When a Botocudo dies he is quickly buried in or near his hut, and then the place is forsaken. On the first day the tribe shows its grief by a wild howling, but on the second it pursues its usual occupations. No food, or weapon, or ornament is interred with the corpse, but for some time a fire is kindled on each side of the grave, to scare away the evil spirit ‘Tanchon,’ who would otherwise rob it of its contents. From fear of this imaginary being the fierce Botocudo, who trembles at nothing that lives, is afraid to sleep alone in the forest, and anxiously seeks before night the society of his comrades.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MEXICAN PLATEAUS, AND THE SLOPES OF SIKKIM.
Geological Formation of Mexico—The Tierra Caliente—The Tierra Templada—The Tierra Fria.
The Sylvan Wonders of Sikkim—Changes of the Forest on ascending—The Torrid Zone of Vegetation—The Temperate Zone The Coniferous Belt—Limits of Arboreal Vegetation—Animal Life.
The prodigious height attained in the torrid zone, not only by single mountains, but by vast tracts of land, and the diminution of temperature which is the necessary consequence of their elevation above the level of the sea, enable the inhabitants of many tropical countries, without leaving their native land, to view the vegetable forms of every zone, and to pluck nearly every fruit that is found between the equator and the arctic circle. In Asia, Africa, and America, in the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and in the Hawaiian group, where the Mauna Loa towers to the height of Mont Blanc, and girdles his foot with palms, while snow rests for a great part of the year upon his summit, we find numerous examples of a rapid transition from the torrid to the temperate or frigid zone, often within the range of a single day’s journey.
It would far exceed my limits were I to attempt to follow all these gradations of climate throughout the wide extent of the tropics; but a short description of the Mexican plateaus, and of the slopes of Sikkim, which I have selected as remarkable instances of the wonderful change of vegetation resulting from the progressive elevation of the land, will, I hope, prove not uninteresting to the reader.
After traversing South America and the Isthmus of Darien, the giant chain of the Andes spreads out, as it enters Mexico, into a vast sheet of table-land, which maintains an elevation of from 6,000 to 9,000 feet for the distance of 200 leagues, until it gradually declines in the higher latitudes of the north, or descends in successive stages to the sea-board of the Atlantic. To this remarkable geological formation the land, though warmed during a part of the year by the rays of a vertical sun, owes that astonishing variety of climate and productions which would make it the envy of the earth, if peopled by a race that knew better how to utilize the gifts of Nature.
All along the Mexican Gulf stretches a broad zone of lowlands, called the tierra caliente, or hot region, which has the usual high temperature of the tropics. Parched and sandy plains, dotted with mimosas and prickly opuntias, are intermingled with savannahs, and woodlands of exuberant fertility.
The branches of the stately forest trees are festooned with clustering vines of the dark purple grape, convolvuli, and other flowering parasites of the most brilliant dyes. The undergrowth of prickly aloe, matted with wild rose and honeysuckle, makes in many places an almost impervious thicket. In this wilderness of sweet-smelling buds and blossoms flutter birds of the parrot tribe, and clouds of butterflies, whose colour, nowhere so gorgeous as here, rival those of the vegetable world; while birds of exquisite song,—the scarlet cardinal, and the mocking-bird that comprehends in his own notes the whole music of a forest,—fill the air with melody.
