Chapter III: Part 3

The deserts of Africa and Asia acquire a peculiar character from the
frequent occurrence of immense tracts of land, covered by one flat
uniform surface of naked rock. In the Scha-mo, which separates
Mongolia and the mountain chain of Ulangom and Malakha-Oola from the
north-west part of China, such rocky banks are termed _Tsy_. In the
woody plains of the Orinoco they are found to be surrounded with the
most luxuriant vegetation.[J] In the midst of these flat, tabular
masses of granite and syenite, several thousands of feet in diameter,
presenting merely a few scattered lichens, we find in the forests, or
on their margins, little islands of light soil, covered with low and
ever-flowering plants, having the appearance of small gardens. The
monks settled on the Upper Orinoco, singularly enough regard the whole
of these horizontal naked stony plains, when extending over a
considerable area, as conducive to fevers and other diseases. Many of
the villages belonging to the mission have been transferred to other
spots on account of the general prevalence of this opinion. Do these
stony flats (_laxas_) act chemically on the atmosphere or influence it
only by means of a greater radiation of heat?

Footnote 5:

p. 2—“_Compared with the Llanos and Pampas of South America, or even
with the Prairies on the Missouri_.”

Our physical and geognostic knowledge of the western mountain region
of North America has recently been enriched by the acquisition of many
accurate data yielded by the admirable labours of the enterprising
traveller Major Long, and his companion Edwin James, but more
especially by the comprehensive investigations of Captain Frémont. The
knowledge thus established clearly corroborates the accuracy of the
different facts which in my work on New Spain I could merely advance
as hypothetical conjectures regarding the northern plains and
mountains of America. In natural history, as well as in historical
research, facts remain isolated until by long-continued investigation
they are brought into connection with each other.

The eastern shore of the United States of North America inclines from
south-west to north-east, as does the Brazilian coast south of the
equator from the Rio de la Plata to Olinda. On both these regions
there rise, at a short distance from the coast line, two ranges of
mountains more nearly parallel to each other than to the western
Andes, (the Cordilleras of Chili and Peru), or to the North Mexican
chain of the Rocky Mountains. The South American or Brazilian mountain
system, forms an isolated group, the highest points of which,
Itacolumi and Itambe, do not rise above an elevation of 900 toises, or
5755 English feet. The eastern portion of the ridge most contiguous to
the sea is the only part that follows a regular inclination from
S.S.W. to N.N.E., increasing in breadth and diminishing in general
elevation as it approaches further westward. The chain of the Parecis
hills approximates to the rivers Itenes and Guaporé, in the same
manner as the mountains of Aguapehi and San Fernando (south of
Villabella) approach the lofty Andes of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de
la Sierra.

There is no direct connection between the two mountain systems of the
Atlantic and South-sea coasts (the Brazilian and the Peruvian
Cordilleras); Western Brazil being separated from Eastern or Upper
Peru by the low lands of the province of Chiquitos, which is a
longitudinal valley that inclines from north to south, and
communicates both with the plains of the Amazon and of the Rio de la
Plata. In these regions, as in Poland and Russia, a ridge of land,
sometimes imperceptible (termed in Slavonic _Uwaly_), forms the line
of separation between different rivers; as for instance, between the
Pilcomayo and Madeira, between the Aguapehi and Guaporé, and between
the Paraguay and the Rio Topayos. The ridge (_seuil_) extends from
Chayanta and Pomabamba (19°–20° lat.,) in a south-easterly direction,
and after intersecting the depressed tracts of the province of
Chiquitos, (which has become almost unknown to geographers since the
expulsion of the Jesuits,) forms to the north-east, where some
scattered mountains are again to be met with, the _divortia aquarum_
at the sources of the Baures and near Villabella (15°–17° lat.)

This water-line of separation which is so important to the general
intercourse and growing civilization of different nations corresponds
in the northern hemisphere of South America with a second line of
demarcation (2°–3° lat.) which separates the district of the Orinoco
from that of the Rio Negro and the Amazon. These elevations or risings
in the midst of the plains (_terræ tumores_, according to Frontinus)
may almost be regarded as undeveloped mountain-systems, designed to
connect two apparently isolated groups, the Sierra Parime and the
Brazilian highlands, to the Andes chain of Timana and Cochabamba.
These relations, to which very little attention has hitherto been
directed, form the basis of my division of South America into three
depressions or basins, viz., those of the Orinoco in its lower course,
of the Amazon, and of the Rio de la Plata. Of these three basins, the
exterior ones, as I have already observed, are Steppes or Prairies;
but the central one between the Sierra Parime and the Brazilian chain
of mountains must be regarded as a wooded plain or _Hylæa_.

