ASPECTS OF NATURE.
Wilson and Ogilvy, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London.
ASPECTS OF NATURE,
IN
DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES;
WITH
Scientific Elucidations.
BY
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.
TRANSLATED BY MRS. SABINE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
PATERNOSTER ROW; AND
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1849.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
It is not without diffidence that I present to the public a series of
papers which took their origin in the presence of natural scenes of
grandeur or of beauty,--on the Ocean, in the forests of the Orinoco,
in the Steppes of Venezuela, and in the mountain wildernesses of Peru
and Mexico. Detached fragments were written down on the spot and at the
moment, and were afterwards moulded into a whole. The view of Nature
on an enlarged scale, the display of the concurrent action of various
forces or powers, and the renewal of the enjoyment which the immediate
prospect of tropical scenery affords to sensitive minds, are the
objects which I have proposed to myself. According to the design of my
work, whilst each of the treatises of which it consists should form a
whole complete in itself, one common tendency should pervade them all.
Such an artistic and literary treatment of subjects of natural history
is liable to difficulties of composition, notwithstanding the aid which
it derives from the power and flexibility of our noble language. The
unbounded riches of Nature occasion an accumulation of separate images;
and accumulation disturbs the repose and the unity of impression
which should belong to the picture. Moreover, when addressing the
feelings and imagination, a firm hand is needed to guard the style from
degenerating into an undesirable species of poetic prose. But I need
not here describe more fully dangers which I fear the following pages
will shew I have not always succeeded in avoiding.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding faults which I can more easily perceive
than amend, I venture to hope that these descriptions of the varied
Aspects which Nature assumes in distant lands, may impart to the reader
a portion of that enjoyment which is derived from their immediate
contemplation by a mind susceptible of such impressions. As this
enjoyment is enhanced by insight into the more hidden connection of
the different powers and forces of nature, I have subjoined to each
treatise scientific elucidations and additions.
Throughout the entire work I have sought to indicate the unfailing
influence of external nature on the feelings, the moral dispositions,
and the destinies of man. To minds oppressed with the cares or the
sorrows of life, the soothing influence of the contemplation of nature
is peculiarly precious; and to such these pages are more especially
dedicated. May they, “escaping from the stormy waves of life,” follow
me in spirit with willing steps to the recesses of the primeval
forests, over the boundless surface of the Steppe, and to the higher
ridges of the Andes. To them is addressed the poet’s voice, in the
sentence of the Chorus--
“Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit! Der Hauch der Grüfte
Steigt nicht hinauf in die reinen Lüfte;
Die Welt ist vollkommen überall,
Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual.”
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS.
The twofold aim of the present work (a carefully prepared and executed
attempt to enhance the enjoyment of Nature by animated description, and
at the same time to increase in proportion to the state of knowledge at
the time the reader’s insight into the harmonious and concurrent action
of different powers and forces of Nature) was pointed out by me nearly
half a century ago in the Preface to the First Edition. In so doing, I
alluded to the various obstacles which oppose a successful treatment of
the subject in the manner designed. The combination of a literary and
of a purely scientific object,--the endeavour at once to interest and
occupy the imagination, and to enrich the mind with new ideas by the
augmentation of knowledge,--renders the due arrangement of the separate
parts, and the desired unity of composition, difficult of attainment.
Yet, notwithstanding these disadvantages, the public have long
regarded my imperfectly executed undertaking with friendly partiality.
The second edition of the “Ansichten der Natur” was prepared by me
in Paris in 1826; and at the same time two fresh treatises were
added,--one an Essay on the Structure and mode of Action of Volcanoes
in different regions of the earth; and the other on the “Vital
Power,” bearing the title “Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius.”
During my long stay at Jena, Schiller, in the recollection of his
youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me on physiological
subjects; and the considerations in which I was then engaged on the
muscular and nervous fibres when excited by contact with chemically
different substances, often gave a more specific and graver turn to our
discourse. The “Rhodian Genius” was written at this time: it appeared
first in Schiller’s “Horen,” a periodical journal; and it was his
partiality for this little work which encouraged me to allow it to be
reprinted. My brother, in a letter forming part of a collection which
has recently been given to the public (Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Briefe
an eine Freundin, Th. ii. S. 39), touches tenderly on the subject of
the memoir in question, but adds at the same time a very just remark:
“The development of a physiological idea is the object of the entire
treatise; men were fonder at that time than they would now be of such
semi-poetic clothing of severe scientific truths.”
In my eightieth year, I am still enabled to enjoy the satisfaction of
completing a third edition of my work, remoulding it entirely afresh to
meet the requirements of the present time. Almost all the scientific
Elucidations or Annotations have been either enlarged or replaced by
new and more comprehensive ones. I have hoped that these volumes might
tend to inspire and cherish a love for the study of Nature, by bringing
together in a small space the results of careful observation on the
most varied subjects; by showing the importance of exact numerical
data, and the use to be made of them by well-considered arrangement and
comparison; and by opposing the dogmatic half-knowledge and arrogant
scepticism which have long too much prevailed in what are called the
higher circles of society.
