Chapter VI: Part 6

Zimmermann’s map of the countries about the Upper Nile shews the dividing line which determines the basin of the Great River, and separates it on the south-east from the domain of the rivers which flow into the Indian Ocean;--that is to say, from the Doara, which enters the sea north of Magadoxo; from the Teb, which has its embouchure on the Amber coast, near Ogda; and from the Goschop, whose abundant stream is formed by the confluence of the Gibu and the Zebi, and which he distinguishes from the Godjeb, rendered celebrated since 1839 by Antoine d’Abbadie, the missionary Krapf, and Beke. These results of the travels of Beke, Krapf, Isenberg, Russegger, Rüppell, Abbadie, and Werne, brought together and shewn in the most comprehensive and convenient manner by Zimmermann, were hailed by me on their appearance in 1843 with the most lively joy, as expressed in a letter to Carl Ritter. “If,” I wrote to him, “a life prolonged to an advanced period brings with it several inconveniences to the individual, and perhaps some even to those who live with him, there is a compensation in the delight of being able to compare older states of knowledge with that which now exists, and to see great advances in knowledge grow and develope themselves under our eyes in departments where all had long slumbered in inactivity, with the exception, perhaps, of attempts by hypercriticism to render previous acquisitions doubtful. This enjoyment has from time to time fallen to our share, yours and mine, in our geographical studies, and this particularly in reference to those very parts of the world which formerly could only be treated of with timid hesitating uncertainty. The conformation of a continent depends in its leading traits on several plastic relations which are usually among the latest to be discovered and unravelled. A new and excellent work of our friend Carl Zimmermann, on the upper country of the Nile and the eastern parts of central Africa, has again brought these considerations very vividly before me. His new map shews in the clearest manner to the eye, by means of a particular method of shading, what is still unknown, and what, by the courage and perseverance of travellers of all nations,--among whom our own countrymen happily hold an important place,--has been already disclosed to us. It is a valuable service, and one which opens the way for farther advances and more comprehensive inferences, when persons, thoroughly acquainted with the existing, often widely scattered, materials,--men who do not merely draw and compile, but compare, select, and, wherever it is possible, check and control the routes of travellers by astronomical determinations of position,--undertake to represent graphically the results of the elements of knowledge possessed at the time. Those who have themselves given to the world so much as you have done, have an especial right to expect much; since their combinations have largely augmented the number of connecting points; yet I believe that when you executed your great work on Africa in 1822 you could hardly have expected so many accessions as we have now received.” The knowledge acquired is, indeed, often only that of rivers, their direction, their branches, and the various synonyms by which they are called in dialects belonging to different families of languages; but rivers reveal to us by their course the form of the surface of the earth, and are at once the nourishers of vegetation, the channels of intercourse between men, and pregnant with unknown influences on the future.

The northerly course of the White Nile, and the south-easterly course of the great Goschop, would indicate that a swelling of the ground separates the domains or basins of these rivers. We know, indeed, but imperfectly, how such a swelling or elevation may be connected with the mountains of Habesch, and in what manner it may be continued southward beyond the equator. Probably, and this is also the opinion of my friend Carl Ritter, the Lupata mountains, which, according to the excellent Wilhelm Peters, extend to 26° S. latitude, are connected with the elevated parts of the Earth’s surface on the north side of the equator, (or with the Abyssinian mountains), by the mountains of the Moon. The word “Lupata,” we learn from the last-named African traveller, is used in the language of Tette as an adjective, meaning “closed.” The chain of mountains would thus be called the “closed” or “barred.” “The Lupata chain, of Portuguese writers,” says Peters, “is about 90 legoas or leagues from the mouth of the Zambeze, and is only about two thousand feet high. The direction of this mountain rampart is north and south, but with occasional bends alternately to the east and to the west. It is sometimes interrupted by plains. Along the whole of the Zanzibar coast, the traders into the interior speak of this long but not very elevated ridge, which extends from 6° to 26° S. latitude, as far as the Factory of Lourenzo-Marques, on the Rio de Espiritu Santo (in the Bay da Lagoa, or Delagoa Bay of the English). The farther the Lupata chain advances towards the south, the nearer it approaches the coast, from which it is only fifteen legoas distant at Lourenzo-Marques.”

[24] p. 12.--“_Caused by the great revolving current._”

In the northern part of the Atlantic, between Europe, North Africa, and the New Continent, the waters of the ocean are driven round in a true revolving current, or circle. This general current,--which, from its cause, might be called a “Rotation Current,”--moves between the tropics, as is well known, with the trade wind, from east to west. It accelerates the passage of ships sailing from the Canaries to South America, and makes it almost impossible to sail “up stream,” or in a direct line from Cartagena de Indias to Cumana. This set to the west, attributed to the trade winds, receives, however, in the Caribbean Sea, the accession of a much stronger movement, originating in a very remote cause, which was discovered as early as 1560 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, (Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. iii. p. 14), and developed with greater certainty by Rennell in 1832. The Mosambique current, flowing from north to south between Madagascar and the east coast of Africa, sets on the Lagullas Bank, turns on the north side of it round the south point of Africa, and advances with much force up the western coast of the Continent to a little beyond the equator near the Island of St. Thomas. It gives at the same time a north-westerly direction to a part of the water of the South Atlantic, causing it to strike Cape St. Augustin, and to follow the coast of Guiana to beyond the mouth of the Orinoco, the Boca del Drago, and the coast of Paria. (Rennell, Investigation of the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean, 1832, p. 96 and 136.) The New Continent, from the Isthmus of Panama to the northern part of Mexico, opposes a barrier to the farther continuance of this movement of the waters, and thus the current is constrained to assume a northerly course off Veragua, and thence to follow the windings of the coast of Costa Rica, Mosquito, Campeachy, and Tabasco. The waters which enter the Mexican Gulf between Cape Catoche of Yucatan and Cape San Antonio of Cuba, after completing a great rotatory movement or circuit, by Vera Cruz, Tamiagua, the mouth of the Rio Bravo del Norte, and that of the Mississipi, force their way northwards through the Bahama Channel, and re-issue into the open ocean. Here they form the well-known “Gulf Stream,” a current or river of warm and rapidly moving water, flowing in an oblique or diagonal direction carrying it farther and farther from the North American coast. Ships from Europe bound for this coast, when uncertain in respect to their longitude, are enabled by this oblique direction of the current to direct their course, as soon as they reach the Gulf Stream, by observations of latitude only. The position of this great current was first indicated with accuracy by Franklin, Williams, and Pownall.