In endeavouring by a few equally brief touches to give a sketch of the
natural features of North America, we must first glance at the chain
of the Andes, which, narrow at its origin, soon increases in height
and breadth as it follows an inclination from south-east to
north-west, passing through Panama, Veragua, Guatimala, and New Spain.
This range of mountains, formerly the seat of an ancient civilization,
presents a like barrier to the general current of the sea between the
tropics, and to a more rapid intercommunication between Europe,
Western Africa, and Eastern Asia. From the 17th degree of latitude at
the celebrated Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the chain deflects from the
shores of the Pacific, and inclining from south to north becomes an
inland Cordillera. In Northern Mexico, the Crane Mountains (Sierra de
las Grullas) constitute a portion of the Rocky Mountains. On their
western declivity rise the Columbia and the Rio Colorado of
California; on the eastern side the Rio Roxo of Natchitoches, the
Canadian river, the Arkansas, and the shallow river Platte, which
latter has recently been converted by some ignorant geographers, into
a Rio _de la Plata_, or a river yielding silver. Between the sources
of these rivers rise in the parallels of 37° 20′ and 40° 13′ lat.,
three huge peaks composed of granite, containing little mica, but a
large proportion of hornblende. These have been respectively named
Spanish Peak, James or Pike’s Peak, and Big Horn or Long’s Peak.[K]
Their elevation exceeds that of the highest summits of the North
Mexican Andes, which indeed nowhere attain the height of the line of
perpetual snow from the parallels of 18° and 19° lat., or from the
group of Orizaba, (2717 toises, or 17,374 English feet), and of
Popocatepetl (2771 toises, or 17,720 English feet) to Santa Fé and
Taos in New Mexico. James’ Peak (38° 48′ lat.) is said to have an
elevation of 11,497 English feet. Of this only 8537 feet have been
determined by trigonometrical measurement, the remainder being deduced
in the absence of barometrical observations, from uncertain
calculations of the declivity or fall of rivers. As it is scarcely
ever possible, even at the level of the sea, to conduct a purely
trigonometrical measurement, determinations of impracticable heights
are always in part barometrical. Measurements of the fall of rivers,
of their rapidity and of the length of their course, are so deceptive,
that the plain at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, more especially
near those summits mentioned in the text, was, before the important
expedition of Captain Frémont, estimated sometimes at 8000 and
sometimes at 3000 feet above the level of the sea.[L] From a similar
deficiency of barometrical measurements, the true height of the
Himalaya remained for a long time uncertain; now, however, science has
made such advances in India, that when Captain Gerard had ascended on
the Tarhigang, near the Sutledge, north of Shipke, to the height of
19,411 feet, he still had, after having broken three barometers, four
equally correct ones remaining.[M]

Frémont, in the expedition which he made between the years 1842 and
1844, at the command of the United States Government, discovered and
measured barometrically the highest peak of the whole chain of the
Rocky Mountains to the north-north-west of Spanish, James’, Long’s,
and Laramie’s Peaks. This snow-covered summit, which belongs to the
group of the Wind River Mountains, bears the name of Frémont’s Peak on
the great chart published under the direction of Colonel Abert, chief
of the topographical department at Washington. This point is situated
in the parallel of 43° 10′ north lat., and 110° 7′ west long., and
therefore nearly 5° 30′ north of Spanish Peak. The elevation of
Frémont’s Peak, which according to direct measurement is 13,568 feet,
must therefore exceed by 2072 feet that given by Long to James’ Peak,
which would appear from its position to be identical with Pike’s Peak,
as given in the map above referred to. The Wind River Mountains
constitute the dividing ridge (_divortia aquarum_) between the two
seas. “From the summit,” says Captain Frémont in his official
report,[N] “we saw on the one side numerous lakes and streams, the
sources of the Rio Colorado, which carries its waters through the
Californian Gulf to the South Sea; on the other, the deep valley of
the Wind River, where lie the sources of the Yellowstone River, one of
the main branches of the Missouri which unites with the Mississippi at
St. Louis. Far to the north-west we could just discover the snowy
heads of the Trois Tetons, which give rise to the true sources of the
Missouri not far from the primitive stream of the Oregon or Columbia
river, which is known under the name of Snake River, or Lewis Fork.”

To the surprise of the adventurous travellers, the summit of Frémont’s
Peak was found to be visited by bees. It is probable that these
insects, like the butterflies which I found at far higher elevations
in the chain of the Andes, and also within the limits of perpetual
snow, had been involuntarily drawn thither by ascending currents of
air. I have even seen large winged lepidoptera, which had been carried
far out to sea by land-winds, drop on the ship deck at a considerable
distance from land in the South Sea.

Frémont’s map and geographical researches embrace the immense tract of
land extending from the confluence of Kanzas River with the Missouri,
to the cataracts of the Columbia and the Missions of Santa Barbara and
Pueblo de los Angeles in New California, presenting a space amounting
to 28 degrees of longitude (about 1360 miles) between the 34th and
45th parallels of north latitude. Four hundred points have been
hypsometrically determined by barometrical measurements, and for the
most part, astronomically: so that it has been rendered possible to
delineate the profile above the sea’s level of a tract of land
measuring 3,600 miles with all its inflections, extending from the
north of Kanzas River to Fort Vancouver and to the coasts of the South
Sea (almost 720 miles more than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk).
As I believe I was the first who attempted to represent, in geognostic
profile, the configuration of entire countries, as the Spanish
Peninsula, the highland of Mexico, and the Cordilleras of South
America (for the half-perspective projections of the Siberian
traveller, the Abbé Chappe,[O] were based on mere and for the most
part on very inaccurate estimates of the falls of rivers); it has
afforded me special satisfaction to find the graphical method of
representing the earth’s configuration in a vertical direction, that
is, the elevation of solid over fluid parts, achieved on so vast a
scale. In the mean latitudes of 37° to 43° the Rocky Mountains
present, besides the great snow-crowned summits, whose height may be
compared to that of the Peak of Teneriffe, elevated plateaux of an
extent scarcely to be met with in any other part of the world, and
whose breadth from east to west is almost twice that of the Mexican
highlands. From the range of the mountains, which begin a little
westward of Fort Laramie, to the further side of the Wahsatch
Mountains, the elevation of the soil is uninterruptedly maintained
from five to upwards of seven thousand feet above the sea’s level;
nay, this elevated portion occupies the whole space between the true
Rocky Mountains and the Californian snowy coast range from 34° to 45°
north latitude. This district, which is a kind of broad longitudinal
valley, like that of the lake of Titicaca, has been named _The Great
Basin_ by Joseph Walker and Captain Frémont, travellers well
acquainted with these western regions. It is a _terra incognita_ of at
least 8000 geographical (or 128,000 English) square miles, arid,
almost uninhabited, and full of salt lakes, the largest of which is
3940 Parisian (or 4200 English) feet above the level of the sea, and
is connected with the narrow Lake Utah,[P] into which the “Rock River”
(_Timpan Ogo_ in the Utah language) pours its copious stream. Father
Escalante, in his wanderings from Santa Fé del Nuevo Mexico to
Monterey in New California, discovered Frémont’s “Great Salt Lake” in
1776, and confounding together the river and the lake, called it
Laguna de Timpanogo. Under this name I inserted it in my map of
Mexico, which gave rise to much uncritical discussion regarding the
assumed non-existence of a large inland salt lake,[Q]—a question
previously mooted by the learned American traveller Tanner. Gallatin
expressly says in his memoir on the aboriginal races[R]—“General
Ashley and Mr. J. S. Smith have found the Lake Timpanogo in the same
latitude and longitude nearly as had been assigned to it in Humboldt’s
Atlas of Mexico.”

