

692 THE MOUNTAINS OF HUNGARY AND RUSSIA.

suppose them to have been the scene of some old-world battle between
the Titans and the Olympian gods. Here the Puy de Sancy exceeds
6000 feet (6215), and the now silent cone of the Puy de Dome,
4500 feet in height.

The Hungarian Mountains, or Mountains of Germany, occupy
the country between the Rhine and the eighteenth meridian of east
longitude. Here we meet with the dark and densely wooded crests
of the Schwarz Wald, or Black Forest; the Erz-Gebirge, on the
borders of Saxony and Bohemia ; and the rich metalliferous masses of
the legend-haunted Harz. Continuing our survey to the eastward,
our glances rest on the bold and many-peaked groups of the Carpa-
thians, which, commencing near the sources of the Oder and the
Vistula, describe a semicircle round the fertile Hungarian plain for
between seven and eight hundred miles. Striking down to the
Danube, it faces on the opposite side the lofty wall of the Balkan,
and through the gorge thus formed, the famous "Iron Gates " of ancient
story, the river rolls its waters with impetuous rapidity. The more
elevated summits of 'the Carpathians possess an average height of
5000 feet, but Mount Lomnitz reaches the loftier level of 7962 feet.

On the borders of Asia lies the long and narrow chain, or rather
chains, of the Ural Mountains, with an average altitude of from
2000 to 2500 feet, sinking in about latitude 57° to a rocky ridge of
little more than 1100 feet. The loftiest crest is Mount Yaman, in
latitude 54° 13', 5387 feet. The Ural Mountains possess abundant
mineral treasures, both gold and platinum occurring in extensive
abundance.

The chain of Mount Caucasus stretches for about 700 miles
between the Black and Caspian Seas, in the direction of north-west
and south-east. It exceeds 150 miles in breadth, throwing out from
the central mass numerous branches and parallel ridges, and enclosing
a network of valleys, plains, and ravines. The culminating point
appears to be the group or mountain-knot of Elburz, in the meridian
of 42° 25' E., which attains the stupendous elevation of 18,493 feet.
Kasbek, which is really in Asia, reaches 16,500 feet.

THE HIMALAYAS. 593

In the Asiatic continent the grandest mountain-system is that of
the Himalayas (or "Snowy Mountains"), which limit the Thibetan
table-land on the south, and divide it from the hot plains of northern
India. They extend in an east and west direction for about 1500
miles, with a breadth of from 200 to 250 ; and consist of a number
of parallel ranges, divided by transverse valleys, and rising one above
another like a series of gigantic terraces. The slopes are clothed
with an exceedingly rich and beautiful flora, and far up to the very
snow-line extend magnificent breadths of forest foliage.* On the
southern slope this snow-line is about 15,000 feet high; on the
northern, 18,000 feet. The loftiest summit of the Himalayas, and
probably the very apex of our globe, is Mount Everest (latitude 27°
59'), 29,002 feet in altitude. Kunchin-jinga is 28,156 feet;
Dhaiualgiri, 28,000 feet ; and Javaher, 25,746 feet above the ocean-
level.

" As we ascend the exterior face of these mountains," •)• says Cap-
tain Strachey, "tropical vegetation prevails to a height of about
4000 feet, though even from 3000 feet a few of the forms of colder
climates begin to appear ; the vegetation, however, is, on the whole,
scanty on this declivity. Far different is it when we follow the
same zone of elevation into the interior of the mountains, along the
courses of the larger rivers, which, owing to the great depths of their
valleys, carry a tropical flora into the very heart of the mountain
region. The sheltered and confined beds of these rivers, where the
two great requisites for tropical vegetation, heat and humidity, are at
their maximum, often afford the finest specimens of forest scenery,
varied by an admixture of the temperate forms of vegetable life,
which here descend to their lowest level. Thus the traveller's eye
may rest on palms and acacias intermingled with pines ; on oaks or
maples covered with epiphytal orchidese ; while pothos and clematis,
bamboos and ivy, fill up the strangely contrasted picture.

"Above 4000 feet oaks and rhododendrons greatly increase in

* Dr. J. Hooker, '• Himalayan Journals."

f Captain Strachey, " Journal of Royal Geographical Society" (vol. xxi.)
38

594 THE ALTAI SYSTEM.

number, and these trees, with andromeda (Pieris), form the great
mass of the forest from 6000 to 8000 feet. Species of the deciduous
trees of the temperate zone are gradually introduced as we rise, and
these again, with- the addition • of other pines, prevail in the upper
regions of forest — that is, from 8000 to 11, 5 00 feet."

Glaciers abound in the loftier Himalayas. The lowest elevation

THE HIMALAYAS— MOUNT GAURISAXKAR 23.000 feett.

to which they descend is about 11,500 feet above the level of
the sea.

The Altai Mountains lie north of Mongolia, with an average
elevation of from 5000 to 7000 feet. Eternal snow crowns their
loftiest summit, Mount Bielukha, 11,063 feet. In Central Asia we

MOUNTAINS OF ASIA. 595

find the chains of the Tldan-shan, partly volcanic, and the Kuen-lun,
which are little known, but probably lift their towering heads to an
altitude of fully 20,000 feet. China is traversed from west to east
by two mountain-ranges, the Pe-ling and Nan-ling, or " Northern "
and "Southern," which prolong their rocky heights to the veiy
shores of the Pacific. "West of the table-land of Pamer the eye rests
upon the formidable chain of the Beloor-tagh, from 18,000 to 20,000
feet in elevation; and on the borders of Central Asia the Himalaya,
the Beloor-tagh and other chains unite in the colossal knot or group
of the Hindoo-Koosli. Thence, with a westerly course, extend the
Paropamisan and Caspian Mountains, the latter culminating in
Mount Demavend, 14,300 feet, near the Caspian Sea. The Solei-
man Mountains border on the rugged plateau of Afghanistan ; in
Armenia rises the fable-haunted crest of Agri-dagh, or Mount Ararat,
17,260 feet; while, in Asia Minor, the Taurus chain, which so
often beheld the banners and glancing spears of the Romans, attains
its loftiest in Mount Argceus, or Arjish-dagh, 13,100 feet; and
along the coast of Syria rolls the undulating range of Lebanon, with
Mount Hermon soaring to 9600 feet. Arabia is occupied by a
branch of the Lebanon, which runs southward into the Sinai tic
peninsula. The highest of the Sinai Mountains is 9300 feet above
the sea.

The average altitude of the Ghauts, which line the east and west
coasts of Hindostan, is 3000 feet; but some of their summits aspire
to 8000 feet.

A range of high mountains traverses the dreary peninsula of
Kamtschatka, and appears to be a continuation of the volcanic chain
which forms the Kurile Islands, and extends even to Japan and the
great islands of the Eastern Archipelago. Many of the Kamtschatkan
volcanoes are still active, such as Avatsha, Kluchevsky, and
Assachnish, and though shrouded in snow and ice project from their
seething caldrons vast showers of ashes, stones, boiling water, and
lava. Avatsha is 9600 feet high.

The Indian islands contain many colossal mountains, mostly, if

696 THE AFRICAN SUMMITS.

not all, of a volcanic character, and the same generalization is true
of the beautiful Polynesian archipelagos : —

" Summer-isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea."

Mount Ophir, in Sumatra, is 13,840 feet high ; Stamat, in Java,
12,300 feet; Indiapura, in Sumatra, 12,140 feet; Tomboro, in the
island of Sumbawa, 7600 feet; and Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands,
3970 feet. Kina-balu, in Borneo, is a magnificent mass, 13,968
feet in height. " Its grand precipices," says a traveller,* " its polished
granite surfaces glittering under the bright tropical rays, the dashing
cascades, which fall from so great a height as to dissolve in spray
before being lost in the dark valleys below, have a magical effect
upon the imagination."

My rapid survey of the mountain-systems of the globe now brings
both writer and reader to the African Continent, which contains,
however, an unusually large proportion of plain and low level. The
northern mountain-ranges, which extend from east to west parallel to
the Mediterranean, are known to geographers under the general
appellation of Mount Atlas, whose culminating point occurs in the
peak of Miltoin, 11,400 feet, to the south-east of the city of
Morocco.

In the north-eastern part of the continent lie the Mountains of
Abyssinia, the highest pinnacle being that of Geesh, which towers at
an elevation of 15,000 feet above the sea. Many other summits are
also crowned with "snows eternal," feeding a succession of streams
which pour their waters into the White Nile.

Detached masses and mountain-groups spread along the western
coast, between the 12th and 18th parallels of north and south
latitude respectively. To the north of the Equator lie the Kong
Mountains ; and near the coast of the Bight of Biafra rises the semi-
extinct volcano of the Camaroons, 13,129 feet high. This elevation
is far exceeded by that of the colossal summits, which on the eastern
* Spencer St. John. " Life in the Forests of the Far East " (London. 1863).

MOUNTAINS OF NORTH AMERICA. 597

coast are situated within a few degrees of the equinoctial line, and
wear a crown of snow which is indissoluble. One of these, KLli-
mandjaro, has an altitude of 22,814 feet, while Kenia cannot be less
than 20,000 feet. Others are probably equal, or little inferior, to
these in height.

In South Africa are three ranges of mountains, or rather terraces,
the northernmost of which is called the Nieuweld, and runs in a
general course of east and west. Towards its eastern extremity it
bears the name of the Sneeaberg, or Snowy Mountain, and its
summits are frequently 1000 feet high. The Compassberg group
is 7000 feet in elevation. Immediately to the south of Cape Town
rises the curious flat-topped Table Mountain, 3582 feet in height.
The Peak of Teneriffe, in the Canary Isles, off the north-west coast,
is volcanic ; it rises 12,236 feet above the sea.

Asia possesses, as we have seen, the loftiest mountain-peaks, but it
is on the American continent we meet with the grandest mountain-
systems. We remark, in the first place, that they are all directed
from north to south ; in the second, that they are grouped along the
western and eastern coasts in two unequal systems, converging
towards each other as they run southward. In North America these
two systems are the Rocky Mountains on the west; and the Apala-
chian, or Alleghany, on the east. The former consists of a mountain-
region, diversified with valleys, terraces, and plateaus, varying in
breadth from 40 to 100 miles, and raising several summits to a very
conspicuous elevation, as in Mount Brown, 15,900 feet, and the
volcanic peak of Mount Elias, in California, 17,500 feet.

The Apalachian range extends from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to
the parallel of 34°, a course of 1500 miles. It is intersected by
Lake Champlain and the valley of the Hudson. Its average height
does not exceed 3000 feet ; but it culminates in Mount Washington
to an altitude of 6234 feet.

In South America the chain of the Rocky Mountains is prolonged
in the magnificent system of the Cordilleras de los Andes, or the

598 MOUNTAINS OF SOUTH AMERICA.

Andes, which commences immediately to the southward of the
Isthmus of Panama, extends along the whole stretch of the western
coast, and finally terminates in the rocky archipelago of Tierra del
Fuego. This chain is locally distinguished into the Columbian,
Peruvian, Bolivian, Chilian, and Patagonian Andes. Its widest
extension occurs between the 20th and 25th parallels, where it
measures upwards of 400 miles across. Throughout its entire course
it attains a very considerable elevation. Its volcanic character is
very marked. Thus, in the Columbian Andes, Antisana and Cotopaxi
are still active ; in the Chilian, Aconcagua is the loftiest volcano on
the globe ; in the Patagonian, four active volcanoes occur. The
region at the base of the Chilian Andes suffers more from volcanic
convulsion than any other part of the world, and its towns are
repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes.

The principal summits are : — Aconcagua, 2 3, 9 4 4 feet; Chimborazo,
21,415 feet; Sahama, 22,350 feet; Cotopaxi, 18,867; Antisana,.
19,136 feet; Sorata, 21,286 feet; arid lUimanni, 21,149 feet.

On the eastern coast we meet with the Mountains of Guiana and
the Mountains of Brazil, never reaching a higher level than 5000
feet. Mount Sarmiento, in Tierra del Fuego, is 6900 feet above the
sea. In the West Indies the loftiest point is found in the Blue
Mountains of Jamaica, 7278 feet.

CHAPTER V.

VEGETABLE LIFE AND ANIMAL LIFE IN THE MOUNTAINS.

