English ed.) to the circumstance that, according to a statement of the
trustworthy Gomara, (Historia General de las Indias, cap. 214) there
was still living in the sixteenth century, in the north-west of Mexico,
in 40° latitude, an Indian tribe, whose principal riches consisted in
herds of tame bisons (bueyes con una giba). But notwithstanding the
possibility of taming the bison, notwithstanding the quantity of milk
it yields, and notwithstanding the herds of lamas in the Cordilleras of
Peru, no pastoral life or pastoral people were found when America was
discovered, and there is no historical evidence of this intermediate
stage in the life of nations ever having existed there. It is worthy
of remark that the American buffalo or bison has exerted an influence
on the progress of geography in trackless mountainous regions. These
animals wander in the winter, in search of a milder climate, in herds
of several thousands to the south of the Arkansas River. In these
migrations their size and unwieldiness make it difficult for them to
pass over high mountains. When, therefore, a well-trodden buffalo path
is met with, it is advisable to follow it, as being sure to conduct
to the most convenient pass across the mountains. The best routes
through the Cumberland Mountains, in the south-west parts of Virginia
and Kentucky, in the Rocky Mountains between the sources of the Yellow
Stone and the Platte, and between the southern branch of the Columbia
and the Rio Colorado of California, were thus marked out beforehand by
buffalo paths. The advance of settlement and cultivation has gradually
driven the buffalo from all the Eastern states: they formerly roamed
on the banks of the Mississipi and of the Ohio far beyond Pittsburg.
(Archæologia Americana, vol. ii., 1836, p. 139.)
From the granitic cliffs of Diego Ramirez,--in the deeply indented
and intersected Tierra del Fuego, which contains on the east silurian
schists and on the west the same schists altered by the metamorphic
action of subterranean fire, (Darwin’s Journal of Researches into the
Geology and Natural History of the Countries visited in 1832-1836 by
the Ships Adventure and Beagle, p. 266),--to the North Polar Sea, the
Cordilleras extend in length more than 8000 geographical miles. They
are the longest though not the loftiest chain on our planet; being
raised from a cleft running in the direction of a meridian from pole
to pole, and exceeding in linear distance the interval which in the
Old Continent separates the Pillars of Hercules from the Icy Cape of
the Tchuktches in the north-east of Asia. Where the Andes divide into
several parallel chains, it is remarked that the ranges nearest the
sea are usually those which exhibit most volcanic activity; but it
has also been observed repeatedly, that when the phenomena of still
active subterranean fire disappear in one chain, they break out in
another chain running parallel to it. Generally speaking, the volcanic
cones are found in a direction corresponding with that of the axis of
direction of the entire chain; but in the elevated highlands of Mexico
the active volcanoes are placed along a transverse cleft running from
sea to sea in the east and west direction. (Humboldt, Essai Politique,
T. ii. p. 173.) Where, by the elevation of mountain masses in the
ancient corrugation or folding of the crust of the earth, access has
been opened to the molten interior, that interior continues to act,
through the medium of the cleft, upon the upheaved wall-like mass.
That which we now call a mountain chain has not arrived at once at
its present state: rocks, very different in the order of succession
in reference to age, are found superimposed upon each other, and have
penetrated to the surface by early formed channels. The various nature
of the formations is due to the outpouring and elevation of eruptive
rocks, as well as to the slow and complicated process of metamorphic
action taking place in clefts filled with vapours and favourable to the
conduction of heat.
For a long time past, from 1830 to 1848, the following have been
regarded as the culminating or highest points of the Cordilleras of the
New Continent.
The Nevado de Sorata, also called Ancohuma or Tusubaya, (S. lat. 15°
52′) a little to the south of the village of Sorata or Esquibel, in
the eastern Bolivia Range: elevation 3949 toises, or 23692 Parisian,
or 25250 English feet.
The Nevado de Illimani, west of the Mission of Yrupana (S. lat. 16°
38′) in the same mountain range as Sorata: elevation 3753 toises, or
22518 Parisian, or 24000 English feet.
The Chimborazo (S. lat. 1° 27′) in the province of Quito: elevation
3350 toises, or 20100 Parisian, or 21423 English feet.
The Sorata and Illimani were first measured by a distinguished
geologist, Mr. Pentland, in 1827, and also in 1838. Since the
publication, in June 1848, of his great map of the basin of the lake
of Titicaca, we know that the above-mentioned elevations of these two
mountains are respectively 3960 and 2851 English feet, too great. The
map gives to the Sorata 21286, and to the Illimani 21149 English feet.
