Free-thinking of the Inca Huayna Capac. Philosophical doubts on the official worship of the sun, and obstacles to the diffusion of knowledge among the lower and poorer classes of people, according to the testimony of Padre Blas Valera—p. [431].
Raleigh’s project for the restoration of the Inca dynasty under English protection, which should be granted for an annual tribute of several hundred thousand pounds—p. [432].
Columbus’ earliest evidence of the existence of the Pacific. It was first seen on the 25th of September, 1513, by Vasco Nunez de Balboa, and first navigated by Alonso Martin de Don Benito—p. [432].
On the possibility of constructing an Oceanic canal through the isthmus of Panama (with fewer locks than the Caledonian Canal). Points, the exploration of which has been hitherto totally neglected—p. [435].
Determination of the longitude of Lima—p. [435].
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.