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PURCHASED FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
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CANADA COUNCIL SPECIAL GRANT
FOR
HISTORY OF SCIENCE
‘alte ng see Ae ee
a 4, ASPECTS OF NATURE,
DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES ; |
WITH
Scientific Wlucidvations.
BY
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.
TRANSLATED BY MRS. SABINE.
IN TWO VOLUMES,
VOL. I.
LONDON: * PRINTED FOR
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
PATERNOSTER ROW; AND
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1849.
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AUTHOR’S PREFACE
TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
Ir is not without diffidence that I present to the public a series of papers which took their origin in the presence of natural scenes of grandeur or of beauty,—on the Ocean, in the forests of the Orinoco, in the Steppes of Venezuela, and in the mountain wildernesses of Peru and Mexico. Detached fragments were written down on thé spot and at the moment, and were afterwards moulded into a whole. The view of Nature on an enlarged scale, the display of the concurrent action of various forces or powers, and the renewal of the enjoyment which the immediate prospect of tropical scenery affords to sensitive minds, are the objects which I have proposed to myself. According to the design of my work, whilst each of the treatises of which it consists should form a whole complete in itself, one common tendency should pervade them all. Such an artistic and
VOL. I. b
Vill PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
literary treatment of subjects of natural history is liable to difficulties of composition, notwithstanding the aid which it derives from the power and flexibility of our noble language. The unbounded riches of Nature occasion an accumulation of separate images; and accumulation disturbs the repose and the unity of impression which should belong to the picture. Moreover, when addressing the feelings and imagination, a firm hand is needed to guard the style from degenerating into an undesirable species of poetic prose. But I need not here describe more fully dangers which I fear the following pages will shew I have not always
succeeded in avoiding.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding faults which I can more easily perceive than amend, I venture to hope that these descriptions of the varied Aspects which Nature assumes in distant lands, may impart to the reader a portion of that enjoyment which is derived from their immediate contem- plation by a mind susceptible of such impressions. As this enjoyment is enhanced by insight into the more hidden connection of the different powers and forces of nature, T have subjoined to each treatise scientific elucidations and ‘additions.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 1x
Throughout the entire work I have sought to indicate the unfailing influence of external nature on the feelings, the moral dispositions, and the destinies of man. To minds oppressed with the cares or the sorrows of life, the soothing influence of the contemplation of nature is peculiarly precious; and to such these pages are more especially dedicated. May they, “escaping from the stormy waves of life,” follow me in spirit with willing steps to the recesses of the primeval forests, over the boundless surface of the Steppe, and to the higher ridges of the Audes. To them
is addressed the poet’s voice, in the sentence of the
Chorus—
“ Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit ! Der Hauch der Griifte Steigt nicht hinauf in die reinen Liifte ; Die Welt ist vollkommen iiberall, Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual.”
ere ‘ ini
me ait ad by
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS. .
Tue twofold aim of the present work (a carefully prepared and executed attempt to enhance the enjoyment of Nature by animated description, and at the same time to increase in proportion to the state of knowledge at the time the reader’s insight into the harmonious and concurrent action of different powers and forces of Nature) was pointed out by me nearly half a century ago in the Preface to the First Edition. In so doing, I alluded to the various obstacles which oppose a successful treatment of the subject in the manner designed. The combination of a literary and of a purely scientific object,—the endeavour at once to interest and occupy the imagination, and to enrich the mind with new ideas by the augmentation of knowledge,—renders the due arrangement of the separate parts, and the desired unity of composition, difficult of attainment. Yet, notwithstanding these dis-
xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS.
advantages, the public have long regarded my imperfectly executed undertaking with friendly partiality.
The second edition of the “ Ansichten der Natur” was prepared by me in Paris in 1826; and at the same time two fresh treatises were added,—one an Hssay on the Structure -and mode of Action of Volcanoes in different regions of the earth; and the other on the “ Vital Power,” bearing the title “Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius.” During my long stay at Jena, Schiller, in the recollection of his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me on physiological subjects; and the considerations in which I was then engaged on the muscular and nervous fibres when excited by contact with chemically different substances, often gave a more specific and graver turn to our discourse. The “ Rhodian Genius” was written at this time: it appeared first in Schiller’s “ Horen,” @ periodical journal; and it was his partiality for this little work which encouraged me to allow it to be reprinted. My brother, in a letter forming part of a collection which has recently been given to the public (Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Briefe an eine Freundin, Th. ii. S. 39), touches tenderly on the subject of the memoir
in question, but adds at the same time a very just remark :
PREFACE TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS. xill
“The development of a physiological idea is the object of the entire treatise; men were fonder at that time than they would now be of such semi-poetic clothing of severe scientific truths.”
In my eightieth year, I am still enabled to enjoy the satisfaction of completing a third edition of my work, re- moulding it entirely afresh to meet the requirements of the present time. Almost all the scientific Elucidations or Annotations have been either enlarged or replaced by new and more comprehensive ones. I have hoped that these volumes might tend to inspire and cherish a love for the study of Nature, by bringing together in a small space the results of careful observation on the most varied subjects ; by showing the importance of exact numerical data, and the use to be made of them by well-considered arrangement and comparison ; and by opposing the dogmatic half-knowledge and arrogant scepticism which have long too much prevailed
in what are called the higher circles of society.
The expedition made by Ehrenberg, Gustav Rose, and myself, by the command of the Emperor of Russia, in 1829, to Northern Asia (in the Ural and Altai mountains, and on
xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS.
the shores of the Caspian Sea), falls between the period of publication of the second and third editions. This expedi- tion has contributed materially to the enlargement of my views in all that regards the form of the surface of the earth, the direction of mountain-chains, the connection of steppes and deserts with each other, and the geographical distribution of plants in relation to ascertained conditions of tempera- ture. The long subsisting want of any accurate knowledge on the subject of the great snow-covered mountain-chains which are situated between the Altai and the Himalaya (7. e. the Thian-schan and the Kuen-liin), and the ill-judged neglect of Chinese authorities, have thrown great obscurity around the geography of Central Asia, and have allowed imagination to be substituted for the results of observation in works which have obtained extensive circulation. In the course of the last few months the hypsometrical comparison of the culminating summits of the two continents has almost unexpectedly received important corrections and additions, of which I hasten to avail myself. (Vol. i. pp.57-58, and 92-93.) The determinations of the heights of two mountains in the eastern chain of the Andes of Bolivia, the Sorata and the Illimani, have been freed from the errors which had placed
those mountains above the Chimborazo, but without as yet
PREFACE TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS. XV
altogether restering to the latter with certainty its ancient pre-eminence among the snowy summits of the New World. In the Himalaya the recently executed trigonometrical measurement of the Kinchinjinga (28178 English feet) places it next in altitude to the Dhawalagiri, a new and more exact trigonometrical measurement of which has also been recently
made.
For the sake of uniformity with the two previous editions of the “ Ansichten der Natur,” I have given the degrees of temperature in the present work (unless where expressly stated otherwise) in degrees of Reaumur’s scale. The linear measures are the old French, in which the toise equals six Parisian feet. The miles are geographical, fifteen to a degree of the equator. The longitudes are reckoned from the
Observatory at Paris as a first meridian.
Berm, 1849.
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
In the translation the temperatures are given in degrees of Fahrenheit, retaining at the same time the original figures in Reaumur’s scale. In the same manner the measures are given in English feet, generally retaining at the same time the original statements in Parisian or French feet or toises, a desirable precaution where accuracy isimportant. The miles are given in geographical miles, 60 to a degree, but in this case the original figures have usually been omitted, the con- version being so simple as to render the introduction of error very improbable. In a very few instances “ English miles” appear without any farther epithet or explanation; these have been taken by the author from English sources, and
‘may probably signify statute miles. The longitudes from
Greenwich are substituted for those from Paris, retaining in
addition the original statement in particular cases.
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CONTENTS.
PAGE
AutHoR’s PREFACE TO THE First Epition . ; ; ; Vil AutTHoR’s PREFACE TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS . xi Note By THE TRANSLATOR J F 5 : y Qo ees STEPPES AND DESERTS ‘ 4 , ‘ é . ; 1 Annotations and Additions : St 2 : ; 27 CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO : Pbk, Sie PTS i. Bez Annotations and Additions , 2 : : «| "S58 Nocturnat Lire of ANIMALS IN THE PrimEvan Forest . 257 Annotations and Additions : : : ; cae | Hypsometric ADDENDA . E : ‘ : . {ay
*,* For General Summary of the Contents of the First Volume, see page 289.
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STEPPES AND DESERTS.
7
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ASPECTS OF NATURE
IN
DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES.
STEPPES AND DESERTS.
A wipEty extended and apparently interminable plain stretches from the southern base of the lofty granitic crest, which, in the youth of our planet, when the Caribbean gulf was formed, braved the invasion of the waters. On quitting the moun- tain valleys of Caraccas, and the island-studded lake of Tacarigua (') whose surface reflects the stems of plantains and bananas, and on leaving behind him meads adorned with the bright and tender green of the Tahitian sugar cane or the darker verdure of the Cacao groves, the traveller, looking southward, sees unroll before him Steppes receding until they vanish in the far horizon.
Fresh from the richest luxuriance of organic life, he treads at once the desolate margin of a treeless desert. Neither hill nor cliff rises, like an island in the ocean, to break the uniformity of the boundless plain; only here and there
VOL. I, B
> STEPPES AND DESERTS.
broken strata of limestone, several hundred square miles in extent, appear sensibly higher than the adjoining parts. _ “ Banks” (2) is the name given to them by the natives ; as if language instinctively recalled the more ancient condition of the globe, when those elevations were shoals, and the Steppes themselves were the bottom of a great Mediterranean sea.
Even at the present time nocturnal illusion still recalls these images of the past. When the rapidly rising and descending constellations illumine the margin of the plain, or when their trembling image is repeated in the lower stratum of undulating vapour, we seem to see before us a shoreless ocean. (3) Like the ocean, the Steppe fills the mind with the feeling of infinity; and thought, escaping from the visible impressions of space, rises to contemplations of a higher order. Yet the aspect of the cleat transparent mirror of the ocean, with its light, curling, gently foaming, sportive waves, cheers the heart like that of a friend; but the Steppe lies stretched before us dead and rigid, like the stony crust (*) of a desolated planet.
In every zone nature presents the phenomena of these great plains: in each they have a peculiar physiognomy, determined by diversity of soil, by climate, and by elevation above the level of the sea.
In northern Europe, the Heaths, which, covered with a single race of plants repelling all others, extend from the point of Jutland to the mouth of the Scheldt, may be re- garded as true Steppes,—but Steppes of small extent and hilly surface, if compared with the Llanos and Pampas of
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 3
South America, or even with the Prairies of the Missouri (5) and the Barrens of the Coppermine river, where range countless herds of the shaggy buffalo and musk ox.