A more exact calculation of the trigonometrical operations of 1838 has
led Mr. Pentland to these new results. There are, according to him, in
the western Cordillera four peaks of from 21700 to 22350 English feet.
The highest of these, the peak of Sahama, would thus be 926 English
feet higher than the Chimborazo, and but 850 English feet lower than
the Volcano of Acongagua, measured by the expedition of the Beagle
(Fitz Roy’s Narrative, Vol. ii. p. 481.)
[6] p. 3.--“_The Desert near the basaltic mountains of Harudsh._”
Near the Egyptian Natron Lakes, (which in the time of Strabo had not
yet been divided into six reservoirs), there is a range of hills which
rises steeply on the northern side, and runs from east to west past
Fezzan, where it finally appears to join the chain of the Atlas. It
divides in north-eastern Africa, as the Atlas does in north-western
Africa, the inhabited maritime Lybia of Herodotus from the land of the
Berbers, or Biledulgerid, abounding in wild animals. From the limits
of Middle Egypt the whole region south of the 30th degree of North
latitude is a sea of sand, in which are dispersed islands, or Oases,
containing springs of water and a flourishing vegetation. The number
of these Oases, of which the ancients only reckoned three, and which
Strabo compared to the spots on a panther’s skin, has been considerably
augmented by the discoveries of modern travellers. The third Oasis of
the ancients, now called Siwah, was the Nomos of Ammon; a residence
of priests, a resting place for caravans, and the site of the temple
of the horned Ammon and the supposed periodically cool fountain of
the Sun. The ruins of Ummibida, (Omm-Beydah), belong incontestibly to
the fortified caravanserai at the temple of Ammon, and therefore to
the most ancient monuments which have come down to us from the early
dawn of civilization. (Caillaud, Voyage à Syouah, p. 14; Ideler in den
Fundgruben des Orients, Bd. iv. S. 399-411).
The word Oasis is Egyptian, and synonymous with Auasis and Hyasis
(Strabo, lib. ii. p. 130, lib. xvii. p. 813, Cas.; Herod. lib. iii.
cap. 26, p. 207, Wessel). Abulfeda calls the Oases, el-Wah. In the
later times of the Cæsars, malefactors were sent to the Oases; being
banished to these islands in the sea of sand, as the Spaniards and the
English have sent criminals to the Falklands or to New Holland. Escape
by the ocean is almost easier than through the desert. The fertility of
the Oases is subject to diminution by the invasion of sand.
The small mountain-range of Harudsh is said to consist of basaltic
hills of grotesque form (Ritter’s Afrika, 1822, S. 885, 988, 993, and
1003). It is the Mons Ater of Pliny; and its western extremity or
continuation, called the Soudah mountains, has been explored by my
unfortunate friend, the adventurous traveller Ritchie. This eruption
of basalt in tertiary limestone, rows of hills rising abruptly from
dike-like fissures, appears to be analogous to the outbreak of basalt
in the Vicentine territory. Nature often repeats the same phenomena in
the most distant parts of the earth. In the limestone formations of
the “white Harudsh” (Harudje el-Abiad), which perhaps belong to the
old chalk, Hornemann found an immense number of fossil heads of fish.
Ritchie and Lyon remarked that the basalt of the Soudah mountains,
like that of the Monte Berico, was in many places intimately mixed
with carbonate of lime,--a phenomenon probably connected with eruption
through limestone strata. Lyon’s map even mentions dolomite in the
neighbourhood. Modern mineralogists have found syenite and greenstone
in Egypt, but not basalt. Possibly the material of some of the ancient
Egyptian vases, which are occasionally found of true basalt, may have
been taken from these western mountains. May “Obsidius lapis” also have
been found there? or are basalt and obsidian to be sought for near the
Red Sea? The strip of volcanic or eruptive formations of the Harudsh,
on the margin of the African desert, reminds the geologist of the
augitic vesicular amygdaloid, phonolite, and greenstone porphyry, which
are only found at the northern and western boundaries of the Steppes of
Venezuela and of the plains of the Arkansas, as it were on the hills
of the ancient coast line. (Humboldt, Relation Historique, tom. ii. p.
142; Long’s Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, vol. ii. pp. 91 and 405.)