The expedition made by Ehrenberg, Gustav Rose, and myself, by the
command of the Emperor of Russia, in 1829, to Northern Asia (in the
Ural and Altai mountains, and on the shores of the Caspian Sea), falls
between the period of publication of the second and third editions.
This expedition has contributed materially to the enlargement of
my views in all that regards the form of the surface of the earth,
the direction of mountain-chains, the connection of steppes and
deserts with each other, and the geographical distribution of plants
in relation to ascertained conditions of temperature. The long
subsisting want of any accurate knowledge on the subject of the great
snow-covered mountain-chains which are situated between the Altai
and the Himalaya (_i. e._ the Thian-schan and the Kuen-lün), and the
ill-judged neglect of Chinese authorities, have thrown great obscurity
around the geography of Central Asia, and have allowed imagination
to be substituted for the results of observation in works which have
obtained extensive circulation. In the course of the last few months
the hypsometrical comparison of the culminating summits of the two
continents has almost unexpectedly received important corrections and
additions, of which I hasten to avail myself. (Vol. i. pp. 57-58, and
92-93.) The determinations of the heights of two mountains in the
eastern chain of the Andes of Bolivia, the Sorata and the Illimani,
have been freed from the errors which had placed those mountains above
the Chimborazo, but without as yet altogether restoring to the latter
with certainty its ancient pre-eminence among the snowy summits of
the New World. In the Himalaya the recently executed trigonometrical
measurement of the Kinchinjinga (28178 English feet) places it next
in altitude to the Dhawalagiri, a new and more exact trigonometrical
measurement of which has also been recently made.
For the sake of uniformity with the two previous editions of the
“Ansichten der Natur,” I have given the degrees of temperature in the
present work (unless where expressly stated otherwise) in degrees of
Reaumur’s scale. The linear measures are the old French, in which the
toise equals six Parisian feet. The miles are geographical, fifteen
to a degree of the equator. The longitudes are reckoned from the
Observatory at Paris as a first meridian.
BERLIN, 1849.
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
In the translation the temperatures are given in degrees of Fahrenheit,
retaining at the same time the original figures in Reaumur’s scale.
In the same manner the measures are given in English feet, generally
retaining at the same time the original statements in Parisian or
French feet or toises, a desirable precaution where accuracy is
important. The miles are given in geographical miles, 60 to a degree,
but in this case the original figures have usually been omitted, the
conversion being so simple as to render the introduction of error very
improbable. In a very few instances “English miles” appear without
any farther epithet or explanation; these have been taken by the
author from English sources, and may probably signify statute miles.
The longitudes from Greenwich are substituted for those from Paris,
retaining in addition the original statement in particular cases.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION vii
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS xi
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR xvii
STEPPES AND DESERTS 1
Annotations and Additions 27
CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO 207
Annotations and Additions 233
NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST 257
Annotations and Additions 273
HYPSOMETRIC ADDENDA 277
⁂ For General Summary of the CONTENTS of the First Volume,
_see_ page 289.
ASPECTS OF NATURE
IN
DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES.
STEPPES AND DESERTS.
A widely extended and apparently interminable plain stretches from
the southern base of the lofty granitic crest, which, in the youth of
our planet, when the Caribbean gulf was formed, braved the invasion
of the waters. On quitting the mountain valleys of Caraccas, and the
island-studded lake of Tacarigua[1] whose surface reflects the stems
of plantains and bananas, and on leaving behind him meads adorned with
the bright and tender green of the Tahitian sugar cane or the darker
verdure of the Cacao groves, the traveller, looking southward, sees
unroll before him Steppes receding until they vanish in the far horizon.
Fresh from the richest luxuriance of organic life, he treads at once
the desolate margin of a treeless desert. Neither hill nor cliff rises,
like an island in the ocean, to break the uniformity of the boundless
plain; only here and there broken strata of limestone, several hundred
square miles in extent, appear sensibly higher than the adjoining
parts. “Banks”[2] is the name given to them by the natives; as if
language instinctively recalled the more ancient condition of the
globe, when those elevations were shoals, and the Steppes themselves
were the bottom of a great Mediterranean sea.
Even at the present time nocturnal illusion still recalls these images
of the past. When the rapidly rising and descending constellations
illumine the margin of the plain, or when their trembling image is
repeated in the lower stratum of undulating vapour, we seem to see
before us a shoreless ocean.[3] Like the ocean, the Steppe fills the
mind with the feeling of infinity; and thought, escaping from the
visible impressions of space, rises to contemplations of a higher
order. Yet the aspect of the clear transparent mirror of the ocean,
with its light, curling, gently foaming, sportive waves, cheers the
heart like that of a friend; but the Steppe lies stretched before us
dead and rigid, like the stony crust[4] of a desolated planet.
In every zone nature presents the phenomena of these great plains: in
each they have a peculiar physiognomy, determined by diversity of soil,
by climate, and by elevation above the level of the sea.