I have purposely dwelt at length on these considerations regarding the
remarkable elevation of the soil in the region of the Rocky Mountains,
since by its extension and height it undoubtedly exercises a great,
although hitherto unappreciated influence on the climate of the
northern half of the new continent, both in its southern and eastern
portions. On this vast and uniformly elevated plateau Frémont found
the water covered with ice every night in the month of August. Nor is
the configuration of the land less important when considered in
reference to the social condition and progress of the great North
American United States. Although the mountain range which divides the
waters attains a height nearly equal to that of the passes of Mount
Simplon (6170 Parisian or 6576 English feet), Mount Gothard (6440
Parisian or 6863 English feet), and the great St. Bernard (7476
Parisian or 7957 English feet), the ascent is so prolonged and gradual
that no impediments oppose a general intercourse by means of vehicles
and carriages of every kind between the Missouri and Oregon
territories, between the Atlantic States, and the new settlements on
the Oregon (or Columbia) river, or between the coast-lands lying
opposite to Europe on the one side of the continent, and to China on
the other. The distance from Boston to the old settlement of Astoria
on the Pacific at the mouth of the Oregon when measured in a direct
line, and taking into account the difference of longitude, is 550
geographical, _i.e._, 2200 English miles, or one-sixth less than the
distance between Lisbon and Katherinenburg in the Ural district. On
account of this gentle ascent of the elevated plains leading from the
Missouri to California and the Oregon territory (all the
resting-places measured between the Fort and River Lamarie on the
northern branch of the Platte river to Fort Hall on the Lewis Fork of
the Columbia, being situated at an elevation of from five to upwards
of seven thousand feet, and that in Old Park even at the height of
9760 Parisian or 10,402 English feet!), considerable difficulty has
been experienced in determining the culminating point, or that of the
_divortia aquarum_. It is south of the Wind River Mountains, about
midway between the Mississippi and the coast line of the Southern
Ocean, and is situated at an elevation of 7490 feet, or only 480 feet
lower than the pass of the Great Bernard. The emigrants call this
culminating point the South Pass.[S] It is situated in a pleasant
region, embellished by a profusion of artemisiæ, especially A.
tridentata (Nuttall), and varieties of asters and cactuses, which
cover the micaceous slate and gneiss rocks. Astronomical
determinations place its latitude in the parallel of 42° 24′, and its
longitude in that of 109° 24′ W. Adolf Erman has already drawn
attention to the fact, that the line of strike of the great
east-Asiatic Aldanian mountain-chain, which separates the basin of the
Lena from the rivers flowing towards the Great Southern Ocean, if
extended in the form of a great circle on the surface of the globe,
passes through many of the summits of the Rocky Mountains between 40°
and 55° north lat. “An American and an Asiatic mountain-chain,” he
remarks, “appear therefore to be only portions of one and the same
fissure erupted by the shortest channels.”[T]

The western high mountain coast chain of the Californian maritime
Alps, the _Sierra Nevada de California_, is wholly distinct from the
Rocky Mountains, which sink towards the Mackenzie River (that remains
covered with ice for a great portion of the year), and from the high
table land on which rise individual snow-covered peaks. However
injudicious the choice of the appellation of _Rocky Mountains_ may be,
when applied to the most northerly prolongation of the Mexican central
chain, I do not deem it expedient to substitute for it the
denomination of the Oregon Chain, as has frequently been attempted.
These mountains do indeed give rise to the sources of three main
branches constituting the great Oregon or Columbia river (viz.,
Lewis’, Clarke’s, and North Fork); but this mighty stream also
intersects the chain of the ever snow-crowned maritime Alps of
California. The name of Oregon Territory is also employed, politically
and officially, to designate the lesser territory of land west of the
coast chain, where Fort Vancouver and the Walahmutti settlements are
situated; and it would therefore seem better to abstain from applying
the name of Oregon either to the central or to the coast chain. This
denomination, moreover, led the celebrated geographer Malte-Brun into
a misconception of the most remarkable kind. He read in an old Spanish
chart the following passage:—“And it is still unknown (_y aun se
ignora_) where the source of this river” (now called the Columbia) “is
situated,” and he believed that the word _ignora_ signified the name
of the Oregon.[U]

