ON STEPPES AND DESERTS.
At the foot of the lofty granitic range which, in the early age of our planet, resisted the irruption of the waters on the formation of the Caribbean Gulf, extends a vast and boundless plain. When the traveller turns from the Alpine valleys of Caracas, and the island-studded lake of Tacarigua[[1]], whose waters reflect the forms of the neighbouring bananas,—when he leaves the fields verdant with the light and tender green of the Tahitian sugar-cane, or the sombre shade of the cacoa groves,—his eye rests in the south on Steppes, whose seeming elevations disappear in the distant horizon.
From the rich luxuriance of organic life the astonished traveller suddenly finds himself on the dreary margin of a treeless waste. Nor hill, nor cliff rears its head, like an island in the ocean, above the boundless plain: only here and there broken strata of floetz, extending over a surface of two hundred square miles, (more than three thousand English square miles[[C]],) appear sensibly higher than the surrounding district. The natives term them banks[[2]], as if the spirit of language would convey some record of that ancient condition of the world, when these elevations formed the shoals, and the Steppes themselves the bottom, of some vast inland sea.
Even now, illusion often recalls, in the obscurity of night, these images of a former age. For when the guiding constellations illumine the margin of the plain with their rapidly rising and setting beams, or when their flickering forms are reflected in the lower stratum of undulating vapour, a shoreless ocean seems spread before us[[3]]. Like a limitless expanse of waters, the Steppe fills the mind with a sense of the infinite, and the soul, freed from the sensuous impressions of space, expands with spiritual emotions of a higher order. But the aspect of the ocean, its bright surface diversified with rippling or gently swelling waves, is productive of pleasurable sensations,—while the Steppe lies stretched before us, cold and monotonous, like the naked stony crust of some desolate planet[[4]].
In all latitudes nature presents the phenomenon of these vast plains, and each has some peculiar character or physiognomy, determined by diversity of soil and climate, and by elevation above the level of the sea.
In northern Europe the Heaths which, covered by one sole form of vegetation, to the exclusion of all others, extend from the extremity of Jutland to the mouth of the Scheldt, may be regarded as true Steppes. They are, however, both hilly and of very inconsiderable extent when compared with the Llanos and Pampas of South America, or even with the Prairies on the Missouri[[5]] and Copper River, the resort of the shaggy Bison and the small Musk Ox.
The plains in the interior of Africa present a grander and more imposing spectacle. Like the wide expanse of the Pacific, they have remained unexplored until recent times. They are portions of a sea of sand, which towards the east separates fruitful regions from each other, or incloses them like islands, as the desert near the basaltic mountains of Harudsch[[6]], where, in the Oasis of Siwah, rich in date-trees, the ruins of the temple of Ammon indicate the venerable seat of early civilization. Neither dew nor rain refreshes these barren wastes, or unfolds the germs of vegetation within the glowing depths of the earth; for everywhere rising columns of hot air dissolve the vapours and disperse the passing clouds.
Wherever the desert approaches the Atlantic Ocean, as between Wadi Nun and the White Cape, the moist sea-air rushes in to fill the vacuum caused by these vertically ascending currents of air. The navigator, in steering towards the mouth of the river Gambia, through a sea thickly carpeted with weeds, infers by the sudden cessation of the tropical east wind[[7]], that he is near the far-spreading and radiating sandy desert.
Flocks of swift-looted ostriches and herds of gazelles wander over this boundless space. With the exception of the newly discovered group of Oases, rich in springs, whose verdant banks are frequented by nomadic tribes of Tibbos and Tuarycks[[8]], the whole of the African deserts may be regarded as uninhabitable by man. It is only periodically that the neighbouring civilized nations venture to traverse them. On tracks whose undeviating course was determined by commercial intercourse thousands of years ago, the long line of caravans passes from Tafilet to Timbuctoo, or from Mourzouk to Bornou; daring enterprises, the practicability of which depends on the existence of the camel, the ship of the desert[[9]], as it is termed in the ancient legends of the East.
These African plains cover an area which exceeds almost three times that of the neighbouring Mediterranean. They are situated partly within and partly near the tropics, a position on which depends their individual natural character. On the other hand, in the eastern portion of the old continent the same geognostic phenomenon is peculiar to the temperate zone.