In northern Europe, the Heaths, which, covered with a single race of
plants repelling all others, extend from the point of Jutland to the
mouth of the Scheldt, may be regarded as true Steppes,--but Steppes of
small extent and hilly surface, if compared with the Llanos and Pampas
of South America, or even with the Prairies of the Missouri[5] and the
Barrens of the Coppermine river, where range countless herds of the
shaggy buffalo and musk ox.
A grander and severer aspect characterises the plains of the interior
of Africa. Like the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, it is only in
recent times that attempts have been made to explore them thoroughly.
They are parts of a sea of sand, which, stretching eastward, separates
fruitful regions from each other, or encloses them like islands; as
where the Desert, near the basaltic mountains of Harudsh,[6] surrounds
the Oasis of Siwah rich in date trees, and in which the ruins of the
temple of Ammon mark the venerable site of an ancient civilisation.
Neither dew nor rain bathe these desolate plains, or develope on their
glowing surface the germs of vegetable life; for heated columns of air,
every where ascending, dissolve the vapours, and disperse each swiftly
vanishing cloud.
Where the Desert approaches the Atlantic Ocean, as between the Wadi Nun
and Cape Blanco, the moist sea air pours in to supply the void left by
these upward currents. The mariner, steering towards the mouth of the
Gambia through a sea covered with weed, when suddenly deserted by the
east trade wind of the tropics,[7] infers the vicinity of the widely
extended heat-radiating desert. Herds of antelopes and swift-footed
ostriches roam through these vast regions; but, with the exception of
the watered Oases or islands in the sea of sand, some groups of which
have recently been discovered, and whose verdant shores are frequented
by nomade Tibbos and Tuaricks,[8] the African Desert must be regarded
as uninhabitable by man. The more civilised nations who dwell on its
borders only venture to enter it periodically. By trading routes, which
have remained unaltered for thousands of years, caravans traverse the
long distance from Tafilet to Timbuctoo, and from Moorzouk to Bornou;
adventurous undertakings, the possibility of which depends upon the
existence of the camel, the “ship of the desert,”[9] as it is called in
the traditionary language of the eastern world.
These African plains occupy an extent nearly three times as great
as that of the neighbouring Mediterranean sea. They are situated
partly within, and partly in the vicinity of the tropics; and on this
situation their peculiar character depends. In the eastern part of the
old continent, the same geognostic phenomenon occurs in the temperate
zone. On the plateaux of central Asia, between the gold mountains
or the Altai and the Kuen-lun,[10] from the Chinese wall to beyond
the Celestial mountains, and towards the sea of Aral, there extend,
through a length of many thousand miles, the most vast, if not the most
elevated, Steppes on the surface of the globe. I have myself had the
opportunity, fully thirty years after my South American journey, of
visiting a portion of them; namely, the Calmuck Kirghis Steppes between
the Don, the Volga, the Caspian, and the Chinese lake Dsaisang, being
an extent of almost 2800 geographical miles.
These Asiatic Steppes, which are sometimes hilly and sometimes
interrupted by pine forests, possess (dispersed over them in groups)
a far more varied vegetation than that of the Llanos and Pampas of
Caraccas and Buenos Ayres. The finest part of these plains, which is
inhabited by Asiatic pastoral tribes, is adorned with low bushes of
luxuriant white-blossomed Rosaceæ, and with Fritillarias, Tulips, and
Cypripedias.
As the torrid zone is characterised on the whole by a disposition in
all vegetation to become arborescent, so some of the Asiatic Steppes
in the temperate zone are characterised by the great height attained
by flowering herbaceous plants, Saussureas and other Synantheræ, and
Papilionaceæ especially a host of species of Astragalus. In traversing
pathless portions of these Steppes, the traveller, seated in the
low Tartar carriages, sees the thickly crowded plants bend beneath
the wheels, but without rising up cannot look around him to see the
direction in which he is moving. Some of the Asiatic Steppes are grassy
plains; others are covered with succulent, evergreen, articulated soda
plants: many glisten from a distance with flakes of exuded salt which
cover the clayey soil, not unlike in appearance to fresh fallen snow.
These Mongolian and Tartarian Steppes, interrupted frequently by
mountainous features, divide the very ancient civilisation of Thibet
and Hindostan from the rude nations of Northern Asia. They have
in various ways exercised an important influence on the changeful
destinies of man. They have compressed the population towards the
south, and have tended, more than the Himalaya, or than the snowy
mountains of Srinagur and Ghorka, to impede the intercourse of nations,
and to place permanent limits to the extension of milder manners, and
of artistic and intellectual cultivation in northern Asia.
But, in the history of the past, it is not alone as an opposing barrier
that we must regard the plains of Central Asia: more than once they
have proved the source from whence devastation has spread over distant
lands. The pastoral nations of these Steppes,--Moguls, Getæ, Alani,
and Usuni,--have shaken the world. As in the course of past ages,
early intellectual culture has come like the cheering light of the sun
from the East, so, at a later period, from the same direction barbaric
rudeness has threatened to overspread and involve Europe in darkness. A
brown pastoral race,[11] of Tukiuish or Turkish descent, the Hiongnu,
dwelling in tents of skins, inhabited the elevated Steppe of Gobi.