From the 41st degree of latitude, the river of warm water, which has been gradually diminishing in rapidity and increasing in breadth, turns suddenly to the east. It almost touches the southern edge of the great Newfoundland bank, where I found the greatest amount of difference between the temperature of the warm water of the Gulf stream, and that of the waters resting on the banks and subjected thereby to a cooling process. Before the stream reaches the westernmost of the Azores it divides into two branches, one of which, at least at certain seasons, advances towards Ireland and Norway, and the other towards the Canaries and the West Coast of Africa. This Atlantic rotatory movement, (described by me in more detail in the first volume of my Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions), explains the possibility of trunks of South American and West Indian trees being carried, in spite of the trade winds, to the coasts of the Canary Islands, and stranded there. I have made many experiments on the temperature of the Gulf Stream in the vicinity of the Banks of Newfoundland. The Stream brings the warmer water of lower latitudes into more northern regions with much rapidity, and I have thus found its temperature two or three degrees of Reaumur (5° to 7° Fah.) higher than that of the adjacent unmoved masses of water, which form as it were the banks of the warm oceanic river.

The flying fish of the tropics (Exocetus volitans) accompanies the warm water of the Gulf Stream far into the temperate zone. Floating sea-weed (Fucus natans), chiefly taken up by the stream in the Gulf of Mexico, shews when a ship is entering the current, and the arrangement of the branches of the sea-weed shews the direction of the movement of the water. The mainmast of the English ship of war, the Tilbury, destroyed by fire on the coast of San Domingo, was carried by the Gulf Stream to the north coast of Scotland. Even casks filled with palm oil, the remains of the cargo of a ship wrecked off Cape Lopez on the coast of Africa, were carried in the same manner to Scotland[*], after having twice traversed the whole breadth of the Atlantic; once from east to west with the equatorial current between 2° and 12° N. lat., and once from west to east by the aid of the Gulf Stream, between 45° and 55° N. lat. Rennell, in p. 347 of the “Investigation of Currents,” relates the voyage of a bottle with papers enclosed, thrown overboard by the English ship Newcastle on the 20th of January, 1819, in lat. 38° 52′, and long. 63° 58′, which was picked up on the 2nd of June, 1820, at the Rosses, (near the Island of Arran), on the west coast of Ireland. A short time before my arrival at Teneriffe a stem of South American cedar (Cedrela odorata), well covered with lichens, had been cast ashore in the harbour of Santa Cruz.

Effects of the Gulf Stream in stranding on the Islands of Fayal, Flores, and Corvo in the Azores, bamboos, artificially cut pieces of wood, trunks of an unknown species of Pine from Mexico and the West Indian Islands, and corpses of men of unknown race with unusually broad faces, contributed to the discovery of America, by confirming Columbus in his belief of the existence to the westward of Asiatic countries and islands at no impassable distance. The great discoverer even heard from the lips of settlers near the Cape de la Verga in the Azores, of some, “who, in sailing westward, had met decked or covered boats, manned by persons of strange and foreign appearance, and built apparently in such a manner that they could not founder,--almadias con casa movediza que nunca se hunden.” There is highly credible and well-confirmed testimony to the fact, much as it has long been doubted, of natives of America, (probably Esquimaux from Greenland or Labrador), carried by currents or driven by storms from the North West, having actually crossed the Atlantic in their canoes and reached our shores. James Wallace, in his “Account of the Islands of Orkney, (1700, p. 60),” relates, that in 1682 a Greenlander was seen in his boat off the South Point of the Island of Eda by several persons, who did not succeed in bringing him to shore. In 1684, a Greenland fisherman appeared in his boat off the Island of Westram. In the church at Barra there was suspended an Esquimaux boat, driven thither by currents and tempests. The inhabitants of the Orkneys call Greenlanders so appearing among them Finns or “Finnmen.”

In Cardinal Bembo’s History of Venice, I find a narrative to the effect that in 1508 a French ship captured near the English coast a small boat, with seven persons of a strange and foreign appearance. The description suits extremely well with Esquimaux, (homines erant septem _mediocri statura, colore subobscuro, lato et patente vultu_, cicatriceque una violacea signato.) No one understood their language. Their clothing was composed of fish skins sewn together. On their heads they wore “coronam e culmo pictam, septem quasi auriculis intextam.” They ate raw flesh, and drank blood as we would wine. Six of the men died during the passage of the vessel, on board which they had been taken; but the seventh, a youth, was presented to the king of France, who was then at Orleans. (Bembo, Historia Venetæ, ed. 1718, lib. vii. p. 257).