THE same changes that we observe in the characters of vegetable life
as we advance towards the Pole reproduce themselves, the reader
will easily understand, as we ascend the mountain-sides. Only, in
the former case the gradation is slow and scarcely perceptible ; in the

UP THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE. 599

latter, it displays itself rapidly ; in such wise that a distance of a
few hundred yards in height is equivalent to a journey of several
degrees in latitude. It is scarcely necessary to add that the warmer
the climate, the higher we must rise to reach the belt or zone where
flourish the species peculiar to Arctic countries.

In every land the flora of the lowest region of the mountains is
virtually the same as that of the adjacent plains, and it is only at an
elevation of 300 feet that we discern a positive change of aspect.
In temperate Europe, the Normandy fir and the Epicea begin to
form, at that altitude, forests of considerable extent. These trees are
from 120 to 150 feet in height, with a pyramidal configuration,
sombre foliage, and drooping boughs, arid whose bark takes to itself
a clothing of various lichens (notably Usneas), the long filaments,
branchy and yellowish, clinging to the branches of the most aged
individuals. In the shadow of these resinous trees thrive the
honeysuckle, the rose, the wild raspberry. At the base of the senile
trunks are developed the crawling or climbing stems, ever verdurous,
of various lycopodiums. In rocky localities the great yellow
gentian unfolds its long spikes of golden flowers, in company with
the elegant martagon, whose yellow-spotted red corollas are rolled up
turban- wise. At a higher level, between 4500 and 6000 feet, the
cembro pine, rare enough in France and England, more common in
the mountains of Central Europe, and the larch, whose leaves fall
every winter, are the last representatives of the true arborescent
Flora.

Still continuing our ascent, we meet now with nothing but an
herbaceous vegetation. Here and there only, in turfy places and
abrupt ravines, a few birches and some dwarf willows display them-
selves, scarcely taller than the herbs which surround them. It is in
the rocky hollows also that the oleanders or ferruginous rhododen-
drons vegetate, sole representatives in Europe of a genus which
among the Asiatic mountains numbers several species. The Flora of
the Alpine prairies is, moreover, extremely varied. The Graminese
dominate therein, but associated with other families which enamel with

GOO

FLOWERS OF THE MOUNTAIN.

the most brilliant colours the bright green carpet of those cold
regions ; the bright yellow or orange of the Composite ; the blue of
the Phyteumas, of the Larkspurs, and the Campanulas; the rose of
the Carnations and the Centaureas; the intense purple of the Ranun-
culuses (Nigrttettce). In the most arid localities we admire the azure

1. Fir, with bearded Usnea. 2. Great Yellow Gentian. 3. Martagon, or Turk's Cap Lily.

flowers of the little Gentianellas and the white blossoms of the Saxi-
frages ; their presence, under such conditions, filling our souls with
wonder, and stimulating our hearts to praise their divine Creator.

" And with childlike, credulous affection.

We behold their tender buds expand —
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land."*

* Longfellow, " Poetical Works."

LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 601

Some of the plants which enrich the lofty slopes of the European
mountains are endowed with an agreeable aromatic odour, and with
keen stimulating properties. Such are the Artemisias and the
AchitteGB. To the former of these families belongs the Artemisia
(jlacialis, which the mountaineers consider an universal panacea,
and which enters into the composition of the famous liqueur of the
Chartreux.

On the threshold of the eternal snows, under the influence of the
icy breezes, vegetation grows rarer and yet rarer, until it is reduced
to a few species which compensate for their insignificance by their
beauty. Such are the Campanula of Allioni, with its graceful bells
of blue ; the delicate Saxifraga, whose rosy flowers also expose their
beauties on the frost-bound shores of Spitzbergen ; the Soldanella of
the Alps ; the Ranunculus of the Glaciers ; numerous Androsellse,
some of which do not exceed a third of an inch in height ; finally, on
the extreme border, and straggling even on the moraines of the Glaciers,
where no other plant can live, the little Myosotis, which grows in
small tufts covered with white down, and starred with delicate blue
flowers. At a still higher level we find only a few lichens relieving
the monotonous surface of the rocks; and sometimes, flourishing under
unknown circumstances, the Protococcus nivalis, whose red globules
communicate to the snow a blood-red tint.

The Mountain Flora will offer us, in other parts of the globe, the
same series of diminution, commencing with the groups which people
the low lands of each geographical zone, and terminating with those
which, at the level of the sea, are met with only in the Frozen
Zone. Some mountain-chains, however, possess genera or species
exclusively belonging to them. It is on the ridges of Atlas and
Lebanon, at an elevation of 3500 or 5400 feet, that the majestic
cedars spread their umbrageous branches. The cedars of Atlas attain
a stature of 120 to 140 feet, and their trunk measures, at the base,
from a yard to a yard and a half in diameter. " When young," says
M. Charles Martins,* " they have a pyramidal form ; but when they
* Charles Martins, " Du Spitzberg au Sahara.''

C02

THE CEDAR OF LEBANON.

soar above their neighbours, or above the rock which protects them,
there comes a sudden storm, a flash of lightning, or an insect pierces
their terminal shoot, and deprives them of their shapely spire ;
the tree is discrowned ; then, the branches spread horizontally in
terraces or layers of verdure, one upon another, screening the sky
from the gaze of the traveller, who presses forward in a sort of

CEDAR or LEBANON.

twilight under these vaults impenetrable to the solar rays. From an
elevated point of the mountain still more majestic is the spectacle.
The horizontal surfaces resemble lawns of the deepest green, or of a
glaucous colour like that of water, upon which are sprinkled cones of
a violet hue ; the eye plunges into an abyss of greenery in whose
depth mutters an invisible torrent."

THE CEDAR OF ATLAS. COS

The cedar of Atlas constitutes, if not a species, at least a distinct
variety from the cedar of Lebanon. The latter is now very rare on
the mountain which is regarded as its native habitat. The prophet
Ezekiel describes it in all its glory : "A cedar with fair branches,
and with a shadowing shroud, and of a high stature .... his
height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs
were multiplied, and his branches became long, because of the multi-
tude of waters, when he shot forth " (Ezek. xxxi. 3, 5). But those
immense green forests which once stood out in dark deep shadow
against the radiant sky are now reduced to a single scanty grove
— a grove containing, according to Dr. Hooker, but four hundred
trees, and of these four hundred only twelve of the ancient majestic
race. They are situated high up on the western slope of the moun-
tain-range, two hours south-east from Tripoli, and at an elevation
above the sea-level of 6172 feet. Most of the Lebanon patriarchs
are about 50 feet in height, and of nearly the same girth. One,
however, measures 63 feet in circumference.

The cedar was introduced into England towards the close of the
seventeenth century, and has become permanently naturalized. It is
even found in a nourishing condition as far north as Inverness. It
does not, however, attain such gigantic dimensions here as on the slopes
of Lebanon. There is one at Goodwood, in Sussex, 2 5 feet in circum-
ference ; and another at Peperharrow, in Surrey, 1 5 feet. In the Jardin
des Plantes a celebrated tree, whose terminal shoot was struck by a
chance shot during the siege of the Bastile, boasts of the following
proportions : — Ten feet girth at three feet from the ground, and ten
feet and a half on a level with the soil. Its horizontal branches
extend fully forty-five to fifty feet in length, and cover, consequently,
a surface of upwards of 300 feet in circuit.

If we would now pass in review the complete series of Zones of
Vegetation, it is to the north of Hindostan, in the Himalaya, or to
South America and the Cordillera of the Andes, that we must trans-
port ourselves. On the first steps, or lowest terraces, of these immense
chains, we shall see the tropical Flora revealing all its wealth and its

604

STEP UPON STEP.

puissance; there, between 3500 and 6900 feet above the sea-level,
we meet with nearly all the plants peculiar to temperate climes, and
those which only belong to the northern lands. On the Himalayan
slopes, the pine and the cedar flourish at an elevation of 7500 feet.
Advancing from this limit, we soon encounter a great variety of
Rhododendrons, a shrub now well known in our European gardens,

RHODODENDRONS OF THE HIMALAYA.
1. Rhododendron Pendulum. 2. Rhododendron Dalhousie. 3. Rhododendron Xivale.

and highly prized for its ever green foliage and rich full bloom. It
thrives at the height of 12,000 feet; a few species even battle with
the elements at an altitude of 15,000 feet, but they are then only
stunted and crawling plants. With these are associated, at about
10,000 feet, the alder, the birch, and the willow. The plains are
covered, at the same time, with a prodigious host of Ranunculacese,
Compositse, Saxifrages, and Pinnalacese, to which succeeds all the
army of Lichens. Thus, then, it appears that the same laws deter-

A LADDER OF VEGETATION. COS

mine always and everywhere the orographic distribution of plants.
Only the influence of elevation is counterbalanced here by that of
climate ; whence it results that the arborescent species endure at a
far greater height than on our European mountains.

In the same manner that the Himalaya " resumes," so to speak,
the Flora of all the climates of the Old World, does the Cordillera of
the Andes, and, notably, that portion of the chain situated between
Peru and Venezuela, present all the vegetable types of the New
World, disposed upon its plateaux and its slopes as upon a gigantic
flight of steps. In the lower region, the plants of Tropical America,
favoured by a marshy soil, deck themselves out in their most gorgeous
attire. At an elevation of between 1800 and 3500 feet, the vegeta-
tion is neither so brilliant nor so varied, but it has not yet thrown
off its original character. We remark here a constant abundance of
Myrtacese, Laurenacise, and Bignoniacese, as well as numerous epiphy-
tous plants — Orchidacese, Ferns, Bromeliacese. From 3500 to 9000
feet we mark the successive appearance of plants belonging to the
colder countries of North America : Escallionse, Magnoliaceas, Vac-
ciniacese, and Solanacese. Here and there a few Bromeliacese and
some other epiphytes display themselves. We encounter also in this
zone a small number of Palmacese ; among others, the Ceroxylon and
the Diplothenium. But soon the arborescent vegetation almost
wholly disappears, and only a few stunted bushes remain, similar to
those which, in the Alps, succeed the larch. Then come meadows
almost entirely formed of Composite, Umbelliferse, and Saxifrages ;
and, finally, the Lichens, the last plants — the last forms of vegetable
life — lingering on the frontiers of the region of eternal snow.

If the law which presides over the orographic distribution of
plants were applicable to the animal kingdom, we should meet on the
frozen crests of the mountains with the same species as, or, at least,
with analogous species to, those we have seen in the vicinity of the
Pole. But it is not so. Plants flourish wherever they can find, with
an endurable climate, a soil in which their roots can develop them-
selves and imbibe the juices needful for their support ; but the condi-

COG MOUNTAIN SHEEP.

tions which render a country inhabitable for animals — I mean the
higher animals more particularly — are wholly different and more
complex. A facility for removing from place to place in search of
food is one of these conditions, and assuredly one of the most essen-
tial But the number of terrestrial animals capable of climbing the
scarped flanks, of traversing the narrow ridges, and leaping across the
precipitous chasms of the mountains, is extremely limited. How-
ever, a few Herbivora excel in these perilous exercises. They are
Ruminants of small size, with tiny limbs, and small ungulated hoofs ;
Moufflons, wild Goats, Chamois, Kids, which seek on inaccessible
heights a refuge against the attacks of man and the Camaria, and
Ixnind, with marvellous agility and precision, from rock to rock,
from icy crag to crag, over the most formidable gulfs, and up the
most precipitous steeps.

The Moufflons, or Wild Sheep, erroneously regarded by some
naturalists as the ancestors of our domestic sheep, form a genus whose
species are distributed in Asia, America, and Northern Africa, and
in the mountainous islands of the Mediterranean. The Musmon
Moufflon, which inhabits the mountains of Corsica, of Sardinia, of
Cyprus, and of Candia, is nearly the size of a sheep, but far more
robust His hair, which is only wool properly so called, is a reddish-
brown over nearly the whole of his body, and whitish under the
belly and the legs. His horns are of great size, transversely crumpled,
with a simple curve, and a sharp extremity. Among the Asiatic
species the largest is the Masinwn argali, which inhabits the Altai"
and the mountains of Kamtschatka, and approaches the ass in si/.e.
His skin is a yellowish-brown, with some white on the fore-feet.
His horns describe an almost complete circle. The American species
is the Musimon montanus, which we find in the Rocky Mountains.
Finally, the region of the Atlas and of the Aures Mountains is the
country of the Ruffled Moufflon (Moufflon A Manchettes), so named
on account of his long hairs, which fall from his shoulders upon the
extremity of his anterior legs. His neck is also supplied with a
thick mane.

