The name _Rhinoceros_ ([Greek: rhin], nose, and [Greek: keras], 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-legs, and another from the hind part of the back to the thighs. He

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 Proboscideæ. 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, admirably

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 movement impossible on

the part of the quadruped, if Nature had not disposed 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 innocuously. 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 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.

[Illustration: KAFFIR HUNTER CARRIED OFF BY A RHINOCEROS.]

The African Rhinoceros is the king of his race. He wears a naked,

smooth, and tenacious skin. Two horns are mounted on his 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 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.[172] 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 extraordinary

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.

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 Mammals

immediately next to Man in the zoological series.

Linné 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

contemporary 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 Lemuridæ, or Lemurs. 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 conditions

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 Macaucos. 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 prominent 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 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 formidable 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 Cynocephali soon allow all their malignity, mischievousness,

brutality, and vicious instincts to peep out, and as they grow older

become completely intractable.

In the time of Desfontaines 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 goodwill 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, 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 up that one of their species is

popularly known by the expressive name of the "Man-Tiger."

[Illustration: BABOONS PLUNDERING A GARDEN.]

We must not confound the Cynocephali with the Cynopitheci, an

intermediate genus between the Apes and the Macaucos, which connects

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 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.

[Illustration: THE BLACK CYNOPITHECUS.]

I may here pause to indicate a few of the more remarkable varieties of

the Baboon and the Monkey: premising that by a recent classification the

Apes, or Simiæ, 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 present, I limit my remarks to members of the second and

third sections.

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 measures 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 _Douc_, a very large species,

remarkable for their coat 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 brownish-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,[173] "was

not quite full grown. When it first arrived, it occasionally made a

gruff subdued howling noise early in the morning. 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 larynx. 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, 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.[174] It is said that this howling 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 Diana_), the upper parts of whose body are of a reddish

colour, besprinkled with white spots.

The Mandrill, or Variegated Baboon (_Cynocephalus maimon_), 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.

The Derrias (_Cynocephalus hamadryas_), 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 frequent 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 ornamented 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

(_Pithecus 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 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 distinguish 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'être_--its motive of existence; the relations between the

organism 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 Linné, 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 specifically

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 Linné at a later period

renounced this quasi-assimilation, and that modern zoologists have

unanimously rejected it.[175]

In the age of Linné, the apes of which we speak were but imperfectly

known. Even now-a-days our information upon the subjects of their

intelligence, manners, and habits, is defective and fragmentary. 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 themselves. 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 (_Simia 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 have reached Europe

have not exceeded four feet in height. The Orang has short and feeble

lower limbs; but his arms, on the contrary, 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 Blondins. 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 partly 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 gôitre, which is due

to the presence of the pouch called thyroïdian. This pouch, placed above

the sternum, extends beneath the arm-holes, and communicates with the

larynx. 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 present 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 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 platform, 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 protracting 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.

[Illustration: DEATH OF AN ORANG-OUTANG.]

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

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 become domesticated, and display a loyal affection towards

their masters. Unfortunately the climate of Europe, and perhaps, 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 thyroïdian

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 ([Greek: syn]) by a

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.

[Illustration: GIBBON-SIAMANG AND MOURNING GIBBON.]

The Wou-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 utterance--a

kind of clucking totally unlike the howlings of the other gibbons.

Ashen-gray is the colour of the skin of the Mourning Gibbon (_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 inhabits the

Sunda Islands, and principally Java, and numerous individuals 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 _Quimpezé_, 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 Simidæ, he alone has calves to his legs. He has

neither tail, ischiatic callosities, _abajoues_, nor thyroïdian 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 disadvantage. 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 reputation of

a Mendez Pinto or a Munchausen, asserts that he discovered at the

Gaboon two new species of Chimpanzees. One, called by the natives

_Nshiégo-Mbouvé_, 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[176] is the

_Kooloo-Kamba_. He is distinguished from all his congeners by a very

peculiar 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 Simiadæ. 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 _Jacko_.

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, recognized the

Pongo as a species of the genus Troglodytes, distinct from 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 Mpongwéss,

who dwell on the banks of the Gaboon, not far from the forests tenanted

by this mysterious Quadrumane.