On the mountainous range of Central Asia, between the Gold or Altai Mountain and the Kouen-lien[[10]], from the Chinese wall to the further side of the Celestial Mountains, and towards the Sea of Aral, over a space of several thousand miles, extend, if not the highest, certainly the largest Steppes in the world. I myself enjoyed an opportunity, full thirty years after my South American travels, of visiting that portion of the Steppes which is occupied by Kalmuck-Kirghis tribes, and is situated between the Don, the Volga, the Caspian Sea, and the Chinese Lake of Dsaisang, and which consequently extends over an area of nearly 2,800 geographical miles. The vegetation of the Asiatic Steppes, which are sometimes hilly and interspersed with pine forests, is in its groupings far more varied than that of the Llanos and the Pampas of Caracas and Buenos Ayres. The more beautiful portions of the plains, inhabited by Asiatic pastoral tribes, are adorned with lowly shrubs of luxuriant white-blossomed Rosaceæ, Crown Imperials (Fritillariæ), Cypripedeæ, and Tulips. As the torrid zone is in general distinguished by a tendency in the vegetable forms to become arborescent, so we also find, that some of the Asiatic Steppes of the temperate zone are characterized by the remarkable height to which flowering plants attain; as, for instance, Saussureæ, and other Synanthereæ; all siliquose plants, and particularly numerous species of Astragalus. On crossing the trackless portions of the herb-covered Steppes in the low carriages of the Tartars, it is necessary to stand upright in order to ascertain the direction to be pursued through the copse-like and closely crowded plants that bend under the wheels. Some of these Steppes are covered with grass; others with succulent, evergreen, articulated alkaline plants; while many are radiant with the effulgence of lichen-like tufts of salt, scattered irregularly over the clayey soil like newly fallen snow.
These Mongolian and Tartar Steppes, which are intersected by numerous mountain chains, separate the ancient and long-civilized races of Thibet and Hindostan from the rude nations of Northern Asia. They have also exerted a manifold influence on the changing destinies of mankind. They have inclined the current of population southward, impeded the intercourse of nations more than the Himalayas, or the Snowy Mountains of Sirinagur and Gorka, and placed permanent limits to the progress of civilization and refinement in a northerly direction.
History cannot, however, regard the plains of Central Asia under the character of obstructive barriers alone. They have frequently proved the means of spreading misery and devastation over the face of the earth. Some of the pastoral tribes inhabiting this Steppe,—the Mongols, Getæ, Alani, and Usüni,—have convulsed the world. If in the course of earlier ages, the dawn of civilization spread like the vivifying light of the sun from east to west; so in subsequent ages and from the same quarter, have barbarism and rudeness threatened to overcloud Europe.
A tawny tribe of herdsmen[[11]] of Tukiuish i. e., Turkish origin, the Hiongnu, dwelt in tents of skins on the elevated Steppe of Gobi. A portion of this race had been driven southward towards the interior of Asia, after continuing for a long time formidable to the Chinese power. This shock, (dislodgement of the tribes) was communicated uninterruptedly as far as the ancient land of the Fins, near the sources of the Ural.[[D]] From thence poured forth bands of Huns, Avars, Chasars, and a numerous admixture of Asiatic races. Warlike bodies of Huns first appeared on the Volga, next in Pannonia, then on the Marne and the banks of the Po, laying waste those richly cultivated tracts, where, since the age of Antenor, man’s creative art had piled monument on monument. Thus swept a pestilential breath from the Mongolian deserts over the fair Cisalpine soil, stifling the tender, long-cherished blossoms of art!
From the Salt-steppes of Asia,—from the European Heaths,—smiling in summer with their scarlet, honey-yielding flowers,—and from the barren deserts of Africa, we return to the plains of South America, the picture of which I have already begun to sketch in rude outline.
But the interest yielded by the contemplation of such a picture must arise from a pure love of nature. No Oasis here reminds the traveller of former inhabitants, no hewn stone[[12]], no fruit-tree once cultivated and now growing wild, bears witness to the industry of past races. As if a stranger to the destinies of mankind, and bound to the present alone, this region of the earth presents a wild domain to the free manifestation of animal and vegetable life.