A grander and severer aspect characterises the plains of the interior of Africa. Like the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, it is only in recent times that attempts have been made to explore them thoroughly. ‘They are parts of a sea & sand, which, stretching eastward, separates fruitful regions from each other, or encloses them like islands; as where the Desert, near the basaltic mountains of Harudsh, (°) surrounds the Oasis of Siwah rich in date trees, and in which the ruins of the temple of Ammon mark the venerable site of an ancient civilisation. Neither dew nor rain bathe these desolate plains, or develope on their glowing surface the germs of vegetable life; for heated columns of air, every where ascending, dissolve the vapours, and disperse each swiftly vanishing cloud. |
Where the Desert approaches the Atlantic Ocean, as be- tween the Wadi Nun and Cape Blanco, the moist sea air pours in to supply the void left by these upward currents. The mariner, steering towards the mouth of the Gambia through a sea covered with weed, when suddenly deserted by the east trade wind of the tropics, (7) infers the vicinity of the widely extended heat-radiating desert. Herds of ante- lopes and swift-footed ostriches roam through these vast regions; but, with the exception of the watered Oases or islands in the sea of sand, some groups of which have recently been discovered, and whose verdant shores are frequented by nomade Tibbos and Tuaricks, (8) the African
4, STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Desert must be regarded as uninhabitable by man. The more civilised nations who dwell on its borders only venture . to enter it periodically. By trading routes, which have remained unaltered for thousands of years, caravans traverse the long distance from Tafilet to Timbuctoo, and from Moorzouk to Bornou; adventurous undertakings, the possi- bility of which depends upon the existence of the camel
the “ ship of the desert,” (9) as it is called in the traditions language of the eastern world.
These African plains occupy an extent nearly three times as great as that of the neighbouring Mediterranean sea. They are situated partly within, and partly in the vicinity of the tropics; and on this situation their peculiar character depends. In the eastern part of the old continent, the same geognostic phenomenon occurs in the temperate zone. On the plateaux of central Asia, between the gold mountains or the Altai and the Kuen-lun, (!°) from the Chinese wall to beyond the Celestial mountains, and towards the sea of Aral, there extend, through a length of many thousand miles, the . most vast, if not the most elevated, Steppes on the surface of the globe. I have myself had the opportunity, fully thirty years after my South American journey, of visiting a portion of them ; namely, the Calmuck Kirghis Steppes be- tween the Don, the Volga, the Caspian, and the Chinese lake Dsaisang, being an extent of almost 2800 geographical miles.
These Asiatic Steppes, which are sometimes hilly and sometimes interrupted by pine forests, possess (dispersed over them in groups) a far more varied vegetation than that
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 5
of the Llanos and Pampas of Caraccas and Buenos Ayres. The finest part of these plains, which is inhabited by Asiatic pastoral tribes, is adorned with low bushes of luxuriant white-blossomed Rosacez, and with Fritillarias, Tulips, and Cypripedias.
As the torrid zone is characterised on the whole by a dis- position in all vegetation to become arborescent, so some of the Asiatic Steppes in the temperate zone are charac- terised by the great height attained by flowering herbaceous plants, Saussureas and other Synantherse, and Papilionacez especially a host of species of Astragalus. In traversing pathless portions of these Steppes, the traveller, seated in the low Tartar carriages, sees the thickly crowded plants bend beneath the wheels, but without rising up cannot look around him to see the direction in which he is moving. Some of the Asiatic Steppes are grassy plains; others are covered with succulent, evergreen, articulated soda plants: many glisten from a distance with flakes of exuded salt which cover the clayey soil, not unlike in appearance to fresh fallen snow. 7
These Mongolian and Tartarian Steppes, interrupted fre- guently by mountainous features, divide the very ancient civilisation of Thibet and Hindostan from the rude nations of Northern Asia. They have in various ways exercised an important influence on the changeful destinies of man. They have compressed the population towards the south, and have tended, more than the Himalaya, or than the snowy mountains of Srinagur and Ghorka, to impede the intercourse of nations, and to place permanent limits to the extension
6 STEPPES AND DESERTS,
of milder manners, and of artistic and intellectual cultivation in northern Asia. |
But, in the history of the past, it is not alone as an opposing barrier that we must regard the plains of Central Asia: more than once they have proved the source from whence devastation has spread over distant lands. The pastoral nations of these Steppes,—Moguls, Gete, Alani, and Usuni,—have shaken the world. As in the course of past ages, early intellectual culture has come like the cheering light of the sun from the Hast, so, at a later period, from the same direction barbaric rudeness has threatened to overspread and involve Europe in darkness. A brown pastoral race, (1!) of Tukiuish or Turkish descent, the Hiongnu, dwelling in tents of skins, inhabited the elevated Steppe of Gobi. Long terrible to the Chinese power, a part of this tribe was driven back into Central Asia. The shock or im- pulse thus given passed from nation to nation, until it reached the ancient land of the Finns, near the Ural moun- tains. From thence, Huns, Avari, Ghazarés, and various admixtures of Asiatic races, broke forth. Armies of Huns appeared successively on the Volga, im Pannonia, on the Marne, and on the Po, desolating those fair and fertile fields which, since the time of Antenor, civilised man had adorned with monument after monument. Thus went forth from the Mongolian deserts a deadly blast, which withered on Cisalpine ground the tender long-cherished flower of art.
From the salt Steppes of Asia, from the European Heaths smiling in summer with their purple blossoms rich in honey,
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 7
and from the arid Deserts of Africa devoid of all vegetation, ~ let us now return to those South American plains of which
I have already began to trace the picture, albeit in rude
outlines.
The interest which this picture can offer to the beholder is, however, exclusively that of pure nature. Here no Oasis recalls the memory of earlier inhabitants; no. carved stone, (12) no ruined building, no fruit tree once the care of the cultivator but now wild, speaks of the art or industry of former generations. Asif estranged from the destinies of mankind, and riveting attention solely to the present mo- ment, this corner of the earth appears as a wild theatre for the free development of animal and vegetable life.
The Steppe extends from the Caraccas coast chain to the forests of Guiana, and from the snowy mountains of Merida (on the slope of which the Natron Lake Urao is an object of superstitious veneration to the natives,) to the great delta formed by the Orinoco at its mouth. To the south-west a branch is prolonged, like an arm of the sea, (13) beyond the banks of the Meta and Vichada to the unvisited sources of the Guaviare, and to the lonely mountain to which the excited fancy of the Spanish soldiery gave the name of Paramo de la Suma Paz—the seat of perfect peace.
This Steppe occupies a space of 16,000 (256,000 English) square miles. It has often been erroneously deseribed as running uninterruptedly, and with an equal breadth, to the straits of Magellan, forgetting the forest-covered plain of the Amazons which intervenes between the grassy Steppes of the Apure and those of the river Plate. The Andes of
8 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Cochabamba, and the Brazilian group of mountains, send forth, between the province of Chiquitos and the isthmus of Villabella, some detached spurs, which advance, as it were, to meet each other. (4) A narrow plain connects the forest lands of the Amazons with the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The latter far surpass the Llanos of Venezuela in area; and their extent is so great that while their northern margin is bordered by palm trees, their southern extremity is almost continually covered with ice.
The Tuyu, which resembles the Cassowary (the Struthio rhea), is peculiar to these Pampas, which are also the haunt of troops of dogs (}5) descended from those introduced by the colonists, but which have become completely wild, dwelling together in subterranean hollows, and often attacking with blood-thirsty rage the human race whom their progenitors served and defended.
Like the greater portion of the desert of Sahara, (16) the northernmost of the South American plains, the Llanos, are in the torrid zone: during one half of the year they are desolate, like the Lybian sandy waste; during the other, they appear as a grassy pla, resembling many of the Steppes of Central Asia. (17)
It is a highly interesting though difficult task of general geography to compare the natural conditions of distant regions, and torepresent by a few traits the results of this comparison. The causes which lessen both heat and dry- ness in the New World (38) are manifold, and in some respects as yet only partially understood. Amongst these may be classed the narrowness and deep indentation of the
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 9
American land in the northern part of the torrid zone, where consequently the atmosphere, resting on a liquid base, does not present so heated an ascending current ;—the extension of the continent towards the poles ;—the expanse of ocean over which the trade-winds sweep freely, acquiring thereby ‘a cooler temperature ;—the flatness of the eastern coasts ;— - currents of cold sea-water from the antarctic regions, which, coming from the south-west to the north-east, first strike the coast of Chili in the parallel of 35° south latitude, and advance along the coast of Peru as far north as Cape Parina, and then turn suddenly to the west ;—the numerous lofty mountain chains rich in springs, and whose snow-clad sum- mits, rising high above all the strata of clouds, cause descending currents of cold air to roll down their declivities ; —the abundance of rivers of enormous breadth, which, after many windings, seek the most distant coast ;—Steppes which from not being sandy are less susceptible of acquiring a high degree of heat,—impenetrable forests occupying the alluvial plains situated immediately beneath the equator, protecting with their shade the soil beneath from the direct influence of the sunbeams, and exhaling in the interior of the country at a great distance fromthe mountains and from the ocean vast quantities of moisture, partly imbibed and partly elaborated :—all these circumstances afford to the flat part of America a climate which by its humidity and coolness contrasts wonderfully with that of Africa. It is to the same causes that we are to attribute the luxuriant vegetation, the magnificent forests, and that abundant leafiness by which the new continent is peculiarly characterised,
10 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
If, therefore, one side of our planet has a moister atmo- sphere than the other, the consideration of the present condition of things is amply sufficient to explain the problem . presented by this inequality. The physical inquirer needs not to clothe the explanation of these phenomena in a mantle of geological myths. He needs not to assume that on our planet the harmonious reconciliation of the destructive conflict of the elements took place at different epochs in the eastern and the western hemispheres; or that America emerged later than the other parts of the globe from the chaotic watery covering, (9) as an island of swamps and marshes tenanted by alligators and serpents.
There is, indeed, a strikmg similarity between South America and the southern peninsula of the old continent in the form of the outline and in the direction of the coasts; but the nature of the soil, and the relative position of the neighbouring masses of land, produce in Africa that extra- ordinary aridity which over an immense area checks the development of organic life. Four-fifths of South America are situated on the southern side of the equator; or in a hemisphere which from the greater proportion of sea and from other causes is cooler and moister than our northern half of the globe, (2°) to which the larger part of Africa belongs. The breadth of the South American Steppe, measured from east to west, is only a third of that of the African Desert. The Llanos receive the influence of the tropical sea wind, while the African Deserts, being situated in the same zone of latitude as Arabia and the south of Persia, are in contact with strata of air which have blown
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 11
over warm heat-radiating continents. The venerable and only lately appreciated father of history, Herodotus, in tae true spirit of an enlarged view of nature, described the Deserts of northern Africa, of Yemen, of Kerman and Mekran (the Gedrosia of the Greeks), and even as far as Moultan, as forming a single connected sea of sand. (21)
In addition to the action of these hot winds, there is (so far as we know) an absence or comparative paucity in Africa of large rivers, of widely extended forests producing coolness and exhaling moisture, and of lofty mountains. Of moun- tains covered with perpetual snow, we know only the western part of the Atlas, (2?) whose narrow range, seen in profile from the Atlantic, appeared to the ancient navigators when sailing along the coast as a, single detached lofty sky-supportng mount. The eastern pro- longation of the chain extends nearly to Dakul, where Carthage, once mistress of the seas, now lies in mouldering ruins. As forming a long extended coast-chain, or Geetulian tampart, the effect of the Atlas range is to intercept the cool north breezes, and the vapours which ascend from the Mediterranean.
The Mountains of the Moon, Djebel-al-Komr, (?3) (fabulously represented as forming part of a mountainous parallel extending from the high plateaux of Habesh, an African Quito, to the sources of the Senegal), were supposed to rise above the limit of perpetual snow. The Cordillera of Lupata, which extends along the eastern coast of Mozambique and Monomotapa, as the Andes along the
12 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
western coast of Peru, is believed to be covered with per- petual snow in the gold districts of Machinga and Mocanga. ~ But all these mountains, with the abundant waters to which they give rise, are far remote from the immense Desert which stretches from the southern declivity of the Atlas to the Niger.