Long terrible to the Chinese power, a part of this tribe was driven
back into Central Asia. The shock or impulse thus given passed from
nation to nation, until it reached the ancient land of the Finns, near
the Ural mountains. From thence, Huns, Avari, Ghazarés, and various
admixtures of Asiatic races, broke forth. Armies of Huns appeared
successively on the Volga, in Pannonia, on the Marne, and on the Po,
desolating those fair and fertile fields which, since the time of
Antenor, civilised man had adorned with monument after monument. Thus
went forth from the Mongolian deserts a deadly blast, which withered on
Cisalpine ground the tender long-cherished flower of art.
From the salt Steppes of Asia, from the European Heaths smiling in
summer with their purple blossoms rich in honey, and from the arid
Deserts of Africa devoid of all vegetation, let us now return to those
South American plains of which I have already began to trace the
picture, albeit in rude outlines.
The interest which this picture can offer to the beholder is, however,
exclusively that of pure nature. Here no Oasis recalls the memory of
earlier inhabitants; no carved stone,[12] no ruined building, no fruit
tree once the care of the cultivator but now wild, speaks of the art
or industry of former generations. As if estranged from the destinies
of mankind, and riveting attention solely to the present moment, this
corner of the earth appears as a wild theatre for the free development
of animal and vegetable life.
The Steppe extends from the Caraccas coast chain to the forests of
Guiana, and from the snowy mountains of Merida (on the slope of which
the Natron Lake Urao is an object of superstitious veneration to the
natives,) to the great delta formed by the Orinoco at its mouth. To the
south-west a branch is prolonged, like an arm of the sea,[13] beyond
the banks of the Meta and Vichada to the unvisited sources of the
Guaviare, and to the lonely mountain to which the excited fancy of the
Spanish soldiery gave the name of Paramo de la Suma Paz--the seat of
perfect peace.
This Steppe occupies a space of 16,000 (256,000 English) square miles.
It has often been erroneously described as running uninterruptedly,
and with an equal breadth, to the straits of Magellan, forgetting
the forest-covered plain of the Amazons which intervenes between the
grassy Steppes of the Apure and those of the river Plate. The Andes
of Cochabamba, and the Brazilian group of mountains, send forth,
between the province of Chiquitos and the isthmus of Villabella, some
detached spurs, which advance, as it were, to meet each other.[14] A
narrow plain connects the forest lands of the Amazons with the Pampas
of Buenos Ayres. The latter far surpass the Llanos of Venezuela in
area; and their extent is so great that while their northern margin is
bordered by palm trees, their southern extremity is almost continually
covered with ice.
The Tuyu, which resembles the Cassowary (the Struthio rhea), is
peculiar to these Pampas, which are also the haunt of troops of
dogs[15] descended from those introduced by the colonists, but which
have become completely wild, dwelling together in subterranean hollows,
and often attacking with blood-thirsty rage the human race whom their
progenitors served and defended.
Like the greater portion of the desert of Sahara,[16] the northernmost
of the South American plains, the Llanos, are in the torrid zone:
during one half of the year they are desolate, like the Lybian sandy
waste; during the other, they appear as a grassy plain, resembling many
of the Steppes of Central Asia.[17]
It is a highly interesting though difficult task of general geography
to compare the natural conditions of distant regions, and to represent
by a few traits the results of this comparison. The causes which
lessen both heat and dryness in the New World[18] are manifold, and
in some respects as yet only partially understood. Amongst these
may be classed the narrowness and deep indentation of the American
land in the northern part of the torrid zone, where consequently the
atmosphere, resting on a liquid base, does not present so heated
an ascending current;--the extension of the continent towards the
poles;--the expanse of ocean over which the trade-winds sweep freely,
acquiring thereby a cooler temperature;--the flatness of the eastern
coasts;--currents of cold sea-water from the antarctic regions,
which, coming from the south-west to the north-east, first strike the
coast of Chili in the parallel of 35° south latitude, and advance
along the coast of Peru as far north as Cape Pariña, and then turn
suddenly to the west;--the numerous lofty mountain chains rich in
springs, and whose snow-clad summits, rising high above all the strata
of clouds, cause descending currents of cold air to roll down their
declivities;--the abundance of rivers of enormous breadth, which,
after many windings, seek the most distant coast;--Steppes which from
not being sandy are less susceptible of acquiring a high degree of
heat,--impenetrable forests occupying the alluvial plains situated
immediately beneath the equator, protecting with their shade the soil
beneath from the direct influence of the sunbeams, and exhaling in the
interior of the country at a great distance from the mountains and
from the ocean vast quantities of moisture, partly imbibed and partly
elaborated:--all these circumstances afford to the flat part of America
a climate which by its humidity and coolness contrasts wonderfully
with that of Africa. It is to the same causes that we are to attribute
the luxuriant vegetation, the magnificent forests, and that abundant
leafiness by which the new continent is peculiarly characterised.