The Mpongwéss negroes call the Chimpanzee _Enge-eko_, and the Gorilla

_Enge-ena_; whence the surname of "Gina," linked to the zoological

appellation of "Gorilla"--_Gorilla-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 extraordinary 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 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 very 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 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 _métier_ 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,

immediately 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 utterance

of human agony.[177]

[Illustration: A GORILLA KILLING A NEGRO.]

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 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 CEBIDÆ, 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 classification of naturalists under

one single family, named _Cebidæ_. These--one genus, the Brachiura,

excepted--have all a very long, and, generally, a prehensile tail. They

differ, moreover, from the Simidæ 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, readily domesticate themselves with man, and do

not become in their old age more impracticable or malicious than in

youth.

The Cebidæ are divided into several genera, such as the _Howlers_, the

_Atelæ_, the _Sajous_, the _Saïmris_, the _Nyctipitheci_, or Nocturnal

Apes; to which we may add, perhaps, the tribe of the _Hapalidæ_

(Ouistitis and Tamarins).

[Illustration: HOWLING MONKEYS.]

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 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 Cebidæ is

long and prehensile; that is, endowed with a peculiar faculty of winding

or clinging round any object.

[Illustration: ATELES CROSSING A RIVER.]

In the genus _Ateles_, or "Spider Monkey," for example, it virtually

forms a fifth limb, by whose agency the animal suspends himself in 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 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 descending 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 gentleness, 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 acclimatize in

Europe, and, even if they survive the voyage, die very shortly after

their arrival.

Linné 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.

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 Lemuridæ 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 Lemuridæ, 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 and 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 conformation which render the apes, even the

most favoured by Nature, offensive caricatures of man. They are lively

and agile; they climb, run, and leap with as much grace as nimbleness.

Their habits are nocturnal, 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 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 Maki_, 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, finally, his belly and tail are black. Other species have

been distinguished, as the Red-bellied Maki, the Yellow-bellied, the

Maki with the white forehead, and the like.

[Illustration: 1. Maki-Mocoas. 2. White-Mantled Maki.]

* * * * *

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 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 direction 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 zoologists now

classify them with the Edentata, and form them into the family of

Bradypes or Bradypidæ. Undoubtedly the sloth, or aï, is an animal of

curious and uncouth appearance; in general conformation not unlike the

bear, to which he also approaches in the form of 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.

[Illustration: CHEIROMYS, OR AYE-AYE OF MADAGASCAR.]

The name of "Sloth" popularly bestowed on this animal is not so

well-deserved as some writers of Zoology made Easy have represented. 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 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 corresponding 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 organization 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 _Chalypus-Unau_ and the _Bradypus-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 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 Aï 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 conformation. He may, however, be

recognized by his rudimentary tail, his flattened visage, and the long

frizzled hair which covers certain parts of the body.

[Illustration: 1. Aï (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 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 graminivorous 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."

[Illustration: COMMON EUROPEAN SQUIRRELS.]

The Squirrel (_Sciurus_) belongs to the family _Sciuridæ_, 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 ([Greek: skia], a shade, and [Greek: oura], 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 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 extended. 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 manners, 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 Carolinensis_),

where he enjoys his free and sportive life in the great forests of

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 fineness

of his fur. In the neighbourhood of Hudson's Bay dwells the Red or

Hudson's Bay Squirrel (_Sciurus 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 specified 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

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 Sciuridæ 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 considerable

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 subferruginous 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 aërial 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, reaching, 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_, 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 _Sciuridæ_ 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 product 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 hygiène,

mingle with barbarous customs and absurd or superstitious 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 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 improbabilities 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

surpassing skill.

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 multiplying 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

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?"[178]

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 Europeans. 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

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 _five_ and _ten_; other American tribes say

"two men" instead of _forty_, because each man has 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 incongruous 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, 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," "profession," 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 incongruous 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 intercession of his "rain-maker" to

obtain the desired showers. It is not a moral and a spiritual, but a

_material_ God, of whom the savage conceives, and before whose anger he

trembles.