The rocks which give rise to the cataracts of the Columbia at the
point where the river breaks through the chain, mark the prolongation
of the Sierra Nevada of California from the 44th to the 47th degree of
latitude.[V] In this northern prolongation of the chain lie the three
colossal elevations of Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, and Mount St.
Helen’s, which rise 14,540 Parisian (or 15,500 English) feet above the
sea-level. The height of this coast chain or range far exceeds
therefore that of the Rocky Mountains. “During an eight months’
journey along these maritime Alps,” says Captain Frémont,[W] “we were
constantly within sight of snow-covered summits; and while we were
able to cross the Rocky Mountains through the South Pass at an
elevation of 7027 feet, we found that the passes in the maritime
range, which is divided into several parallel chains, were more than
2000 feet higher”—and therefore only 1170 (English) feet below the
summit of Mount Etna. It is also a very remarkable fact, and one which
reminds us of the relations of the eastern and western Cordilleras of
Chili, that volcanoes still active are only found in the Californian
chain which lies in the closest proximity to the sea. The conical
mountains of Regnier and of St. Helen’s are almost invariably observed
to emit smoke; and on the 23rd of November, 1843, the latter of these
volcanoes erupted a mass of ashes which covered the shores of the
Columbia for a distance of forty miles, like a fall of snow. To the
volcanic Californian chain belong also in the far north of Russian
America, Mount Elias (according to La Pérouse 1980 toises, or 12,660
feet, and according to Malaspina 2792 toises, or 17,850 feet in
height), and Mount Fair Weather (Cerro de Buen Tiempo, 2304 toises, or
14,733 feet high). Both these conical mountains are regarded as still
active volcanoes. Frémont’s expedition, which has proved alike useful
in reference to botany and geognosy, likewise collected volcanic
products in the Rocky Mountains (as scoriaceous basalt, trachyte, and
true obsidian), and discovered an old extinct crater somewhat to the
east of Fort Hall (43° 2′ north lat., and 112° 28′ west long.), but no
traces of any still active volcanoes emitting lava and ashes, were to
be met with. We must not confound with these the hitherto unexplained
phenomenon termed _smoking hills_, _côtes brûlées_, and _terrains
ardens_, in the language of the English settlers and the natives who
speak French. “Rows of low conical hills,” says the accurate observer
M. Nicollet, “are almost periodically, and sometimes for two or three
years continually, covered with dense black smoke, unaccompanied by
any visible flames. This phenomenon is more particularly noticed in
the territory of the Upper Missouri, and still nearer to the eastern
declivity of the Rocky Mountains, where there is a river named by the
natives Mankizitah-watpa, or the river of smoking earth. Scorified
pseudo-volcanic products, a kind of porcelain jasper, are found in the
vicinity of the smoking hills.”

Since the expedition of Lewis and Clarke an opinion has generally
prevailed that the Missouri deposits a true pumice on its banks; but
here white masses of a delicate cellular texture have been mistaken
for that substance. Professor Ducatel was of opinion that the
phenomenon which is chiefly observed in the chalk formation, was owing
to “the decomposition of water by sulphur pyrites and to a reaction on
the brown coal floetzes.”[X]

If before we close these general remarks regarding the configuration
of North America we once more cast a glance at those regions which
separate the two diverging coast chains from the central chain, we
shall find in strong contrast, on the West, between that central chain
and the Californian Alps of the Pacific, an arid and uninhabited
elevated plateau nearly six thousand feet above the sea; and in the
East, between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. (whose highest
points, Mount Washington and Mount Marcy, rise, according to Lyell, to
the respective heights, of 6652 and 5400 feet,) we see the richly
watered, fruitful, and thickly-inhabited basin of the Mississippi, at
an elevation of from four to six hundred feet, or more than twice that
of the plains of Lombardy. The hypsometrical character of this eastern
valley, or in other words, its relation to the sea’s level, has only
very recently been explained by the admirable labours of the talented
French astronomer Nicollet, unhappily lost to science by a premature
death. His great chart of the Upper Mississippi, executed between the
years 1836 and 1840, was based on two hundred and forty astronomical
determinations of latitude, and one hundred and seventy barometrical
determinations of elevation. The plain which encloses the valley of
the Mississippi is identical with that of northern Canada, and forms
part of one and the same depressed basin, extending from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Arctic Sea.[Y] Wherever the low land falls in
undulations, and slight elevations which still retain their un-English
appellation of _côteaux des prairies_, _côteaux des bois_, occur in
connected rows between the parallels of 47° and 48° north lat., these
rows and gentle undulations of the ground separate the waters between
Hudson’s Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Such a line of separation between
the waters is formed, north of Lake Superior or Kichi Gummi, by the
Missabay Heights, and further west by the elevations known as
_Hauteurs des Terres_, in which are situated the true sources of the
Mississippi, one of the largest rivers in the world, and which were
not discovered till the year 1832. The highest of these chains of
hills hardly attains an elevation of from 1500 to 1600 feet. From its
mouth (the old French Balize) to St. Louis, somewhat to the south of
its confluence with the Missouri, the Mississippi has a fall of only
380 feet, notwithstanding that the itinerary distance between these
two points exceeds 1280 miles. The surface of Lake Superior lies at an
elevation of 618 feet, and as its depth in the neighbourhood of the
island of Magdalena is fully 790 feet, its bottom must be 172 feet
below the surface of the ocean.[Z]

Beltrami, who in 1825 separated himself from Major Long’s expedition,
boasted that he had found the sources of the Mississippi in Lake Cass.
The river passes, in its upper course, through four lakes, the second
of which is the one referred to, while the outermost one, Lake Istaca
(47° 13′ north lat., and 95° west long.), was first recognised as the
true source of the Mississippi, in 1832, in the expedition of
Schoolcraft and Lieutenant Allen. This stream, which subsequently
becomes so mighty, is only 17 feet in width, and 15 inches deep, when
it issues from the singular horse-shoe-shaped Lake Istaca. The local
relations of this river were first fully established on a basis of
astronomical observations of position by the scientific expedition of
Nicollet, in the year 1836. The height of the sources, that is to say,
of the last access of water received by Lake Istaca from the ridge of
separation, called _Hauteur de Terre_, is 1680 feet above the level of
the sea. Near this point, and at the southern declivity of the same
separating ridge, lies Elbow Lake, the source of the small Red River
of the north, which empties itself, after many windings, into Hudson’s
Bay. The Carpathian Mountains exhibit similar relations in reference
to the origin of the rivers which empty themselves into the Baltic and
the Black Sea. M. Nicollet gave the names of celebrated astronomers,
opponents as well as friends, with whom he had become acquainted in
Europe, to the twenty small lakes which combine together to form
narrow groups in the southern and western regions of Lake Istaca. His
atlas is thus converted into a geographical album, reminding one of
the botanical album of the _Flora Peruviana_ of Ruiz and Pavon, in
which the names of new families of plants were made to accord with the
Court Calendar, and the various alterations made in the _Oficiales de
la Secretaria_.