THE GOAT OF THE BOCKS.

C07

The Wild Goats and Bouquetins probably form, as the best
authorities represent, but one and the same genus. In any
case the latter are much better known than the former. They
closely resemble our domestic goats, from which they chiefly differ
in the prodigious development of their horns, the said horns being
generally knotty, slightly divergent, and supported by osseous
axes. Their name, according to Gervais, comes from two words,
Bouc-estain, signifying the Goat of the Rocks. They belong exclu-

sively to the Old Continent. These animals are very wild. The
precipitousness and lofty elevation of their pasture-grounds render
their chase a matter of peril. The same may be said of the Chamois,
or Isard, which inhabits the loftiest ridges of the Alps, the Pj'renees,
and the mountains of Greece. Dogs are of no avail in hunting these
animals. In Asia the falcon is employed in capturing the bouquetin.
In Europe the chamois-hunters are excellent marksmen — indefatigable,
tearless, capable of great endurance, keen, and vigilant. It is at morn

608 THE MUSK-DEER.

and eve that they venture forth on their hazardous enterprise. The
chamois wander in small troops. Their voice is a kind of low bleat-
ing ; but when one of them descries approaching danger, he imme-
diately raises a sharp cry, which is the signal of flight. Driven
together and closely packed, the poor animals stand at bay, and
dash themselves upon the daring hunter with an impetuosity which
often proves fatal to him.

The Musk-Deer form a distinct family in the order Ruminant iu.
In their external conformation they resemble both the stag and the
antelope, but they have neither horns nor antlers ; their stomach is
deficient in the part named the feuillet, which exists in all the other
Ruminantia ; finally, their upper jaw is provided with two long
canines, which among the males project from the mouth, and which
serve at one and the same time as defensive arms and as instruments
to dig out of the soil the roots upon which these animals feed. All
the species of- this genus are Asiatic, except one, which is a native of
Guinea. I can only particularize here the Musk-Deer of Thibet and
Nepaul, which furnishes commerce with the curious product, so useful
in medicine and perfumery, known as mush This product is an
extremely odorous and unctuous substance, contained in a special
organ situated under the belly of the male. The high price which it
commands would make the chase of the musk-deer very profitable,
were not these animals so rare and so difficult to get at. They lead
a solitary life among the scarped rocks and in the thorny bushes
bordering on the glaciers. In winter they descend towards more
temperate localities. They are caught either in snares or with
nooses, or slain with arrows. The Tongnsian hunters, to attract the
musk-deer, imitate the cry of their young by applying the mouth to
a fragment of bark. The chase is only pursued in winter and
autumn. In Thibet the hunters require a special license from the
government.

We may pass over the species of Rodents which burrow among
the mountains, with a word of allusion to the traditional companion
of the poor wandering Savoyard, the Alpine Marmot. This gentle

THE MAX IX THE WHITE CLOAK. G09

and interesting animal is so well known to my readers that I need
not pause to describe him.

In the deep gorges and dense forests which break up the monotony
of the lofty table-lands, live in fierce solitude the congeners of the
" Man in the White Cloak" of the Polar deserts — Bears with a thick
fur and of a sombre hue. While these animals seem designed by
their organization to feed upon flesh, and while their strength enables
them to seize upon the largest game — which, indeed, they occasionally
do — their diet is omnivorous, and they even exhibit, in general, a
marked predilection for the aliment of a vegetable nature. The
reader, moreover, will remember with what eagerness the bears of our
menageries and zoological gardens devour the bread, cakes, or fruit
which their visitors press upon them. In their native mountain
homes they will rather fly from man than attack him ; but if
assailed and closely pressed, they defend themselves bravely, rearing
upon their hind-feet, and endeavouring to suffocate their aggressor
with their muscular arms. If caught in their youth they are
easily tamed, and display a greater intelligence than any of the other
carnivora.

The genus Ursidce, or Bears, is wholly wanting in Africa, but
has its representatives in Europe, Asia, and America. The European
species are : the great Brown Bear, formerly distributed over all the
mountains and through all the forests of Western and Northern
Europe, and which is still sufficiently common in the Alps, the
Pyrenees, and some wooded highland districts of Russia ; and the
Bear of Asturias, found only in the sierras of the Iberian peninsula.
The latter is of smaller dimensions than the former. His hide is
tawny.

Asia possesses : the Syrian Bear and Bear of Lebanon, two
varieties of the same species, distinguished by Horsfield under the
name of Ursus Isabella, in allusion to the dirty brown colour of his
skin ; the Bear of Thibet, which is found in the Himalayan chain
and the islands of Japan — in size and appearance he approximates to
our European bear, but differs in the blacker shades of his hair ; the

09

G10

THE URSIDJE.

Malay Bear (Procldlus Malay anus), which is jet black, climbs trees
with agility, and lives on a vegetable diet ; and the Juggler, or
Jungle Bear of India (Prochilus ursinus), originally named the
" Five-fingered Sloth,"- — a great favourite with the Indian jugglers
on account of his adaptability and mildness.

To North America belong the Black Bear (Ursus Americanus)
and the Grisly Bear (Ursus ferox). The former has a long head, a
pointed nose, small eyes> and short round ears ; his limbs are strong,

1. Black Bear of Canada.

2. Gray Bear of North America.

unwieldy, and thick ; his tail is short ; feet large ; and the hair on
the body smooth, glossy, and black. The Grisly Bear is about nine
feet long, a narrow and flattened muzzle, sunken eyes, and formidable
teeth ; he ranges over not only the entire chain of the Rocky Moun-
tains, but in the prairies and forests which occupy the centre and
west of the great continent, where his sanguinary instincts and pro-
digious strength render him a formidable antagonist. The Black

THE CONDOR OF THE ANDES.

THE CONDOR OF THE ANDES. 613

Bear of Canada, on the contrary, is the least ferocious and least car-
nivorous of his genus. His chief food is of a vegetable nature —
grain, fruits, and roots — but he does not disdain an occasional regale
of pork. He commits great depredations on the maize-fields, and is
also exceedingly partial to honey. From the nature of his food, his
flesh is exceedingly succulent, and much relished by the Canadian
settlers.

Ascend the wildest and most barren mountains, even to the limit
where all life ceases to exist ; or the flank of a perpendicular rock, in
a crevasse, in some chink or fissure where the foot of man or quadru-
ped may never rest ; and there, were you able to approach sufficiently
near, you would see some interlaced branches and stems, and within
it a few fragments, a few gnawed and polished bones, while a strong
odour scented the surrounding air. Regard it more attentively —
some tiny creatures are astir upon that unclean couch. Yes : your
gaze now rests on the eyry of one of those aerial tyrants, Eagles or
Vultures, which alone can dwell on the cloud-crowned, wind-swept
heights. I must confine myself here to mentioning the largest and
most formidable species, which surpasses all the others in sweep and
speed and power of flight — the Condor of the Andes. This bird
possesses the habits and voracity of other vultures, and, as if con-
scious of his enormous strength, shows himself the most audacious.
He frequently pounces upon living animals ; but his non-retractile
talons, blunted by their attrition upon the rocks, do not permit him
to carry off his prey ; he contents himself with fixing it against the
ground with one of his claws, while he rends it to pieces with his
powerful beak. Gorged with food, he becomes incapable of flight.
You may then approach him ; but should you attempt to seize him,
he opposes a desperate resistance, and as he enjoys an extraordinary
tenacity of life, the victory will probably cause you a prolonged
struggle and many cruel wounds.

A story is told of a Chili miner, of more than ordinary physical
force, who attacked — hand-to-hand, as it were — a condor while
digesting his greedy banquet, and unable to make his escape. The

614 " ULTIMUS ROMANORUM."

engagement was long and desperate. The man was compelled to put
forth all his strength. At length, exhausted, torn, and bleeding, he
left his enemy on the field of battle, and carried off for a trophy a
few feathers, which he showed to his comrades, affirming that he had
never fought a harder fight. The other miners went in search of
the corpse of this terrible bird. They found him standing erect, and
flapping his wings in order to fly away. They only killed him by
crushing in his head with a hatchet.

The condor enjoys the privilege of an exceptional longevity. The
Indians of the Andean plains assert that he lives nearly a hundred
years. He builds no regular nest ; the female is satisfied with a
hollow in the rocky cliff of sufficient size to shelter her while hatch-
ing her eggs. Both parents busy themselves very attentively in
bringing up their young, disgorging in their beaks the food which
they have themselves taken. The young birds grow slowly ; it is
not until they are six weeks old that they begin to flutter round
their parents. Their training, however, lasts but a few months ;
after which they separate of their own accord from the male and
female birds, and seek their own nourishment.

The condor has the loftiest flight of all the winged race. He has
been seen towering in the " blue serene," on a level with the snow-
crowned summit of Illimani, 23,000 feet above the sea, in a region
where man cannot endure the excessive rarefaction of the air. When,
in the fulness of time, civilization shall have conquered to itself the
South American continent, the condor, flying for refuge to these
brain-wildering heights among the icy peaks of the Cordillera, shall
be, perhaps, in that quarter of the globe, the latest denizen of the
Desert — the last representative of THE SAVAGE WORLD.

I n ir

ABBYE-SINOH, the tiger- killer, 310.

Abyssinia, its physical features.
248 ; flora, 248-50 ; mountains,
596. — See also SHOA, TIGRE.

Abyssinian meadow-grass, 242.

Acacia detinms, 257.

Acacia doratoxylon, 279.

Acacias, family of, their character-
istics, 411.

Acrostifhon grande, 277.

Actceas described, 261.

Adansonia diyitata (the Baobab',
409.

Adour, the, valley of, 27.

Africa, interior of, described, ISO,
187 ; southern plateau, 187, 194,
195 ; its general physical fea-
tures, 187, 188 ; Karroos of Sou-
thern Africa, 188,191.-See CAPE
COLONY, CENTRAL AFRICA,
EQUATORIAL AFRICA, KAF-
FRARIA, KALIHARI, NATAL,
SENEOAMBIA.

African elephant, characteristics
of, 451.

Agami, the, described, 354.

Agouti, the, described, 342.

Agua, the, described, 363.

Ahu, the, described, 65.

Akhaf, the desert of, 106, 109.

Albert N'yanza, the, discovered by
Sir S. Baker, 202.

Alfa, the, described, 150.

Alfourous, the, their manners, 525

Alleghany Mountains, the, char-
acter of, 216.

Alligator, the, its natural history,
357, 358.

Alligator lucius, 357.

Aloe socotrina, 249.

Aloes, various species of, described,
254.

Alpaca, the, characteristics of, 334,
335. — See HUANACU.

Alpine Squirrel, the, 499.

Alps, the, referred to, 14; de-
scribed, 589, 590.

Alps, the Scandinavian, described,
588.

Altai' Mountains, the, description
of, 594.

Amazon, forests of the river, their
characteristics, 386, 387.

Amboyna, island of, its species,
421.

America, progressive civilization
of, 205, 206 ; Spanish conquests
in, 206, 209 ; probable future of,
209; character of its fauna, 281-
283. — See NORTH AMERICA,
SOUTH AMERICA.

Anastatica hierochuntica, 149.

Andamanese, the, character of,
525.

Andes, the, description of, 907,
598 ; Condor of, 613, 614 ; vege-
tation and character of the Pam-
pas of, 228, 229.

Androsellw, the, described, 601.

Annona (ox-heart), the, described,
246.

Ant-eater, habits of the great, 346,
347.

Anthropomorphic apes, natural
history of, 470-487.

Antilope />orcos,the,accountof,169.

Apache Indians, the, described,335.

Apalachian Mountains, the, fea-
tures of, 597.

Ape, the, natural history of, 463 ;
habitat, 464. — See BABOON,
CHIMPANZEE, CYNOCEPHALI,
CYNOPITHECI, GOKILLA, MON-
KEY, ORANG-OUTANG.

Apennines, the, their character
and aspect, 590.

Apios tuberosa, 260.

Aponogeton distachynm, 256.