Possibly, however, all the causes of heat and dryness which have been enumerated may have been insufficient to transform such considerable parts of the African plains into a dreadful desert, without the concurrence of some revolution of nature,—such, for instance, as an irruption of the ocean, whereby these flat regions may have been despoiled of their coating of vegetable soil, as well as of the plants which it nourished. Profound obscurity veils the period of such an event, and the force which determined the irruption. Perhaps it may have been caused by the great “rotatory current” (2+) which sends the warmer water of the Mexican gulf over the banks of Newfoundland and to the shores of the old continent, and causes West India cocoa-nuts’ and other tropical fruits to reach the coasts of Ireland and Norway. There is still at least at the present time, an arm of this current directed from the Azores to the south-east, which sometimes produces disasters by carrying ships upon the west coast of Africa, which it strikes at a part lined by sand-hills. | Other sea coasts (I particularly recall that of Peru between Amotape and Coquimbo) shew that in these hot regions of the earth, where rain never falls and where neither Lecideas nor other Lichens (25) germinate, centuries
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 13
and perhaps thousands of years may elapse before the moveable sand can afford to the roots of plants a secure holding place.
These considerations are sufficient to explain why, with an external similarity of form, Africa and South America present so marked a difference of character both in respect to climate and to vegetation. But although the South American Steppe is covered with a thin coating of mould or fertile earth, and although it is periodically bathed by rains, and becomes covered at such seasons with luxuriantly sprouting herbage, yet it never could attract the surround- ing nations or tribes to forsake the beautiful mountain valleys ‘of Caraccas, the margin of the sea, or the wooded banks of the Orinoco, for the treeless and springless wilder- ness; and thus, previous to the arrival of European and African settlers, the Steppe was almost entirely devoid of human inhabitants.
The Llanos are, indeed, well suited to the rearing of cattle, but the care of animals yielding milk (?6) was almost un- known to the original inhabitants of the New Continent. Hardly any of the American tribes have ever availed them- selves: of the advantages which nature offered them in this respect, The American race (which, with the exception of © the Esquimaux, is one and the same from 65° North to 55°
South latitude), has not passed from the state of huntersto —
that of cultivators of the soil through the intermediate stage of a pastoral life. Two kinds of native cattle (the Buffalo and the Musk Ox) feed in the northern prairies of western Canada and the plains of arctic America, in Quivira, and
14 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
around the colossal ruins of the Aztec fortress which rises in the wilderness, like an American Palmyra, on the solitary _ banks of the Gila. The long-horned Rocky Mountain Sheep - abounds on the arid limestone rocks of California. The Vicunas, Huanacos, Alpacas, and Lamas, belong to South America ; but the two first named of all these useful animals, 7. e., the Buffalo and the Musk Ox, have retained their natural freedom for two thousand years, and the use of milk and cheese, like the possession and cultivation of farinaceous grasses, (27) has remained a distinguishing characteristic of the nations of the old world.
If some of the latter have crossed from northern Asia to the west coast of America, and if, keeping by preference to the cooler mountain regions, (28) they have followed the lofty ridge of the Andes towards the south, their migration must have taken place by ways in which they could not be accom- panied by their flocks and herds, or bring with them the cultivation of corn. When the long shaken empire of the Hiongnu fell, may we conjecture that the movement of this powerful tribe may also have occasioned in the north-east of China and in Corea a shock and an impulse which may have caused civilized Asiatics to pass over into the new continent? Tf such a migration had consisted of inhabitants of the Steppes in which agriculture was not pursued, this hazardous hypothesis (which has hitherto been but little favoured by the comparison of languages) would at least explain the striking absence of the Cereals in America. Possibly one of those Asiatic priestly colonies whom mystic dreams sometimes impelled to embark in long voyages, (of which
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 15
the history of the peopling of Japan (29) in the time of Thsinchi-huang-ti offers a memorable example), may have been driven by storms to the coasts of New California. : ~ Jf, then, pastoral life, that beneficent middle stage which — attaches nomadic hunting hordes to desirable pastures and prepares them, as it were, for agriculture, has remained un- known to the aboriginal nations of America, this circum- stance sufficiently explains the absence of human inhabitants in the South American Steppes. ‘This absence has allowed the freest scope for the abundant development of the most varied forms of animal life; a development limited only by their mutual pressure, and similar to that of vegetable life in the forests of the Orinoco, where the Hymenza and the gigantic laurel are never exposed to the destructive hand of man, but only to the pressure of the luxuriant climbers which twine around their massive trnnks. Agoutis, small spotted antelopes, cuirassed armadilloes, which, like rats, startle the hare in its subterranean holes, herds of lazy chiguires, beautifully striped viverree which poison the air with their odour, the large maneless lion, spotted jaguars (often called tigers) strong enough to drag away a young bull after kilimg him ;—these and many other forms of animal life (3°) wander through the treeless plain.
Thus almost exclusively inhabited by these wild animals, the Steppe would offer little attraction or means of sub- sistence to those nomadic native hordes, who, like the Asiatics of Hindostan, prefer vegetable nutriment, if it were not for the occasional presence of single individuals of the fan palm, the Mauritia. The benefits of this life-supporting
(16 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
;
tree are widely celebrated ; it alone, from the mouth of the Orinoco to north of the Sierra de Imataca, feeds the un- _ subdued nation of the Guaranis. (3!) When this people were more numerous and lived in closer contiguity, not only did they support their huts on the cut trunks of palm trees as pillars on which rested a scaffolding forming the floor, but they also, it is said, twined from the leaf-stalks of the Mauritia cords and mats, which, skilfully interwoven and suspended from stem to stem, enabled them in the rainy season, when the Delta is overflowed, to live in the trees like the apes. The floor of these raised cottages is partly covered with a coating of damp clay, on which the women make fires for household purposes,—the flames appearing at night from the river to be suspended high in air. The Guaranis still owe the preservation of their physical, and perhaps also their moral, independence, to the half-submerged, marshy soil over which they move with a light and rapid step, and to their elevated dwellings in the trees,—a habita- tion never likely to be chosen from motives of religious . enthusiasm by an American Stylites. (32) But the Mauritia affords to the Guaranis not merely a secure dwelling-place, but also various kinds of food. Before the flower of the male palm tree breaks through its tender sheath, and only at that period of vegetable metamorphosis, the pith of the stem of the tree contains a meal resembling sago, which, hike the farina of the jatropha root, is dried in thin bread- like slices. The fermented juice of the tree forms the sweet intoxicating palm wine of the Guaranis. The scaly fruits, which resemble in their appearance reddish fir cones, afford,
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 17
like the plaintam and almost all tropical fruits, a dif- ferent kind of nutriment, according as they are eaten after their saccharine substance is fully developed, or im their earlier or more farinaceous' state. Thus in the lowest stage of man’s intellectual development, we find the existence of an entire people bound up with that of a single tree; like the insect which lives exclusively on a single part of a particular flower.
Since the discovery of the New Continent, the Llanos have become habitable to men. In order to facilitate com- munication between the Orinoco country and the coasts, towns have been built here and there on the banks of the streams which flow through the Steppes. (3) The rearing of cattle has began over all parts of these vast regions. Huts, formed of reeds tied together with thongs and covered with skins, are placed at distances of a day’s. journey from each other; numberless herds of oxen, horses, and mules, estimated at the peaceful epoch of my journey at a million and a half, roam over the Steppe. The immense multiplica- tion of these animals, originally brought by man from the Old Continent, is the more remarkable from the number of dangers with which they have to contend.
When, under the vertical rays of the never-clouded sun, the carbonized turfy covering falls into dust, the indurated soil cracks asunder as if from the shock of an earthquake. If at such times two opposing currents of air, whose conflict produces a rotatory motion, come in contact with the soil, the plain assumes a strange and singular aspect. Like conival-shaped clouds (34) the points of which. descend
VOL. I. ; C
18 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
to the earth, the sand rises through the rarified air in the electrically charged centre of the whirling current; resembling the loud waterspout dreaded by the experienced mariner. The lowering sky sheds a dim, almost straw- coloured light on the desolate pla. The horizon draws suddenly nearer ; the Steppe seems to contract, and with it the heart of the wanderer. The hot dusty particles which fill the air increase its suffocating heat, (35) and the east wind, blowing over the long-heated soil, brings with it no refreshment, but rather a still more burning glow. The pools which the yellow fading branches of the fan palm had protected from evaporation now gradually disappear. As in the icy north the animals become torpid with cold, so here, under the influence of the parching drought, the crocodile and the boa become motionless and fall asleep, deeply buried in the dry mud. Livery where the death-threatening drought prevails, and yet, by the play of the refracted rays of light producing the phenomenon of the mirage, the thirsty traveller is every where pursued by the illusive image of a cool rippling watery mirror. (3°) The distant palm bush ap- parently raised by the influence of the contact of un- equally heated and therefore unequally dense strata of air, hovers above the ground, from which it is separated by a narrow intervening margin. Half concealed by the dark clouds of dust, restless with the pain of thirst and hunger, the horses and cattle roam around, the cattle lowing dis- mally, and the horses stretching out their long necks and snuffing the wind, if haply a moister current may betray the neighbourhood of a not wholly dried up pool. More saga-
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 19
cious and cunning, the mule seeks a different mode of alleviating his thirst. The ribbed and spherical melon- cactus (37) conceals under its prickly envelope a watery pith. The mule first strikes the prickles aside with his fore feet, and then ventures warily to approach his lips to the plant and drink the cool juice. But resort to this vegetable fountain is not always without danger, and one sees many animals that have been lamed by the prickles of the cactus. When the burning heat of the day is followed by the coolness of the night, which in these latitudes is always of the same length, even then the horses and cattle cannot __ enjoy repose. Enormous bats suck their blood like vam- pires during their sleep, or attach themselves to their backs, causing festering wounds, in which musquitoes, hippobosces, and a host of stinging insects, niche themselves. ‘Thus the animals lead a painful life during the season when, under the fierce glow of the sun, the soil is deprived of its moisture. At length, after the long drought, the welcome . season of the rain arrives; and then how suddenly is the scene changed! (38) The deep blue of the hitherto per- petually cloudless sky becomes lighter; at night the dark space in the constellation of the Southern Cross is hardly distinguishable ; the soft phosphorescent light of the Magel- lanic clouds fades away; even the stars in Aquila and Ophiucus in the zenith shine with a trembling and less planetary light. A single cloud appears in the south, like a distant mountain, rising perpendicularly from the horizon. Gradually the increasing vapours spread like mist over the sky, and now the distant thunder ushers in the life-restoring
20 STFPPES AND DESERTS.
rain. Hardly has the surface of the earth received the refreshing moisture, before the previously barren Steppe begins to exhale sweet odours, and to clothe itself with Kyllingias, the many panicules of the Paspalum, and a variety of grasses. The herbaceous mimosas, with renewed sensi- bility to the influence of light, unfold their drooping slum- bering leaves to greet the rising sun; and the early song of. birds, and the opening blossoms of the water plants, join to salute the morning. ‘The horses and cattle now graze in full enjoyment of life. The tall springing grass hides the beautifully spotted jaguar, who lurking in safe concealment, and measuring carefully. the distance of a single bound, springs, cat-like, as the Asiatic tiger, on his passing prey.
Sometimes, (so the Aborigines relate), on the margin of the swamps the moistened clay is seen to blister and rise slowly in a kind of mound ; then with a violent noise, like. the outbreak of a small mud volcano, the heaped-up earth is east high into the air. The beholder acquainted with the meaning of this spectacle flies, for he knows there will issue forth a gigantic water-snake or a scaly crocodile, awakened from a torpid state (39) by the first fall of rain.