The east of the Mississippi is still occupied by dense forests; the
west by prairies only, on which the buffalo (_Bos Americanus_) and the
musk ox (_Bos moschatus_) pasture. These two species of animals, the
largest of the new world, furnish the nomadic tribes of the
Apaches-Llaneros and Apaches-Lipanos with the means of nourishment.
The Assiniboins occasionally slay from seven to eight hundred bisons
in the course of a few days in the artificial enclosures constructed
for the purpose of driving together the wild herds, and known as
_bison parks_.[AA] The American bison, called by the Mexicans
_Cibolo_, is killed chiefly on account of the tongue, which is
regarded as a special delicacy. This animal is not a mere variety of
the aurochs of the old world; although, like other species of animals,
as for instance the elk (_Cervus alces_) and the reindeer (_Cervus
tarandus_), no less than the stunted inhabitants of the polar regions,
it may be regarded as common to the northern portions of _all_
continents, and as affording a proof of their former long existing
connection. The Mexicans apply to the European ox the Aztec term
_quaquahue_, or horned animal, from _quaquahuitl_, a horn. The huge
ox-horns which have been found in ancient Mexican buildings near
Cuernavaca, south-west of the capital of Mexico, appear to me to
belong to the bison. The Canadian bison can be used for agricultural
labour, and will breed with the European cattle, although it is
uncertain whether the hybrid thus engendered is capable of propagating
its species. Albert Gallatin, who, before his appearance in Europe as
a distinguished diplomatist, had acquired by personal observation a
considerable amount of information regarding the uncultivated parts of
the United States, assures us that the fruitfulness of the mixed breed
of the American buffalo and European cattle is an undoubted fact: “the
mixed breed,” he writes, “was quite common fifty years ago in some of
the north-western counties of Virginia, and the cows, the issue of
that mixture, propagated like all others.” “I do not remember,” he
further adds, “that full-grown buffaloes were tamed; but dogs would at
that time occasionally bring in the young bison-calves, which were
reared and bred with European cows. At Monongahela all the cattle for
a long time were of this mixed breed. It was said, however, that the
cows yielded but little milk.” The favourite food of the buffalo is
the _Tripsacum dactyloides_ (known as buffalo-grass in North Carolina)
and a hitherto undescribed species of clover allied to the _Trifolium
repens_, and designated by Barton as _Trifolium bisonicum_.

I have elsewhere[AB] drawn attention to the fact, that according to a
passage of the trustworthy Gomara[AC], there lived, as late as the
sixteenth century, an Indian tribe in the north-west of Mexico, in 40°
north lat., whose greatest wealth consisted in hordes of tamed
buffaloes (_bueyes con una giba_). Yet, notwithstanding the
possibility of taming the buffalo, and the abundance of milk it
yields, and notwithstanding the herds of Lamas in the Peruvian
Cordilleras, no pastoral tribes were met with on the discovery of
America. Nor does history afford any evidence of the existence, at any
period, of this intermediate stage of national development. It is also
a remarkable fact that the North American bison or buffalo has exerted
an influence on geographical discoveries in pathless mountain
districts. These animals advance in herds of many thousands in search
of a milder climate, during winter, in the countries south of the
Arkansas river. Their size and cumbrous forms render it difficult for
them to cross high mountains on these migratory courses, and a
well-trodden buffalo-path is therefore followed wherever it is met
with, as it invariably indicates the most convenient passage across
the mountains. Thus buffalo-paths have indicated the best tracks for
passing over the Cumberland Mountains in the south-western parts of
Virginia and Kentucky, and over the Rocky Mountains, between the
sources of the Yellowstone and Plate rivers, and between the southern
branch of the Columbia and the Californian Rio Colorado. European
settlements have gradually driven the buffalo from the eastern
portions of the United States. Formerly these migratory animals passed
the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, advancing far beyond
Pittsburgh.[AD]

From the granitic rocks of Diego Ramirez and the deeply-intersected
district of Terra del Fuego (which in the east contains silurian
schist, and in the west, the same schist metamorphosed into granite by
the action of subterranean fire,)[AE] to the North Polar Sea, the
Cordilleras extend over a distance of more than 8000 miles. Although
not the loftiest, they are the longest mountain chain in the world,
being upheaved from one fissure, which runs in the direction of a
meridian from pole to pole, and exceeding in linear extent the
distance which, in the old continent, separates the Pillars of
Hercules from the Icy Cape of the Tschuktches, in the north-east of
Asia. Where the Andes are divided into several parallel chains, those
lying nearest the sea are found to be the seat of the most active
volcanoes; and it has moreover been repeatedly observed that when the
phenomenon of an eruption of subterranean fire ceases in one mountain
chain, it breaks forth in some other parallel range. The cones of
eruption usually follow the direction of the axis of the chain; but in
the Mexican table-land, the active volcanoes are situated on a
transverse fissure, running from sea to sea, in a direction from east
and west.[AF] Wherever the upheaval of mountain masses in the folding
of the ancient crust of the earth has opened a communication with the
fused interior, volcanic activity continued to be exhibited on the
murally upheaved mass by means of the ramification of fissures. That
which we call a mountain chain has not been raised to its present
elevation, or manifested as it now appears, at one definite period;
for we find that rocks, varying considerably in age, have been
superimposed on one another, and have penetrated towards the surface
through early formed channels. The diversity observable in rocks is
owing to the outpouring and upheaval of rocks of eruption, as well as
to the complicated and slow process of metamorphism going on in
fissures filled with vapour, and conducive to the conduction of heat.