Apteryx Australis, its natural his-
tory, 377, 378.

Aquila bifasciata, 75.

Arabian Deserts, the, description
of, 106.

Arabs, the, their origin, 176 ; phy-
sique, 176; history, 176, 177;
religion, 177 ; attachment to
polygamy, 177 ; love of rapine,
177; religious zeal, 178; general
characteristics, 178, 179 ; house-
hold wealth, 178, 180. — See
BEDOUINS.

Aralia crassifolia, 277.

Ararat, Mount, its physical as-
pect, 595.

Araucanians, the, their habits and
manners, 541.

Arctic discovery, reference to, and
account of, 552-555.

Arctic regions, the, described, 548.
— See POLAR REGIONS.

Ardea alba, 72. — See HERON.

Areca saccharifera, 418.

Argaeus, Mount, description of, 595.

Ariel Gazelle, the, natural history
of, 169.

Aristida pungens, 148.

Armadillo, the, natural history of,
345, 346.

Arnee Buffalo, the, description of,
297, 308.

ARNOLD, MATTHEW, quoted, 398,
591.

Aroidacese, the, family of, 438.

Artemisia alba, 151.

Artemisia glacialis, 601.

Artesian wells, 161.

Artocarpus incisa, 414.

Arundo conspicua., 275.

Asiatic elephant, the, its natural
history, 450, 451.

Asimina triloba, 259.

Asinus Quagga, the, natural his-
tory of, 291, 292.

Ass, the, its habits and peculiari-
ties, 56.

Ass, Wild, the.— See ONAGRA.

Attelia Banksii, 276.

Asturias, bear of, described, 609.

Atacania, the Pampas of, 219.

Ateles, the, their natural history,
489, 490.

ATKINSON, T. W., quoted, 58, 77,
79,88.

Atlas Mountains, the, their situa-
tion and physical aspect, 124, 596.

Atmosphere of mountain-regions,
582, 583.

Aureilhan, lake of, 30.

Australia, discovery of, 291, 232;
its deserts, 232 ; rivers, 232 ;
mountains, 235; adventure and
exploration in, 235, 236; wilder-
ness of, 237; expedition by Burke
and Wills, 237-240; its flora, 273-
281; its fauna, 366-378; its char-
acteristic vegetation, 422-424; its
aboriginal population, 522, 523.

Auvergne, its extinct volcanoes,
591, 592.

Avatsha, mount, 595.

Aye-Aye, the, its natural history,
494.

P.aboon of the Atlas, the, described,
465.

INDEX.

Bahiouda, desert of, described,
122, 123.

BAKER, Sir S. , quoted, 202, 287, 283.

Baleniceps, the, account of, 321.

Balsams, the yellow, described, 261.

Bamboo, the, its physiology and
uses, 402.

Bamunguatos Mountains, the,
chain of, 196.

Banana, the, its physiology and
uses, 246, 249, 402, 403.

Banyan, the, account of, 404, 405.

Baobab, the, characteristics and
discovery of, 409, 410.

BARTH, Dr., quoted, 204.

Barbary Squirrel, the, account of,
500.

Barren landes, the, described, 549.

Bassia buttyracea, 410.

Batata, the, account of, 242.

BATES, H. \V., quoted, 341, 347,
358, 386, 387, 388, 395, 396, 397,
434, 435, 446, 4G8.

Batna, account of, 127.

Baudouin, lake, description of,114,
117.

Bauhinias, the, characteristics of,
439.

Bear, the Arctic, natural history
of, 565, 566; adventures with,
667, 568 ; bear of Europe and
Asi a, 609, 610; of North America,
610, 613.

Bear, the White, account of, 551,
566.

Beaver, the, natural history of,
342 ; dams built by, 343, 344 ;
mode of hunting, 345; gradual
disappearance of, 345.

Bechuana country, the, dryness of,
191.

Bedford, Earls of, their works in
the Fen country, 44.

Bedouins, the, their manners,
habits, religion, and warlike dis-
position, 179, 180.

Beloor-tagh, mountains of, de-
scribed, 595.

Benguela, description of, 193; flora
of, 251.

Benin, climate and aspect of, 193.

Berbers, the, their characteristics,
182.

Betel-nut tree, the, account of, 422.

Biafra described, 193.

Bielukha, mount, described, 594.

Biscarosse, lake, 30; forest, 38.

Bisons, the, natural history of, 338;
mode of hunting, 339; food, mi-
grations, uses, 339.

Bittern, the great, account of, 72.

Black Bear, the, account of, 610.

Black mosqliito grass, 263.

Black Mountains, the, 188, 212, 215.

Black pepper, whence procured, 245.

Black Swan, the, account of, 376.

Boa-Constrictor, the, natural his-
tory of, 358, 359.

Boars of America, accoiint of, 330.

BOITARD, quoted, 456.

Bolas, Indian, a mode of hunting
with, 336, 337.

BONALD, quoted, 503.

BorassusflabelliJ 'minis, 401, 402.

Bos ami, 297.

Bos bubalus, 297.

Boswellia serrata, 407.

Botauris stellaris, 72. —See BIT-
TERN.

Botocoudos, the, described, 539.

Bradypus torquatus, 496.

BRANDE, W. T., quoted, 60, 251,
252, 408.

BRAY, Mrs., quoted, 41.

Brayera anthelmintica, 249.

Brazil, Campos of, their physical
aspects, 270, 271.

Bread-fruit tree, its character and
properties, 414, 415.

Brittany, physical history of, 18 20;
geology 18, 19; its Druidic monu-
ments, 19; its landes, 20, 24; its
inhabitants, 23 ; its dunes, or
sand-hills, 32, 35.

Brown Bear, the, account of, 609.

BRUN, MALTE, quoted, 589.

Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby, de-
scribed, 375.

BRYANT, W. C., quoted, 216.

Bubalus, the, described, 294.

Bucephalus viridis, 327.

BUCKLAND, Dr., quoted, 447.

BUCKLAND, FRANK, quoted, 328.

Buenos Ayres, Pampas of, 226, 228.

Buffalo, the, natural history of,
296 ; mode of hunting, 297 ; of
Kaffraria, 295, 296.

BUFFON, quoted, 58, 71, 448, 479.

Bull-frog, the, described, 363, 364.

Buriats, the, account of, 91, 92.

Burke and Wills, Australian ex-
pedition of, 236-240.

BURNETT, quoted, 310, 313.

BURTON, Captain E. F., quoted,
514.

Bustard, the, natural history of, 75.

Butter-tree, the, natural account
of, 411.

BYRON, quoted, 14, 135, 136, 201.

Caesalpineae, the, account of, 445.
Caimans.— See ALLIGATOR.
Caladium segmium, 245.
Calebash nutmeg, the, account of,

246.

California, giant trees of, 430, 431.
Calla, the, account of, 256.
Callistimon salignum, 277.
CalUthrix scturus, 490.
Calomys bizcacha, 342.
Camaroon Mountains, the, account

of, 596.
Camel, the, natural history of,

58-64; docility and usefulness,

58, 59 ; physiology, 59, 60 ;

habits, 60-62; moral qualities,

62, 63 ; story of, 63, 64.— See

DROMEDARY.

Camel-herd, the, described, 318.
Campanula of Allioni, the, 601.
Campos of Brazil, vegetable life of,

272, 273.

Canada, future prospects of, 209.
Cannes, Keltic memorials at, 19.

Cannibalism in Hindnstan, 510: !n

Polynesia, 513 ; in Africa, 514 ;

in Ombai, 519.
Caoutchouc, nature and properties

of, 441, 442.

Cape Colony, account of, 188, 191.
Cape Eland, the, 295.
Cape Negro, 193.
Capim Gordura, described, 271.
Capybara, account of the, 341.
Caracara, the, account of, 355.
Caraccas, the Llanos of, 268.
Cariama, the, account of, 354.
Caribs, the, their manners and

customs, 538, 539.
Oarnivora, the, habitat and history

of, 167-169.

Carolinea insiynis, 437.
Carpathian Mountains, the, ac-
count of, 592

CARRETTE, M., quoted, 166, 167.
Carrion plant, the, described, 254
Caspian Mountains, the, 595.
Cassanga, flora of, 258.
Cassava bread, described, 242.
Cassia, the, account of, 241.
Casso, the, described, 249.
Cassowary, the, natural history of,

318, 319.

Castor fiber, 343.-See BEAVER.
Casuarina equisetifolia, 277.
Cathartes, TJrubu, the, described,

56.
Catoblepus Gnu, the, described,

295.

Caucasus, mountain-range of, de-
scribed, 592.
Cazau, lake of, 29, 30.
Cebidse, the, natural history of,

487, 488.
Cedar-trees, in the Atlas region,

601, 602; in England, 603; in the

Lebanon, 603.
Celastrus edulis, 249.
Central Africa, physical features

of, 196-198.
Cerastes, the, natural history of,

171, 172.

Cercopithecus Diana, 469.
Cercopithecus ruber, 469.
Cereopsis, the, account of, 376,

377.

Cereus Peruvianus, 266.
Cervus Mexicanus, the, account

of, 340.
Cevennes, the, natural features of,

14, 591.

Ceylon, reference to, 415.
CEZA, PIERRE DE, quoted, 438.
Chacma, the, described, 470.
CHAMBERS, WILLIAM, quoted, 38.
Chamois, the, natural history of,

607, 608.

Charace», the, described, 269.
Cheetah, the, natural history of,

310, 313.

Cheiromys Madagascariensis, 494.
Chilason, the, described, 68.
Chiquitos, the, account of, 540.
Chulon, the, described, 68.
Ciconia, the, natural history of,

INDEX.

Civets, the, natural history of, 316.

Citrulli, the, 257.

Climate, influence of, 543, 544.

CLOQUET, Dr., quoted, 110.

Clusia rosea, 437.

Cobra, the, physiology of, 327, 328.

Cocoa-nut palm, the, description

of, 245.

Cocos oberacea, 245.
Cojfcea Arabica, 245.
Coffee-tree, description of, 245
COLERIDGE, S. T., quoted, 119,

120, 590.

Colocasia mucronatum, 245.
Colonial millet, account of, 242.
Comanches Indians, the, habits of,

535.
Common Buffalo, the, physiology

of, 297.

Common Squirrel, the, 499.
Compass Berg, the, account of, 188.
Compositse, the, in botany, 253.
Condor of the Andes, account of,

613, 614.

Conifera, the, family of, 423, 424.
Convolvuli, American, described,

439.

Convolvulus Batatas, 242.
Cook, Captain, voyages of, 232.
Cooper's Creek, in Australia, 236,

238.

Copal-tree, the, properties of, 428.
Coracan, the, account of, 242.
Corchorus olitorius, 245.
Cordilleras, the, physical features

of, 267.

Corral in Ceylon, the, 299.
Corypha Australls, 281.
Corypha inermis, 268.
Cossacks, the, manners and cus-
toms of, 81, 82.
Cotton-plant, the, in the Sahara,

158.

Cow-tree, the, properties of, 388.
CRAWFORD, quoted, 406.
Crocodile, the, natural history of,

322; mode of trapping, 323.
Crotalus horridus, 359.
Croton sebiferum, 407, 408.
Cucamis, the, described, 267.
Cucurbitacese, the, account of, 246.
Cuon Bansu, the, described, 315.
Curlew, the,natural history of 72,73-
CUVIER, quoted, 286, 345.
Cycadacese, the, properties and

nature of, 286.
Cycas circinnalis, 421.
Cygnus atratus, 376.
Cynocephali, the, natural history

of, 464; habits and propensities,

466.
Cynopitheci, the, natural history

of, 466, 467.

DANTE, quoted, 148.

Darling, the river,in Australia, 235.

Dartmoor, physical history of, 39;

its tors, or granite hills, 40;

morasses, 40; ancient forests. 40.
DARWIN, Dr., quoted, 341.
Date-palm, the, its character, fruit,

and uses, 154-156.

Date-tree, the, thorny, properties
of, 412.

DAUMAS, General, quoted, 132, 164.

D'AuRET, MadameLEONiE, quoted,
565.

Daw, the, natural history of, 292.

Dead Sea, description of, 99; its
phenomena and desolation, 100;
its basin, 101 ; probable origin,
exploration of, 102; constituents
and character of its waters, 105,
106.