The Steppe extends from the littoral chain of Caracas to the forests of Guiana, and from the snow-covered mountains of Merida, on whose declivity lies the Natron lake of Urao,—the object of the religious superstition of the natives,—to the vast delta formed by the mouth of the Orinoco. To the south-west it stretches like an arm of the sea[[13]], beyond the banks of the Meta and of the Vichada, to the unexplored sources of the Guaviare, and to the solitary mountain group to which the vivid imagination of the Spanish warriors gave the name of Paramo de la Suma Paz, as though it were the beautiful seat of eternal repose.
This Steppe incloses an area of 256,000 square miles. Owing to inaccurate geographical data, it has often been described as extending in equal breadth to the Straits of Magellan, unmindful that it is intersected by the wooded plain of the Amazon, which is bounded to the north by the grassy Steppes of the Apure, and to the south by those of the Rio de la Plata. The Andes of Cochabamba and the Brazilian mountains approximate each other by means of separate transverse spurs, projecting between the province of Chiquitos and the isthmus of Villabella[[14]]. A narrow plain unites the Hylæa of the Amazon with the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The area of the latter is three times larger than that of the Llanos of Venezuela; indeed so vast in extent, that it is bounded on the north by palms, while its southern extremity is almost covered with perpetual ice. The Tuyu, which resembles the Cassowary, (Struthio Rhea,) is peculiar to these Pampas, as are also those herds of wild dogs[[15]], which dwell in social community in subterranean caverns, and often ferociously attack man, for whose defence their progenitors fought.
Like the greater part of the desert of Sahara[[16]], the Llanos, the most northern plains of South America, lie within the torrid zone. Twice in every year they change their whole aspect, during one half of it appearing waste and barren like the Lybian desert; during the other, covered with verdure, like many of the elevated Steppes of Central Asia[[17]].
The attempt to compare the natural characteristics of remote regions, and to pourtray the results of this comparison in brief outline, though a gratifying, is a somewhat difficult branch of physical geography.
A number of causes, many of them still but little understood[[18]], diminish the dryness and heat of the New World. Among these are: the narrowness of this extensively indented continent in the northern part of the tropics, where the fluid basis on which the atmosphere rests, occasions the ascent of a less warm current of air; its wide extension towards both the icy poles; a broad ocean swept by cool tropical winds; the flatness of the eastern shores; currents of cold sea-water from the antarctic region, which, at first following a direction from south-west to north-east, strike the coast of Chili below the parallel of 35° south lat., and advance as far north on the coasts of Peru as Cape Pariña, where they suddenly diverge towards the west; the numerous mountains abounding in springs, whose snow-crowned summits soar above the strata of clouds, and cause the descent of currents of air down their declivities; the abundance of rivers of enormous breadth, which after many windings invariably seek the most distant coast; Steppes, devoid of sand, and therefore less readily acquiring heat; impenetrable forests, which, protecting the earth from the sun’s rays, or radiating heat from the surface of their leaves, cover the richly-watered plains of the Equator, and exhale into the interior of the country, most remote from mountains and the Ocean, prodigious quantities of moisture, partly absorbed and partly generated—all these causes produce in the flat portions of America a climate which presents a most striking contrast in point of humidity and coolness with that of Africa. On these alone depend the luxuriant and exuberant vegetation and that richness of foliage which are so peculiarly characteristic of the New Continent.
If, therefore, the atmosphere on one side of our planet be more humid than on the other, a consideration of the actual condition of things will be sufficient to solve the problem of this inequality. The natural philosopher need not shroud the explanation of such phenomena in the garb of geological myths. It is not necessary to assume that the destructive conflict of the elements raged at different epochs in the eastern and western hemispheres, during the early condition of our planet; or that America emerged subsequently to the other quarters of the world from the chaotic covering of waters, as a swampy island, the abode of crocodiles and serpents[[19]].
South America presents indeed a remarkable similarity to the south-western peninsula of the old continent, in the form of its outlines and the direction of its coast-line. But the internal structure of the soil, and its relative position with respect to the contiguous masses of land, occasion in Africa that remarkable aridity which over a vast area checks the development of organic life. Four-fifths of South America lie beyond the Equator, and therefore in a region which, on account of its abundant waters, as well as from many other causes, is cooler and moister than our northern hemisphere[[20]]. To this, nevertheless, the most considerable portion of Africa belongs.
