I cannot tell: but I think, probably after. But this is certain, that there must have been a time when figs, and bamboos, and palms, and sarsaparillas, and many other sorts of plants could get from Africa to America, or the other way, and indeed almost round the world. About the south of France and Italy you will see one beautiful sarsaparilla, with hooked prickles, zigzagging and twining about over rocks and ruins, trunks and stems: and when you do, if you have understanding, it will seem as strange to you as it did to me to remember that the home of the sarsaparillas is not in Europe, but in the forests of Brazil, and the River Plate.
Oh, I have heard about their growing there, and staining the rivers brown, and making them good medicine to drink: but I never thought there were any in Europe.
There are only one or two, and how they got there is a marvel indeed. But now—If there was not dry land between Africa and South America, how did the cats get into America? For they cannot swim.
Cats? People might have brought them over.
Jaguars and Pumas, which you read of in Captain Mayne Reid’s books, are cats, and so are the Ocelots or tiger cats.
Oh, I saw them at the Zoological Gardens.
But no one would bring them over, I should think, except to put them in the Zoo.
Not unless they were very foolish.
And much stronger and cleverer than the savages of South America. No, those jaguars and pumus have been in America for ages: and there are those who will tell you—and I think they have some reason on their side—that the jaguar, with his round patches of spots, was once very much the same as the African and Indian leopard, who can climb trees well. So when he got into the tropic forests of America, he took to the trees, and lived among the branches, feeding on sloths and monkeys, and never coming to the ground for weeks, till he grew fatter and stronger and far more terrible than his forefathers. And they will tell you, too, that the puma was, perhaps—I only say perhaps—something like the lion, who (you know) has no spots. But when he got into the forests, he found very little food under the trees, only a very few deer; and so he was starved, and dwindled down to the poor little sheep-stealing rogue he is now, of whom nobody is afraid.
Oh, yes! I remember now A. said he and his men killed six in one day. But do you think it is all true about the pumas and jaguars?