DEANE, quoted, 20.

DELEGOROUE, quoted, 301, 302.

Delta, the, of the Nile, 102.

Derrias, the, account of, 470.

Deserts, the, of France, 13-38;
England, 39-45; of Europe and
Asia, 4G-50; animal life in, 51-
77; inhabitants of, 78-94; deserts
of sand, 95, 96, 131, 132, 133; rain-
less deserts, 96, 97, 123; of salt,
97, 98, 110; of Persia, 97, 98; of
Arabia, 106-117; of Africa, 118-
134; phenomena of the Deserts,
139-148; vegetation in, 149-162;
animal life in, 162-173; fauna of,
173, 174; inhabitants of, 174-185;
of Africa, 186-205, et passim.

DESPONTAINES, quoted, 465.

DESMOULINS, quoted, 558.

Desplobado, Desert of, 229.

DEST.BLAIZE,M., quoted, 571-573.

DE ST. VINCENT, M. BORY, 569.

DIARD, quoted, 288, 289.

Dima, the, account of, 249.

Dinotherium, the, described, 447.

Dioscorea alata, 242.

Djemel, or Common Camel, the,
163-165.

Dog-headed Opossum, the, de-
scribed, 372.

Dogs, the Prairie, so-called, 350-
352; wild dogs, 313.

Dolmens of Brittany, the, 20.

Voranthes excelsa, 280, 281.

Douc, the, account of, 468.

Dracaena terminalis, 422.

Dromedary, the> natural history
of, 162, 163.

Dryaudra, the, nature and proper-
ties of, 280.

Dryobabanops camphora, 418.

Dseren, the, described, 67.

Du CHAILLU, quoted, 323, 481, 483.

Duck-billed Platypus, the, charac-
ters of, 374, 375.

Dunes, or Sand-hills. — See SAND-
HILLS.

D'URVILLE, DUMONT, explora-
tioiis of, 553.

Dutch discoveries inAustralia, 232.

DYER, quoted, 44

Eagles, adventure with, 75-77.

Echidna, the, natural history of,
373, 374.

Echinacea purpureas, 261.

Egagra, the, reference to, 67.

Egypt, desert of, described, 120;
soil, 152; vegetable life of, 152-
154; inhabitants of, 183, 184.

39 a

Elceis Guinensis, 412.

Eland, the.natural history of, 65,66.

Elburz, Mount, 592.

Eleasine Corocana, 242.

Eleasine Tocussa, 242.

Electric Eel, the, its nature and
phenomena, 364; mode of catch-
ing them, 365, 366.

Elephant, the, natural history of,
286, 450; various species, habi-
tat, mode of march, 451; treat-
ment of the young, 451, 452 ;
mode of entrapping, 452-455;
elephant hunts in Hindostan and
Ceylon, 455, 456 ; general char-
acteristics, 456-459.

Elephant Seal, the, 568.

El-Kantara, Oases of, described,
158, 159.

ELLIS, Rev. WILLIAM, quoted, 427,
527.

EMERSON, B. W., quoted, 516.

Emu, the, natural history of, 375,
376; the "Wingless," 377.

England, colonial empire of, 209.

Epacridse, the, natural history of,
277.

Ephedra, 264.

Ephedra alata, 148.

Epicea, the, described, 599.

Equatorial Africa, expedition in,
by Burton and Speke, 201; Barth
and Denham, 203, 204.

Erica Cavendishiana, 255.

Eriocaulons,the,descriptionof,262.

Eriodendr«n Samauma, 388.

Erosion, Desert of, its physical
features, 128, 131.

Eskimos, or Esquimaux, the, in
Arctic America, their appear-
ance, character, habits, and
manners, 578.

Etna, mount, description of, 590;
physical character of, 591.

Eucalyptic, or gum-trees of Aus-
tralia, described, 279, 280.

Euhydra tribus, 564, 565.

Euphorbiacess, the, description of,
248, 254.

Europe, invasions of, by Asiatic
tribes, 79.

Falls of the Zambesi, described,
198, 201.

FELINSKA, Madame, quoted, 575.

Fen country of England, the, de-
scribed, 41; extent of, 42; ancient
aspect, 42 ; modern landscapes,
oases, drainage, 43, 44; present
productiveness, 44; general char-
acter, 45.

Fennec, the, characteristics of,
314, 315.

Ficus Indica, or Banyan-tree, 404,
405; of the Indian Archipelago,
412.

Fish Hawk, the, described, 356.

Fishing Eagle, the described, 355,
356.

Flamingo, the, description of, 320;
habits of, 321 ; varieties of, 353.

Flax, Australian, its properties, 276.

613

IXDEX.

FLETCHER, quoted, 24.

Flying Squirrel, the, natural his-
tory of, 500, 501.

Fontainebleau, forest of, described,
17.

FOEBES, Professor, quoted, 573.

Forest, a petrified, account of, 117.

Forests, their general features, 379,
380; botany of, 380; influence of,
on temperature, and properties,
383, 384; in Europe and Asia,
384; in America, 385-389; flora
of, 389-394.— See WOODS.

FORCHJES, M., quoted, 98, 99.

Fox squirrel, the, natural history
of, 500.

Foxes, the Polar, characteristics of,
565.

France, deserts of, described, 13,
14; mountains of, 14-17; forests
of, 17; marshes, 17, 18.

FROMENTIN, M., quoted, 132.

Gallago, the, account of, 491.

Gamboge, Indian, its uses, 415,416.

Gangeticus Crocodile, 323.

Gariep river, the, in South Africa,
191.

Gascony, characteristics of the
Llandes of, 24, 27-29; its sand-
hills, 35, 36.

Gavial, the, natural history of, 323.

Gazella Soemmeringii, 169.

Gazelles of the Steppes, description
of the, 169.

Genets, the, natural history of, 316.

Gentian, the yellow, described, 599.

GERVAIS, M. PAUL, quoted, 371-
373, 466.

Ghauts, mountain-range of the, in
Hindostan, 595.

Ghonds, cannibalism amongst the,
511.

GIBBON, the historian, quoted, 178,
179.

Gibbon-Lar, the, 478.

Gibbon Monkey, the, character of,
470; habitat, and natural history
of, 477; various species of, 477-
479.

Gibbon-Siamang, the, 477.

Gipsies, the, their habitats, 84 ;
their various names, and immi-
gration into Europe, 85; peculi-
arities of, 86; in .Russia, 87.

Giraffe, the, natural history of, 293,
294.

Glutton, the Arctic, described, 563.

Gneiss mountains, characteristics
of, 585, 586.

Gnu, the, natural history of, 294,
295.

Goat, the^Wild, described, 67, 607.

Goats' Serpent, the, account of,
326, 327.

Gobi, desert of, its physical fea-
tures, 97; plateau of, 47.

GOETHE, quoted, 190.

Goose,the Cerefaced,described,376.

Gorilla, the, natural history of, 481-
486; its appearance and habits,
482, 483; mode of hunting, 484.

Gossypium, the, account of, 407.

GOULD, quoted, 371.

Grallatores, the African, characters
of, 321.

Graminese, the, family of, 437.

Granite, structure of, 585.

Grasses of the American Steppes,
267.

GRAY, Dr., quoted, 291.

Gray Squirrel, the, account of, 499,
500.

Great Karoo, the, described, 188.

Green Climber, the, account of,327.

GREY, Sir GEORGE, quoted, 376.

Grisly Bear, the, habits and physio-
logy of, 610.

Guachoof the Pampas, the, 230,231.

Guaiacum, its properties, 264.

Guaranis, the, manners and cus-
toms of, 538, 539.

Guatemala, flora of, 266.

Gu6pard,the,natural history of,310.

Guiana, savannahs of, 245, 246.

Guinea corn, its properties, 242.

Guinea palm, the, character of, 413.

Guinea pepper, nature of, 246.

Gulo Arctims, 563.

Gymnoti, the, 364.— See ELECTRIC-
EEL.

Gynerium saccharoides, 273.

Halicetus Leucocephalus, 355.

Hare, the Arctic, 561.

Hare, the Varying, 67.

Harpy Eagle, the, natural history
of, 355.

HARRIS, Major, quoted, 472.

Heather-cock, the, described, 75.

Hectia Pitcairnitefolia, 279.

Helichrysum fruticosum, 255.

HELL, Madame HOMMAIRE DE,
quoted, 50, 58, 61, 62, 63, 81, 84.

HELPS, ARTHUR, quoted, 508, 515,
516.

Hemionus, or Wild Horse, the,
natural history of, 290, 291.

Hemippus, or Wild Mare, the,
natural history of, 291.

Henna plant, the, properties of, 410.

Heron of the Steppes, the, de-
scribed, 72 ; species of, 72.

HERSCHELL, Sir JOHN, quoted, 589.

HERVE and LANOYE, MM., quoted,
543, 549.

Himalaya Mountains, configura-
tion, structure, and vegetation
of, 593 ; glaciers of, 594 ; cedars
and rhododendrons of, 604, 605 ;
flora of, 605.

Hindostan, flora of, 39S-401.

Hindu reverence for the banyan,
405.

Hippopotamus, the, natural his-
tory of, 286, 287; adventure with,
288.

HOMER, quoted, 49, 146.

Honey-guide, the, why so called,
317.

Honeysuckle, the Arctic, described,
556.

HOOKER, Dr. JOSEPH, quoted, 593,

Hops, the African, description of,
298, 299.

HORACE, quoted, 193.

Horeb, Mount, description of, 112.

Horse, the, in America, 350.

Horse,the Wild, description of, 200.

Hottentots, the, character of, 521.

Howling Monkey, physiology of
the, 488, 489.

Huanacu, the, uses of, 335.

Hue, the Abbe, quoted, 69, 70, 75,
76, 77.

Hudson's Bay, account of, 546.

HUMBOLDT, A. VON, quoted, 48,
49, 78, 226, 268, 350, 359, 389,
439, 469, 555.

Hungary, mountain system of, 592.

Hurricane in the Steppes, account
of, 230.

Hyaena of the Cape, the, natural
history of, 313.

Hyana villosa, 313.

Hydrodwzrus capybara, 341.

Hydrophis, the, account of, 378.

Hylobates cinereus, 479.

Hylobates leuciscus, 478.

Hylobates syndactylus, 477, 478.

Hyperborean races, the, their man-
ners, customs, and characteris-
tics, 570, 571.

Ibis, the, natural history of, 321.
Ice-fields, their aspect, 552.
Ice-mountains, features of, 551.
Ichneumon, the, natural history

of, 316.

Ifjnatia amara, 440.
Immortelle, the, characteristics

of, 255.
India, palms of, their physiology,

401, 402.

Indian millet, uses of, 242.
Indian oak, its properties, 406.
Indians of North America, their

history and character, 532-534.
Indigo, nature and properties of,

246, 407.

Indigofera tinctoria, 245.
Ipo-antiar, the, its nature and

properties, 416, 417.
Iron Bark Tree,the,uses of, 279,280.
Iron Mountains, the, vegetation of,

260, 262.
Isonandra-Percha, the, its nature,

418.

Jacana, the, characteristics of, 321.

Jaguar, the, natural history of, 350.

Jalapa officinalis, 439.

JANIN, JULES, quoted, 18.

Jatropha manihot, 242.

Java, vegetable life in, 418, 421.

Jebel-Gaouss, reference to the, 128.

Jebel-Tougour,referencetothe,127.

JEPHSON, quoted, 20.

Jerbilla, the, natural history of,

170, 171.

Jerboa, the, natural history of, 170.
Jocko, the, of Buffon, 479.
JOMARD, M., quoted, 147.
Jordan, valley of the, its physical

features, 101, 102.

INDEX.

619

Kabara, the port of, 204.

Kaffirs, the, character of, 520, 521.

Kaffraria, physical features of,
191 ; flora of, 252-256.

Kalihari Desert, physical features
of,. 191-193 ; flora of, 256, 257.

Kalmuks, the, ethnology, religion,
character, customs of, 83, 84.

Kamtschatdales, the, physical fea-
tures of, 577.

Kamtschatka, mountains of, 595.

Kanaks, the, 532.

Kandelung valley, the, account of,
19(3, 197.

Kangaroo, the Great, physical
character, habits, and manners
of, 368, 369.