The extent from east to west of the South American Steppes or Llanos, is only one third that of the African Desert. The former are refreshed by the tropical sea wind, while the latter, situated in the same parallel of latitude as Arabia and Southern Persia, are visited by currents of air which have passed over heat-radiating continents. The venerable father of history, Herodotus, so long insufficiently appreciated, has in the true spirit of a comprehensive observer of nature, described all the deserts of Northern Africa, Yemen, Kerman, and Mekran (the Gedrosia of the Greeks), as far even as Mooltan in Western India, as one sole connected sea of sand[[21]].
To the action of hot land winds, may be associated in Africa, as far as we know, a deficiency of large rivers, of forests that generate cold by exhaling aqueous vapour, and of lofty mountains. The only spot covered with perpetual snow is the western portion of Mount Atlas[[22]], whose narrow ridge, seen laterally, appeared to the ancient navigators when coasting the shore, as one solitary and aërial pillar of heaven. This mountain range extends eastward to Dakul, where the famed Carthage, once mistress of the seas, lies in crumbling ruins. This range forms a far extended coast-line or Gætulian rampart, which repels the cool north winds and with them the vapours rising from the Mediterranean.
The Mountains of the Moon, Djebel-al-Komr[[23]], fabulously represented as forming a mountainous parallel between the elevated plain of Habesch—an African Quito—and the sources of the Senegal, were supposed to rise above the lower sea line. Even the Cordilleras of Lupata, which skirt the eastern coast of Mozambique and Monomotapa, in the same manner as the Andes bound the western shores of Peru, are covered with eternal snow in the gold districts of Machinga and Mocanga. But these mountains, abundantly watered, are situated at a considerable distance from the vast desert which extends from the southern declivity of the chain of Atlas to the Niger, whose waters flow in an easterly direction.
Possibly, these combined causes of aridity and heat would have proved insufficient to convert such large portions of the African plains into a dreary waste, had not some convulsion of nature—as for instance the irruption of the ocean—on some occasion deprived these flat regions of their nutrient soil, as well as of the vegetation which it supported. The epoch when this occurred, and the nature of the forces which determined the irruption, are alike shrouded in the obscurity of the past. Perhaps it may have been the result of the great rotatory current[[24]], which drives the warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico over the bank of Newfoundland to the old continent, and by which the cocoa-nut of the West Indies and other tropical fruits have been borne to the shores of Ireland and Norway. One branch of this oceanic current, after it leaves the Azores, has still, at the present time, a south-easterly course, striking the low range of the sandy coasts of Africa with a force that is frequently fraught with danger to the mariner. All sea-coasts—but I refer here more particularly to the Peruvian shore between Amotape and Coquimbo—afford evidence of the hundreds, or even thousands of years, which must pass before the moving sand can yield a firm basis for the roots of herbaceous plants, in those hot and rainless regions where neither Lecideæ nor other lichens can grow[[25]].
These considerations suffice to explain why, notwithstanding their external similarity of form, the continents of Africa and South America present the most widely different climatic relations and characters of vegetation. Although the South American Steppe is covered with a thin crust of fruitful earth, is periodically refreshed by rains, and adorned with luxuriant herbage, its attractions were not sufficient to induce the neighbouring nations to exchange the beautiful mountain valleys of Caracas, the sea-girt districts, and the richly watered plains of the Orinoco, for this treeless and springless desert. Hence on the arrival of the first European and African settlers, the Steppe was found to be almost without inhabitants.
The Llanos are, it is true, adapted for the breeding of cattle, but the primitive inhabitants of the new continent were almost wholly unacquainted with the management of animals yielding milk[[26]]. Scarcely one of the American tribes knew how to avail themselves of the advantages which nature, in this respect, had placed before them. The American aborigines, who, from 65° north lat. to 55° south lat., constitute (with the exception, perhaps, of the Esquimaux,) but one sole race, passed directly from a hunting to an agricultural life without going through the intermediate stage of a pastoral life. Two species of indigenous homed cattle (the Buffalo and the Musk Ox) graze on the pasture lands of Western Canada and Quivira, as well as in the neighbourhood of the colossal ruins of the Aztek fortress, which rises like some American Palmyra on the desert solitudes of the river Gila. A long-horned Mouflon, resembling the so-called progenitor of the sheep, roams over the parched and barren limestone rocks of California; while the camel-like Vicunas, Huanacos, Alpacas, and Llamas, are natives of the southern peninsula. But of these useful animals the two first only (viz. the Buffalo and the Musk Ox) have preserved their natural freedom for thousands of years. The use of milk and cheese, like the possession and culture of farinaceous grasses, is a distinctive characteristic of the nations of the old world[[27]].