The following have for a long time, viz., from 1830 to 1848, been
regarded as the highest or culminating points of the Cordilleras of
the new continent:—

The _Nevado de Sorata_, also called Ancohuma or Tusubaya (15° 52′
south lat.), somewhat to the south of the village of Sorata or
Esquibel, in the eastern chain of Bolivia: elevation, 25,222 feet.

The _Nevado de Illimani_, west of the mission of Yrupana (16° 38′
south lat.), also in the eastern chain of Bolivia: elevation, 24,000
feet.

The _Chimborazo_ (1° 27′ south lat.), in the province of Quito:
elevation, 21,422 feet.

The Sorata and Illimani were first measured by the distinguished
geologist, Pentland, in the years 1827 and 1838; and since the
publication of his large map of the basin of the Laguna de Titicaca,
in June, 1848, we learn that the above elevations given for the Sorata
and Illimani are 3960 feet and 2851 feet too high. His map gives only
21,286 feet for the Sorata, and 21,149 feet for the Illimani. A more
exact calculation of the trigonometrical operations of 1838 led Mr.
Pentland to these new results. He ascribes an elevation of from 21,700
to 22,350 feet to four summits of the western Cordilleras; and,
according to his data, the Peak of Sahama would thus be 926 feet
higher than the Chimborazo, but 850 feet lower than the Peak of
Aconcagua.

Footnote 6:

p. 2—“_The desert near the basaltic mountains of Harudsch_.”

Near the Egyptian Natron Lakes, which in Strabo’s time had not yet
been divided into the six reservoirs by which they are now
characterized, there rises abruptly to the north a chain of hills,
running from east to west past Fezzan, where it at length appears to
form one connected range with the Atlas chain. It divides in
north-eastern, as Mount Atlas does in north-western Africa the Lybia,
described by Herodotus as inhabited and situated near the sea, from
the land of the Berbirs, or Biledulgerid, famed for the abundance of
its wild animals. On the borders of Middle Egypt the whole region,
south of the 30th degree of latitude, is an ocean of sand, studded
here and there with islands or oases abounding in springs and rich in
vegetation. Owing to the discoveries of recent travellers, a vast
addition has been made to the number of the Oases formerly known, and
which the ancients limited to three, compared by Strabo to spots upon
a panther’s skin. The third Oasis of the ancients, now called Siwah,
was the _nomos_ of Ammon, a hierarchical seat and a resting-place for
the caravans, which inclosed within its precincts the temple of the
horned Ammon and the spring of the Sun, whose waters were supposed to
become cool at certain periods. The ruins of Ummibida (_Omm-Beydah_)
incontestably belong to the fortified caravanserai at the Temple of
Ammon, and therefore constitute one of the most ancient monuments
which have come down to us from the dawn of human civilization.[AG]

The word Oasis is Egyptian, and is synonymous with Auasis and
Hyasis.[AH] Abulfeda calls the Oases _el-Wah_. In the latter time of
the Cæsars, malefactors were sent to the Oases, being banished to
these islands in the sandy ocean, as the Spaniards and English
transported their malefactors to the Falkland islands and New Holland.
The ocean affords almost a better chance of escape than the desert
surrounding the Oases; which, moreover, diminish in fruitfulness in
proportion to the greater quantity of sand incorporated in the soil.

The small mountain range of Harudsch (_Harudje_[AI]) consists of
grotesquely-shaped basaltic hills. It is the _Mons Ater_ of Pliny, and
its western extremity, known as the Soudah mountain, has been recently
explored by my unfortunate friend, the enterprising traveller Ritchie.
These basaltic eruptions in the tertiary limestone, and rows of hills
rising abruptly from fissures, appear to be analogous to the basaltic
eruptions in the Vicentine territory.

Nature repeats the same phenomena in the most distant regions of the
earth. Hornemann found an immense quantity of petrified fishes’ heads
in the limestone formations of the White Harudsch (_Harudje
el-Abiad_), belonging probably to the old chalk. Ritchie and Lyon
remarked that the basalt of the Soudah mountain was in many places
intimately mingled with carbonate of lime, as is the case in Monte
Berico; a phenomenon that is probably connected with eruptions through
limestone strata. Lyon’s chart even indicates dolomite in the
neighbourhood. Modern mineralogists have found syenite and greenstone,
but not basalt, in Egypt. Is it possible that the true basalt, from
which many of the ancient vases found in various parts of the country
were made, can have been derived from a mountain lying so far to the
west? Can the _obsidius lapis_ have come from there, or are we to seek
basalt and obsidian on the coast of the Red Sea? The strip of the
volcanic eruptions of Harudsch, on the borders of the African desert,
moreover reminds the geologist of augitic vesicular amygdaloid,
phonolite, and greenstone porphyry, which are only found on the
northern and western limits of the steppes of Venezuela and of the
plains of the Arkansas, and therefore, as it were, on the ancient
coast chains.[AJ]

Footnote 7:

p. 3—“_When suddenly deserted by the tropical east wind, and the sea
is covered with weeds_.”

It is a remarkable phenomenon, although one generally known to
mariners, that in the neighbourhood of the African coast, (between the
Canaries and the Cape de Verde islands, and more especially between
Cape Bojador and the mouth of the Senegal,) a westerly wind often
prevails instead of the usual east or trade wind of the tropics. The
cause of this phenomenon is to be ascribed to the far-extending desert
of Zahara, and arises from the rarefaction, and consequent vertical
ascent of the air over the heated sandy surface. To fill up the vacuum
thus occasioned, the cool sea-air rushes in, producing a westerly
breeze, adverse to vessels sailing to America; and the mariner, long
before he perceives any continent, is made sensible of the effects of
its heat-radiating sands. As is well known, a similar cause produces
that alternation of sea and land breezes, which prevails at certain
hours of the day and night on all sea-coasts.