Karroos of South Africa, the, 188,
191.

KEATS, quoted, 196.

Kenia, Mount, in Equatorial
Africa, 597.

Kerman, Desert of. 97, 98.

Khaya Senegalensis, 410.

Khirgiz, the, races of, 87, 88 ; cus-
toms, dwellings, attire, 89, 90,
91 ; character and mode of life, 91.

Kilimandjaro, Mount, in Equato-
rial Africa, 597.

Kina-balu, Mount, in Africa, 596.

KIXGSLEY, Rev. CHARLES, quoted,
42.

Kite, the Black, reference to, 75.

Kong Mountains, the, in Africa, 596.

Kooloo-Kamba, the, 481.

Koragum, the, described, 71.

Koran, reference to the, 177.

Kordofan, physical features of, 247.

Korosko, Desert of, its physical
features, 121, 122.

Korsak, the, described, 71.

Kuen-lun Mountains, the, in Asia,

Lacerta crocodilus, 322.

Lagomys, the, natural history of,

561, 562.

LANDOR, W. S., q'loted, 282.
LANOYE, F. DE, quoted, 398, 401.
EAORTY-HADJI, Father, quoted,

101, 102.
Laplanders, the, their character,

occupation, mode of life, cradles,

huts, and general characters,

571-573.

LATHAM, Dr., quoted, 93.
Lauraceas, the, family of, described,

407.

Laurus cinnamomum, 414.
LAUTURE, Comte ESCAYRAC DE,

quoted, 146, 147.
Lavatera plebeia, 276.
Lawsonia inermis, 410.
Lebanon, mountains of, 595.
Lecythis ollaria, 434.
Leeba river, the, 197, 198; flora of,

257, 258.

Leguminosae, the, family of, de-
scribed, 277.
Leopard, the. natural history and

anecdotes of,
Lepus variabilis, 67

Liana tieutfi, described, 417.
Lichen esculentus, 173, 174.
Lignum vita;, 264.
Limoniastrum Guyanianum, 149.
LINNAEUS (LINNE), quoted, 428,

463, 471, 491.
Linum marginale, 276.
Lion, the, natural history of, 300 ;

old fables respecting. 300 ; habits

of, 301 ; general characters of,

303.
LIVINGSTONE, Dr., quoted, 192,

195, 197, 198, 256, 257, 298, 299,

302, 303, 325, 326.
Llama, the, natural history of,

333 ; anecdotes respecting, 337
Llaneros, the, account of, 220.
Llano-Estacado, the, 219.
Llanora, flora of, 266, 267.
Llanos, the. — See PAMPAS.
Lobata, plains of, 197.
Loganiaceae, the, family of, de-
scribed, 417.
LONGFELLOW, quoted, 42, 128, 385,

600.
Lorinthaceae, family of, described,

251.

Loris, the, natural history of, 491.
LUCAN, quoted, 165.
LUND, Dr., quoted, 496.
Lupata Mountains, in Africa, 191.
LYON, Captain, quoted, 566.

Maca, the, account of, 229.

Macropus giganteus, 368, 369.

Madagascar, flora of, 424-428.

Mahari, the, natural history of,
163, 164.

Mahogany Tree, the, account of,
410.

Mais del Agua, 270.

Makis, the, habits of, 492, 493.

Malabar Squirrel, the, natural his-
tory of, 500.

Malays, the, character and habits
of, 526, 527.

Mamanchota, Organ Mountain of,
587.

Mammoth, the, natural history of,
448-450.

Man, supposed analogy between
the Ape and, 471 ; early history
of, 515.

Manchineal, the, nature and quali-
ties of, 427, 440.

Mandinkg, the, tribe of, 518.

Mandrill, the, described, 469.

Mangrove tree, the, physiology of,
411, 412, 442.

Manioc, the, properties of, 242.

Manna plant, particulars of, 173.

MANT, Bishop, quoted, 72-75.

Mara, the, reference to, 342.

Marmot, the Alpine, account of,
608, 609.

Marquesas Islands, the, inhabitants
of, 529, 530.

Marsupials, their physiology and
characteristics, 367.— See KAN-
GAROO, PHALANGA, PHASCO-
LARCTOS, THYLACYNI.

Martagon, the, described, 599.

Martens of the North, the, account
of, 562, 563.

MARTIN, Sir ROGER, his exploits
as a tiger-killer, 310.

MARTINS, M. CHARLES, quoted,
124, 127, 131, 132, 133, 136, 138,
154, 601, 602.

Massaranduba, the, described, 388,
435.

Mastodon, the, particulars of, 447,
448.

Mauritia Palm, the, uses and im-
portance of, 268.

MAURY, Captain, quoted, 526,
532, 533, 534, 586.

Mauvaises Terres, in Nebraska,
description of the, 212.

Mediterranean, the, 542.

Alekran, Desert of, 98.

Melantha punctuata, 150, 154, 161,
601, 602.

Mesembryanthema described, 253,
257.

Mexico, Pampas of, 219 ; Savage
Man in, 537.

MICHELET, quoted, 321, 322.

MILTON, the poet, quoted, 100,
197, 265, 393.

MILTON, Lord, and Dr. CHE/DLE,
quoted, 385, 386.

Milvus ater, 75.— See KITE.

Minizan, destruction of, 38.

Minosa, the, account of, 268.

Mint, Australian, described, 276.

Mirage, the, description of, 143;
its effects and origin, 144, 145 ;
explanation of, 146; characteris-
tics of, 147, 148.

Mohammed, reference to, 178.

Mollugo cerviana, 253.

Moluccas, Flora of the, 421.

Mongolia, its position, history,
present condition, ruined cities,
92 ; religion, races, and physical
characteristics, 93, 94.

Mongolian family, the, offshoots
of, 175.— See ARABS, SHEMITES.

Monkey, the, of the Old World,
468; of South America, 468, 488.
— See CHACMA, DERRIAS, Douc,
MANDRILL, HOWLING MONKEY,
PREACHER MONKEY, RED MON-
KEY, SPOTTED MONKEY.

Monodora myristica, 246.

Monostremata, the, natural his-
tory of, 373-375.— See ECHIDNA.

Montoir, marshes of, 17, 18.

MOORE, quoted, 98, 136, 143, 155,
156.

MORIN, quoted, 203.

Mossamedes, gardens of, 251.

Mosses, Arctic, properties of, 556.

Moufflon, the, description of, 606!

Mount Despair, 238.

Mountains, the, atmosphere of,
582, 583 ; distribution and con-
figuration of, 585 ; constituents
of, 585, 586; of Europe, 588, 592,
597, 598 ; of Asia, 593-596 ; of
Africa, 596, 597 ; vegetable and
animal life of, 598-614.

Mourad, Desert of, 127.

620

INDEX.

Mpongwes, the, account of, 518.
Mulhacen, Peak of, in the Pyre-

nees, 591.

MDLLER, MAX, quoted, 79, 88, 92.
MURRAY, C. A., quoted, 351,352,360.
Murray, the river, 235.
Musa ensete, 249.
Musimon argali, 606.
Musimon montanus, 606.
Musk-deer, the, 608.
Musk-ox, the, 557, 558.
Mustelidae, the, natural history of,

317.

Mycetes Beelzebub, 468, 469.
Mycetes strumineus, 468.
Myosotis, the, 601.
Myrmecophaga piliata, 346-348.
Myrsine variabilis, 277.

Nadjed, table-land of, 111.
Nandau, the, account of, 353.
Nanguer (Gazelle), the, described,

169.

Narsilia macropus, 276, 277.
Nasalis larvatus, 468.
Natal, coast of, 191.
Nature, the study of, 428, 429.
Negro Cynopithecus, the, de-

scribed, 467.
Negro, the, habitat of, 516, 517;

his physical peculiarities, 517 ;

in Africa, 517-521 ; in Australia,

522.

Nelumbium calophyllum, 259, 262.
Nepenthes distillatoria (or Pitcher

Plant), the, described, 421.
New Holland, rivers of, 232.
Ngami, Lake, in Central Africa,

194; flora of, 257.
Nieuveld Bergen, in South Africa,

187, 597.
Niger, the, delta of, 193; valley of,

204.

Nigritia, vegetation of, 246, 247.
Nile, river, fecundity of, 118, 152 ;

struggle between it and the

Desert, 118 ; mountains of, 119;

scenery of the valley of, 120 ;

sources of the, 203; valley of, 152.
Nipa fructicans, 418.
North America, superiority of,

over South America, 209; De-

serts of, 210. — See PRAIRIES.
Noukahiva, islanders of, 530-532.
Nova Zembla, described, 550.

Nubia, women of, 184, 185.

Nuphar lutca, 263.

Nutmeg, the Calebash, account of,

246.

Nux Vomica, its properties, 417.
N'yanyizi-Nyassa, lake in Central

Africa, 201.
Nylghau, the, description of, 295.

Oases of the Sahara, 128; their for-
mation, 154; vegetable life of
the, 155-157 ; of El-Kantara,
described, 158, 159; of Ouargla,
159, 160 ; springs of, 161 ; pre-
carious conditions of the exist-
ence of 161, 162.

(Enothera macrocarpa, 261.

(Estre, the, 558, 561.

Ombai, inhabitants of, 528, 529.

Onagra, the, natural history of,
291 ; description of, 56 ; proper-
ties and uses, 56-58.

Ophidia, the, physiology and cha-
racteristics of, 224, 325.

Oplismenus colonus, 242.

Opuntiafrutescens, 266.

Orang-Outang, habitat of, 472 ;
description of, 473 ; habits of,
473,474; general details, 474-476.

Organ Mountains of Brazil, de-
scribed, 587.

Orinoco, the river, 220, 223.

Oriza saliva,, its properties, 242.

Ostiaks, the, described, 575; priests
and worship of, 575 ; mode of
hunting of, 576.

Ostrich, the, natural history of,
317; anecdotes of, 318; American
species of, 353.

Otter of Kamtschatka, the, de-
scribed, 564.

Ouaregla, oasis of, described, 159,
160.

Ouistitis, the, account of, 490, 491.

Ourmiah, or Urumiyeh, Salt Lake
of, 111.

Ox, the, in America, 330.

Paca, the, natural history of, 341,

342.
Pachydermata, the, characteristics

of, 285, 286.
Palisades of the Hudson, 587 ; of

the Rocky Mountains, 588.
PALLISER, Captain, his expedition

of discovery, 385.
Palmaceae, the, physiology of the

family of, 408.
Palm Moriche, the, described, 268,

269.
Palm tree, in Egypt, 152 ; growth

of, in oases, 156 ; properties and

uses of the fruit, 157 ; general

details, 401, 402.
Pampas, the, description of, 219,

220 ; inhabitants, 220 ; area and

physical aspects, 220-231.
Pampas grass, the, uses of, 273.
Pampas Indians, the, characteris-
tics of, 539, 540.

Pampero, the, phenomenon of, 230.
Pandarus candelabrum, 245.
Panther, the,natural history of, 303.
Papaw tree, the, character of, 442.
Papuans, the, their manners arfd

customs, 524, 525.
Paradoxures, the, described, 316,

317.

Paraguay river, the, 201.
Pariah Dog of India, described, 315.
PARKYNS, MANSFIELD, quoted,

249, 402.

PARRY, Captain, expedition of, 580.
Partux picta, 295.
Pashiuba tree, the, account of, 388,

Pasom, the, described, 295.
Passiflora, the, order of, 439.

Patagonia, Pampas of, their physi-
cal aspect, 227, 228, 273 ; vege-
table life in the, 258-266.

Patagonians, character of the, 540.

Paullinia pinnata, 439.

Peccary of America, its natural
history, 330.

Pecherais, the, their habits, 542.

Pelican,th"e,natural history of,74,75.

PENNANT, quoted, 307.

Pennicellaria spicata, 242.

Pennisetum fasciculare, 275.

Pernambuco.Pampasof, described,
219, 226.

FERRIS, M., quoted, 37.

Peru, conquest of, 206, 209; plains
of, 267, 268.

Petrogale brachiotis, 375.

Petrogale penicillata, 375.

Phacocoerus, the, natural history

Phalanga, the, account of, 371.

Phascolarctos, the, described, 370.

Phascolomys (or Wombat), the,
introduced into Europe, 369 ;
discovery of, 370 ; description of,
371.