If some few tribes have passed through Northern Asia to the western coast of America, and preferring to keep within a temperate climate, have followed the course of the ridges of the Andes southward[[28]], such migrations must have been made by routes on which the settlers were unable to transport either flocks or grain. The question here arises, whether on the downfall of the long-declining empire of the Hiongnu, the consequent migration of this powerful race may not have been the means of drawing from the north-east of China and Korea, bands of settlers, by whom Asiatic civilisation was transported to the new continent? If the primitive colonists had been natives of those Steppes in which agriculture was unknown, this bold hypothesis (which as yet is but little warranted by etymological comparisons) would at all events explain the remarkable absence of the Cereals in America. Perhaps contrary winds may have driven to the shores of New California one of those Asiatic Priest-colonies who were instigated by their mystic dreameries to undertake distant voyages, and of which the history of the peopling of Japan, at the time of the Thsinschihuang-ti, affords a memorable instance.[[29]]
If a pastoral life—that beneficent intermediate stage which binds nomadic bands of hunters to fruitful pasture lands, and at the same time promotes agriculture—was unknown to the primitive races of America, it is to the very ignorance of such a mode of life that we must attribute the scantiness of population in the South American Steppes. But this circumstance allowed freer scope for the forces of nature to develop themselves in the most varied forms of animal life; a freedom only circumscribed by themselves, like vegetable life in the forests of the Orinoco, where the Hymenæa and the giant laurel, exempt from the ravages of man, are only in danger of a too luxuriant embrace of the plants which surround them.
Agoutis, small spotted antelopes, the shielded Armadillo, which, rat-like, terrifies the hare in its subterranean retreat; herds of slothful Chiguires, beautifully striped Viverræ, whose pestilential odour infects the air; the great maneless Lion; the variegated Jaguar (commonly known as the tiger), whose strength enables it to drag to the summit of a hill the body of the young bull it has slain—these, and many other forms of animal life[[30]] roam over the treeless plain.
This region, which may be regarded as peculiarly the habitation of wild animals, would not have been chosen as a place of settlement by nomadic hordes, who like the Indo-Asiatics generally prefer a vegetable diet, had it not possessed some few fan-palms (Mauritia) scattered here and there. The beneficent qualities of this tree of life have been universally celebrated.[[31]] Upon this alone subsist the unsubdued tribe of the Guaranes, at the mouth of the Orinoco northward of the Sierra de Imataca. When they increased in numbers and became over-crowded, it is said that, besides the huts which they built on horizontal platforms supported by the stumps of felled palm-trees, they also ingeniously suspended from stem to stem spreading mats or hammocks woven of the leaf-stalk of the Mauritia, which enabled them, during the rainy season, when the Delta was overflowed, to live in trees in the manner of apes. These pendent huts were partly covered with clay. The women kindled the fire necessary for their culinary occupations on the humid flooring. As the traveller passed by night along the river, his attention was attracted by a long line of flame suspended high in the air, and apparently unconnected with the earth. The Guaranes owe the preservation of their physical, and perhaps even of their moral independence, to the loose marshy soil, over which they move with fleet and buoyant foot, and to their lofty sylvan domiciles; a sanctuary whither religious enthusiasm would hardly lead an American Stylite.[[32]]
The Mauritia not only affords a secure habitation, but likewise yields numerous articles of food. Before the tender spathe unfolds its blossoms on the male palm, and only at that peculiar period of vegetable metamorphosis, the medullary portion of the trunk is found to contain a sago-like meal, which like that of the Jatropha root, is dried in thin breadlike slices. The sap of the tree when fermented constitutes the sweet inebriating palm-wine of the Guaranes. The narrow-scaled fruit, which resembles reddish pine-cones, yields, like the banana and almost all tropical fruits, different articles of food, according to the periods at which it is gathered, whether its saccharine properties are fully matured, or whether it is still in a farinaceous condition. Thus in the lowest grades of man’s development, we find the existence of an entire race dependent upon almost a single tree; like certain insects which are confined to particular portions of a flower.