The appearance of men called _Indians_ on the western coasts of Germany, under the Othos, and under Frederic Barbarossa, in the 10th and 12th centuries, and even, as is related by Cornelius Nepos, (ed. Van Staveren, cur. Bardili, T. ii., 1820, p. 356), Pomponius Mela, (lib. iii. cap. 5, § 8), and Pliny, (Hist. Nat., T. ii. p. 67), when Quintus Metellus Celer was Pro-consul in Gaul, may be explained by similar effects of currents and north-west winds of long continuance. A king of the Boii, others say of the Suevi, gave the shipwrecked dark-coloured men to Metellus Celer. Gomara, in his Historia Gen. de las Indias, (Saragossa, 1553, fol. vii.), refers to this account, and considers the Indians spoken of in it to have been natives of Labrador. “Si ya no fuesen de Tierra del Labrador, y los tuviesen, los Romanos por Indianos engañados en el color.” The appearance of Esquimaux on the northern coasts of Europe may be believed to have occurred more often in earlier times, because we know, from the researches of Rask and Finn Magnusen, that in the 11th and 12th centuries this race extended in considerable numbers, under the name of the Skrälinges of Labrador, even as far south as the “good Vinland;” _i. e._, the coast of Massachusets and Connecticut. (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 270; English ed. p. 234; Examen critique de l’Hist. de la Géographie, T. ii. p. 247-278.)

As the winter cold of the most northern parts of Scandinavia is softened by the influence of the Gulf Stream, by which American tropical fruits (cocoa nuts, and seeds of the Mimosa scandens and the Anacardium occidentale) are cast upon the shore beyond the 62nd degree of latitude, so does Iceland also occasionally enjoy the beneficial influence of the extension of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream far to the northward. The coasts of Iceland as well as those of the Färoe Islands, receive a great deal of drift-wood, which, coming formerly in greater abundance, was cut into beams and planks and used for building timber. Fruits of tropical plants, collected on the coast of Iceland, between Raufarhavn and Vapnafiord, testify the movement of the waters from the southward. (Sartorius von Waltershausen, physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, S. 22-35.)

[25] p. 12.--“_Neither Lecideas nor other Lichens._”

In northern countries, the earth, if left bare, soon becomes covered with Bæomyces roseus, Cenomyce rangiferinus, Lecidea muscorum, L. icmadophila, and similar Cryptogameæ, which prepare the way for the growth of grasses and herbaceous plants. In the tropics, where mosses and lichens only abound in shady places, some species of succulent plants take their place.

[26] p. 13.--“_The care of animals yielding milk_, ... ... _The ruins of the Aztec fortress._”

The two kinds of cattle alluded to, and subsequently spoken of,--the Bos americanus and Bos moschatus,--are peculiar to the American continent. But the natives--

Queis neque mos, neque cultus erat, nec jungere tauros.

_Virgil, Æn._ i. 316.

--drink the fresh blood, not the milk, of these animals. Single exceptions have indeed been found, but only among tribes who at the same time cultivated maize. I have before remarked, (p. 54), that Gomara speaks of a people in the north-west of Mexico who possessed herds of tame bisons, and derived from these animals clothing, meat, and drink. The drink may have been the blood, (Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. iii. p. 416) for, as I have more than once remarked, the dislike to milk, or at least the absence of its use, appears, before the arrival of Europeans, to have been, generally speaking, a feature common to all the natives of the New Continent,--and one which they possess in common with the inhabitants of China and Cochin China, who yet were near neighbours to true pastoral nations. The herds of tame lamas, found in the highlands of Quito, Peru, and Chili, belonged to a settled population, who cultivated the ground and did not follow a nomadic life. Pedro de Cieça de Leon, (Chronica del Peru, Sevilla, 1553, cap. 110, p. 264) seems to imply, though certainly as a rare and exceptional case, that in the Peruvian mountain plateau of Collao lamas were used for drawing the plough. (Compare Gay, Zoologia de Chile, Mamiferos, 1847, p. 154.) The usual custom in Peru was to plough with men only. (See the Inca Garcilaso’s Commentarios reales, P. i. lib. v. cap. 2, p. 133; and Prescott, Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, 1847, vol. i. p. 136.) Mr. Barton has made it appear probable that, among some of the tribes of Western Canada, the buffalo was from early times made an object of care for the sake of its flesh and skin. (Fragments of the Nat. Hist. of Pennsylvania, P. i. p. 4.) In Peru and Quito the lama is now nowhere found in a state of original wildness. I was told by the natives that the lamas on the western declivity of the Chimborazo had become wild when the ancient residence of the rulers of Quito “Lican” was laid in ashes. In the same manner the oxen in the Ceja de la Montaña, in Middle Peru, have become perfectly wild: they are a small and daring race, and often attack the Indians. The natives call them Vacas del Monte, or Vacas cimarronas. (Tschudi, Fauna Peruana, S. 256.) Cuvier’s opinion, that the lama had descended from the still wild Guanaco, has been unfortunately still further disseminated by the meritorious traveller Meyen, (Reise um die Erde, Th. iii. S. 64), but has been completely refuted by von Tschudi.

The Lama, the Paco or Alpaca, and the Guanaco, are three originally distinct species of animals. (Tschudi, S. 228 and 237.) The Guanaco (Huanacu in the Quichua language) is the largest of the three; and the Alpaca, measured from the ground to the crown of the head, the smallest. The lama is next to the guanaco in stature. Herds of lamas, when they are as numerous as I have seen them in the high plateau between Quito and Riobamba, are a great ornament to the landscape. The Moromoro of Chili appears to be a mere variety of the lama. Vicuñas, Guanacoes, and Alpacas, still live wild at elevations of from 13000 to 16000 feet above the level of the sea. The two latter species are sometimes met with tamed, but the guanaco only rarely. The alpaca does not bear the warmer climate of the lower elevations so well as the lama. Since the introduction of the more useful horses, mules, and asses, (the latter acquire great spirit and beauty within the tropics), the custom of rearing and using the lama and the alpaca as beasts of burden, in the mountains and among the mines, has much decreased. But the wool, of such different qualities in respect to fineness, is still an important article in the industry of the inhabitants of the mountains. In Chili the wild and the tamed guanaco are distinguished by separate names; the wild being called Luan, and the tame Chilihueque. The wide dissemination of the wild guanaco, from the Peruvian Cordilleras to Tierra del Fuego, sometimes in herds of 500, has been favoured by the circumstance that these animals can swim with great ease from island to island, so that the Patagonian fiords offer no obstacle to their wanderings. (See the pleasing descriptions by Darwin in his Journal, 1845, p. 66.)