The rivers which bound the plain to the south, the Arauca, Apure, and Payara, become gradually swollen; and now nature constrains the same animals, who in the first half of the year panted with thirst on the dry and dusty soil, to adopt an amphibious life. A portion of the Steppe now presents the aspect of a vast inland sea. (#°) The brood mares retire with their foals to the higher banks, which stand like islands above the surface of the lake.
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 21
Every day the space remaining dry becomes smaller. The animals, crowded together, swim about for hours in search of other pasture,.and feed sparingly on the tops of the flowering grasses rising above the seething surface of the dark-coloured water. Many foals are drowned, and many are surprised by the crocodiles, killed by a stroke of their powerful notched tails, and devoured. It is not a rare thing to see the marks of the pointed teeth of these monsters on the legs of the horses and cattle who have narrowly escaped from their blood-thirsty jaws. Such a sight reminds the thoughtful observer involuntarily of the capability of conforming to the most varied circumstances, with which the all-providing Author of Nature has endowed certain animals and plants. :
The ox and the horse, like the farinaceous cerealia, have followed man over the whole surface of the globe, from India to Northern Siberia, from the Ganges to the River Plate, from the African sea shore to the mountain plateau of Antisana, (+!) which is higher than the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe. The ox wearied from the plough reposes, sheltered from the noontide sun in one country by the quivering shadow of the northern birch, and in another by the date palm. The same species which, in the east of Europe, has to encounter the attacks of bears and wolves, is exposed in other regions to the assaults of tigers and crocodiles.
But the crocodile and jaguar are not the only assailants of the South American horses ; they have also a dangerous enemy among fishes. The marshy waters of Bera and
22 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Rastro (4?) are filled with numberless electric eels, which can at pleasure send a powerful discharge from any part of their slimy yellow spotted bodies. These gymnoti are from five to six feet in length, and are powerful enough to kill the largest animals when they discharge their nervous organs at once in a favourable direction.
The route from Uritucu through the Steppe was formerly obliged to be changed, because the gymnoti had increased to such numbers in a small stream that in crossing it many horses were drowned every year, either from the effects of the shocks they received, or from fright. All other fishes fly the vicinity of these formidable eels. Even the fisherman angling from the high bank fears lest the damp line should convey the shock to him from a distance. Thus, in these regions, electric fire breaks forth from the bosom of the waters.
The capture of the gymnoti affords a picturesque spectacle. Mules and horses are driven into a marsh which is closely surrounded by Indians, until the unwonted noise and disturbance induce the pugnacious fish to begin an attack. One sees them swimming about like serpents, and trying cunningly to glide under the bellies of the horses. Many of these are stunned by the force of the invisible blows ; others, with manes standing on end, foaming and with wild terror sparkling in their eyes, try to fly from the raging tempest. But the Indians, armed with long poles of bamboo, drive them back into the middle of the pool. Gradually the fury of the unequal strife begins to slacken. Like clouds which have discharged their electricity, the
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 23
wearied fish begin to disperse; long repose and abundant food are required to replace the galvanic force which they have expended. Their shocks become gradually weaker and weaker. Terrified by the noise of the trampling horses, they timidly approach the bank, where they are wounded by harpoons, and cautiously drawn on shore by non-conducting pieces of dry wood.
Such is the extraordinary battle between horses and fish. That which forms the invisible but living weapon of this electric eel ;—that which, awakened by the contact of moist dissimilar particles, (*%) circulates through all the organs of plants and animals ;—that which, flashing from the thunder cloud, illumines the wide skyey canopy ;—that which draws iron to iron and directs the silent recurring march of the guiding needle ;—all, like the several hues of the divided ray of light, flow from one source; and all blend again together in one perpetually, every where diffused, force or power. |
I might here close the hazardous attempt to trace a _ picture of nature such as she shows herself in the Steppes. But as on the ocean fancy not unwillingly dwells awhile on the image of its distant shores, so, before the wide plain disappears from our view, let us cast a rapid glance at the regions by which the Steppes are bounded.
The Northern Desert of Africa divides two races of men who belong originally to the same part of the globe, and whose unreconciled discord appears as ancient as the mythus of Osiris and Typhon. (#4) North of the Atlas there dwell nations with long and straight hair, of sallow complexion and
24 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Caucasian features. On the south of the Senegal, towards Soudan, live hordes of negroes in many different stages of civilization. In Central Asia, the Mongolian Steppe divides Siberian barbarism from the ancient civilisation of the peninsula of India.
The South American Steppes form the "aa of a partial Kuropean cultivation. (#°) To the north, between the mountains of Venezuela and the Caribbean sea, we find commercial cities, neat villages, and carefully cultivated fields. Even the love of art and scientific culture, together with the noble desire of civil freedom, have long been awakened there. Towards the south the Steppe terminates im a savage wilderness. Forests, the growth of thousands of years, fill with their impenetrable fastnesses the humid regions between the Orinoco and the Amazons. Massive leaden-coloured granite rocks (#6) narrow the bed of the foaming rivers. Mountains and forests resound with the thunder of the falling waters, with the roar of the tiger-like jaguar, and with the melancholy rain-announcing howlings of the bearded apes. (47)
Where a sand-bank is left dry by the shallow current, the unwieldly crocodiles le, with open jaws, as motionless as pieces of rock and often covered with birds. (48) The boa serpent, his body marked like a chess-board, coiled up, his tail wound round the branch of a tree, lies lurking on the bank secure of his prey; he marks the young bull or some feebler inhabitant of the forest as it fords the stream, and swiftly uncoiling seizes the victim, and covering it with mucus forces it laboriously down his swelling throat. (#9)
a
STEPPES AND DESERTS. 25
In the midst of this grand and savage nature live many
tribes of men, isolated from each other by the extraordi-
nary diversity of their languages: some are nomadic, wholly unacquainted with agriculture, and using ants, gums, and earth as food (5°) ; these, as the Otomacs and Jarures, seem a kind of outcasts from humanity: others, like the Maqui- ritares and Macos, are settled, more intelligent and of milder manners, and live on fruits which they have them- selves reared.
Large spaces between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo are only inhabited by the tapir and the social apes, and are wholly destitute of human beings. Figures graven on the rocks (5!) shew that even these deserts were once the seat of some degree of intellectual cultivation. They bear witness to the changeful destinies of man, as do the un- equally developed flexible languages ; which latter belong to the oldest and most imperishable class of historic me- morials.
But as in the Steppe tigers and crocodiles fight with horses and cattle, so in the forests on its borders, in the wilder- nesses of Guiana, man is ever armed against man. Some tribes drink with unnatural thirst the blood of their enemies ; others apparently weaponless and yet prepared for murder (5?) kill with a poisoned thumb-nail. The weaker hordes, when they have to pass along the sandy margin of the rivers, carefully efface with their hands the traces of their timid footsteps. ‘Thus man in the lowest stage of almost animal rudeness, as well as amidst the apparent brilliancy of our
higher cultivation, prepares for himself and his fellow
26 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
men increased toil and danger. The traveller wandering
over the wide globe by sea and land, as well as the historic
inquirer searching the records of past ages, finds every where the uniform and saddening spectacle of man at variance with man.
He, therefore, who, amidst the unreconciled discord of nations, seeks for intellectual calm, gladly turns to con- template the silent life of vegetation, and the hidden activi- ties of forces and powers operating in the sanctuaries of nature; or, obedient to the inborn impulse which for thousands of years has glowed in the human breast, gazes upwards in meditative contemplation on those celestial orbs, which are ever pursuing in undisturbed harmony their ancient and unchanging course.
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 27
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.
(1) p. 1.—* The Lake of Tacarigua.”
In proceeding through the interior of South America from the Caraccas or Venezuela shore towards the boundary of Brazil, from the 10th degree of North latitude to the Equator, the traveller crosses first an elevated mountain- chain running in an east and west direction, next vast treeless Steppes or Plains (los Llanos), which stretch from the foot of the above-named mountains (the coast chain of Caraccas) to the left bank of the Orinoco, and lastly the range which occasions the Cataracts of Atures and Maypure. This latter range of mountains, to which I have given the name of the Sierra Parime, runs in an easterly direction from the Cataracts to Dutch and French Guiana. It isa mass of mountains divided into many parallel ridges, and is the site of the fabled Dorado. It is bordered on the south by the forest plain, through which the river of the Amazons and the Rio Negro have formed the channels in which their waters flow. Those who desire a fuller acquaintance with the geography of these regions will do well to consult and compare the great map of La Cruz-Olmedilla, bearing date 1775, (from which almost all the more recent maps of South America have been formed,) and the map of Columbia
28 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
constructed by me from my own astronomical determinations of geographical positions, and published in 1825. The coast chain of Venezuela, geographically considered, is a part of the chain of the Andes of Peru. The chain of the Andes divides itself, at the great mountain junction at the sources of the Magdalena, south of Popayan, (between 1° 55’ and 2° 20’ latitude), into three chains, the easternmost of which terminates in the snow-covered mountains of Merida. These mountains sink ‘down towards the Paramo de las Rosas into the hilly land of Quibor and Tocuyo, which connecis the coast chain of Venezuela with the Cordilleras of Cundinamarca. The coast chain forms an unbroken rampart from Porto Cabello to the promontory of Paria. Its mean height hardly equals 750 toises or 4795 English feet ; yet single summits, like the Silla de Caracas (also called Cerro de Avila), decked with the purple-flowering Befaria the American Rose of the Alps, rise 1350 toises or 8630 English feet above the level of the sea. The coast of Terra Firma bears traces of devastation. We recognise everywhere the action of the great current which, sweeping from east to west, formed by disruption the West Indian Islands, and hollowed out the Caribbean gulf. The projecting tongues of land of Araja and Chuparipari, and especially the coast of Cu- mana and New Barcelona, offer a remarkable spectacle to the geologist. The precipitous Islands of Boracha, Caracas, and Chimanas, rise like towers from the sea, and bear witness to the terrible pressure of the waters against the mountain chain when it was broken by their irruption. Perhaps, like the Mediterranean, the Antillean gulf was once an inland
pi
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 29
sea, which became suddenly connected with the ocean. The islands of Cuba, Hayti, and Jamaica, still contain the rem- nants of the lofty mountains of mica slate which bounded this sea to the north. It is remarkable that where these three islands approach each other most nearly the highest summits are found; and we may conjecture that the highest part of this Antillean chain was situated between Cape Tiburon and Point Morant. The Copper Mountains (Montafias de Cobre) near Santiago de Cuba have not yet been measured, but their elevation is probably greater than that of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, (1138. toises, 7277 English feet,) which somewhat exceeds the height of the St. Gothard Pass. My conjectures on the valley-form of the Atlantic Ocean, and on the ancient connection of the continents, were given more in detail in a memoir written in Cumana, entitled Fragment dun Tableau Géologique de PAmerique Meridionale (Journal de Physique, Messidor, An. IX.) It is worthy of remark, that Columbus himself, in his Official Reports, called attention to the connection between the direction of the equatorial current and the form of the coast line of the larger Antilles. (Examen critique de Vhist. de la Géographie,
p. 104-108.)
The northern and most cultivated part of the province of Caraccas is a country of mountains. The coast chain is divided like the Swiss Alps into several subordinate chins enclosing longitudinal valleys. The most celebrated of these
is the pleasant valley of Aragua, which produces a great
quantity of indigo, sugar, cotton, and, what is most re- .