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, O 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,[179]

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 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 commentary 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:[180]--

"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."

The savage has only rudimentary notions of the justice, the respect, and

the good-will which man owes to his fellows. Nevertheless, 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 gratitude, 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 permanent; 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 hyperborean races,

anthropophagy rages with intensity among peoples comparatively

civilized. The Ghonds 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.

[Illustration: A CANNIBAL FEAST AMONG THE BATTAS OF SUMATRA.]

In Sumatra there exists a tribe, that of the Battas, which has not

only a religion and a worship, but a kind of constitution, a literature,

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 _Cobens_ of the

Uanpès, 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 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 Vouabembés, who feed upon carrion, vermin,

larvæ, 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,[181] 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 exertions 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 complete, for

others it seems to be a perpetual infancy, an incurable 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 investigate, 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 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,[182] "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 preserved the same character and employments." It is

race that has planted the Anglo-Saxon on every shore, and that for ages

has subjected 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 Australian branch

wholly distinct from, and independent of, the African branch; which,

nevertheless, it resembles in several organic peculiarities, 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, 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 proportion 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 inexpressive. 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 uniform 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 reproduced among all the individuals who compose it with

scarcely perceptible 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 of Africa. Its

primitive stock is supposed to be the people called Mandinké or Malinké

(Mandingue), formerly established at Mendé, 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, where they have introduced Islamism.

Further south, at the Gaboon, we meet with the wholly savage nations of

the Mpongwes, the Shekianis, and the Fans. The Mpongwes 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

characteristic trait is their passionate ardour for trade. Their

principal wares are ivory, precious woods, and slaves. They display in

their commercial 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 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.

[Illustration: NEGROES--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 Zanguebar and the Lakes

Victoria-Nyanza and Tanganyika, lie the kingdoms of Ugogo, Unyamezi,

Unyoro, Kidi, and others, visited by Grant and Speke in their

celebrated journey to the sources of the Nile. The inhabitants of these

countries are "darkly, deeply, beautifully" 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 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.

[Illustration: KAFFIR WARRIORS.]

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 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 darker than that of the

Arabs, and of whom the Wanikas offer the most conspicuous type. Then

follow the south Kaffir branch, including 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.

[Illustration: HOTTENTOTS--A MAN AND WOMAN.]

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 wretchedness 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 cultivate the soil, or depasture herds of cattle; such

are the Bayéyés, 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 _Bosjesmans_, 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 Téraï, between Palmoco,

Sumbhulpoor, and the sources of the Nerbudda. But whence came the

latter? On this subject all historical tradition 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.

[Illustration: AUSTRALIANS.]

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 from one another, and the latter are

superior to the former. The Australians are puny and wretched in

appearance. They have a protuberant 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, and whatever part of the world they inhabit. The

tribes are distinguished 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

indigenous 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.[183]

[Illustration: PAPUANS.]

The Papuans have not woolly hair, like the Australians. Their hair grows

in separate plaits, which twine one in another, and form, 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 authority 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.

CHAPTER XI.

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 composite race, presenting

very diverse types. Ethnologists, however, divide it into two original

branches--the Malayan and the Polynesian.

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 of, the Orang-Lobous, and the Pagais. The latter tatoo the body,

says Maury,[184] 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 glorification 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 Polynesian 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 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.

[Illustration: MALAYS--MALE AND TWO FEMALES.]

These two mixed races comprise in themselves several varieties, but all

bear the common denomination of Malagasy or Madecassy.[185]

[Illustration: HOVAS OF MADAGASCAR--MEN, WOMAN, AND CHILD.]

According to M. Maury, the populations of Polynesia depart the more

completely from the Malayan type as we advance in an eastward

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 _Kanaks_.[186] 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 Ombaï, situated

at the extremity of that vast archipelago which seems in some remote age

to have formed an isthmus connecting the Australian with the Asiatic

continent, the natives are of a more or less decided olive-brown. Their

eyes are deep-set and brilliant, 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 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, which 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 Ombaï are anthropophagic.

[Illustration: WARRIORS OF THE ISLAND OF OMBAI.]