South of the Gila River, which, together with the Rio Colorado, enters the Californian Gulf or Mar de Cortes, stand, in the solitude of the Steppe, the enigmatical ruins of the Aztec Palace, called by the Spaniards las Casas grandes. When the Aztecs, about the year 1160, came from the unknown land of Aztlan to Anahuac, they settled themselves for a time on the banks of the Gila. The Franciscan monks, Garces and Font, are the latest travellers who have visited the Casas grandes, and they did so in 1773. They stated the ruins to extend over above a square German mile (16 English square miles). The whole plain is strewed with fragments of painted pottery. The principal palace, (if a house built of unburnt clay can be so designated), is 447 English feet long and 277 English feet broad. (See a rare work printed in Mexico, and entitled Cronica seráfica y apostólica del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro por Fr. Juan Domingo Arricivita).

The Tayé of California, as drawn by Father Venegas, appears to differ little from the Ovis musimon of the Old Continent. The same animal is also seen on the “Stony Mountains,” near the sources of the Peace River. Very different from it, on the other hand, is the small white and black spotted goat-like creature which feeds near the Missouri and Arkansas rivers. The synonymy of Antilope furcifer, A. tememazama of Smith, and Ovis montana, is still very undetermined.

[27] p. 14.--“_The cultivation of farinaceous grasses._”

The original habitat of the farinaceous grasses is wrapped in the same obscurity as that of the domestic animals which have accompanied man since his earliest migrations. The German word for corn, “Getraide,” has been ingeniously derived by Jacob Grimm from the old German gitragidi, getregede. “It is as it were the _tame_ fruit (fruges, frumentum), which has come into the hands of man; as we speak of tame animals in opposition to wild ones.” (Jacob Grimm, Gesch. der deutschen Sprache, 1848, Th. i. S. 62.) It is certainly a very striking phenomenon, to find on one side of our planet nations to whom flour or meal from small-eared grasses (Hordeaceæ and Avenaceæ), and the use of milk, were completely unknown, while the nations of almost all parts of the other hemisphere cultivate the Cerealia, and rear milk-yielding animals. The cultivation of different kinds of grasses may be said to afford a characteristic distinction between the two parts of the world. In the New Continent, from 52° north to 46° south latitude, we see only one species cultivated, viz. maize. In the Old Continent, on the other hand, we find every where, from the earliest times of history, the fruits of Ceres, wheat, barley, spelt or red wheat, and oats. That wheat grew wild in the Leontine fields, as well as in several other places in Sicily, was a belief entertained by ancient nations, and is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus. (Lib. v. p. 199 and 232, Wessel.) Ceres was found in the alpine meadow of Enna; and Diodorus fables that “the inhabitants of the Atlantis were unacquainted with the fruits of Ceres, because they had separated from the rest of mankind before those fruits had been shewn to mortals.” Sprengel has collected several interesting passages which lead him to think it probable that the greater part of our European kinds of grain were originally wild in the northern parts of Persia and India, namely, summer wheat in the country of the Musicanes, a province in Northern India (Strabo, xv. 1017); barley (“antiquissimum frumentum,” as Pliny calls it, and which is also the only cereal with which the Guanches of the Canaries were acquainted), according to Moses of Chorene (Geogr, Armen. ed. Whiston, 1736, p. 360), on the Araxes or Kur in Georgia, and according to Marco Polo in Balascham in Northern India (Ramusio, vol. ii. p. 10); and spelt or red wheat, near Hamadan. But these passages, as has been shewn by my keen-sighted friend and teacher Link, in an instructive critical memoir (Abhandl. de Berl. Akad. 1816, S. 123), still leave much uncertainty. I also early regarded the existence of originally wild kinds of grain in Asia as extremely doubtful, and viewed such as might have been seen there as having _become wild_. (Essai sur la Géographie des Plantes, 1805, p. 28.) Reinhold Forster, who before his voyage with Captain Cook, made by order of the Empress Catherine an expedition into Southern Russia for purposes of natural history, reported that the two-stalked summer barley (Hordeum distichon), grew wild near the junction of the Samara and the Volga. At the end of the month of September, 1829, Ehrenberg and myself, on our journey from Orenburg and Uralsk to Saratow and the Caspian, also herborised on the banks of the Samara. We were, indeed, struck with the quantity of wheat and rye plants growing in what might be called a wild state in the uncultivated ground, but the plants did not appear to us to differ from the ordinary cultivated ones. Ehrenberg received from M. Carelin a kind of rye, Secale fragile, gathered on the Kirgis Steppe, and which Marschall von Bieberstein regarded for a time as the original or mother plant of our cultivated rye, Secale cereale. Although Olivier and Michaux speak of spelt (Triticum spelta) as growing wild at Hamadan in Persia, Achill Richard does not consider that Michaux’s herbarium bears out this statement. Greater confidence is due to the most recent accounts obtained by the unwearied zeal of a highly-informed traveller, Professor Carl Koch. He found much rye (Secale cereale, var. β pectinata) in the Pontic Mountains, at elevations of upwards of five or six thousand feet, in places where within the memory of the inhabitants no grain of the kind had ever been cultivated. Koch remarks, that the circumstance is “the more important because with us this grain never propagates itself spontaneously.” In the Schirwan parts of the Caucasus, Koch collected a kind of barley which he calls “Hordeum spontaneum,” and considers to be the originally wild “Hordeum zeocriton” of Linnæus. (Carl Koch Beiträge zur Flora des Orients, Heft i. S. 139 and 142.)