30 STEPPES AND DESERTS,
markable, European wheat. The southern margin of this. valley adjoins the beautiful lake of Valencia, whose old. Indian name is Tacarigua. ‘The contrast between its oppo- site shores gives it a striking resemblance to the Lake of Geneva. It is true that the bare mountains of Guigue and Guiripa have less grandeur of character than the Savoy Alps; but, on the other hand, the opposite bank of the Tacarigua lake, which is thickly clothed with plantains, mimosas, and triplaris, far surpasses in picturesque beauty the vineyards of the Pays de Vaud. The lake is about thirty geographical miles im length, and is full of small islands, which, as the loss of water by evaporation exceeds the influx, are increasing in size. Within some years sand- banks have even become real islands, and have received the significant name of the “ Newly Appeared,’ Las Apa- recidas. On the island of Cura the remarkable species of Solanum is cultivated which has edible fruit, and which Wildenow has described in the Hortus Berolinensis (1816, Tab. xxvii.) The height of the Lake of Tacarigua above the sea is almost 1400 French feet, (according to my measurement exactly 230 toises, or 1470 English feet,) less than the mean height of the valley of Caraccas. The lake has several kinds of fish (see my Observations de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée, T. ii p. 179-181), and is one of the most pleasing natural scenes which I know in any part of the globe. In bathing, Bonpland and myself were often alarmed by the appearance of the Bava, an undescribed crocodile-like lizard, three or four feet in length, of repulsive aspect, but harmless to men. We found im the lake a
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 31
Typha (Cats-tail), identical with the European Typha an- gustifolia; asingular fact, and important in reference to the geography of plants.
Two varieties of sugar-cane are cultivated near the lake, in the valleys of Aragua: the common sugar-cane of the West Indies, Cafia criolla; and the cane recently introduced from the Pacific, Cafa de Otaheiti. ‘The verdure of the Tahitian cane is of a much lighter and more agreeable tint, and a field of it can readily be distinguished at a great dis- tance from a field of the common cane. The sugar-cane of Tahiti was first described by Cook and George Forster, who appear, however, from the excellent memoir of the latter upon the edible plants of the islands of the Pacific, to have been but little acquainted with its valuable qualities. Bou- gainville brought it to the Isle of France, from whence it was conveyed to Cayenne, and since 1792 it has been taken to Martinique, Hayti, and several of the smaller West Indian Islands. It was carried with the bread-frmt tree to Jamaica by the brave but unfortunate Captain Bligh, and was intro- duced from the Island of Trinidad to the neighbouring coast of Caraccas, where it became a more important acquisition than the bread-fruit, which is never likely to supersede a plant so valuable and affording so large an amount of sustenance as the plantain. The Tahitian sugar-cane is much richer in juice than the common cane, said to be originally a native of the east of Asia. On an equal surface of ground it yields a third more sugar than the cafia criolla, which has a thinner stalk and smaller joints. As, moreover, the West Tndia islands begin to suffer great want of fuel, (in Cuba
82 _ STEPPES AND DESERTS.
the wood of the orange tree is used for sugar boiling,) the: thicker and more woody stalk of the Tahitian cane is an
important advantage. If the introduction of this plant had ;
not taken place almost at the same time as the commence- ment of the bloody negro war in St. Domingo, the prices of sugar in Europe would have risen still higher than they did, in consequence of the ruinous effects of those troubles on agriculture and trade. It was an important question, whether the cane of the Pacific, when removed from its. native soil, would gradually degenerate and become the same as the common cane. Experience hitherto has de- cided against any such degeneration. In Cuba a caballeria _ (nearly 33 English acres) planted with Tahitian sugar-cane produces 870 hundred weight of sugar. It is singular that this important production of the islands of the Pacific is only cultivated in those parts of the Spanish colonies which are farthest from the Pacific. The Peruvian coast is only twenty-five days’ sail from Tahiti, and yet, at the period of my travels in Peru and Chili, the Tahitian cane was unknown there. The inhabitants of Easter Island, who suffer much from deficiency of fresh water, drink the juice of the sugar- cane, and (avery remarkable physiological fact) also sea water. In the Society, Friendly, and Sandwich Islands, the light green, thick-stalked sugar-cane is always the one cultivated.
Besides the Cafia de Otaheiti and the Cafa Criolla, a reddish African variety, called Cana de Guinea, is cultivated in the West Indies: its juice is less in quantity than that of the common Asiatic cane, but is said to be better suited for making rum.
, —_—-
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 33
In the province of Caraccas the dark shade of the cacao plantations contrasts beautifully with the light green of the Tahitian sugar cane. Few tropical trees have such thick foliage as the Theobroma cacao. It loves hot and humid valleys: great fertility of soil and insalubrity of atmosphere are inseparable from each other in South America as well as im Asia; and it has even been remarked that as increasing cultivation lessens the extent of the forests, and renders the soil and climate less humid, the cacao plantations become less flourishing. For these reasons these plantations are diminishing in number and extent in the province of Caraccas, and increasing rapidly in the more eastern pro- vinces of New Barcelona and Cumana, and particularly in the moist woody district between Cariaco and the Golfo Triste.
(?) p. 2.—“* Banks’ is the name given by the natives
to this phenomenon.”
The Llanos of Caraccas are occupied by a great and widely extended formation of congiomerate of an early period. In descending from the vallies of Aragua, and crossing over the most southern ridge of the coast chain of Guigue and Villa de Cura towards Parapara, one finds successively, gneiss end mica slate ;—a probably silurian formation of clay slate and black limestone ;—serpentine and greenstone in detached spheroidal masses ;—and, lastly, close to the margin of the great plain, small hills of augitic amygdaloid and porphyritic slate. These hills between Parapara and Ortiz appear to me like volcanic eruptions on
VOL. I. D
34 STEPPES AND DESERTS..
the ancient sea-shore of the Llanos, farther to the north are the celebrated grotesque-shaped cavernous rocks of Morros de San Juan; they form a kind of rampart, have a crystalline grain like upheaved dolomite, and are rather to be regarded as parts of the shore of the ancient gulf than as islands. I term the Llanos a gulf, for when we consider their small elevation above the present sea level, their form open as it were to the equatorial current sweeping from east to west, and the lowness of the eastern coast between the mouth of the Orinoco and the Essequibo, we can scarcely doubt that the sea once overflowed the whole basin between the coast chain of Caraccas and the Sierra de la Parime, and beat against the mountains of Merida and Pamplona; (as itis - supposed to have overflowed the plains of Lombardy, and beat against the Cottian and Pennine Alps). The strike or inclination of the American Llanos is also directed from west to east. ‘Their height at Calabozo, 400 geographical miles from the sea, is barely 30 toises (192 English feet) ; being 15 toises (96 English feet) less than that of Pavia, and 45 toises (288 English feet) less than that of Milan, in the plains of Lombardy between the Alps and Apennines. The form of the surface of this part of the globe reminds one of Claudian’s expression, “ curvata tumore parvo piani- ties.’ The horizontality of the Llanos is so perfect that in many portions of them no part of an area of more than 480 square miles appears to be a foot higher than the rest. I, in addition to this, we imagine to ourselves the absence of all bushes, and even in the Mesa de Pavones the absence of any isolated palm-trees, it will afford some idea of the
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS, 85
singular aspect of this sea-like desert plam. As far as the eye can reach, it can hardly rest on a single object a few inches high. If it were not that the state of the lowest strata of the atmosphere, and the consequent changes of refraction, render the horizon continually indeterminate and undulating, altitudes of the sun might be taken with the sextant from the margin of the plain as well as from the horizon at sea. This great horizontality of the former sea bottom makes the “banks” more striking. They are broken strata which rise abruptly from two to three feet above the surrounding rock, and extend uniformly over a length of from 40 to 48 English geographical miles. The small streams of the Steppes take their rise on these banks.
In passing through the Llanos of Barcelona, on our return. from the Rio Negro, we found frequent traces of earth- quakes. Instead of the banks standing Azgher than the surrounding rock, we found here solitary strata of gypsum from 3 to 4 toises (19 to 25 English feet) dower. Farther to the west, near the junction of the Caura with the Orinoco, and to the east of the mission of §. Pedro de Alcantara, an extensive tract of dense forest sank down in an earthquake in 1790, and a lake was formed of more than 300 toises (1918 English feet) diameter. The tall trees (Desmanthus, Hymenzeas, and Malpighias) long retained their foliage and verdure under the water.
(3) p. 2.—“ We seem to see before us a shoreless ocean.”
The prospect of the distant Steppe is still more striking, when the spectator has been long accustomed in the dense
36 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
forests both to a very restricted field of view, and to the aspect of a rich and highly luxuriant vegetation. In- effaceable is the impression which I received on our return from the Upper Orinoco, when, from the Hato del Capuchino, on a mountain opposite to the mouth of the Rio Apure, we first saw again the distant Steppe. The sun had just set; the Steppe appeared to rise like a hemisphere; and the light of the rising stars was refracted in the lowest stratum of air, The excessive heating of the plain by the vertical rays of the sun causes the variations of refraction,—occasioned by the effects of radiation, of the ascending current, and of the contact. of strata of air of unequal density,—to continue through the entire night. :
(+) p. 2.—* The naked stony crust.”
Immense tracts of flat bare rock form peculiar and characteristic features in the Deserts both of Africa and Asia. In the Schamo, which separates Mongolia and the mountain chains of Ulangom and Malakha-Oola from the north-west part of China, these banks of rock are called Tsy. They are also found in the forest-covered plains of the Orinoco, surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation (Relation Hist. t. ii. p. 279). In the middle of these flat tabular masses of granite and syenite of some thousand feet diameter, denuded of all vegetation save a few scantily dis- tributed lichens, we find small islands of soil, covered with low and always flowering plants which give them the ap- pearance of little gardens. The monks of the Upper Orinoco regard these bare and perfectly level surfaces of rock, when
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 37
they are of considerable extent, as peculiarly apt to cause fevers and other illnesses. Several missionary villages have been deserted or removed elsewhere in consequence of this opinion, which is very widely diffused. Supposing the opinion correct, is such an influence of these flat rocks or laxas to be attributed to a chemical action on the atmo- sphere, or merely to the effect of increased radiation ?
(5) p. 2.—* The Llanos and Pampas of South America, and the Prairies of the Missouri.”
The physical and geognostical views entertained respect- ing the western part of North America have been rectified in many respects by the adventurous journey of Major Long, the excellent writings of his companion Edwin James, ‘and more especially by the comprehensive observations of Captain Frémont. These, and all other tecent accounts, now place in a clear light what, in my work on New Spain, I could only put forward as conjecture, on the subject of the mountain ridges and plains to the north. In the description of nature as well as in historical inquiries, facts long remain isolated, until by laborious investigation they are brought into connection with.each other. |
The east coast of the United States of North Anierica runs from south-west to north-east, in the same direction as that followed in the southern hemisphere by the Brazilian coast from the river Plate to Olinda. In the two hemi- spheres two ranges of mountains exist at a short distance from the eastern coast; they are more nearly parallel to
38 ‘STEPPES AND DESERTS.
ea¢h other than they are to the more westerly chain, called in South America the Cordilleras of Peru and Chili, and in North America the Rocky Mountains. The Brazilian system of mountains forms an isolated group, of which the lighest summits (the Itacolumi and Itambe) do not rise above the height of 900 toises (5755 English feet). The most easterly ridges, which are nearest to the Atlantic, follow a uniform direction from SSW. to NNE.; more to the west the group becomes broader, but diminishes considerably in height. The Parecis hills approach the rivers Itenes and Guaporé, and the mountains of Aguapelu (to the south of Villabella) approach the lofty Andes of Cocha- bamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
There is no immediate connection between the eastern and western chains,—the Brazilian mountains, and the Cordilleras of Peru,—for the low province of Chiquitos, which is a longitudinal valley running from north to south, and open- ing into the plas both of the Amazons and of the river Plate, separates Brazil on the east from the Alto Peru on the west. Here, as in Poland and Russia, an often almost imperceptible rise of ground (called, in Slavonian, Uwaly) forms the separating water-line between the Pilcomayo and the Madeira, between the Aguapehi and the Guaporé, and between the Paraguay and the Rio Topayos. The swell of the ground runs to the south-east from Chayanta and Poma- bamba (lat. 19°—20°), traverses the province of Chiquitos, which, since the expulsion of the Jesuits, has again become almost a terra incognita, and forms, to the north-east, where there are only detached mountains, the “divortia
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 89
aquarum” at the sources of the Baures and near Villabella, lat. 15°—17°.
