CHAPTER VII.
ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD:—HERBIVOROUS ANIMALS.
TO the prodigal Flora of the Tropics, which we shall soon see displaying in the virgin forests its exuberant fecundity, corresponds a Fauna no less rich, and marked by a singular variety.
This Fauna offers, especially in the Old World, an impressive character of power, strength, superior force—I had almost said, majesty. In truth, if we do calmly compare the mammals and the birds of tropical America with those which roam the wild plains of Africa, Hindostan, the Indo-Chinese peninsula, and the great islands of the Indian Ocean, we cannot but recognize the evident superiority of the latter. The anthropoid Ape, the enormous Pachyderms, Elephant, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Giraffe, and, among animals of the same order, the Antelopes, many of which attain the dimensions of the Horse, belong exclusively to the Eastern Hemisphere. The genus Camel, represented in Asia by the Bactrian Camel, in Africa by the Dromedary, is but weakly typified in South America by the Lama, the Vicuña, and the Alpaca, not inelegant in form, but of a markedly inferior stature. And what equality is there between the lordly Tiger of the rank Indian jungles, and the sleek, stealthy Jaguar of the American wilderness? Or who will venture to compare the so-called “Lion of America,” the Puma or Cougouar, with the regal quadruped which makes the hot Libyan wastes re-echo with his terrible roar?
Among the Birds, the Phenicoptera, with its disproportionate legs and neck, distributed over all the ancient continent below 40° of latitude, and the Ostrich, properly so called, are much superior in dimensions to their analogues on the other side of the Atlantic, the American Flamingo and the Nandou. So do the Eagles and Vultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa prevail in numbers and force over those of the New World. And the ancient continent can likewise claim as its own the gigantic Epiornis, the wonderful “Roc Bird” of the well-known Oriental legend, whose petrified eggs and some of whose fossil bones have been discovered in Madagascar. It is true, however, that the greatest of living Raptores, the Condor, inhabits exclusively the Cordillera of the Andes:—
“Stands solitary, stands immovable
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabashed,
In the cold light, above the dews of morn.”—(W. S. Landor.)
But the balance is re-established by the Erpetological and Entomological Fauna of the New World, which can oppose its huge Boas, its Caïmans and Pythons, to the Crocodiles and Gavials of Africa and Asia; its Crotali and Trigonocephali to the Najas of India, the Echidnas of the Cape, and the Cerastes of Egypt and the Sahara; while the Bull Frog of the United States and the Pipa of Guiana are only found on the banks of the vast lonesome swamps of the new continent. As far as the Desert World is concerned, in both hemispheres the legions are innumerable, and their energies commensurate to the greatness of the continual work of destruction and purification which they seem destined to accomplish in all tropical countries.
It is unnecessary to carry any further the parallel between the two hemispheres. We shall more clearly detect their analogies and differences by pursuing the study, already opened up in the Steppes and Seas of Sand, of the principal species proper to the various forms of the Desert, the different regions and divisions of the Savage World.
Yet I must confess that the difficulties of the study increase with the extent of the field we are called upon to explore. The Steppes and Wildernesses of Sand constitute, both in Africa and Asia, regions which are clearly defined, and the poverty both of their fauna and their flora fixes a definite limit to the researches of the naturalist. Such is not the case in the immense countries which now lie before us. Instead of sighing, like Alexander, for more worlds to conquer, the student of science is ever deploring the impossibility of exhausting even a single division of the grand work before him. “Art is long; life is short.” The most industrious among us can never rise to the full height of his glorious task; must always remain like a child on the shore of the ocean of truth, and be content with the few shells his nerveless hand contrives to gather. In the wide regions we are about to traverse we feel at every step the colossal character of the enterprise. Every instant their aspect changes; Nature never repeats herself; their products vary with the latitude, the climate, and the soil. To pass in review all the trees and plants and flowers which flourish there, all the animals and peoples which dwell among them, would be nothing less than to embrace in a vast encyclopædia the description and history of two organic kingdoms. But such is not the design of the present volume. I have not undertaken to give an exact picture of nature, which would task to the uttermost the powers of men of such diverse genius as Humboldt, Owen, Lyell, Darwin, Tyndall, Hooker, and Ruskin, but to sketch the bold outlines and more prominent features of the physiognomy of the Desert World, and not to reproduce its more minute details.
My embarrassment, then, arises less from the multitude and infinite variety of the objects we have to examine, than from the difficulty of harmonizing the study with the divisions of this work. How, in fact, can I establish a positive distinction between the animals of the Prairies or the Savannahs and those of the Forests, between those of the latter and the animals proper to the Mountains? For such a purpose it is needful that each of these forms of the Desert World should possess its peculiar fauna; which is true only within very narrow limits. In reality, most animals inhabit or frequent, according to circumstances, sometimes one district, sometimes another, without its being possible to assign with any amount of precision their habitual, or simply their occasional, abode.