If, therefore, one side of our planet has a moister atmosphere than
the other, the consideration of the present condition of things is
amply sufficient to explain the problem presented by this inequality.
The physical inquirer needs not to clothe the explanation of these
phenomena in a mantle of geological myths. He needs not to assume that
on our planet the harmonious reconciliation of the destructive conflict
of the elements took place at different epochs in the eastern and the
western hemispheres; or that America emerged later than the other parts
of the globe from the chaotic watery covering,[19] as an island of
swamps and marshes tenanted by alligators and serpents.
There is, indeed, a striking similarity between South America and the
southern peninsula of the old continent in the form of the outline
and in the direction of the coasts; but the nature of the soil, and
the relative position of the neighbouring masses of land, produce in
Africa that extraordinary aridity which over an immense area checks the
development of organic life. Four-fifths of South America are situated
on the southern side of the equator; or in a hemisphere which from the
greater proportion of sea and from other causes is cooler and moister
than our northern half of the globe,[20] to which the larger part of
Africa belongs. The breadth of the South American Steppe, measured from
east to west, is only a third of that of the African Desert. The Llanos
receive the influence of the tropical sea wind, while the African
Deserts, being situated in the same zone of latitude as Arabia and the
south of Persia, are in contact with strata of air which have blown
over warm heat-radiating continents. The venerable and only lately
appreciated father of history, Herodotus, in the true spirit of an
enlarged view of nature, described the Deserts of northern Africa, of
Yemen, of Kerman and Mekran (the Gedrosia of the Greeks), and even as
far as Moultan, as forming a single connected sea of sand.[21]
In addition to the action of these hot winds, there is (so far as we
know) an absence or comparative paucity in Africa of large rivers,
of widely extended forests producing coolness and exhaling moisture,
and of lofty mountains. Of mountains covered with perpetual snow, we
know only the western part of the Atlas,[22] whose narrow range, seen
in profile from the Atlantic, appeared to the ancient navigators when
sailing along the coast as a single detached lofty sky-supporting
mount. The eastern prolongation of the chain extends nearly to Dakul,
where Carthage, once mistress of the seas, now lies in mouldering
ruins. As forming a long extended coast-chain, or Gætulian rampart, the
effect of the Atlas range is to intercept the cool north breezes, and
the vapours which ascend from the Mediterranean.
The Mountains of the Moon, Djebel-al-Komr,[23] (fabulously represented
as forming part of a mountainous parallel extending from the high
plateaux of Habesh, an African Quito, to the sources of the Senegal),
were supposed to rise above the limit of perpetual snow. The Cordillera
of Lupata, which extends along the eastern coast of Mozambique and
Monomotapa, as the Andes along the western coast of Peru, is believed
to be covered with perpetual snow in the gold districts of Machinga and
Mocanga. But all these mountains, with the abundant waters to which
they give rise, are far remote from the immense Desert which stretches
from the southern declivity of the Atlas to the Niger.
Possibly, however, all the causes of heat and dryness which have been
enumerated may have been insufficient to transform such considerable
parts of the African plains into a dreadful desert, without the
concurrence of some revolution of nature,--such, for instance, as
an irruption of the ocean, whereby these flat regions may have been
despoiled of their coating of vegetable soil, as well as of the plants
which it nourished. Profound obscurity veils the period of such an
event, and the force which determined the irruption. Perhaps it may
have been caused by the great “rotatory current”[24] which sends the
warmer water of the Mexican gulf over the banks of Newfoundland and to
the shores of the old continent, and causes West India cocoa-nuts and
other tropical fruits to reach the coasts of Ireland and Norway. There
is still at least at the present time, an arm of this current directed
from the Azores to the south-east, which sometimes produces disasters
by carrying ships upon the west coast of Africa, which it strikes at a
part lined by sand-hills. Other sea coasts (I particularly recall that
of Peru between Amotape and Coquimbo) shew that in these hot regions of
the earth, where rain never falls and where neither Lecideas nor other
Lichens[25] germinate, centuries and perhaps thousands of years may
elapse before the moveable sand can afford to the roots of plants a
secure holding place.
These considerations are sufficient to explain why, with an external
similarity of form, Africa and South America present so marked a
difference of character both in respect to climate and to vegetation.
But although the South American Steppe is covered with a thin coating
of mould or fertile earth, and although it is periodically bathed by
rains, and becomes covered at such seasons with luxuriantly sprouting
herbage, yet it never could attract the surrounding nations or tribes
to forsake the beautiful mountain valleys of Caraccas, the margin of
the sea, or the wooded banks of the Orinoco, for the treeless and
springless wilderness; and thus, previous to the arrival of European
and African settlers, the Steppe was almost entirely devoid of human
inhabitants.