A negro slave of the great Cortes was the first who cultivated wheat in New Spain. He had found three grains of it amongst the rice which had been brought from Spain for provision for the army. In the Franciscan convent at Quito, I saw preserved as a relic the earthen vessel which had contained the first wheat sowed there by the Franciscan monk Fray Jodoco Rixi, a native of Ghent in Flanders. The first sowing had been made in front of the convent, on what is now the Plazuela de San Francisco, after cutting down the forest which then extended from the foot of the volcano of Pichincha to the spot in question. The monks, who I often visited during my stay at Quito, begged me to explain to them the inscription on the earthen vessel, which they thought must contain some mystic reference to the wheat. I read the motto, which was in the old German dialect, and was--“Whoso drinks from me let him not forget his God.” I too felt with the monks that this old German drinking vessel was a truly venerable relic. Would that there had been preserved every where in the New Continent the names, not of those who made the earth desolate by bloody conquests, but of those who first intrusted to it these its fruits so early associated with the civilisation of mankind in the Old Continent! In respect generally to the names of the kinds of grain, as bearing on the original affinities of different languages, a high authority has remarked, that “such indications are much more rare in the case of different kinds of grain, and on subjects of agriculture, than on those connected with the care of cattle: herdsmen when dispersed had still much in common, whereas the subsequent cultivators of the soil had to create new words. But the fact that in comparison with the Sanscrit, Romans and Greeks appear nearly on a par with the Germans and Slavonians, argues in favour of the very early contemporaneous emigration of the two latter. Yet the Indian “java” (Frumentum hordeum), compared with the Lithuanian “jawai,” and the Finnish “jywa,” offers a singular exception.” (Jac. Grimm, Gesch. der deutschen Sprache, Th. i. S. 69.)

[28] p. 14.--“_Keeping by preference to the cooler mountain regions._”

Throughout Mexico and Peru the traces of a great degree of civilisation are confined to the elevated plateaux. We have seen on the Andes the ruins of palaces and baths at heights between 1600 and 1800 toises (10230 and 11510 English feet). It can only have been men of a northern race, who, migrating from the north towards the south, could find delight in such a climate.

[29] p. 15.--“_The history of the peopling of Japan._”

The probability of the western nations of the New Continent having had communication with the east of Asia long before the arrival of the Spaniards, was I think shewn by me in a work on the monuments of the native inhabitants of America (Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des peuples indigenes de l’Amérique). I inferred this probability from a comparison of the Mexican and Thibeto-Japanese calendars,--from the correct orientation of the steps of the pyramidal elevations towards the different quarters of the heavens,--and from the ancient myths and traditions of the four ages or four epochs of destruction of the world, and the dispersion of mankind after a great flood of waters. The accounts published since my work, in England, France, and the United States, describing the wonderful bas reliefs, almost in the Indian style, in the ruins of Guatimala and Yucatan, have given to these analogies a still higher value. (Compare Antonio del Rio, Description of the Ruins of an Ancient City discovered near Palenque, 1822, translated from the original manuscript report by Cabrera (del Rio’s exploration took place in 1787), p. 9, tab. 12-14; with Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 1843, vol. i. pp. 391 and 429-434; vol. ii. pp. 21, 54, 56, 317, 323; with the magnificent volume of Catherwood, “Views of ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan,” 1844; and lastly, with Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico,” vol. iii. App. p. 360.)

The architectural remains in the peninsula of Yucatan shew, still more than those of Palenque, a degree of civilisation and art which excites our astonishment. They are situated between Valladolid, Merida, and Campeachy, chiefly in the western part of the country. But the monuments in the island of Cozumel (more properly Cuzamil), east of Yucatan, were the first which were seen by the Spaniards in the expedition of Juan de Grijalva, 1518, and that of Cortes in 1519, and the report of them did much to spread over Europe a high idea of ancient Mexican civilisation. The most important ruins of the peninsula of Yucatan, which unfortunately have not yet been thoroughly measured and drawn by architects, are the Casa del Gobernador of Uxmal, the Teocallis and vaulted constructions at Kabah, the ruins of Labnah with domed columns, those of Zayi with columns very nearly of the Doric order, and those of Chiche with large ornamented pilasters. An old manuscript written in the Maya language by a Christian Indian, and which is still in the hands of the Gefe politico of Peto, Don Juan Pio Perez, gives the different epochs (“Katunes” of 52 years) in which the Toltecs settled in different parts of the peninsula. From these data Perez infers that the monuments or buildings of Chiche go back to the close of the fourth century of our era, while those of Uxmal belong to the middle of the tenth century. But the accuracy of these conclusions is subject to much uncertainty. (Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, vol. i. p. 439; and vol. ii. p. 278.)

I regard the existence of ancient connections between the inhabitants of western America and eastern Asia as more than probable, but by what routes, or with what Asiatic nations, the communications took place, cannot at present be decided. A small number of individuals of the educated priestly caste might perhaps be sufficient to bring about great alterations in the civil and social state of western America. The stories formerly narrated of Chinese expeditions to the New Continent really apply only to voyages to Fusang or Japan. On the other hand, Japanese and Sian-Pi from the Corea may have been driven by storms to the American coast, and landed there. We know as matter of history that Bonzes and other adventurers sailed over the eastern Chinese seas in search of some medicine which should entirely prevent death. Under Tschin-schi-kuang-ti, 209 years before our era, 300 young couples, young men and young women, were sent to Japan, and instead of returning to China they settled at Nipon (Klaproth, Tableaux historiques de l’Asie, 1824, p. 79; Nouveau Journal Asiatique, T. x. 1832, p. 335; Humboldt, Examen critique, T. ii. p. 62-67). May not similar expeditions have been driven by storms or other accidents to the Aleutian islands, to Alashka, or to New California? As the western coasts of the American continent trend from NW. to SE., and the eastern coasts of Asia in the opposite direction, or from NE. to SW., the distance between the two continents in 45° of latitude, or in the temperate zone which is most favourable to mental development, is too considerable to admit of the probability of such an accidental settlement taking place in that latitude. We must, then, assume the first landing to have been made in the inhospitable climate of from 55° to 65° and that the civilisation thus introduced, like the general movement of population in America, has proceeded by successive stations from north to south (Humboldt, Relat. historique, t. iii p. 155-160). The remains of ships from Cathay, _i. e._, from Japan or China, were supposed to have been found on the coasts of the northern Dorado, (called Quivira and Cibora) at the beginning of the 16th century (Gomara, Hist. general de las Indias, p. 117).