Since the discovery of the new continent, its plains (Llanos) have become habitable to man. Here and there towns[[33]] have sprung up on the shores of the Steppe-rivers, built to facilitate the intercourse between the coasts and Guiana (the Orinoco district). Everywhere throughout these vast districts the inhabitants have begun to rear cattle. At distances of a day’s journey from each other, we see detached huts, woven together with reeds and thongs, and covered with ox-hides. Innumerable herds of oxen, horses, and mules (estimated at the peaceful period of my travels at a million and a half) roam over the Steppe in a state of wildness. The prodigious increase of these animals of the old world is the more remarkable, from the numerous perils with which, in these regions, they have to contend.
When, beneath the vertical rays of the bright and cloudless sun of the tropics, the parched sward crumbles into dust, then the indurated soil cracks and bursts as if rent asunder by some mighty earthquake. And if, at such a time, two opposite currents of air, by conflict moving in rapid gyrations, come in contact with the earth, a singular spectacle presents itself. Like funnel-shaped clouds,[[34]] their apexes touching the earth, the sands rise in vapoury form through the rarefied air in the electrically-charged centre of the whirling current, sweeping on like the rushing water-spout, which strikes such terror into the heart of the mariner. A dim and sallow light gleams from the lowering sky over the dreary plain. The horizon suddenly contracts, and the heart of the traveller sinks with dismay as the wide Steppe seems to close upon him on all sides. The hot and dusty earth forms a cloudy veil which shrouds the heavens from view, and increases the stifling oppression of the atmosphere[[35]]; while the east wind, when it blows over the long-heated soil, instead of cooling, adds to the burning glow.
Gradually, too, the pools of water, which had been protected from evaporation by the now seared foliage of the fan-palm, disappear. As in the icy north animals become torpid from cold, so here the crocodile and the boa-constrictor lie wrapt in unbroken sleep, deeply buried in the dried soil. Everywhere the drought announces death, yet everywhere the thirsting wanderer is deluded by the phantom of a moving, undulating, watery surface, created by the deceptive play of the reflected rays of light (the mirage[[36]]). A narrow stratum separates the ground from the distant palm-trees, which seem to hover aloft, owing to the contact of currents of air having different degrees of heat and therefore of density[[E]]. Shrouded in dark clouds of dust, and tortured by hunger and burning thirst, oxen and horses scour the plain, the one bellowing dismally, the other with outstretched necks snuffing the wind, in the endeavour to detect, by the moisture in the air, the vicinity of some pool of water not yet wholly evaporated.
The mule, more cautious and cunning, adopts another method of allaying his thirst. There is a globular and articulated plant, the Melocactus[[37]], which encloses under its prickly integument an aqueous pulp. After carefully striking away the prickles with his forefeet, the mule cautiously ventures to apply his lips to imbibe the cooling thistle juice. But the draught from this living vegetable spring is not always unattended by danger, and these animals are often observed to have been lamed by the puncture of the cactus thorn.
Even if the burning heat of day be succeeded by the cool freshness of the night, here always of equal length, the wearied ox and horse enjoy no repose. Huge bats now attack the animals during sleep, and vampyre-like suck their blood;[[F]] or, fastening on their backs, raise festering wounds, in which mosquitoes, hippobosces, and a host of other stinging insects, burrow and nestle. Such is the miserable existence of these poor animals when the heat of the sun has absorbed the waters from the surface of the earth.
When, after a long drought, the genial season of rain arrives, the scene suddenly changes[[38]]. The deep azure of the hitherto cloudless sky assumes a lighter hue. Scarcely can the dark space in the constellation of the Southern Cross be distinguished at night. The mild phosphorescence of the Magellanic clouds fades away. Even the vertical stars of the constellations Aquila and Ophiuchus shine with a flickering and less planetary light. Like some distant mountain, a single cloud is seen rising perpendicularly on the southern horizon. Misty vapours collect and gradually overspread the heavens, while distant thunder proclaims the approach of the vivifying rain.
