The different cities vary in their style of architecture almost as much as as they do from those of Assyria or Egypt; but when we come to examine the sculptures, we may be able to trace a much stronger resemblance. The statues of the woman and child, the cruciform ornaments, the serpents and gigantic heads of apes, as well as those of the typical heads of savage animals surmounting the heads of the statues, are all to be found on the banks of the Nile, and were probably derived from the same central source. While the tribes who proceeded westward peopled Egypt, others, among whom a similar system of idolatry prevailed, may have migrated towards the east, and finally made their way across the Pacific to the shores of America.
Part 3—Chapter I.
South America.
Scenes of Ancient Days.
Time was when a rocky island, against which dashed the surges of the Atlantic on the east and of the Pacific on the west, rose in solitude from the wide-extending ocean where now the highlands of Guiana appear above the surrounding plains. Not another spot of dry land was to be found—so geologists affirm—between that point and the hills of Canada on the north, or for thousands of miles southward towards the pole, over that portion of the globe’s surface now occupied by the vast continent of America. Then, by slow degrees, the mountains of Brazil, with their mines of glittering gems, appeared above the surface of the waters, amid which huge reptile-like whales, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and cetiosaurs buffeted the billows, and vast saurians, lizards, and alligators, rivalling the elephant in bulk, and twice his length—such as the megalosaurus, the iguanodon, and teleosaurus—crawled along the slimy shores; while giant birds, with wide-spreading feet, stalked across the newly-formed plains, or flew shrieking, with wings of prodigious expanse skimming the glittering sea,—the lords paramount of this lower world. At length the earth, convulsed by mighty throes in the far-away west from north to south, began to cast up a long line of rocky heights, now to sink, now to rise once more above the surface,—till by degrees Pelion piled on Ossa—the vast chain of the Cordilleras rose towards the skies, forming a mighty barrier between the two great oceans.
On the eastern side, the waves of the Atlantic, beating continuously, brought down into the shallow sea the débris from the newly-formed rocks, gradually filling up the spaces between the already created islands; and the streams, running down from the mountain heights, formed the plan of the three great river-systems of the continent—the Orinoco in the north, the Amazon in the centre, and La Plata in the south.
The Almighty Creator appears always to have worked by mechanical means in preparing the globe for the habitation of man. There came then a glacial period. Ponderous blocks of ice, resting not only on the mountainsides, but extending over the plains, and acting the part of mighty mill-stones, ground into impalpable powder the pieces of detached rock of which the lower surface was composed, till a soil was formed capable of producing a wondrous and varied vegetation to clothe that Amazonian valley.
(The continent, Professor Agassiz supposes, extended at that time between 200 and 300 miles further east than it does at present; but the waters from the rapidly-melting mass of ice, forcing a passage towards the ocean, carried a large portion away, leaving only certain tracts which now appear in the form of islands at the mouths of the Amazon and Orinoco.)