This line of separation of the waters is important in relation to facilities of intercourse, and to the increase of cultivation and civilisation: more to the north (2°—8° N. lat.), a similar line divides the basin of the Orinoco from that of the Ama- zons and the Rio Negro. ‘These risings or swellings in the plains (called, by Frontin, terree tumores) might be regarded as undeveloped systems of mountains, which would have con- nected two apparently isolated groups (the Sierra Parime and the Brazilian mountains) with the Andes of Timana and Cochabamba. ‘These relations, which have been hitherto but little attended to, are the ground of the division which I have made of South America into three basins; viz. those of the lower Orinoco, of the Amazons, and of the Rio de la Plata. The first and last of these are steppes or prairies ; the middle basin, that of the Amazons, between the Sierra Parime and the Brazilian group of mountains, is a forest- eovered plain or Hylea.
If we wish to trace, in equally few lines, a sketch of the natural features of North America, let us cast our eyes first on the mountain chain which, running from south-east to north-west, at first low and narrow, and increasing both in breadth and height from Panama to Veragua, Guatimala, and Mexico (where it was the seat of a civilisation which preceded the arrival of Europeans), arrests the general equa- torial current of the waters of the ocean, and opposes a barrier to the more rapid commercial intercourse of Europe and Western Africa with the eastern parts of Asia. North
40 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
of the 17th degree of latitude and the celebrated isthmus of Tehuantepec, the mountains, quitting the coast of the Pacific, and following a more direct northerly course, be- come an inland Cordillera. In North Mexico, the “ Crane Mountains” (Sierra de las Grullas) form part of the Rocky Mountain chain. Here rise, to the west, the Columbia and the Rio Colorado of California ; and, to the east, the Rio Roxo de Natchitoches, the Candian, the Arkansas, and the Platte or shallow river, a name which has latterly been ignorantly transformed into that of a silver-promising river Plate. Between the sources of these rivers (from N. lat. 37° 20° to 40° 13’) rise three lofty summits (formed of a granite con- taining much hornblende and little mica), called Spanish Peak, James’s or Pike’s Peak, and Big Horn or Long’s Peak. (See my Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, 2me édit. t. i. pp. 82 and 109.) ‘The elevation of these peaks exceeds that of any of the summits of the Andes of North Mexico, which, indeed, from the 18th and 19th parallels of latitude, or from the group of Orizaba and Popo- eatepetl (respectively 2717 toises or 17374 English feet, and 2771 toises or 17720 English feet,) to Santa Fé and Taos, never reach the limits of perpetual snow. James Peak, in lat. 38° 40’, is supposed to be 1798 toises, or 11497 English feet ; but of this elevation only 1335 toises (8537 English feet) has been measured trigonometrically, the remaining 463 toises, or 2960 English feet, being de- pendent, in the absence of barometrical observations, on uncertain estimations of the declivity of streams. As a trigonometrical measurement can hardly ever be undertaken
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 41
from the level of the sea, measurements of inaccessible heights must generally be partly trigonometrical, and partly barometrical. Estimations of the fall of rivers, of their rapidity and of the length of their course, are so deceptive, that the plain at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, nearest to the summits above spoken of, was estimated, previous to the important expedition of Capt. Frémont, sometimes at 8000, and sometimes at 3000 feet. (Long’s Expedition, vol. i. pp- 36, 362, 382, App. p. xxxvii.) It was froma similar deficiency of barometrical measurements that the true eleva- tion of the Himalaya continued so long uncertain: but now the resources which belong to the cultivation of science have increased in India to such a degree, that Captain Gerard, when on the Tarhigang, near the Sutlej, north of Shipke, at an elevation of 19411 English feet, after breaking three barometers, had still four equally correct ones remain- ing. (Critical Researches on Philology and Geography, 1824, p. 144.) 3
Frémont, in the expedition which he made in the years 1842—1844 by order of the Government of the United States, found the highest summit of the whole chain of the Rocky Mountains to the north north-west of Spanish, James’s, Long’s, and Laramie Peaks. This snowy summit, of which he measured the elevation barometrically, belongs to the group of the Wind River mountains. It bears on the large map, edited by Colonel Abert, Chief of the Topographical Office at Washington, the name of Frémont’s Peak, and is situated in 43° 10’ lat. and 110° 13’ W. long. from Greenwich, almost 54° north of Spanish Peak. Its height,
42 STEPPES AND DESERTS,
by direct measurement, is 12730 French, or 13568 English feet. This would make Frémont’s Peak 324 toises (or — 2072 English feet) higher than the elevation assigned by
Long to James’s Peak, which, according to its position, appears to be identical with Pike’s Peak in the map above referred to. The Wind River mountains form the divortia aquarum, or division between the waters flowing towards either ocean. Captain Frémont (in his Official Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the years 1843-44, p. 70,) says, “ We saw, on one side, countless mountain lakes, and the sources of the Rio Colorado which carries its waters through the gulf of California to the Pacific ; and, on the other side, the deep valley of the Wind river, where are situated the sources of the Yellowstone river, one of the principal branches of the Missouri which unites with the Mississippi at St. Louis. To the north- west, rise, covered with perpetual snow, the summits called the Trois Tetons, where the true source of the Missouri itself is situated, not far from that of the head water of the Oregon or Columbia, or the source of that branch of it called Snake River or Lewis Fork.” To the astonishment of the adventurous travellers, they found the top of Frémont’s Peak visited by bees: perhaps, like the butterflies seen by me, also among perpetual snow but in much more elevated regions in the Andes of Peru, they had been carried thither involuntarily by ascending currents of air. I have seen in the Pacific, at a great distance from the coast, large winged lepidopterous insects fall on the deck of the ship,
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 43
having, no doubt, been carried far out to sea by land winds. |
Frémont’s map and geographical investigations comprehend the extensive region from the junction of the Kanzas river with the Missouri, to the falls of the Columbia and to the missions of Santa Barbara and Pueblo de los Angeles in New California; or a space of 28 degrees of longitude, and from the 34th to the 45th parallel of latitude. Four hundred points have been determined hypsometrically by barometric observations, and, for the most part, geographi- cally by astronomical observations ; so that a district which, with the windings of the route, amounts to 3600 geogra- phical miles, from the mouth of the Kanzas to Fort Vancouver and the shores of the Pacific (almost 720 miles more than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk), has been represented in profile, shewing the relative heights above the level of the sea. As I was, I believe, the first person who under- took to represent, in geognostic profile, the form of entire countries,—such as the Iberian peninsula, the highlands of Mexico, and the cordilleras of South America, (the semi- perspective projections of a Siberian. traveller, the Abbé Chappe, were founded on mere and generally ill-judged estimations of the fall of rivers),—it has given me peculiar pleasure to see the graphical method of representing the
form of the earth in a vertical direction, or the elevation of the solid portions of our planet above its watery covering, applied on so grand a scale as has been done in F'rémont’s map. In the middle latitudes of 37° to 43°, the Rocky Mountains present, besides the higher snowy summits
4.4 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
comparable with the Peak of Teneriffe in elevation, lofty plains of an extent hardly met with elsewhere on the sur- face of the earth, and almost twice as extensive in an east and west direction as that of the Mexican plateaux. From the group of mountains, which commences a little to the west of Fort Laramie to beyond the Wahsatch mountains, there is an uninterrupted swelling’ of the ground from 5300 to 7400 English feet above the level of the © sea. A similar elevation may even be said to occupy
the whole space from 34° to 45° between the Rocky — Mountains proper and the Californian snowy coast chain. This space, a kind of broad longitudinal valley like that of the lake of Titiaca, has been called, by Joseph Walker, a traveller well acquainted with these western regions, and by Captain Frémont, “The Great Basin.” It is a terra incognita of at least 128000 square miles in extent, arid, almost entirely without human inhabitants, and full of salt lakes, the largest of which is 4200 English feet above the level of the sea, and is connected with the narrow lake of Utah. (Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition, pp. 154 and 273—276.) The last-mentioned lake receives the abundant waters of the “ Rock River ;” Timpan Ogo, in the Utah language. Father Escalante, in journeying, in 1776, from Santa Fé del Nuevo Mexico to Monterey in New California, discovered Frémont’s “ Great Salt Lake,” and, confounding lake and river, gave it the — name of Laguna de Timpanogo. As such I inserted it in my map of Mexico; and this has given rise to much un- critical discussion on the assumed non-existence of a great
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 45
inland salt lake in North America,—a question previously raised by the well-informed American geographer, Tanner. (Humboldt, Atlas Mexicain, planche 2; Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, T. i. p. 231, T. ii. pp. 243, 313, and 420; Fremont, Upper California, 1848, p. 9; and, also, Duflot de Mofras, Exploration de Oregon, 1844, T. n. p- 40.) Gallatin says expressly, in the Memoir on the Aboriginal Races in the Archzeologia Americana, vol. i. p. 140, “ General Ashley and Mr. J. S. Smith have found the lake Timpanogo in the same latitude and longitude nearly as had been assigned to it in Humboldt’s Atlas of Mexico.”
I have dwelt on the remarkable swelling of the ground in the region of the Rocky Mountains, because, doubtless, by its elevation and extent, it exercises an influence hitherto but little considered, on the climate of the whole continent of North America, to the south and east. In the ex- tensive continuous plateau, Frémont saw the waters covered with ice every night in the month of August. Nor is the elevation of this region less important as respects the social state and progress of the great United States of North America. Although the elevation of the line of the separation of the waters nearly equals that of the passes of the Simplon (6170 French, or 6576 English feet), of the St. Gothard (6440 French, or 6865 English feet), and of the St. Bernard (7476 French, or 7969 English feet), yet the ascent is so gradual, as to offer no obstacle to the use of wheel carriages of all kinds in the communication between the basins of the Missouri and the Oregon ; in other words,
46 STEPPES AND DESERTS..
between the states on the Atlantic Sea Board opposite Europe, and the new settlements on the Oregon and Columbia opposite China. The itimerary distance from Boston to Astoria on the Pacific at the mouth of the Columbia, is, according to the difference of longitude, 2200 geographical miles, or about one-sixth less. than the distance of Lisbon from the Ural near Katharinenburg. From the gentleness of the ascent of the high plateau which leads from the Missouri to California and to the basin of the Oregon,—(from the River and Fort Laramie, on the northern branch of the Platte River, to Fort Hall on the Lewis Fork of the Columbia, all the camping places of which the height was measured were from upwards of five to seven thousand, and at Old Park even 9760: French, or 10,403 Enghsh feet) ;—it has not been easy to determine the situation of the culminating point, or “ divortia aquarum.” It is south of the Wind River mountains, nearly midway between the Mississipi and the coast of the Pacific, at an elevation of 7027 French, or 7490 English feet; therefore only 450 French, or 480 English, feet lower than the Pass of the great St. Bernard. The immigrants cali this point “the South Pass.” (Fré- mont’s Report, pp. 3, 60, 70, 100, 129). It is situated in a pleasant district, in which the mica slate and gneiss rock are found covered with many species of Artemisia, particu- larly Artemisia tridentata (Nuttall), asters, and cactuses. Astronomical determinations give the latitude 42° 24’, and the longitude 109° 24’ W. from Greenwich. Adolph Erman has already called attention to the circumstance that the
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 47
direction of the great chain of the Aldan mountains in the east of Asia, which divides the streams flowing into the Lena from those which flow towards the Pacific, if prolonged on the surface of the globe in the direction of a great circle, passes through several summits of the Rocky Moun- tains, between the parallels of 40° and 55° “Thus an American and an Asiatic chain of mountains appear to belong to one great fissure, following the direction of a great circle, or the shortest course from point to point.” (Compare Erman’s Reise um die Erde, Abth. I. Bd. ii. S. 8, Abth. If. Bd. i. S. 386, with his Archiv fur wissen- schaftliche Kunde von Russland, Bd. vi. 8. 671).