Scarcely is the surface of the earth moistened before the teeming Steppe becomes covered with Kyllingiæ, with the many-panicled Paspalum, and a variety of grasses. Excited by the power of light, the herbaceous Mimosa unfolds its dormant, drooping leaves, hailing, as it were, the rising sun in chorus with the matin song of the birds and the opening flowers of aquatics. Horses and oxen, buoyant with life and enjoyment, roam over and crop the plains. The luxuriant grass hides the beautifully spotted Jaguar, who, lurking in safe concealment, and carefully measuring the extent of the leap, darts, like the Asiatic tiger, with a cat-like bound on his passing prey.
At times, according to the account of the natives, the humid clay on the banks of the morasses[[39]], is seen to rise slowly in broad flakes. Accompanied by a violent noise, as on the eruption of a small mud-volcano, the upheaved earth is hurled high into the air. Those who are familiar with the phenomenon fly from it; for a colossal water-snake or a mailed and scaly crocodile, awakened from its trance by the first fall of rain, is about to burst from his tomb.
When the rivers bounding the plain to the south, as the Arauca, the Apure, and the Payara, gradually overflow their banks, nature compels those creatures to live as amphibious animals, which, during the first half of the year, were perishing with thirst on the waterless and dusty plain. A part of the steppe now presents the appearance of a vast inland sea[[40]]. The mares retreat with their foals to the higher banks, which project, like islands, above the spreading waters. Day by day the dry surface diminishes in extent. The cattle, crowded together, and deprived of pasturage, swim for hours about the inundated plain, seeking a scanty nourishment from the flowering panicles of the grasses which rise above the lurid and bubbling waters. Many foals are drowned, many are seized by crocodiles, crushed by their serrated tails, and devoured. Horses and oxen may not unfrequently be seen which have escaped from the fury of this blood-thirsty and gigantic lizard, bearing on their legs the marks of its pointed teeth.
This spectacle involuntarily reminds the contemplative observer of the adaptability granted by an all-provident nature to certain animals and plants. Like the farinaceous fruits of Ceres, the ox and horse have followed man over the whole surface of the earth—from the Ganges to the Rio de la Plata, and from the sea-coast of Africa to the mountainous plain of Antisana, which lies higher than the Peak of Teneriffe[[41]]. In the one region the northern birch, in the other the date-palm, protects the wearied ox from the noonday sun. The same species of animal which contends in eastern Europe with bears and wolves, is exposed, in a different latitude, to the attacks of tigers and crocodiles!
The crocodile and the jaguar are not, however, the only enemies that threaten the South American horse; for even among the fishes it has a dangerous foe. The marshy waters of Bera and Rastro[[42]] are filled with innumerable electric eels, who can at pleasure discharge from every part of their slimy, yellow-speckled bodies a deadening shock. This species of gymnotus is about five or six feet in length. It is powerful enough to kill the largest animals when it discharges its nervous organs at one shock in a favourable direction. It was once found necessary to change the line of road from Uritucu across the Steppe, owing to the number of horses which, in fording a certain rivulet, annually fell a sacrifice to these gymnoti, which had accumulated there in great numbers. All other species of fish shun the vicinity of these formidable creatures. Even the angler, when fishing from the high bank, is in dread lest an electric shock should be conveyed to him along the moistened line. Thus, in these regions, the electric fire breaks forth from the lowest depths of the waters.
The mode of capturing the gymnotus affords a picturesque spectacle. A number of mules and horses are driven into a swamp, which is closely surrounded by Indians, until the unusual noise excites the daring fish to venture on an attack. Serpent-like they are seen swimming along the surface of the water, striving cunningly to glide under the bellies of the horses. By the force of their invisible blows numbers of the poor animals are suddenly prostrated; others, snorting and panting, their manes erect, their eyes wildly flashing with terror, rush madly from the raging storm; but the Indians, armed with long bamboo staves, drive them back into the midst of the pool.
By degrees the fury of this unequal contest begins to slacken. Like clouds that have discharged their electricity, the wearied eels disperse. They require long rest and nourishing food to repair the galvanic force which they have so lavishly expended. Their shocks gradually become weaker and weaker. Terrified by the noise of the trampling horses, they timidly approach the brink of the morass, where they are wounded by harpoons, and drawn on shore by non-conducting poles of dry wood.