The accumulation of sea-weed in the neighbourhood of the western
coasts of Africa has been often referred to by ancient writers. The
local position of this accumulation is a problem which is intimately
connected with the conjectures regarding the extent of Phœnician
navigation. The Periplus, which has been ascribed to Scylax of
Caryanda, and which, according to the investigations of Niebuhr and
Letronne, was very probably compiled in the time of Philip of Macedon,
contains a description of a kind of fucus sea, _Mar de Sargasso_,
beyond Cerne; but the locality indicated appears to me very different
from that assigned to it in the work “_De Mirabilibus
Auscultationibus_,” which for a long time, but incorrectly, bore the
great name of Aristotle.[AK] “Driven by the east wind,” says the
pseudo-Aristotle, “Phœnician mariners came in a four days’ voyage from
Gades to a place where the sea was found covered with rushes and
sea-weed (θρύον καὶ φῦκος). The sea-weed is uncovered at ebb, and
overflowed at flood tide.” Does he not here refer to a shoal lying
between the 34th and 36th degrees of latitude? Has a shoal disappeared
there in consequence of volcanic revolution? Vobonne refers to rocks
north of Madeira.[AL] In Scylax it is stated that “the sea beyond
Cerne ceases to be navigable in consequence of its great shallowness,
its muddiness, and its sea-grass. The sea-grass lies a span thick, and
it is pointed at its upper extremity, so that it pricks.” The sea-weed
which is found between Cerne (the Phœnician station for merchant
vessels, Gaulea; or, according to Gosselin, the small estuary of
Fedallah, on the north-west coast of Mauritania,) and Cape Verde, at
the present time by no means forms a great meadow or connected group,
“_mare herbidum_,” such as exists on the other side of the Azores.
Moreover, in the poetic description of the coast given by Festus
Avienus,[AM] in which, as Avienus himself very distinctly
acknowledges, he availed himself of the journals of Phœnician ships,
the impediments presented by the sea-weed are described with great
minuteness; but Avienus places the site of this obstacle much further
north, towards Ierne, the Holy Isle.

Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,
Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.
Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
Exstare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice
Retinere puppim ...
Hæc inter undas multa cæspitem jacet,
Eamque late gens Hibemorum colit.

When we consider that the sea-weed (_fucus_), the mud or slime
(πηλὸς), the shallowness of the sea, and the perpetual calms, are
always regarded by the ancients as characteristic of the Western Ocean
beyond the Pillars of Hercules, we feel inclined, especially on
account of the reference to the _calms_, to ascribe this to Punic
cunning, to the tendency of a great trading people to hinder others,
by terrific descriptions, from competing with them in maritime trading
westwards. But even in the genuine writings of the Stagyrite,[AN] the
same opinion is retained regarding the absence of wind, and Aristotle
attempts to explain a false notion, or, as it seems to me, more
correctly speaking, a fabulous mariner’s story, by an hypothesis
regarding the depth of the sea. The stormy sea between Gades and the
Islands of the Blest (Cadiz and the Canaries) can in truth in no way
be compared with the sea, which lies between the tropics, ruffled only
by the gentle trade-winds (_vents alisés_), and which has been very
characteristically named by the Spaniards[AO] _El Golfo de las Damas_.

From very careful personal researches and from comparison of the logs
of many English and French vessels, I am led to believe that the old
and very indefinite expression _Mar de Sargasso_, refers to two fucus
banks, the larger of which is of an elongated form, and is the
easternmost one, lying between the parallels of 19° and 34°, in a
meridian 7° westward of the Island of Corvo, one of the Azores; while
the smaller and westernmost bank is of a roundish form, and is found
between Bermuda and the Bahama Islands (lat. 25°–31°, long. 66°–74°).
The principal diameter of the small bank, which is traversed by ships
sailing from Baxo de Plata (Caye d’Argent,) northward of St. Domingo
to the Bermudas, appears to me to have a N. 60° E. direction. A
transverse band of _fucus natans_, extending in an east-westerly
direction between the latitudes of 25° and 30°, connects the greater
with the smaller bank. I have had the pleasure of seeing these views
adopted by my lamented friend Major Rennell, and confirmed, in his
great work on Currents, by many new observations.[AP] The two groups
of sea-weed, together with the transverse band uniting them,
constitute the Sargasso Sea of the older writers, and collectively
occupy an area equal to six or seven times that of Germany.

The vegetation of the ocean thus offers the most remarkable example of
_social plants_ of a single species. On the main land the Savannahs or
grass plains of America, the heaths (_ericeta_), and the forests of
Northern Europe and Asia, in which are associated coniferous trees,
birches, and willows, produce a less striking uniformity than do these
thalassophytes. Our heaths present in the north not only the
predominating Calluna vulgaris, but also Erica tetralix, E. ciliaris,
and E. cinerea; and in the south, Erica arborea, E. scoparia, and E.
Mediterranea. The uniformity of the view presented by the Fucus natans
is incomparably greater than that of any other assemblage of social
plants. Oviedo calls the fucus banks “meadows,” _praderias de yerva_.
If we consider that Pedro Velasco, a native of the Spanish harbour of
Palos, by following the flight of certain birds from Fayal, discovered
the Island of Flores as early as 1452, it seems almost impossible,
considering the proximity of the great fucus bank of Corvo and Flores,
that no part of these oceanic meadows should have been seen before the
time of Columbus by Portuguese ships driven westward by storms.