The Rocky Mountains which sink down towards the Mackenzie River which is covered a large portion of the year with ice, and the highlands from which single snow-clad summits rise, are altogether distinct from the more westerly and higher mountains of the coast, or the chain of the Californian Maritime Alps, the Sierra Nevada de California. However ill selected the now generally used name of the Rocky Mountains, to designate the most northerly continu- ation of the Mexican Central Chain, it does not appear to me desirable to change it, as has been often proposed, for that of the Oregon Chain. Although these mountains do indeed contain the sources of Lewis’s, Clark’s, and North Fork, the three chief branches which form the mighty Oregon, or Columbia River, yet this river also breaks through the Californian chain of snow-clad Maritime Alps. The name of Oregon District is also employed politically and officially for the smaller territory west of the
48 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Coast Chain, where Fort Vancouver and the Welahmutti settlements. are situated, and therefore it is the more
desirable not to give the name of Oregon either to the )
Central or the Coast Chain. This name is connected with a most singular mistake of an eminent geographer, M. Malte Brun: reading on an old Spanish map, “ And it is not yet known, (y aun se ignora) where the source of this river’ (the river now called the Columbia) “is situated,” he thought he recognised in the word ignora the name of Oregon. (See my Essai politique sur 1a Nouvelle Espagne, T. u. p. 314).
The rocks which, where the Columbia breaks through the Chain, form the Cataracts, mark the continuation of the Sierra Nevada de California from the 44th to the 47th degree of latitude. (Frémont, Geographical Memoir upon Upper California, 1848, p. 6.) This northern continuation comprises the three colossal summits of Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, and Mount St. Helen’s, which rise more than 14540 French or 15500 English feet above the level of the sea. The height of this Coast Chain, or Range, far exceeds, therefore, that of the Rocky Mountains. “ During a journey of eight months’ duration which was made along the Maritime Alps,” says Captain Frémont, in his Report, p- 274, “we had snowy peaks always in view; we had surmounted the Rocky Mountains by the South Pass at an elevation of 7027 (7490 E.) feet, but we found the passes of the Maritime Alps, which are divided into several parallel ranges, more than 2000 feet higher ;” therefore, only about 1170 feet (1247 E.) belowthe summit of Etna. It is extremely
: : i
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS, 49
remarkable, and reminds us of the difference between the eastern and: western cordilleras of Chili, that it is only the chain of mountains nearest to the sea (the Californian range), which has still active volcanoes. The conical moun- tains of Regnier and St. Helen’s are seen to emit smoke almost constantly, and on the 23rd of November 1843, Mount St. Helen’s sent forth a quantity of ashes which covered the banks of the Columbia for forty miles like snow. To the volcanic Coast Range also belong, (in Russian America in the high north), Mount St. Elias (1980 toises high, according to La Perouse, and 2792 toises, according to» Malaspina (12660 and 17850 KE. feet), and Mount Fair Weather, (Cerro de Buen Tempo) 2304 toises, or 14732 E. feet high. Both these mountains are supposed to be still active volcanoes. Frémont’s expedition, (which was important alike for its botanical and geological results), collected volcanic products, such as scoriaceous basalt, trachyte, and even obsidian, in the Rocky Mountains, and found an extinct volcanic crater a little to the east of Fort Hall, (lat. 43° 2’, long. 112° 28 W.); but there are no signs of volcanoes still active, that is to say, emitting at times lava or ashes. We are not to confound with such activity the still imperfectly explained phenomenon of “smoking hills ;” “cdtes brilées,” or “terrains ardens,” as they are called by the English settlers, and by natives speaking French. An accurate observer, M. Nicollet, says, “ranges of low conical hills are covered with a thick black smoke almost periodically, and often for two or three years together. No flames are seen.” This phenomenon VOL. I. E
50 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
shews itself principally in the district of the Upper Missouri, and still nearer to the eastern declivity of the Rocky Moun- — tains, where a river bears the native namie of Mankizitah- Watpa, or the “ river of the smoking earth.” Scoriacous pseudo-volcanic products, such as a kind of porcelain jasper, are found in the vicinity of the “smoking hills.” Since the expedition of Lewis and Clark an opinion has become prevalent that the Missouri deposits real pumice on its banks. Fine cellular whitish masses have been confounded with pumice. Professor Ducatel was disposed to ascribe _ this appearance, which was principally observed in the chalk formation, to a “decomposition of water by sulphuric pyrites, and to a reaction on beds of lignite.” (Compare Frémont’s Report, p. 164, 184, 187, 193, and 299, with Nicollet’s Illustration of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississipi River, 1843, p. 39-41.)
If, in concluding these few general considerations on the physical geography of North America, we once more turn our attention to the spaces which separate the two diverging . coast chains from the central chain, we find, in striking contrast, on the one hand, the arid uninhabited plateau of above five or six thousand feet elevation, which im the west intervenes between the central chain and the Californian Maritime Alps which skirt the Pacific; and on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, between them and the Alleghanies, (the highest summits of which, Mount Washington and Mount Marcy, are, according to Lyell, 6240 and 5066 French, or 6652 and 5400 English feet above the level of the sea,) the vast, well-watered, and fertile
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 51
low plain or basin of the Mississipi, the greater part of which is from 400 to 600 French feet above the level of the sea, or about twice the elevation of the plains of Lombardy. The hypsometric conformation of this eastern region, 7. e. the altitude of its several parts above the sea, has been elucidated by the valuable labours of the highly-talented French astro- nomer, Nicollet, of whom science has been deprived by a too early death. His large and excellent map of the Upper Mississipi, constructed in the years 1836-1840, is based on 24,0 astronomically determined latitudes, and 170 barometric measurements of elevation. ‘The plain which contains the basin of the Mississipi is one with the Northern Canadian plain, so that one low region extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea. (Compare my Rélation Histo- rique T. iii. p. 234, and Nicollet’s Report to the Senate of the United States, 1843, p. 7 and 57.) Where the plain is undulating, and where, between 47° and 48° of latitude, low hills (céteaux des prairies, and coteaux des bois, in the still un-English nomenclature of the natives) occur in connected ranges, these ranges and gentle swellings of the ground divide the waters which flow towards Hudson’s Bay from those which seek the Gulf of Mexico. Sucha dividing line is formed north of Lake Superior by the Missabay Heights, and more to the west by the “ Hauteurs des Terres,” in which were first discovered, in 1832, the true sources of the Mississipi, one of the largest rivers in the world. The highest of these ranges of hills hardly attains an elevation of 1400 to 1500 41492 to 1599 English) feet. From St. Louis, a little to the south of the junction of the Mis-
52 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
souri and the Mississipi, to the mouth of the latter river at
Old French Balize, it has only a fall of 357 (880 English) —
feet in an itinerary distance of more than 1280 geographical miles The surface of Lake Superior is 580 (618 Hnglish) feet above the level of the sea, and its depth near Magdalen Island is 742 (791 English) feet; its bottom, therefore,
is 162 (173 English) feet below the surface of the ocean.
(Nicollet, p. 99, 125, and 128.)
Beltrami, who separated himself from Major Long’s ex- pedition in 1825, boasted of having discovered the source of the Mississipi in Lake Cass. The river in the upper part of its course passes through four lakes, of which Lake Cass is the second. The uppermost is the Istaca Lake (in lat. 47° 13’ and long. 95° 0°), and was first recognised as the true
source of the Mississipi in the expedition of Schoolcraft and
Allen in 1832. This afterwards mighty river is only 17 feet wide and 15 inches deep when it issues from the singular horse-shoe-shaped Lake of Istaca. Itwas not until the scientific expedition of Nicollet, in 1836, that a clear know- ledge of the localities was obtained and rendered definite by
astronomically determined positions. The height of the °
sources of the Mississipi, viz. of the remotest affluent received by the Lake of Istaca from the dividing ridge or “ Hauteur de Terre,” is 1575 (1680 English) feet above the level of the sea. In the immediate vicinity, and indeed on the southern slope of the same dividing ridge, is Elbow Lake, in which the smaller Red River of the North, which after many windings flows into Hudson’s Bay, -has its origin. The Carpathian mountains present similar circumstances in the
ee Oe
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. a3
proximity and relative positions of the sources of rivers which send their waters respectively to the Black Sea and to the Baltic. Twenty small lakes, forming narrow groups to the south and west of Lake Istaca, have received from M. Nicollet the names of distinguished European astronomers, adversaries as well as friends. The map thus becomes a kind of geographical album, reminding one of the botanical album of Ruiz and Pavon’s Flora Peruviana, in which the names of new genera of plants were adapted to the Court Calendar, and to the various changes taking place in the Oficiales de la Secretaria.
‘To the east of the Mississipi dense forests still partially prevail; but to the west of the river there are only Prairies, in which the buffalo (Bos americanus), and the musk ox (Bos moschatus), feed in large herds. Both these animals, (the largest of the New World) serve the wandering Indians, the Apaches Llaneros.and the Apaches Lipanos, for food. The Assiniboins sometimes kill in a few days from seven to eight hundred bisons in what are called ‘bison parks,” artificial enclosures into which the wild herds are driven. (Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das imnere Nord-America, Bd. i. 1839, 8.443.) The American bison, or buffalo, called by the Mexicans Cibolo, which is frequently killed merely for the sake of the tongue a much-prized dainty, is by no means a mere variety of the Aurochs of the Old Continent; although some other kinds of animals, as the elk (Cervus alces) and the reindeer (Cervus tarandus), and even, in the human race, the short-statured polar man, are common to the northern parts of both continents, evidencing
54 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
their former long continued connection. The Mexicans call the European ox in the Aztec dialect “ quaquahue,” a . horned animal, from quaquahuitl, a horn. Some very large horns of cattle found in the ancient Mexican buildings not far from Cuernavaca, to the south-west of the city of Mexico, appear to me to have belonged to the musk ox. The Cana- dian bison can be tamed to agricultural labour. It breeds with the European cattle, but it was long uncertain whether the hybrid was fruitful. Albert Gallatin, who, before he appeared in Europe as a distinguished diplomatist, had _ obtained by personal inspection great knowledge of the un- cultivated parts of the United States, assures us that “the mixed breed was quite common fifty years ago in some of the north-western counties of Virginia; and the cows, the issue of that mixture, propagated like all others.” “I do not remember,” he adds, “the grown bison being tamed, but sometimes young bison calves were caught by dogs, and were brought up and driven out with the European cows.” At Monongahela all the cattle were for a long time of this mixed breed : but complaints were made that they gave very little milk. The favourite food of the bison or buffalo is Tripsacum dactyloides (called buffalo grass in North Caro- lina), and an undescribed species of clover nearly allied to Trifolium repens, and designated by Barton as Trifolium bisonicum.