Such is the remarkable contest between horses and fish. That which constitutes the invisible but living weapon of these inhabitants of the water—that, which awakened by the contact of moist and dissimilar particles[[43]], circulates through all the organs of animals and plants—that which flashing amid the roar of thunder illuminates the wide canopy of heaven—which binds iron to iron, and directs the silent recurring course of the magnetic needle—all, like the varied hues of the refracted ray of light, flow from one common source, and all blend together into one eternal all-pervading power.
I might here close my bold attempt of delineating the natural picture of the Steppe; but, as on the ocean, fancy delights in dwelling on the recollections of distant shores, so will we, ere the vast plain vanishes from our view, cast a rapid glance over the regions by which the Steppe is bounded.
The northern desert of Africa separates two races of men which originally belonged to the same portion of the globe, and whose inextinguishable feuds appear as old as the myth of Osiris and Typhon[[44]]. To the north of Mount Atlas there dwells a race characterised by long and straight hair, a sallow complexion, and Caucasian features; while to the south of Senegal, in the direction of Soudan, we find hordes of Negroes occupying various grades in the scale of civilization. In Central Asia the Mongolian Steppe divides Siberian barbarism from the ancient civilization of the peninsula of Hindostan.
In like manner, the South American Steppes are the boundaries of a European semi-civilization[[45]]. To the north, between the mountain chain of Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea, lie, crowded together, industrial cities, clean and neat villages, and carefully tilled fields. Even a taste for arts, scientific culture, and a noble love of civil freedom, have long since been awakened within these regions.
To the south, a drear and savage wilderness bounds the Steppe. Forests, the growth of thousands of years, in one impenetrable thicket, overspread the marshy region between the rivers Orinoco and Amazon. Huge masses of lead-coloured granite[[46]] contract the beds of the foaming rivers. Mountains and forests re-echo with the thunder of rushing waters, the roar of the tiger-like jaguar, and the dull rain-foreboding howl of the bearded ape[[47]].
Where the shallower parts of the river disclose a sandbank, the crocodile may be seen, with open jaws, and motionless as a rock, its uncouth body often covered with birds[[48]]; while the chequered boa-constrictor, its tail lashed round the trunk of a tree, lies coiled in ambush near the bank, ready to dart with certain aim on its prey. Rapidly uncoiling, it stretches forth its body to seize the young bull, or some feebler prey, as it fords the stream, and moistening its victim with a viscid secretion, laboriously forces it down its dilating throat[[49]].
In this grand and wild condition of nature dwell numerous races of men. Separated by a remarkable diversity of languages, some are nomadic, unacquainted with agriculture, and living on ants, gums, and earth, mere outcasts of humanity[[50]], such as the Ottomaks and Jarures: others, for instance the Maquiritares and Macos, have settled habitations, live on fruits cultivated by themselves, are intelligent, and of gentler manners. Extensive tracts between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo are inhabited solely by the Tapir and social apes; not by man. Figures graven on the rocks[[51]] attest that even these deserts were once the seat of a higher civilization. They bear testimony, as do also the unequally developed and varying languages (which are amongst the oldest and most imperishable of the historical records of man), to the changing destinies of nations.
While on the Steppe tigers and crocodiles contend with horses and cattle, so on the forest borders and in the wilds of Guiana the hand of man is ever raised against his fellow man. With revolting eagerness, some tribes drink the flowing blood of their foes, whilst others, seemingly unarmed, yet prepared for murder, deal certain death with a poisoned thumb-nail[[52]]. The feebler tribes, when they tread the sandy shores, carefully efface with their hands the traces of their trembling steps.
Thus does man, everywhere alike, on the lowest scale of brutish debasement, and in the false glitter of his higher culture, perpetually create for himself a life of care. And thus, too, the traveller, wandering over the wide world by sea and land, and the historian who searches the records of bygone ages, are everywhere met by the unvarying and melancholy spectacle of man opposed to man.
He, therefore, who amid the discordant strife of nations, would seek intellectual repose, turns with delight to contemplate the silent life of plants, and to study the hidden forces of nature in her sacred sanctuaries; or yielding to that inherent impulse, which for thousands of years has glowed in the breast of man, directs his mind, by a mysterious presentiment of his destiny, towards the celestial orbs, which, in undisturbed harmony, pursue their ancient and eternal course.[[G]]