[7] p. 3.--“_When suddenly deserted by the east wind of the tropics in
a sea covered with weed._”
It is a remarkable phenomenon, well known among sailors, that in the
vicinity of the African coast (between the Canaries and the Cape de
Verde Islands, and particularly between Cape Bojador and the mouth of
the Senegal), a west wind often takes the place of the general east
or trade-wind of the tropics. It is the wide expanse of the desert of
Sahara which causes this westerly wind. The air over the heated sandy
plain becomes rarefied and ascends, the air from the sea rushes in to
supply the void so formed, and thus there sometimes arises a west wind,
adverse to ships bound to the American coast, which are made in this
manner to feel the vicinity of the heat-radiating desert without even
seeing the continent to which it belongs. The changes of land and sea
breezes, which blow alternately at certain hours of the day or night on
all coasts, are due to the same causes.
The accumulation of sea-weed in the neighbourhood of the African
coast has been often spoken of by ancient writers. The locality of
this accumulation is a problem which is intimately connected with
our conjectures respecting the extent of Phœnician navigation.
The Periplus, which has been ascribed to Scylax of Caryanda, and
which, according to the researches of Niebuhr and Letronne, was very
probably compiled in the time of Philip of Macedon, describes beyond
Cerne a quantity of fucus forming a weed-covered sea--a kind of “Mar
de Sargasso;” but the locality indicated appears to me to differ
very much from that assigned in the work entitled “De Mirabilibus
Auscultationibus,” which long bore, unduly, the great name of
Aristotle. (Compare Scyl. Caryand. Peripl. in Hudson, vol. ii. p. 53,
with Aristot. de Mirab. Auscult. in opp. omnia ex. rec. Bekkeri, p.
844, § 136.) The pseudo-Aristotle says, “Phœnician mariners, driven
by the east wind, came in four days’ sail from Gades to a part where
they found the sea covered with reeds and sea-weed (θρύον καὶ φῦκος.)
The sea-weed is uncovered at ebb and covered at flood tide.” Is he
not here speaking of a shallow place between the 34° and 36° of
latitude? Has a shoal disappeared in consequence of volcanic eruption?
Vobonne speaks of rocks north of Madeira. (Compare also Edrisi, Geog.
Nub., 1619, p. 157.) In Scylax it is said, “The sea beyond Cerne is
unnavigable on account of its great shallowness, its muddiness, and
the great quantity of sea grasses. The sea grass lies a span thick,
and is full of points at the top, so that it pricks.” The sea-weed
found between Cerne,--(the Phœnician station for laden vessels, Gaulea,
or, according to Gosselin, the small island of Fedallah, on the
north-western coast of Mauritania),--and Cape de Verde, does not now by
any means form a great sea meadow, or connected tract of fucus, a “mare
herbidum,” such as exists beyond the Azores. In the poetic description
of the coast by Festus Avienus, (Ora Maritima, v. 109, 122, 388, and
408), in the composition of which, as Avienus himself says, (v. 412)
he availed himself of the journals of Phœnician ships, the obstacle
presented by the sea-weed is referred to in a very circumstantial
manner; but its site is placed much farther north, towards Ierne, the
“Sacred Island.”
Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,
Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.
Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
Exstare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice
Retinere puppim....
Hæc inter undas multa cæspitem jacet,
Eamque late gens Hibernorum colit.
In remarking that the fucus and the mud or mire, (πηλός), the
shallowness of the sea, and the perpetual calms, are always spoken
of by the ancients as characteristics of the western ocean beyond
the Pillars of Hercules, one is disposed, more particularly on
account of the mention of the _calms_, to ascribe something to Punic
artifice,--to the desire of a great trading people to deter others,
by the apprehension of dangers and difficulties, from entering into
competition with them in western navigation and commerce. But even
in the genuine writings of Aristotle (Meteorol. ii. p. 1, 14,) he
maintains this same opinion of the absence of wind in those regions,
and seeks the explanation of what he erroneously supposes to be a
fact of observation, but which is more properly a fabulous mariner’s
tale, in an hypothesis concerning the depth of the sea. In reality,
the stormy sea between Gades and the islands of the Blest or Fortunate
Islands, (between Cadix and the Canaries), is very unlike the sea
farther to the south between the tropics, where the gentle trade winds
blow, and which is called very characteristically by the Spaniards, el
Golfo de las Damas, the Ladies’ Gulf. (Acosta Historia natural y moral
de las Indias, lib. iii. cap. 4.)