Our knowledge of the languages of America is still too limited, considering their great variety, for us as yet entirely to relinquish the hope of some day discovering an idiom which may have been spoken, with certain modifications, at once in the interior of South America and in that of Asia; or which may at least indicate an ancient affinity. Such a discovery would certainly be one of the most brilliant which can be expected in reference to the history of mankind. But analogies of language only deserve confidence when the enquirer, not resting in or dwelling on resemblances of sound in the roots, traces the analogies into the organic structure, the grammatical forms, and into all which in languages shews itself as the product of the human intellect and character.

[30] p. 15.--“_Many other forms of animals._”

Whole herds of the Cervus mexicanus wander over the Caraccas Steppes: the young stag is spotted, and resembles in appearance the roe-deer of Europe. We saw among them many entirely white,--a singular circumstance in the torrid zone. The Cervus mexicanus is not found at greater elevations on the mountain-slopes of the Andes under the equator than from 700 to 800 toises (4476 to 5115 Eng. feet); but a larger, and also often white, stag,--which I could hardly distinguish from the European by any specific characters,--is met with up to 2000 toises (12789 Eng. feet). The Cavia capybara, called in the province of Caraccas “chiguire,” is an unfortunate animal; being pursued in the water by the crocodile, and on the plain by the tiger or jaguar. It runs so badly that we could often catch it with our hands. Its extremities are smoked for hams, but their taste is very disagreeable from the smell of musk; and on the Orinoco we willingly ate monkey hams in preference. The beautifully marked animals which have so disagreeable an odour are the Viverra mapurito, Viverra zorilla, and Viverra vittata.

[31] p. 16.--“_The Guaranis, and the fan-palm, Mauritia._”

The small coast tribe or nation of the Guaranis, (called in British Guiana the Warraws or Guaranos, and by the Caribs U-ara-u), inhabit not only the marshy Delta and river network of the Orinoco, and particularly the banks of the Manamo Grande and the Caño Macareo, but also extend, with little variation in their modes of life, along the sea coast between the mouths of the Essequibo and the Boca de Navios of the Orinoco. (Compare my Relation historique, T. i. p. 492, T. ii. p. 653 and 703, with Richard Schomburgk’s “Reisen in Britisch Guiana,” Th. i. 1847, S. 62, 120, 173, and 194). According to the testimony of the last-named excellent explorer and observer, there are still 1700 Warraus or Guaranis living in the district of Cumaca, and along the banks of the Barima river, which empties itself into the gulf of the Boca de Navios. The manners and customs of the tribes living in the Delta of the Orinoco were already known to the great historical writer Cardinal Bembo, the contemporary of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Alonzo de Hojeda. He says, “quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolæ domus in arboribus ædificant” (Historiæ Venetæ, 1551, p. 88). It is more probable that Bembo is alluding to the Guaranis at the mouth of the Orinoco, than to the natives near the mouth of the Gulph of Macaraibo, where Alonzo de Hojeda, in August 1499, when he was accompanied by Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa, also found a population having their residence “fondata sopra l’ acqua come Venezia” (Riccardi’s Text in my Examen crit. t. iv. p. 496). In Vespucci’s account of his voyage (in which we find the first indication of the etymology of the term Province of Venezuela, Little Venice, for Province of Caraccas), he only speaks of houses raised upon foundation pillars, not of habitations in the trees.

Sir Walter Raleigh offers a later evidence of high authority; he says expressly, in his description of Guiana, that on his second voyage in 1595, when in the mouth of the Orinoco, he saw the “_fires_” of the Tivitives and the Oua-raa-etes (so he calls the Guaranis) “high up in the trees” (Raleigh, Discov. of Guiana, 1596, p. 90). The fire is represented in a drawing in the Latin edition: “brevis et admiranda descriptio regni Guianæ,” (Norib. 1599) tab. 4. Raleigh was also the first who brought to England the fruit of the Mauritia-palm, which he very justly compared, on account of its scales, to a fir cone. The Padre José Gumilla, who twice visited the Guaranis as a missionary, says, indeed, that this people had their habitation in the palmares (palm groves) of the morasses; but he only mentions dwellings raised upon high pillars, and not scaffoldings attached to trees still in a growing state; (Gumilla, Historia natural, civil, y geografica de las Naciones situadas en las riveras del Rio Orinoco, nueva imp. 1791, p. 143, 145, and 163). Hillhouse and Sir Robert Schomburgk, (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xii. 1842, p. 175; and Description of the Murichi or Ita Palm, read at the Meeting of the British Association held at Cambridge, June 1845; printed in Simond’s Colonial Magazine), are of opinion that both Bembo and Raleigh, (the former speaking from the reports of others, the latter as an eye-witness), were deceived by the high tops of the palm-trees being lit up at night by the flames of fires beneath, so that those who sailed by thought the habitations themselves were attached to the trees. “We do not deny that in order to escape the attacks of the musquitos, the Indian sometimes suspends his hammock from the tops of trees; on such occasions, however, no fires are made under the hammock.” (Compare also Sir Robert Schomburgk’s New Edition of Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana, 1848, p. 50.)