If now we transport ourselves to the eastern extremity of Polynesia, the

Marquesas Islands, occupied by France in 1842, we shall find there the

Pelagian race under one of its handsomest and most amiable types. The

Kanaks of this group are not exempt from cannibalism. 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 Radiguet,

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 Teës, it is among the

Taïpis, 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-sloped. The mouth is neither large nor thick-lipped; the forehead,

rather low and somewhat receding, 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 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.

[Illustration: ISLANDERS OF NOUKAHIVA.]

"The women are of medium stature, their contours frequently 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,[187]

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 Europeans find it

difficult to seize. Seated face to face, the back supported 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 careless of the morrow, they are gifted

with a quick wit, a sound judgment, and a very 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 comprehended 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 speaking 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 designates an unity of origin which is doubtful,

or a similitude of colour which does not exist.

[Illustration: INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA--THE RED SKINS.]

"From the North Pole even to Tierra del Fuego," says Maury, "there is

scarcely a shade of human colouring which is not manifested, 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 less. Between the

stature, not gigantic but very tall, of the Patagonians and the

dwarf-like proportions of the Changos, 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 size of the head. Yet we

recognize between the various American populations an air of kinship,

certain general features which distinguish 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 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 continent--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 Leatherstockings. 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 civilization, 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 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_[188] and gold-seekers of Upper Mexico, and

the American journals frequently contain accounts of their incursions,

their acts of brigandage, and cruelty.

[Illustration: INDIAN WOMEN OF NORTH AMERICA.]

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 olfactory

nerve, and the absence of beard. Several tribes subject the head of the

new-born to a systematic mis-shapement by compressing 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.

[Illustration: THE APACHES ATTACKING AN EMIGRANT TRAIN.]

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 characteristics. The

comparatively advanced civilization which the Spanish conquerors found

established in Mexico had not effaced among the 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.

The Guarani, or Carib race, formerly occupied the Antilles, and on the

mainland extended as far as Paraguay. It is principally distinguished 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.

[Illustration: GUARANI INDIANS (SOUTH AMERICA).]

The Caribs, whose name has become in our common parlance a 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 their

manners, approximate closely to the Red Skins. They show the same love

of independence and the same antipathy to the trammels of civilization.

They are dispersed in the Brazilian forests, and principally in the

province of Maranhao or Maragnan.

[Illustration: PATAGONIANS.]

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 Botocoudos,

having encountered some natives of "the Celestial Empire" in a part of

Brazil, joyously 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

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 represented the Patagonians as giants

upwards of six and seven feet high, and wonderful accounts of them

figure in the pages of Drake, Cavendish, 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'élite_ of the armies of England,

France, Prussia, and Austria. Their arms and legs are very 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 Patagonians,

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 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 melancholy 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 expression 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 Orélie 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 Pécherais, an ichthyophagous tribe

of Tierra del Fuego.

The natives of these islands, says Admiral Wilkes,[189] 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

vertically 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 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 ethnologist, has

designated the _Mediterranean_, and whose features recall in a striking

manner those of some of the Californian 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.

[Illustration]

BOOK V.

_THE POLAR DESERTS--THE MOUNTAINS._

CHAPTER I.

THE POLAR DESERTS.

In 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 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 flourishing

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 hereafter 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 +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, 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.[190]

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 Hervé and

F. de Lanoye,[191] "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 superficies the

mass of the European lands, estimated at about 490,000 square leagues."

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 anfractuosities. 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 temperature of +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 flourish 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 scourge, which the traveller can only escape by

surrounding himself with clouds of smoke.

[Illustration: THE DESERT OF ICE (ARCTIC POLE).]

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 accidentally 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 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 Iakutsk, in lat. 62°. All

this northern part of Siberia is only distinguished 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 Klioutchevskoï, 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 containing 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 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 unfortunate 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, mountains, 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 mediæval cathedrals. Lit up by the radiance of an Arctic

sun, they wear a 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 thickness 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 confusion 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 mêlée, 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 adventures 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 fortunate have not returned in safety

without accomplishing prodigies of valour and energy, without

undergoing the severest privations and most terrible sufferings.