The Llanos are, indeed, well suited to the rearing of cattle, but the
care of animals yielding milk[26] was almost unknown to the original
inhabitants of the New Continent. Hardly any of the American tribes
have ever availed themselves of the advantages which nature offered
them in this respect. The American race (which, with the exception
of the Esquimaux, is one and the same from 65° North to 55° South
latitude), has not passed from the state of hunters to that of
cultivators of the soil through the intermediate stage of a pastoral
life. Two kinds of native cattle (the Buffalo and the Musk Ox) feed
in the northern prairies of western Canada and the plains of arctic
America, in Quivira, and around the colossal ruins of the Aztec
fortress which rises in the wilderness, like an American Palmyra,
on the solitary banks of the Gila. The long-horned Rocky Mountain
Sheep abounds on the arid limestone rocks of California. The Vicunas,
Huanacos, Alpacas, and Lamas, belong to South America; but the two
first named of all these useful animals, _i. e._, the Buffalo and the
Musk Ox, have retained their natural freedom for two thousand years,
and the use of milk and cheese, like the possession and cultivation of
farinaceous grasses,[27] has remained a distinguishing characteristic
of the nations of the old world.
If some of the latter have crossed from northern Asia to the west
coast of America, and if, keeping by preference to the cooler mountain
regions,[28] they have followed the lofty ridge of the Andes towards
the south, their migration must have taken place by ways in which
they could not be accompanied by their flocks and herds, or bring
with them the cultivation of corn. When the long shaken empire of the
Hiongnu fell, may we conjecture that the movement of this powerful
tribe may also have occasioned in the north-east of China and in Corea
a shock and an impulse which may have caused civilized Asiatics to
pass over into the new continent? If such a migration had consisted
of inhabitants of the Steppes in which agriculture was not pursued,
this hazardous hypothesis (which has hitherto been but little favoured
by the comparison of languages) would at least explain the striking
absence of the Cereals in America. Possibly one of those Asiatic
priestly colonies whom mystic dreams sometimes impelled to embark in
long voyages, (of which the history of the peopling of Japan[29] in
the time of Thsinchi-huang-ti offers a memorable example), may have
been driven by storms to the coasts of New California.
If, then, pastoral life, that beneficent middle stage which attaches
nomadic hunting hordes to desirable pastures and prepares them, as it
were, for agriculture, has remained unknown to the aboriginal nations
of America, this circumstance sufficiently explains the absence of
human inhabitants in the South American Steppes. This absence has
allowed the freest scope for the abundant development of the most
varied forms of animal life; a development limited only by their mutual
pressure, and similar to that of vegetable life in the forests of the
Orinoco, where the Hymenæa and the gigantic laurel are never exposed to
the destructive hand of man, but only to the pressure of the luxuriant
climbers which twine around their massive trunks. Agoutis, small
spotted antelopes, cuirassed armadilloes, which, like rats, startle the
hare in its subterranean holes, herds of lazy chiguires, beautifully
striped viverræ which poison the air with their odour, the large
maneless lion, spotted jaguars (often called tigers) strong enough to
drag away a young bull after killing him;--these and many other forms
of animal life[30] wander through the treeless plain.
Thus almost exclusively inhabited by these wild animals, the Steppe
would offer little attraction or means of subsistence to those
nomadic native hordes, who, like the Asiatics of Hindostan, prefer
vegetable nutriment, if it were not for the occasional presence of
single individuals of the fan palm, the Mauritia. The benefits of this
life-supporting tree are widely celebrated; it alone, from the mouth
of the Orinoco to north of the Sierra de Imataca, feeds the unsubdued
nation of the Guaranis.[31] When this people were more numerous and
lived in closer contiguity, not only did they support their huts on
the cut trunks of palm trees as pillars on which rested a scaffolding
forming the floor, but they also, it is said, twined from the
leaf-stalks of the Mauritia cords and mats, which, skilfully interwoven
and suspended from stem to stem, enabled them in the rainy season,
when the Delta is overflowed, to live in the trees like the apes. The
floor of these raised cottages is partly covered with a coating of
damp clay, on which the women make fires for household purposes,--the
flames appearing at night from the river to be suspended high in air.
The Guaranis still owe the preservation of their physical, and perhaps
also their moral, independence, to the half-submerged, marshy soil over
which they move with a light and rapid step, and to their elevated
dwellings in the trees,--a habitation never likely to be chosen from
motives of religious enthusiasm by an American Stylites.[32] But the
Mauritia affords to the Guaranis not merely a secure dwelling-place,
but also various kinds of food. Before the flower of the male palm
tree breaks through its tender sheath, and only at that period of
vegetable metamorphosis, the pith of the stem of the tree contains a
meal resembling sago, which, like the farina of the jatropha root, is
dried in thin bread-like slices. The fermented juice of the tree forms
the sweet intoxicating palm wine of the Guaranis. The scaly fruits,
which resemble in their appearance reddish fir cones, afford, like
the plaintain and almost all tropical fruits, a different kind of
nutriment, according as they are eaten after their saccharine substance
is fully developed, or in their earlier or more farinaceous state. Thus
in the lowest stage of man’s intellectual development, we find the
existence of an entire people bound up with that of a single tree; like
the insect which lives exclusively on a single part of a particular
flower.