We learn, however, from the astonishment of the companions of the
admiral, when they were continuously surrounded by sea-grass from the
16th of September to the 8th of October, 1492, that the magnitude of
the phenomenon was at that period unknown to mariners. In the extracts
from the ship’s journal given by Las Casas, Columbus certainly does
not mention the apprehensions which the accumulation of sea-weed
excited, or the grumbling of his companions. He merely speaks of the
complaints and murmurs regarding the danger of the very weak but
constant east winds. It was only his son, Fernando Colon, who in the
history of his father’s life, endeavoured to give a somewhat dramatic
delineation of the anxieties of the sailors.

According to my researches, Columbus made his way through the great
fucus bank in the year 1492, in latitude 28½°, and in 1493, in
latitude 37°, and both times in the longitude of 38°–41°. This can be
established with tolerable certainty from the estimation of the
velocity recorded by Columbus, and “the distance daily sailed over;”
not indeed by dropping the log, but by the information afforded by the
running out of half-hour sand-glasses (_ampolletas_). The first
certain and distinct account of the log, (_catena della poppa_,) which
I have found, is in the year 1521, in Pigafetta’s Journal of
Magellan’s Circumnavigation of the World.[AQ] The determination of the
ship’s place during the days in which Columbus was crossing the great
bank is the more important, because it shews us that for three
centuries and a half the total accumulation of these socially-living
thalassophytes, (whether consequent on the local character of the
sea’s bottom or on the direction of the recurrent Gulf stream,) has
remained at the same point. Such evidences of the persistence of great
natural phenomena doubly arrest the attention of the natural
philosopher, when they occur in the ever-moving oceanic element.
Although the limits of the fucus banks oscillate considerably, in
accordance with the strength and direction of long predominating
winds, yet we may still, in the middle of the nineteenth century, take
the meridian of 41° west of Paris (or 8° 38′ west of Greenwich) as the
principal axis of the _great bank_. Columbus, with his vivid
imaginative force, associated the idea of the position of this bank
with the great physical line of demarcation, which according to him,
“separated the globe into two parts, and was intimately connected with
the changes of magnetic deviation and of climatic relations.” Columbus
when he was uncertain regarding the longitude, attempted to determine
his place (February, 1493,) by the appearance of the first floating
masses of tangled weed (_de la primera yerva_) on the eastern border
of the great Corvo bank. The physical line of demarcation was, by the
powerful influence of the Admiral, converted on the 4th of May, 1493,
into a political one, in the celebrated _line of demarcation_ between
the Spanish and Portuguese rights of possession[AR].

Footnote 8:

p. 3—“_The Nomadic Tribes of Tibbos and Tuaryks_.”

These two nations, which inhabit the desert between Bornou, Fezzan,
and Lower Egypt, were first made more accurately known to us by the
travels of Hornemann and Lyon. The Tibbos or Tibbous occupy the
eastern, and the Tuaryks (Tueregs) the western portion of the great
sandy ocean. The former, from their habits of constant moving, were
named by the other tribes “birds.” The Tuaryks are subdivided into two
tribes—the Aghadez and the Tagazi. These are often caravan leaders and
merchants. They speak the same language as the Berbers, and
undoubtedly belong to the primitive Lybian races. They present the
remarkable physiological phenomenon that, according to the character
of the climate, the different tribes vary in complexion from a white
to a yellow, or even almost black hue; but they never have woolly hair
or negro features.[AS]

Footnote 9:

p. 3—“_The ship of the desert_.”

In the poetry of the East, the camel is designated as _the land-ship_,
or _the ship of the desert_ (_Sefynet-el-badyet_[AT]).

The camel is, however, not only the carrier in the desert, and the
medium for maintaining communication between different countries, but
is also, as Carl Bitter has shown in his admirable treatise on the
sphere of distribution of this animal, “the main requirement of a
nomadic mode of life in the patriarchal stage of national development,
in the torrid regions of our planet, where rain is either wholly or in
a great degree absent. No animal’s life is so closely associated by
natural bonds with a certain primitive stage of the development of the
life of man, as that of the camel among the Bedouin tribes, nor has
any other been established in like manner by a continuous historical
evidence of several thousand years.”[AU] “The camel was entirely
unknown to the cultivated people of Carthage through all the centuries
of their flourishing existence, until the destruction of the city. It
was first brought into use for armies by the Marusians, in Western
Lybia, in the times of the Cæsars; perhaps in consequence of its
employment in commercial undertakings by the Ptolemies, in the valley
of the Nile. The Guanches, inhabiting the Canary Islands, who were
probably related to the Berber race, were not acquainted with the
camel before the fifteenth century, when it was introduced by Norman
conquerors and settlers. In the probably very limited communication of
the Guanches with the coast of Africa, the smallness of their boats
must necessarily have impeded the transport of large animals. The true
Berber race, which was diffused throughout the interior of Northern
Africa, and to which the Tibbos and Tuaryks, as already observed,
belong, is probably indebted to the use of the camel throughout the
Lybian desert and its oases, not only for the advantages of internal
communication, but also for its escape from complete annihilation and
for the maintenance of its national existence to the present day. The
use of the camel continued, on the other hand, to be unknown to the
negro races, and it was only in company with the conquering
expeditions and proselyting missions of the Bedouins through the whole
of Northern Africa, that the useful animal of the Nedschd, of the
Nabatheans, and of all the districts occupied by Aramean races, spread
here, as elsewhere, to the westward. The Goths brought camels as early
as the fourth century to the Lower Istros (the Danube), and the
Ghaznevides transported them in much larger numbers to India as far as
the banks of the Ganges.” We must distinguish two epochs in the
distribution of the camel throughout the northern part of the African
continent; the first under the Ptolemies, which operated through
Cyrene on the whole of the north-west of Africa, and the second under
the Mahommedan epoch of the conquering Arabs.