According to Martius, the fine Palm Moriche, Mauritia flexuosa, Quiteve, or Ita palm, (Bernau, Missionary Labours in British Guiana, 1847, p. 34 and 44), belongs, as well as Calamus, to the group of Lepidocaryeæ or Coryphineæ. Linnæus has described it very imperfectly, as he erroneously considers it to be leafless. The trunk grows as high as 26 feet, but it probably requires from 120 to 150 years to reach this height. The Mauritia extends high up on the declivity of the Duida, north of the Esmeralda mission, where I have found it in great beauty. It forms in moist places fine groups of a fresh shining verdure, which reminds us of that of our Alder groves. The trees preserve the moisture of the ground by their shade, and hence the Indians say that the Mauritia draws the water round its roots by a mysterious attraction. By a somewhat similar theory they advise that serpents should not be killed; because the destruction of the serpents and the drying up of the pools or lagunas accompany each other: thus the untutored child of nature confounds cause and effect. Gumilla terms the Mauritia flexuosa of the Guaranis the tree of life, arbol de la vida. It grows in the mountains of Ronaima, east of the sources of the Orinoco, as high as 4000 (4263 Eng.) feet. On the unvisited banks of the Rio Atabapo, in the interior of Guiana, we discovered a new species of Mauritia with prickly stems, our Mauritia aculeata; (Humboldt, Bonpland and Kunth, Nova Genera et Species Plantarum, t. i. p. 310).

[32] p. 16.--“_An American Stylites._”

The founder of the sect of the Stylites, the fanatical pillar-saint Simeon Sisanites, the son of a Syrian herdsman, is said to have passed thirty-seven years in religious contemplation on the summits of five successive pillars, each higher than the preceding. The last pillar was 40 ells high. He died in the year 461. For seven hundred years there continued to be men who imitated this manner of life, and were called “sancti columnares” (pillar saints). Even in Germany, in the Diocese of Treves, it was proposed to erect such aerial cloisters, but the Bishops opposed the undertaking (Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. 1755, p. 215.)

[33] p. 17.--“_Towns on the banks of the streams which flow through the Steppe._”

Families who live not by agriculture but by the care of cattle, have congregated in the middle of the Steppe in small towns, which, in the cultivated parts of Europe, would hardly be regarded as villages. Such are Calabozo, in 8° 56′ 14″ N. lat. and 67° 42′ long. according to my observations, Villa del Pao, lat 8° 38′ 1″, long. 66° 57′, S. Sebastian, and others.

[34] p. 17.--“_Conical-shaped clouds._”

The singular phenomenon of these “sand spouts,”--something analogous to which may occasionally be seen on a small scale in Europe where four roads meet,--is particularly characteristic of the Peruvian Sand Desert between Amotape and Coquimbo. Such a dense cloud of sand or dust may prove dangerous to the traveller who does not cautiously avoid its approach. It is also worthy of notice that these partial conflicting currents of air only arise when the air generally is perfectly calm. The aerial ocean resembles the sea in this respect, for in the latter also the small currents which are often heard to ripple audibly, (filets de courant), are only perceptible in a dead calm (calme plat).

[35] p. 18.--“_Increases the suffocating heat._”

I have observed in the Llanos de Apure, at the Guadalupe cattle farm, the thermometer rise from 27° to 29° Reaumur (92°.7 to 97°.2 Fahr.) whenever the hot wind began to blow from the Desert, which at such times was covered either with sand or with short withered turf. In the middle of the sand-cloud the temperature was for some minutes 35° R. (111° F.). The dry sand in the village of San Fernando de Apure had a temperature of 42° R. (126° Fahr.)

[36] p. 18.--“_The illusive image of a cool rippling watery mirror._”

The well-known phenomenon of the mirage is called in Sanscrit the “thirst of the gazelle.” (See my Relation historique, T. i. pp. 296 and 625; T. ii. p. 161.) All objects appear to hover in the air, and are at the same time seen reflected in the lower stratum of air. At such times the entire desert assumes the aspect of the wave-covered surface of a wide spread lake. Palm trees, cattle, and camels, sometimes appear inverted on the horizon. In the French expedition to Egypt, the soldiers, parched with thirst, were often brought by this optical illusion into a state of desperation. This phenomenon has been remarked in all quarters of the globe. The ancients were acquainted with the remarkable refraction of the rays of light in the Lybian Desert. I find mention made in Diod. Sic. lib. iii. p. 184, Rhod. (p. 219, Wessel), of extraordinary illusive images, an African Fata Morgana, with most extravagant explanations of the supposed conglomeration of the particles of air.

[37] p. 19.--“_The Melon-Cactus._”

The Cactus melo cactus is often 10 to 12 inches in diameter, and has usually 14 ribs. The natural group of Cactaceæ, the whole family of Nopaleæ of Jussieu, belong exclusively to the New Continent. The cactuses assume a great variety of shapes: ribbed and melon-like (Melo cacti); articulated or jointed (Opuntiæ); forming upright columns or pillars (Cerei); serpentine and creeping (Rhipsalides); or provided with leaves (Pereskiæ). Many extend high up the sides of the mountains. Near the foot of the Chimborazo, in the elevated sandy plain around Riobamba, I have found a new kind of Pitahaya, the Cactus sepium, even at a height of 10,000 (10,660 Eng.) feet. (Humboldt, Bonpland, and Kunth, Synopsis Plantarum æquinoct. Orbis novi, T. iii. p. 370).

[38] p. 19.--“_The scene in the Steppe is suddenly changed._”

I have endeavoured to depict the coming in of the rainy season, and the signs by which it is announced. The usual deep dark azure of the sky in the tropics arises from the more complete solution of the vapour contained in the atmosphere. The cyanometer indicates a paler blue as soon as the vapours begin to be precipitated. The dark spot or patch in the constellation of the Southern Cross gradually becomes indistinct as the transparency of the atmosphere diminishes, and this alteration announces the near approach of rain. The brightness of the Magellanic clouds, (Nubecula major and minor), gradually vanishes in a similar manner. The fixed stars, which before shone like planets with a steady, tranquil, and not trembling light, now scintillate even in the zenith, where the vapours are least. (See Arago, in my Relation hist. T. i. p. 623). All these appearances are the results of the increased quantity of vapour diffused in the atmosphere.