From very careful researches by myself, and from the comparison of the
logs or journals of many English and French vessels, I infer that the
old and indefinite expression, Mar de Sargasso, includes two banks of
fucus, of which the greater and easternmost one, of a lengthened shape,
is situated between the parallels of 19° and 34° N. lat., in a meridian
of 7 degrees to the west of the Island of Corvo, one of the Azores;
while the lesser and westernmost bank, of a roundish form, is situated
between the Bermudas and the Bahamas, (lat. 25°-31°, long. 66°-74°.)
The longer axis of the small bank which is crossed by ships going from
Baxo de Plata (Caye d’Argent, Silver Cay) on the north of St. Domingo,
to the Bermudas, appears to have a N. 60° E. direction. A transverse
band of Fucus natans, running in an East and West direction between
the parallels of 25° and 30°, connects the greater and lesser banks. I
have had the gratification of seeing these inferences approved by my
honoured friend Major Rennell, and adopted by him in his great work on
Currents, where he has further supported and confirmed them by many new
and additional observations. (Compare Humboldt, Relation Historique,
tom. i. p. 202, and Examen critique, tom. iii. p. 68-99, with Rennell’s
Investigation of the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean, 1832, p. 184.)
The two groups of sea-weed, included together with the transverse
connecting band under the old general name of the Sargasso Sea, occupy
altogether a space exceeding six or seven times the area of Germany.
Thus it is the vegetation of the ocean which offers the most remarkable
example of an assemblage of “social plants” of a single species. On
terra firma, the savannahs or prairies, or grassy plains of America,
the heaths (ericeta), and the forests of the North of Europe and
Asia, consisting of coniferous trees, birches, and willows, offer a
less degree of uniformity than do those thalassophytes. Our heaths
show, in the north, in addition to the prevailing Calluna vulgaris,
Erica tetralix, E. ciliaris, and E. cinerea; and in the south, Erica
arborea, E. scoparia, and E. mediterranea. The uniformity of the
aspect offered by the Fucus natans is greater than that of any other
assemblage or association of plants. Oviedo calls the fucus banks
“meadows,” praderias de yerva. Considering that the island of Flores
was discovered in 1452, by Pedro Velasco, a native of the Spanish port
of Palos, by following the flight of certain birds from the island of
Fayal, it seems almost impossible, seeing the proximity of the great
fucus bank of Corvo and Flores, that a part of these oceanic meadows
should not have been seen before Columbus, by Portuguese ships driven
by storms to the westward. Yet the astonishment of the companions of
Columbus in 1492, when surrounded by sea-weed uninterruptedly from
the 16th of September to the 8th of October, shews that the magnitude
of the phenomenon at least was previously unknown to the sailors. The
anxieties excited by the accumulation of sea-weed, and the murmurs
of his companions in reference thereto, are not indeed mentioned by
Columbus in the extracts from the ship’s journal given by Las Casas.
He merely speaks of the complaints and murmurs respecting the danger
to be feared from the weak but constant East winds. It is only the
son, Fernando Colon, who, in writing his father’s life, endeavoured to
depict the fears of the sailors in a dramatic manner.
According to my researches, Columbus crossed the great fucus bank in
1492, in lat. 28-1/2°, and in 1493, in lat. 37°, both times in the
long. of from 38° to 41° W. This is deducible with tolerable certainty
from Columbus’s recorded estimation of the ship’s rate, and the
“distance daily sailed over;” derived indeed, not from casting the log,
but from data afforded by the running out of half-hour sand-glasses
(ampolletas). The first certain and definite mention of a log (catena
della poppa) which I have been able to discover, is in the year 1521,
in Pigafetta’s journal of Magellan’s Voyage round the World. (Cosmos,
vol. ii. p. 259, and Note 405, English ed.) The determination of the
ship’s place, while Columbus was engaged in traversing the great
meadows of sea-weed, is the more important, because we learn from
it that for three centuries and a half the situation of this great
accumulation of thalassophytes, whether resulting from the local
character of the bottom of the sea, or from the direction of the Gulf
stream, has remained the same. Such evidences of the permanency of
great natural phenomena arrest the attention of the physical inquirer
with double force, when they present themselves in the ever-moving
oceanic element. Although the limits of the fucus banks oscillate
considerably, in correspondence with the variations of the strength
and direction of the prevailing winds, yet we may still in the middle
of the 19th century take the meridian of 41° W. from Paris (38° 38′
W. from Greenwich) as the principal axis of the “great bank.” In the
vivid imagination of Columbus, the idea of the position of this bank
was intimately connected with the great physical line of demarcation,
which, according to him, divided the globe into two parts, with the
changes of magnetic variation, and with climatic relations. Columbus,
when uncertain respecting his longitude, (February 1493), directed
himself by the appearance of the first floating streamers of weed (de
la primera yerva) on the eastern margin of the great Corvo bank. The
physical line of demarcation was, by the powerful influence of the
Admiral, converted on the 4th of May, 1493, into a political line,
being made the celebrated “line of demarcation” between the Spanish and
Portuguese rights of possession. (Compare my Examen Critique, tom. iii.