Philippine Islands, the, vegetable
life in, 423.

Phlox, the, character of, 261.

Picakolou, the, natural history of,
325, 326.

Pimelia axiflora, 277.

Pine Barrens of Mexico, the. de-
scription of, 215, 216.

Pine of New Caledonia, the, 424.

Pipa, the, account of, 303.

Piper nigrum, 245.

Pirates of the Desert, 175.

Pistacia lentiscus, 148.

Pistacia terebinthits, 148.

Pistia spatulata, 264.

PoaAbyssinica, 142.

Polar Regions, the, extent and
area of, 544, 545 ; of America,
described, 545; of Asia, 549, 550;
of Europe, 550, 551 ; discoveries
in, 551-555 ; animal and vege-
table life in, 555-568; characters
of the inhabitants of, 569-579.

Polecat, the Arctic, described, 563.

Polynesia, cannibalism in, 513 ;
inhabitants of, their manners
and customs, 528-532.

POPE, the poet, quoted, 151, 509.

Porcupine Ant-Eater, the, natural
history of, 373, 374.

Porphyry, mountains of, 586.

Portuguese, discoveries of the, in
the Terra Australis, 231, 232.

POTT, Professor, quoted, 86.

Prairies of North America, de-
scription of the, 211-215; of Cen-
tral America, 216-219; vegetable
life in the, 258-266.

Preacher Monkey, the, described,
468.

Primeval Forests, the, characters
of, 385, 386.

PRINQLE, quoted, 194.

Proboscidese, the, physiology of,
447, 44*.

INDEX.

G21

Protacese, the, account of, 256.

Proteles Lalandii, 313, 314.

Protococcus nivalis, 601.

Psamma arenaria, 31.

Pteris caudata, 271.

Pteromys splmdens, 501.

Pteromys volans, 501.

Pteromys volucella, 501.

PTOLEM^US, reference to, 151.

Pudonta gigas, 345.

Puff Adder, the, characters of, 326,

327.
Puma, the, natural history of, 348,

349.

Pyrenees, the, description of, 591.
Pythecus lar, 478.
Python Mouse, the, described, 325.
Python of Sunda, the, described,

325.

Quagga, the, natural history of, 291,

292.

Quango, the, valley of, 258.
QUARTERLY REVIEW, quoted, 188.
Quichuas, the, manners and habits

of, 540, 541.
Quicksands in Arabia, described,

110, 111.
Quinquina, the, properties of, 441.

Race, influence of, on the world's
history, 515, 516.

Piaces of the Desert, their charac-
teristics, 174-185.

RADIQUET, M. MAX, quoted, 530,
531.

Rafflesia Arnoldi, discovery of,
417 ; description of, 418.

Rain in the Sahara, 155.

Ratellus mellivorus, 317.

Rattlesnake, the, physiology of,
359-361.

Ravenala Madagascariensis, the,
account of, 427.

REACH, ANGUS, quoted, 29, 35.

Red Monkey, the, peculiarities of,
469.

Red Skins, the, ancient distribu-
tion of, 534; false romance with
which they have been invested,
534, 535 ; various races of, 535,
536 ; physical peculiarities of,
536.

Reinaondaban.the, account of, 210.

Reindeer, the, natural history of,
558-561.

REN AN, M., quoted, 176.

RENNIE, JOHN, reference to, 44.

Betama Durian, 148.

Rhinoceros, the, physiology of,

459, 460 ; its habitats, 460 ; the
Indian species of, 460; Javanese,

460, 461 ; African, 461, 462 ; ad-
venture with a, 462.

Rhizophora mangle, 411.

Rhus toxicodendrum, 259.

RICHARDSON, Sir J., quoted, 211,
561.

Rocellae, the, nature and properties
of, 251.

Rocky Mountains of North Ame-
rica, the, 210, 211.

Rodentia, family of the, described,

169.
Roebuck of Tartary, the, described,

65.
Roggeveld Bergen, the, in South

Africa, 187.

ROSE, COOPER, quoted, 462.
Rose of Jericho, the, described, 149.
Ross, Sir JAMES, quoted, 556, 561;

Arctic discoveries of, 554, 555.
ROWE, Rev. J., quoted, 40.
ROWE, NATHANIEL, quoted, 300.
RUSKIN, J., quoted, 383, 384, 579.

Saccharum officinarum, 246.

SACHOT, M. OCTAVE, quoted, 527.

Sagalien, inhabitants of, described,
579.

Sago-palms, the, properties of, 421.

Sahara, the African, its physical
aspects, 123, 124 ; mountains,
127 ; oases, described, 128, 154 ;
its peculiarity of aspect, 151 ;
area, 151, 152; climate of, 155.

Saiga, the, natural history of,
66, 67.

Salsolacese, the, properties of, 148.

Salt Desert, the, character of.— See
DESERTS.

Salt-wort, described, 148.

Samoiedes, the, history and char-
acter of, 573-575.

Sand, Deserts of. — See DESERTS.

Sand-hills of Brittany, the, 32 ;
their mode of formation, 35 ; of
Gascony, 35 ; density and con-
figuration, 36, 37 ; inland en-
croachments, 37, 38; their pecu-
liar influence, 38; of Africa, 133,
134.

Santalum acuminatum, 279.

Sapucaya, or Monkey's Nut, the,
described, 434.

Sarcoramphus Papa, the, account
of, 354.

Sarkha, Desert of, 97.

Sarmiento, Mount, California, 598.

Sarracenia, the, characters of, 262.

Sassafras laurel, the, described,
261, 262.

Savacou, the, described, 354.

Savage Man, his abasement and
mean pleasures, 503; his sangui-
nary instincts, 504, 505; his love
of intoxicating drinks, want of
a literature and of science, 505 ;
his intellectual deficiencies as
compared with Civilized Man,
506 ; his neglect of trade and
commerce, imperfect concep-
tions of the Supreme Being, 507 ;
sun-worship, 508 ; his priestcraft
and superstition, 509; his low
moral standard and cannibal
tastes, 510. — For SAVAGE RACES,
see pp. 516-542, and 569-679.

Savannahs of Guinea, their fea-
tures, 245.

Savenay, marshes of, described,
17, 18.

Saxifragas, the, properties and uses
of, 001.

CHOMBURGK, Sir R. , quoted, 417,

439.

Scindapsus pertusiis, 421.
Sciurus Alpinus, account of, 499 ;

Carolinensify 499, 500 ; getulus,

500 ; maximus, 500 ; vulgaris,

499 ; twlpinus, 500.
Sea-Bear, the, natural history of,

568.
Sea-Lion, the, natural history of,

568.

Sea-shore Wolf, the, natural his-
** tory of, 313.
Seal, the, habitats, manners, and

physiology of, 568.
Sechura, pampa of, described, 219.
Senegal, serpent-worship of, 323 ;

serpents of, described, 324.
Senegambia, physical features of,

240, 241 ; flora of, 241 ; cereal

growth of, 241, 242.
Sennaar, physical features of, 247.
Sensitive plant, the, described, 268.
Serpent-Bird the, of the Cape,

natural history of, 321.
Serpents of the Steppes, the, de-
scribed, 77 ; of Asia and Africa,

323-328.— See OPHIDIA, VIPER.
SHAKSPEARE, quoted, 322.
Shekanis, the, account of, 518, 519.
SHELLEY, the poet, quoted, 43, 105,

379.
Shemites, the, characteristics of,

175, 176. — See ARABS, TIBBOOS,

TOURAREQS.

Shepherd races of Asia, their his-
tory, manners, customs, and
character, 78, 79.

Shirwa, Lake, in Africa, 201.

Shoa, vegetable life in, 249.

Short-eared Rock Kangaroo, the,
natural history of, 375.

Silk -cotton tree, the, properties

Silphium laciniatum, 260.
Silphium terebinthinaceum, 266.
Simoom, the, phenomena and

effects of, 135-138.
Sinai, Mount, physical aspect and

associations of, 112, 113, 114, 597.
Sioux Indians, cemeteries of the,

215.
Sivas, quicksands of, described,

110, 111.
Skags-tol-tind, Mount, referred to,

588.
Sloth, natural history, habits, and

manners of the, 494-496. — See

THREE - TOED SLOTH, Two -

TOED SLOTH.
Smilax rotundifolia, 259.
SMITH, SYDNEY, quoted, 274.
SMYTH, Admiral, quoted, 590.
Sneebergen, mountain - range so

called, 187, 597.
Snow, perpetual, limit of, 581.
Socotrine aloes, value of, 249.
Solidungulae, the, order of, 290,21)1.
SOMERVILLE, Mrs., quoted, 97, 98,

211, 223, 589.

SONNERAT, M., quoted, 494.
Sorgho grass, properties of, 242.

b'22

INDEX.

SOUTHEY, quoted, 404, 405, 503.

South America, inferiority of, to
North, 209; its deserts, 210.—
See PAMPAS, VIRGIN FORESTS.

Spain, its conquests in America,

SPENSER, quoted, 356.

Sphagnum, the, properties of, 556.

Spider Monkey, the, described,
489,490.

Spitzbergen,descriptionof,550,551.

Spotted Monkey, the, described,
409.

Squirrel, the, natural history,
habits, and characteristics of,
497-499. — See ALPINE SQUIR-
REL, BAKBARY SQUIRREL, COM-
MON SQUIKKEL, FLYING SQUIR-
EEL, GRAY SQUIRREL, MALABAR
SQUIRREL.

Squirrel Monkey, the, 490.

Stag, the Spotted, described, 340 ;
Yellow, described, 57.

Staghorn, the, described, 277.

STANLEY, Dean, quoted, 99, 100,
101, 137.

Stapelia hirsiita, 234.

Steppes, the, in Europe and Asia,
their extent, 46, 47 ; their pla
team, 47 ; their vegetable life,
47-49 ; phenomena connected
with, 49, 50 ; animal life of, 51 ;
ornithology, 71-77 ; erpetology,
78 ; inhabitants, 78.

Steppes of South America, the,
surface of, 220 ; vegetation,
swamps, and conflagrations of,
221-224 ; a night on, 225 ; inun-
dations of, 2-26; solitude of, 227;
Steppes of Patagonia, 227, 228 ;
Buenos Ayres and the Andes,
228, 229; of Desplobado, 229;
hurricanes of, 230 ; animal life
of, 230, 231.

Sterculia acuminata, 445.

Sterculiacece, the, family of, 411.

ST. HILAIRE, AUGUSTUS, quoted,
539.

ST. JOHN, SPEXSEB, quoted, 596.

Stipa crinita, 279.

Stipa. tenacissima, 150.

STOCQUELER, quoted, 309.

Stork, the, description of, 320.

STRACHEY, Captain, quoted, 593.

Strelitza regina, described, 256.

Struthio camelus, 318. — See Os
TRICH.

Strychnine, nature and properties
of, 417.

Styracese, family of, their charac
teristics, 406.

Sugar cane, history of, 246.

Sugar palm, the, described, 418.

Sumatra, vegetable life in, 416, 417 ;
cannibalfsm in, 511, 513.

Sun, worship of, once prevalent,
508.

Surinam toad, the, described, 363.

Swamp oak, the, qualities of, 277.

Swan's Marsh, the, reference to,
259.

Svnetenia MaJwgani, its uses, 410.

Table Mountains, the, geography ! Trachytic rocks, character of, 588.

of. f,i'7.

TALFOURD, Sir T. N., quoted, 504,
505.

Tallow tree, the, properties and
uses of, 408.

Tamanoir, the, described, 346.

Tamarind, the, characteristics of,
411.

Tamias, the, account of, 502.

Tanganyika, Lake, in Central
Africa, 201, 202.

Tanguen, or Tanghin, the, pro-
perties of, 427.

Tapioca, commercial value of, 242.

Tapir, the, 288, 239; natural his-
tory of the American, 328; mode
of defence, and peculiarities of,

Tarpan, the, natural history of,
51-55; reference to, 291.

Tartar-Nogals, the, their territo-
ries, customs, and religion, 80,81.

Taro, the, account of, 245.

Tarsi, the, description of, 492.

TAYLOR, HENRY, quoted, 210.

TAYLOR,ToM,Professor,quoted, 20

Tchad, Lake, discovery of, 203,
204; description of, 204.