Since the discovery of the New Continent, the Llanos have become
habitable to men. In order to facilitate communication between the
Orinoco country and the coasts, towns have been built here and there
on the banks of the streams which flow through the Steppes.[33] The
rearing of cattle has began over all parts of these vast regions. Huts,
formed of reeds tied together with thongs and covered with skins, are
placed at distances of a day’s journey from each other; numberless
herds of oxen, horses, and mules, estimated at the peaceful epoch of
my journey at a million and a half, roam over the Steppe. The immense
multiplication of these animals, originally brought by man from the Old
Continent, is the more remarkable from the number of dangers with which
they have to contend.
When, under the vertical rays of the never-clouded sun, the carbonized
turfy covering falls into dust, the indurated soil cracks asunder as
if from the shock of an earthquake. If at such times two opposing
currents of air, whose conflict produces a rotatory motion, come in
contact with the soil, the plain assumes a strange and singular aspect.
Like conical-shaped clouds[34] the points of which descend to the
earth, the sand rises through the rarified air in the electrically
charged centre of the whirling current; resembling the loud waterspout
dreaded by the experienced mariner. The lowering sky sheds a dim,
almost straw-coloured light on the desolate plain. The horizon draws
suddenly nearer; the Steppe seems to contract, and with it the heart of
the wanderer. The hot dusty particles which fill the air increase its
suffocating heat,[35] and the east wind, blowing over the long-heated
soil, brings with it no refreshment, but rather a still more burning
glow. The pools which the yellow fading branches of the fan palm
had protected from evaporation now gradually disappear. As in the
icy north the animals become torpid with cold, so here, under the
influence of the parching drought, the crocodile and the boa become
motionless and fall asleep, deeply buried in the dry mud. Every where
the death-threatening drought prevails, and yet, by the play of the
refracted rays of light producing the phenomenon of the mirage, the
thirsty traveller is every where pursued by the illusive image of a
cool rippling watery mirror.[36] The distant palm bush apparently
raised by the influence of the contact of unequally heated and
therefore unequally dense strata of air, hovers above the ground, from
which it is separated by a narrow intervening margin. Half concealed by
the dark clouds of dust, restless with the pain of thirst and hunger,
the horses and cattle roam around, the cattle lowing dismally, and the
horses stretching out their long necks and snuffing the wind, if haply
a moister current may betray the neighbourhood of a not wholly dried
up pool. More sagacious and cunning, the mule seeks a different mode
of alleviating his thirst. The ribbed and spherical melon-cactus[37]
conceals under its prickly envelope a watery pith. The mule first
strikes the prickles aside with his fore feet, and then ventures warily
to approach his lips to the plant and drink the cool juice. But resort
to this vegetable fountain is not always without danger, and one sees
many animals that have been lamed by the prickles of the cactus.
When the burning heat of the day is followed by the coolness of the
night, which in these latitudes is always of the same length, even then
the horses and cattle cannot enjoy repose. Enormous bats suck their
blood like vampires during their sleep, or attach themselves to their
backs, causing festering wounds, in which musquitoes, hippobosces,
and a host of stinging insects, niche themselves. Thus the animals
lead a painful life during the season when, under the fierce glow
of the sun, the soil is deprived of its moisture. At length, after
the long drought, the welcome season of the rain arrives; and then
how suddenly is the scene changed![38] The deep blue of the hitherto
perpetually cloudless sky becomes lighter; at night the dark space in
the constellation of the Southern Cross is hardly distinguishable; the
soft phosphorescent light of the Magellanic clouds fades away; even
the stars in Aquila and Ophiucus in the zenith shine with a trembling
and less planetary light. A single cloud appears in the south, like a
distant mountain, rising perpendicularly from the horizon. Gradually
the increasing vapours spread like mist over the sky, and now the
distant thunder ushers in the life-restoring rain. Hardly has the
surface of the earth received the refreshing moisture, before the
previously barren Steppe begins to exhale sweet odours, and to clothe
itself with Kyllingias, the many panicules of the Paspalum, and a
variety of grasses. The herbaceous mimosas, with renewed sensibility
to the influence of light, unfold their drooping slumbering leaves to
greet the rising sun; and the early song of birds, and the opening
blossoms of the water plants, join to salute the morning. The horses
and cattle now graze in full enjoyment of life. The tall springing
grass hides the beautifully spotted jaguar, who lurking in safe
concealment, and measuring carefully the distance of a single bound,
springs, cat-like, as the Asiatic tiger, on his passing prey.
Sometimes, (so the Aborigines relate), on the margin of the swamps the
moistened clay is seen to blister and rise slowly in a kind of mound;
then with a violent noise, like the outbreak of a small mud volcano,
the heaped-up earth is cast high into the air. The beholder acquainted
with the meaning of this spectacle flies, for he knows there will issue
forth a gigantic water-snake or a scaly crocodile, awakened from a
torpid state[39] by the first fall of rain.