p. 64-99, and Cosmos, English ed. vol. ii. p. 279-280.)
[8] p. 3.--“_The Nomadic Tibbos and Tuaricks._”
These two nations inhabit the deserts between Bornou, Fezzan, and
Lower Egypt. They were first made known to us with some exactness by
Hornemann’s and Lyon’s travels. The Tibbos or Tibbous roam through the
eastern, and the Tuaticks (Tueregs) through the western, parts of the
great desert. The first are called by the other tribes, from being in
continual movement, “birds.” The Tuaricks are distinguished into those
of Aghadez and those of Tagazi. They are often engaged as conductors
of caravans, and in trade. Their language is the same as that of the
Berbers; and they belong unquestionably to the number of the primitive
Lybian nations. The Tuaricks present a remarkable physiological
phenomenon. Different tribes among them are, according to the climate,
white, yellowish, and even almost black; but all are without woolly
hair or Negro features. (Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, T. ii.
p. 343.)
[9] p. 4.--“_The Ship of the Desert._”
In oriental poems, the camel is called the land-ship, or the ship
of the Desert (Sefynet-el-badyet); Chardin, Voyages, nouv. éd. par
Langlès, 1811, T. iii. p. 376.
But the camel is not merely the carrier of the desert, and the link
which, rendering communication between different countries possible,
connects them with each other: he is also, as Carl Ritter has shewn
in his excellent memoir on the sphere of diffusion of these animals,
the principal and essential condition of the nomadic life of nations
in the patriarchal stage of national development, in the hot parts of
our planet where rain is either altogether wanting or very infrequent.
No animal’s life is so closely associated by natural bonds with a
particular stage of the developement of the life of man,--a connection
historically established for several thousand years,--as the life of
the camel among the Bedouin tribes (Asien, Bd. viii. Abth. i. 1847,
S. 610 und 758). “The camel was entirely unknown to the cultivated
Carthaginian nation through all the centuries of their flourishing
existence, until the destruction of their city. The Marusians first
brought it into military use, in the train of armies, in Western Lybia,
in the times of the Cæsars; perhaps in consequence of its employment
in commercial operations in the valley of the Nile by the Ptolemies.
The Guanches, the inhabitants of the Canary Islands and probably
related to the Berber race, were not acquainted with the camel before
the 15th century, when it was introduced by Norman conquerors and
settlers. In the probably very limited communication of the Guanches
with the Coast of Africa, the small size of the boats would prevent the
transport of large animals. The true Berber race, diffused throughout
the interior of Northern Africa, and to which the Tibbos and Tuaricks,
as already mentioned, belong, owes doubtless to the use of the camel
throughout the Lybian desert and its Oases, not only the advantages of
intercommunication, but also the preservation of its national existence
to the present day. On the other hand, the negro races never, of their
own accord, made any use of the camel; it was only in company with
the conquering expeditions and proselyting missions of the Bedouins,
carrying their prophet’s doctrines over the whole of Northern Africa,
that the useful animal of the Nedjid, of the Nabatheans, and of all
the countries inhabited by Aramean races, spread to the westward and
was introduced among the black population. The Goths took camels as
early as the fourth century to the Lower Istros (the Danube), and
the Ghaznevides conveyed them in much larger numbers as far as India
and the banks of the Ganges.” We must distinguish two epochs in the
diffusion of the camel throughout the northern part of the African
continent; one under the Ptolemies, operating through Cyrene on the
whole of the north-west of Africa; and the Mohammedan epoch of the
conquering Arabs.