Teak, the, properties and commer-
cial value of, 406.

Tegeter, Mount, referred to, 247.

Telfariapedata, the, described,246.

Temperature, laws affecting, 580.

Teneriffe, peak of, described, 597.

TENNYSON, quoted, 14, 28, 44, 151,
231, 596.

Tag, flora of, 258.

Texas, vegetable life of, 262-2(56.

Thedbroma cacao, properties of,
245.

Thibet, bear of, 609.

THOMSON, quoted, 119.

Thrasaetus, 355.

Three-toed Sloth, the, natural his-
tory of, 496.

Thylacyni, the, natural history of,
371-373.

Ti, the, described, 277.

Tibboos, the, of Africa, their habits
and character, 181-183.

Tierra-del-Fuego, inhabitants of,
541.

Tiger, the, natural history of, 305:
described by Buffon, 306; by
Daubenton, 306; characteristics,
habits, swiftness of, 307, 308;
mode of hunting, 309, 310.

Tiger-cats, the, description of, 420.

Tigrg, geological features of, 243;
flora of, 248, 249.

Tillandra usneoides, 264, 265.

Tip, desert of, 111.

Toads. — See AGUA, BULL-FRDO,
SURINAM TOAD.

Tocusra, the, 242.

Todea Africa.no,, 256.

Toothache-tree, the, described,264.

Topaz, the, account of. :,4 >.

Touaregs, the, of Africa, their
manners, habits, and character-
istics, 181-183.

Traveller's tree, the, described,

279. 427.
TRECUL, M., quoted, 254, 2C3, 264,

266.

Tree-ferns, their character, 436,437.
Trees, colossal, of Peru, M
TiiEMAi-x, M., quoted, 120, 137,

184, 185.

TP.EMBLET, M., quoted, 133.
Trichecus, 568.
Trigonocephalus, the, description

of, 361.

Tristegis gluttinosa, 271.
TRISTRAM, Rev. H. B., quoted. 96,

97, 123.
Trumpet-Bird, the, description of,

354.

Tumboa.the, physiology of ,251,252.
Tnpinambis, the, described, 172.
Two-toed Sloth, the, natural

history of, 496, 497.

Unau, the, described, 406, 497.
Unghandia speciosa, 265.
L'pas-tree, the properties of, 410;

fables relating to, 417.
Upper Guinea.— See SENEGAMBIA.
L'ral Mountains, the, geology of,

592.

Urceola elastica, 418.
V-carla ^thiopica, 246.

Vaquois, the, character of, 421, 42i.
Varan of the Nile, the, described,

173.
Varans of the Desert, the, natural

history of, 171-173.
Variegated Baboon, the, account

of, 469.

Venezuela, pampas of, 220-225.
Vesuvius,Mount.descriptionof,5X).
Vibro, the genus, 429.
Victoria N'yanza, Lake, discovery

and account of, 202.
Victoria regia, the, history and

description of, 2C9, 270.
Vicuna, the, natural history of,

Vine, the, account of, 246.

Viper, the camel-headed, descrip-
tion of, 361-363.

Vipera cerastes, the, natural his-
tory of, 171, 172.

Vipers, the, of the Desert. 166, 171,
172 ; of South Africa, 325, 326.

Virgin Forests, their extent and
characteristics, 385-392 ; vegetable
life in, 393, 394 , a day in, 395-307.

Vistula, the river, 592.

ntis rinifera, 246.

Viverrida;, the, natural history of,
316, 317.

Vizcacha, the, described. 342.

Vouabembfis, the, cannibalism
among, 514.

VON MARTINS, the traveller,
quoted, 3S7.

VON TSCHUDI, quoted, 229, 333,
334, 337.

Vosges, the, mountain -ranje of,
14, 591.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CL'3

WALLACE, Mr., quoted, 329, 330.
Walrus, the, natural history of , 568.
Water-lily, yellow, the, described,

263.

Water snake, the, habits of, 378.
WATERTON, the naturalist, quoted,

495, 496.

Wells in the Sahara, 161.
WELWITSCH, Dr., quoted, 251.
Welwitschia, the, described, 251, 252.
Whirlwinds of sand, description

of, 141, 142.

WHITE, WALTER, quoted, 45.
White wormwood, the, properties

of, 150, 151.

Whydah, serpents at, 324.
WILKES, Admiral, quoted.541,542;

Arctic discoveries of, 553, 554.
WILLS. W. J., quoted, 236, 238.

WILSOX, ALEXANDER, quoted,

355, 356.
Wistman's Wood, description of,

40, 41.
Wolf of Tartary, description of,

68; his ravages, 68-70.
Wombat, the, 370. — See PHASCO-

LOSIYS.

WOOD, Rev. J. G., quoted, 343,

344.
Woods of Europe, their aspect and

characteristics, 397, 398.
WORDSWORTH, quoted, 177, 209,

247.
Wourali, the poison, deadly nature

of, 439.
Wou-wou, the, natural history of,

478.
WREDE, Baron DE, quoted, 107, 110.

Xanthorrhcea arborea, 278, 279.

Yakoutes, the, their habits and

mode of hunting, 576, 577.
Yucca treculeana, 266.
YVAX, Dr. , quoted, 587.

Zambesi, the, course of, 195, 196;

delta and cascades of, 198, 201;

vegetation of, 258.
Zana, Lake, vegetation on the

shores of, 247, 248.
Zebra, the, natural history of,

292.
Zebra Wolf, the, natural history of,

372.

Zibeth, the, described, 316.
Zopelotes, the, described, 354.
Zorga, the, account of, 194.

of llustrations,

WHOLE PAGE ENGRAVINGS.

A Pyrenean Landscape, .. .. . 15

Celtic Memorials in Brittany 21

The Shepherds of the Landes, .. .. 25

A Flood in Brittany, . . . . . . 33

Wild Horses terrified by a Storm, .. .. 53

The Dead Sea, 103

Caravan in the Desert, . . . . . . 107

Lake Baudouin (a Salt Lake\ . . . . 115

Landscape in the Atlas (Region of Table-
lands), 125

The Sahara (Desert of Erosion), . . . . 129

French Column surprised by the Simoom, 139

Night-Scene in the African Interior, . . 189

Victoria Falls, River Zambesi, . . . . 199

Prairies of North America, . . . . 207

View of the " Mauvaises-Terres," Nebraska, 213

A Prairie on Fire in Central America, . . 217

Pampas of South America, .. .. 221

Australian Landscape, . . . . . . 233

19. Vegetable Life in the African Plains, . . 243

20. Tiger hunting in the Indo-Chinese Penin-

sula, 311

21. Hunter pursued by Peccaries, . . . . 331

22. The Virgin Forest of the Gaboon, . . . . 381

23. The Virgin Forest in Brazil, . . . . 391

24. Tropical Vegetation, 399

25. Flora of the East Indian Islands, . . . . 419

26. A Forest in Madagascar, 426

27. Flora of the New World, 443

28. Hunting the Elephant in Africa, .. .. 453

29. A Corral in Ceylon, 457

30. Death of an Orang-Outang, . . . . 475

31. A Gorilla killing a Negro, 485

32. A Cannibal Feast among the Battas of

Sumatra, 511

33. The Desert of Ice (Arctic Pole), . . . . 547

34. The Reindeer of Lapland 559

35. The Condor of the Andes, 611

VIGNETTES.

L, The Tarpan, or Wild Horse,

2. Onagra, or Wild Ass,

3. Bactrian Camel,

4. The Eland,

5. Capture of a Wolf by a Kirghiz Horseman,

6. Great Bittern— White Heron — Curlew, . .

7. The Eagle of the Steppes, and the Antelope

Saiga

8. Cossack Horsemen in the Steppes,

9. Night Encampment of Gipsies in the

Steppes

10. Khirgiz Aoul or Village,

11. Mount Sinai,

12. Ravines of Korosko, . . . . . . 122

13. Whirlwinds of Sand, 141

14. A Mirage in the Desert, 145

15. Jujube Tree— Lentiscus— Tamarisk, . . 150

16. Doum-Palm — Date-Palm— Alfa, .. .. 153

17. A Street in Ouargla, 159

18. The Mahari — The Djemel, . . . . 163

19. Striped Hyaenas of the Sahara, . . . . 165

20. Jackals disinterring Dead Bodies, .. 166

21. Gypaetos — Sociable Vulture — Cathartes

Percnopterus, .. .. .. .. 167

22. Gazelles— Antelope— Nanguer 169

23. Gazelles of Arabia opposing a Panther, .. 170

C24

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Jerboas attacked by a Horned Viper,
Varan of the Nile— Varan of the Desert,
Bedouin Shepherds and Bedouin Nomades,

Touaregs,

Attack upon a Q'sour,

Nubian Women,

Burke, Wills, and King in the Deserts of

Central Australia,

Vegetable Life in South Africa,
Vegetable Life of Cape Colony,
Vegetable Life of Cape Colony,
Vegetable Life of Cape Colony,
Vegetable Life in the American Prairies,

Vegetable Life in Texas

Vegetable Life in the Texan Prairies,
Vegetable Life in the Plains of the Meta,
Aquatic plants of Guiana,
Vegetable Life in the Pampas,
Vegetable Life in Victoria,
Vegetable Life on the Australian Plains, . .
Vegetable Life on the Australian Plains, . .
Hippopotamus and Crocodile of the River

Nile,

Khinoceros, ..

The Daw and the Quagga,

Zebras,

A Lion rending a Giraffe,

Antelope Gnu — Oreas Lanna — Striped

or Banded Gnu,

An African Hopo,
The African Leopard,

Spotted Hysenas,

Zibeth and Indian Genet,

Striped Parodoxure devouring a Crested

Goura,

Ostriches,

Kose Flamingoes,

Python Molure— Echidna — Fennec,

American Tapir,

Guanaco — Llama — Vicuna,

Agouti— Capybara, ..

Armadillo Loricata— Ant-Eater, ..

Cougouars, or Pumas,

Bison attacked by Jaguar,

Prairie Wolves

Cathartes-Urubu— King of the Vultures,

Alligators, or Caimans,

Crotalus, and Boa-Constrictor,
Trigonocephalus pursued by Birds,
Buf o Agua— Pipa Surinamensis,
Fishing for Gymnoti,

Large-Browed Wombat,

Thylacynus Cynocephalus,
Ornithorhynehus — Echidna,
Apteryx Australis,

The Banyan Tree,

Baobab— Guinea Palm — Acacia verek, . .

Bread-fruit Tree of Ceylon,

Nipa fruticans — Sugar Palm — Ipo- Antiar,

Ravenala Madagascariensis — Heritiera

argentea — Tanghin,
Large-leaved Magnolia- -Virginian Cat-

alpa — Pinas Sabiniana,
Blechnum Brasiliense — Alsophila horrida

— Panicum plicatum— Maranta— Cala-

dium violaceum,

Banana — Carolinea insignis — Clusia rosea,
Kaffir Hunter carried off by a Rhinoceros,
Baboons plundering a Garden,

The Black Cynopithecus,

Gibbon-Siamang, and Mourning Gibbon,
Howling Monkeys,
Ateles crossing a River,
Maki-Mocoas— White-Mantled Maki, . .
Cheiromys, or Aye- Aye of Madagascar, ..

AY — Unau,

Common European Squirrels,
Negroes : Natives of Kidi, Africa,

Kaffir Warriors,

Hottentots : A Man and Woman,
Australians,

Papuans,

Malays : Male and Two Females,

Hovas of Madagascar : Men, Woman,

and Child,

Warriors of the Island of Ombai,

Islanders of Noukahiva,

Indians of North America. The Red

Skins,

Indian Women of North America,

The Apaches attacking an Emigrant

Train,

Guarani Indians (South America),

Patagonians,

Adelie Land (Antarctic Ocean', ..

Ermine and Sable-Marten,

The White Bear and her Cubs,

Lapland Fishers,

A Samoiede Family,

Yakout Warrior worried by a White Bear,

Kamtschatdales,

The Organ Mountains of Rio Janeiro, . .

The Himalayas : Mount Guarisankar, . .

Fir, with Bearded Usnea— Great Yellow

Gentian — Martagon,

Cedar of Lebanon,

Rhododendrons of the Himalaya,

Musk Deer,

Black Bear of Canada — Gray Bear of

North America, . .

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