The rivers which bound the plain to the south, the Arauca, Apure, and
Payara, become gradually swollen; and now nature constrains the same
animals, who in the first half of the year panted with thirst on the
dry and dusty soil, to adopt an amphibious life. A portion of the
Steppe now presents the aspect of a vast inland sea.[40] The brood
mares retire with their foals to the higher banks, which stand like
islands above the surface of the lake. Every day the space remaining
dry becomes smaller. The animals, crowded together, swim about for
hours in search of other pasture, and feed sparingly on the tops
of the flowering grasses rising above the seething surface of the
dark-coloured water. Many foals are drowned, and many are surprised by
the crocodiles, killed by a stroke of their powerful notched tails,
and devoured. It is not a rare thing to see the marks of the pointed
teeth of these monsters on the legs of the horses and cattle who have
narrowly escaped from their blood-thirsty jaws. Such a sight reminds
the thoughtful observer involuntarily of the capability of conforming
to the most varied circumstances, with which the all-providing Author
of Nature has endowed certain animals and plants.
The ox and the horse, like the farinaceous cerealia, have followed man
over the whole surface of the globe, from India to Northern Siberia,
from the Ganges to the River Plate, from the African sea shore to the
mountain plateau of Antisana,[41] which is higher than the summit
of the Peak of Teneriffe. The ox wearied from the plough reposes,
sheltered from the noontide sun in one country by the quivering shadow
of the northern birch, and in another by the date palm. The same
species which, in the east of Europe, has to encounter the attacks of
bears and wolves, is exposed in other regions to the assaults of tigers
and crocodiles.
But the crocodile and jaguar are not the only assailants of the South
American horses; they have also a dangerous enemy among fishes. The
marshy waters of Bera and Rastro[42] are filled with numberless
electric eels, which can at pleasure send a powerful discharge from
any part of their slimy yellow spotted bodies. These gymnoti are
from five to six feet in length, and are powerful enough to kill the
largest animals when they discharge their nervous organs at once in a
favourable direction.
The route from Uritucu through the Steppe was formerly obliged to be
changed, because the gymnoti had increased to such numbers in a small
stream that in crossing it many horses were drowned every year, either
from the effects of the shocks they received, or from fright. All other
fishes fly the vicinity of these formidable eels. Even the fisherman
angling from the high bank fears lest the damp line should convey the
shock to him from a distance. Thus, in these regions, electric fire
breaks forth from the bosom of the waters.
The capture of the gymnoti affords a picturesque spectacle. Mules and
horses are driven into a marsh which is closely surrounded by Indians,
until the unwonted noise and disturbance induce the pugnacious fish
to begin an attack. One sees them swimming about like serpents, and
trying cunningly to glide under the bellies of the horses. Many of
these are stunned by the force of the invisible blows; others, with
manes standing on end, foaming and with wild terror sparkling in their
eyes, try to fly from the raging tempest. But the Indians, armed with
long poles of bamboo, drive them back into the middle of the pool.
Gradually the fury of the unequal strife begins to slacken. Like clouds
which have discharged their electricity, the wearied fish begin to
disperse; long repose and abundant food are required to replace the
galvanic force which they have expended. Their shocks become gradually
weaker and weaker. Terrified by the noise of the trampling horses, they
timidly approach the bank, where they are wounded by harpoons, and
cautiously drawn on shore by non-conducting pieces of dry wood.
Such is the extraordinary battle between horses and fish. That which
forms the invisible but living weapon of this electric eel;--that
which, awakened by the contact of moist dissimilar particles,[43]
circulates through all the organs of plants and animals;--that which,
flashing from the thunder cloud, illumines the wide skyey canopy;--that
which draws iron to iron and directs the silent recurring march of
the guiding needle;--all, like the several hues of the divided ray
of light, flow from one source; and all blend again together in one
perpetually, every where diffused, force or power.
I might here close the hazardous attempt to trace a picture of nature
such as she shows herself in the Steppes. But as on the ocean fancy
not unwillingly dwells awhile on the image of its distant shores, so,
before the wide plain disappears from our view, let us cast a rapid
glance at the regions by which the Steppes are bounded.
The Northern Desert of Africa divides two races of men who belong
originally to the same part of the globe, and whose unreconciled
discord appears as ancient as the mythus of Osiris and Typhon.[44]
North of the Atlas there dwell nations with long and straight hair, of
sallow complexion and Caucasian features. On the south of the Senegal,
towards Soudan, live hordes of negroes in many different stages of
civilization. In Central Asia, the Mongolian Steppe divides Siberian
barbarism from the ancient civilisation of the peninsula of India.
The South American Steppes form the boundary of a partial European
cultivation.[45] To the north, between the mountains of Venezuela
and the Caribbean sea, we find commercial cities, neat villages, and
carefully cultivated fields. Even the love of art and scientific
culture, together with the noble desire of civil freedom, have long
been awakened there. Towards the south the Steppe terminates in a
savage wilderness. Forests, the growth of thousands of years, fill with
their impenetrable fastnesses the humid regions between the Orinoco and
the Amazons. Massive leaden-coloured granite rocks[46] narrow the bed
of the foaming rivers. Mountains and forests resound with the thunder
of the falling waters, with the roar of the tiger-like jaguar, and with
the melancholy rain-announcing howlings of the bearded apes.[47]