[39] p. 20.--“_Awakened from a torpid state by the first fall of rain._”

Extreme dryness produces in plants and animals the same phenomena as does the withdrawal of the stimulus of heat. Many tropical trees and plants shed their leaves during the dry season. The crocodiles and other amphibious animals hide themselves in the mud, where they lie apparently dead, like animals in a state of hybernation or plunged into winter sleep by cold. (See my Relation historique, T. ii. pp. 192 and 626.)

[40] p. 20.--“_The aspect of a vast inland sea._”

Nowhere are these inundations more extensive than in the network of rivers formed by the Apure, the Arachuna, Pajara, Arauca, and Cabuliare. Large vessels sail across the country over the Steppe for 40 or 50 miles.

[41] p. 21.--“_To the mountain plateau of Antisana._”

The great mountain plain or plateau surrounding the volcano of Antisana is 2107 toises (13473 English feet), above the level of the sea. The atmospheric pressure at this elevation is so small that the wild cattle, when hunted with dogs, bleed from the nose and mouth.

[42] p. 22.--“_Bera and Rastro._”

I have described the capture of the Gymnoti in detail in another place. (Observations de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée, vol. i. p. 83-87; and Relation historique, T. ii. p. 173-190). M. Gay Lussac and I found the experiment without a circuit succeed perfectly with a living Gymnotus, which was still very vigorous when brought to Paris. The discharge is solely dependent on the will of the animal. We did not see any spark, but other physicists have done so on several occasions.

[43] p. 23.--“_Awakened by the contact of moist dissimilar particles._”

In all parts of organic bodies dissimilar substances are in contact with each other: in all, solids are associated with fluids. Thus, wherever there is organization and life, there is also electric tension or the play of the voltaic pile, as the experiments of Nobili and Matteucci, and especially the latest admirable labours of Emil du Bois, teach us. The last named physicist has succeeded in “manifesting the presence of the electric muscular current in living and wholly uninjured animal bodies:” he shews that “the human body, through the medium of a copper wire, can cause a magnetic needle at a distance to be deflected at pleasure, first in one and then in the opposite direction.” (Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität, von Emil du Bois-Reymond, 1848, Bd. i. S. xv.) I have witnessed these movements produced at pleasure, and have had the gratification of seeing thereby great and unexpected light thrown on phenomena to which I had laboriously and hopefully devoted several years of my youth.

[44] p. 23.--“_Osiris and Typhon._”

On the conflict between two races of men, the Arabian pastoral people in Lower Egypt, and the agricultural race in Upper Egypt who were in a more advanced state of civilisation, on the fair-haired Prince Baby or Typhon, who founded Pelusium, and on the dark-complexioned Dionysos or Osiris, see Zoëga’s ancient, and now for the most part abandoned views, in his great work “De Origine et Usu Obeliscorum,” p. 577.

[45] p. 24.--“_The boundary of a partial European cultivation._”

In the Capitania general de Caracas, as generally every where on the eastern shores of America, the cultivation introduced by Europeans, and their presence and influence, are limited to a narrow strip of country along the coast. In Mexico, New Granada, and Quito, on the other hand, European civilisation has penetrated deep into the interior of the country, and advanced up the ridges of the Cordilleras. There existed in these last-named regions a considerable degree of settled and civilised life previous to the arrival of the Spaniards; and they have followed this civilisation wherever they found it, regardless whether its seat was near or at a distance from the sea coast. They retained and enlarged the ancient cities, of which they either mutilated the old significant Indian names, or gave them new names, as, for example, of Christian saints.

[46] p. 24.--“_Massive leaden-coloured granite rocks._”

In the Orinoco, and more especially at the Cataracts of Maypures and Atures, all blocks of granite, and even white pieces of quartz, whenever they are touched by the water of the river, acquire a greyish-black coating which scarcely penetrates a hundredth of a line below the surface of the rock. The appearance produced is that of basalt, or fossils coloured with graphite. The crust appears to contain manganese and carbon; I say appears, for the phenomenon has not yet been thoroughly examined. Something similar was remarked by Rozier on the syenite rocks of the Nile, near Syene and Philæ; by the unfortunate Captain Tuckey on the rocky banks of the Congo; and by Sir Robert Schomburgh on the Berbice. (Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoko, S. 212.) On the Orinoco these leaden-coloured rocks are considered to give out pernicious exhalations when wet; and their proximity is believed to produce fevers. (Rel. hist. T. ii. p. 299-304.) In the Rio Negro, and generally in the South American rivers which have “black waters,” “aguas negras,” or waters of a coffee-brown or yellow tint, no such effects take place. No black colour is imparted to the granite rocks by the waters; that is to say, they do not act upon the stone so as to form from its constituent particles a black or leaden-coloured crust.

[47] p. 24.--“_The rain-announcing howlings of the bearded apes._”

The melancholy howlings of the small apes, Simia seniculus, Simia beelzebub, &c., are heard some hours before the rain commences: it is as if the tempest were heard raging at a distance. The intensity of the noise produced by such small animals can only be explained by their number; seventy or eighty being often lodged in a single tree. On the organs of voice of these animals, see my anatomical treatise in the first chapter of my Recueil d’Observations de Zoologie, vol. i. p. 18.

[48] p. 24.--“_Often covered with birds._”

The crocodiles lie so motionless that I have seen flamingos (Phœnicopterus) resting on their heads; the body at the same time being covered with aquatic birds, like the trunk of a tree.

[49] p. 24.--“_Down his swelling throat._”