I have already called attention elsewhere (Cosmos, vol. ii. note 455, English ed.) to the circumstance that, according to a statement of the trustworthy Gomara, (Historia General de las Indias, cap. 214) there was still living in the six-
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 55
teenth century, in the north-west of Mexico, in 40° latitude, an Indian tribe, whose principal riches consisted in herds of tame bisons (bueyes con una giba). But notwithstanding the possibility of taming the bison, notwithstanding the quantity of milk it yields, and notwithstanding the herds of lamas in the Cordilleras of Peru, no pastoral life or pastoral people were found when America was discovered, and there is no historical evidence of this intermediate stage in the life of nations ever having existed there. It is worthy of remark that the American buffalo or bison has exerted an influence on the progress of geography in trackless mountainous regions. ‘These animals wander in the winter, in search of a milder climate, in herds of several thousands to the south of the Arkansas River. In these migrations their size and unwieldiness make it difficult for them to pass over high mountains. When, therefore, a well-trodden buffalo path is met with, it is advisable to follow it, as being sure to conduct to the most convenient pass across the mountains. The best routes through the Cumberland Mountains, in the south-west parts of Virginia and Ken- tucky, in the Rocky Mountains between the sources of the Yellow Stone and the Platte, and between the southern branch of the Columbia and the Rio Colorado of California, were thus marked out beforehand by buffalo paths. The advance of settlement and cultivation has gradually driven the buffalo from all the Eastern states: they formerly roamed on the banks of the Mississipi and of the Ohio far beyond Pittsburg. (Archeologia Americana, vol. ii., 1836, — p. 139.)
56 _ §TEPPES AND DESERTS.
From the granitic cliffs of Diego Ramirez,—in the deeply indented and intersected Tierra del Fuego, which contains on the east silurian schists and on the west the same schists altered by the metamorphic action of subterranean fire, (Darwin’s Journal of Researches ito the Geology and Natural History of the Countries visited in 1832-1836 by the Ships Adventure and Beagle, p. 266),—to the North Polar Sea, the Cordilleras extend in length more than 8000 geographical miles. They are the longest though not the loftiest chain on our planet ; being raised from a cleft running in the direction of a meridian from pole to pole, and exceed- ing in linear distance the interval which in the Old. Conti- nent separates the Pillars of Hercules from the Icy Cape of the Tchuktches in the north-east of Asia. Where the Andes © divide into several parallel chains, it is remarked that the ranges nearest the sea are usually. those which exhibit most volcanic activity; but it has also been observed repeatedly, that when the phenomena of still active subterranean fire . disappear in one chain, they break out in another chain running parallel to it. Generally speaking, the volcanic cones are found in a direction corresponding with that of the axis of direction of the entire chain; but in the elevated highlands of Mexico the active volcanoes are placed along a transverse cleft running from sea to sea in the east and west direction. (Humboldt, Essai Politique, T. ii. p. 173.) Where, by the ‘elevation of mountain masses in the ancient corrugation or folding of the crust of the earth, access has been opened to the molten interior, that inte- rior continues to act, through the medium of the cleft,
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 57
upon the upheaved wall-like mass. That which we now call @ mountain chain has not arrived at once at its present state: rocks, very different in the order of succession in reference to age, are found superimposed upon each other, and have penetrated to the surface by early formed channels. The various nature of the formations is due to the outpour- ing and elevation of eruptive rocks, as well as to the slow and complicated process of metamorphic action taking place in clefts filled with vapours and favourable to the conduction of heat..
For a long time past, from 1830 to 1848, the following have been regarded as the culminating or highest points of the Cordilleras of the New Continent.
The Nevado de Sorata, also called Ancohuma or Tusubaya, (S. lat. 15° 52’) a little to the south of the village of Sorata or Esquibel, in the eastern Bolivia Range: elevation 3949 toises, or 23692 Parisian, or 25250 English feet.
The Nevado de Lllimani, west of the Mission of Yrupana (S. lat. 16° 38’) in the same mountain range as Sorata: elevation 3753 toises, or 22518 Parisian, or 24000 English feet.
The Chimborazo (S. lat. 1° 27’) in the province of Quito: elevation 3350 toises, or 20100 Parisian, or 21423 English feet.
The Sorata and Illimani were first measured by a dis- tinguished geologist, Mr. Pentland, in 1827, and also in 1838. Since the publication, in June 1848, of his great map of the basin of the lake of Titicaca, we know that the above-mentioned elevations of these two mountains are
58 STEPPES AND DESERTS,
respectively 3960 and 2851 English feet, too great. The map gives to the Sorata 21286, and to the Illimani — 21149 English feet. A more exact calculation of the tri- gonometrical operations of 1838 has led Mr. Pentland to * these new results. There are, according to him, in the western Cordillera four peaks of from 21700 to 22350 ‘English feet. The highest of these, the peak of Sahama, would thus be 926 English feet higher than the Chim- borazo, and but 850 English feet lower than the Volcano of Acongagua, measured by the expedition of the Beagle (Fitz Roy’s Narrative, Vol. ii. p. 481.)
(6) p. 3.—* The Desert near the basaltic mountains of Harudsh.”
Near the Egyptian Natron Lakes, (which in the time of Strabo had not yet been divided into six reservoirs), there is a range of hills which rises steeply on the northern side, and runs from east to west past Fezzan, where it, finally appears to join the chain of the Atlas. It divides in north-eastern Africa, as the Atlas does in north-western Africa, the inhabited maritime Lybia of Herodotus from the land of the Berbers, or Biledulgerid, abounding in wild animals. From the limits of Middle Egypt the whole region south of the 30th degree of North latitude is a sea of sand, in which are dispersed islands, or Oases, containing springs of water and a flourishing vegetation. The number of these Oases, of which the ancients only reckoned three, and which Strabo compared to the spots on a panther’s skin, has been considerably augmented by the discoveries of modern travellers. The third Oasis of the ancients, now called
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 59
Siwah, was the Nomos of Ammon; a residence of priests, a resting place for caravans, and the site of the temple of the horned Ammon and the supposed periodically cool fountain of the Sun. The rums of Ummibida, (Omm- Beydah), belong incontestibly to the fortified caravanserai at the temple of Ammon, and therefore to the most ancient monuments which have come down to us from the early dawn of civilization. (Caillaud, Voyage a Syouah, p. 14; Ideler in den Fundgruben des Orients, Bd. iv. 8S. 399- 411).
The word Oasis is Egyptian, and synonymous with Auasis and Hyasis (Strabo, lib. i. p. 130, lib. xvii. p- 813, Cas.; Herod. lib. iii. cap. 26, p. 207, Wessel). Abulfeda calls the Oases, el-Wah. In the later times of the Cesars, malefactors were sent to the Oases; being banished to these islands in the sea of sand, as the Spaniards and the English have sent criminals to the Falklands or to New Holland. Escape by the ocean is almost easier than through the desert. The fertility of the Oases is subject to diminution by the invasion of sand.
The small mountain-range of Harudsh is said to consist of basaltic hills of grotesque form (Ritter’s Afrika, 1822, S. 885, 988, 993, and 1003). It is the Mons Ater of Pliny; and its western extremity or continuation, called the Soudah mountains, has been explored by my unfortunate friend, the adventurous traveller Ritchie. This eruption of basalt in tertiary limestone, rows of hills rising abruptly from dike-like fissures, appears to be analogous to the outbreak of basalt in the Vicentine territory. Nature often repeats the same phenomena in the most distant
60 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
parts of the earth. In the limestone formations of the “white Harudsh” (Harudje el-Abiad), which perhaps . belong to the old chalk, Hornemann found an immense number of fossil heads of fish. Ritchie and Lyon remarked that the basalt of the Soudah mountains, like that of the Monte Berico, was in many places intimately. mixed with carbonate of lime,—a phenomenon probably connected with eruption through limestone strata. Lyon’s map even mentions dolomite in the neighbourhood. Modern mineralogists have found syenite and greenstone in Egypt, but. not basalt. Possibly the material of some of the ancient Egyptian vases, which are occasionally found of true basalt, may have been taken from these western mountains. May “ Obsidius lapis” also have been found there? or are basalt and obsidian to be sought for near the Red Sea? ‘The strip of volcanic or eruptive formations of the Harudsh, on the margin of the African desert, reminds the geologist of the augitic vesicular amygdaloid, phonolite, and greenstone porpyhry, which are only found at the northern and western boundaries of the Steppes of Venezuela and of the plains of the Arkansas, as it were on the hills of the ancient coast line. (Humboldt, Relation Historique, tom. i. p. 142; Long’s Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, vol. u. pp. 91 and 405.)
(7) p. 8.—* When suddenly deserted by the east wind of the tropics in a sea covered with weed.”
It is a remarkable phenomenon, well known among sailors, that in the vicinity of the African coast (between the Canaries and the Cape de Verde Islands, and particu- larly between Cape Bojador and the mouth of the Senegal),
ANNOTATIONS 24ND ADDITIONS. 61
a west wind often takes the place of the general east or trade-wind of the tropics. It is the wide expanse of the desert of Sahara which causes this westerly wind. The air over the heated sandy plain becomes rarefied and ascends, the air from the sea rushes in to supply the void so formed, and thus there sometimes arises a west wind, adverse to ships bound to the American coast, which are made in this manner to feel the vicinity of the heat-radiating desert without even seeing ,the continent to which it belongs. The changes of land and sea breezes, which blow alternately at certain hours of the day or night on all coasts, are due to the same causes.
The accumulation of sea-weed in the neighbourhood of . the African coast has been often spoken of by ancient writers.. The locality of this accumulation is a problem which is intimately connected with our conjectures respecting the extent of Phcenician navigation. The Periplus, which has been ascribed to Scylax of Caryanda, and which, according to the researches of Niebuhr and Letronne, was very probably compiled in the time of Philip of Macedon, describes beyond Cerne a quantity of fucus forming a weed- covered sea—a kind of ‘“ Mar de Sargasso ;” but the locality indicated appears to me to differ very much from that assigned in the work entitled “ De Mirabilibus Auscultationi- bus,” which long bore, unduly, the great name of Aristotle. (Compare Scyl. Caryand. Peripl. in Hudson, vol. ii. p. 53, with Aristot. de Mirab. Auscult. in opp. omnia ex. rec. Bekkeri, p. 844, § 136.) The pseudo-Aristotle says, “ Phoenician mariners, driven by the east wind, came in four days’ sail from Gades to a nart where they found the sea
62 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
covered with reeds and sea-weed (Sptov xalpixoc.) The sea-weed is uncovered at ebb and covered at flood tide.”
Is he not here speaking of a shallow place between the —
34° and 36° of latitude? Has a shoal dissappeared in consequence of volcanic eruption? Vobonne speaks of rocks north of Madeira. (Compare also Edrisi, Geog. Nub., 1619, p. 157.) In Scylax it is said, ‘The sea beyond Cerne is unnavigable on account of its great shallowness, its muddiness, and the great quantity of sea grasses. The sea grass lies a span thick, and is full of points at the top, so that it pricks.” The sea-weed found between Cerne,— (the Pheenician station for laden vessels, Gaulea, or, according to Gosselin, the small island of Fedallah, on the north- western coast of Mauritania),—and Cape de Verde, does not now by any means form a great sea meadow, or con- nected tract of fucus, a “ mare herbidum,” such as exists beyond the Azores.. In the poetic description of the coast by Festus Avienus, (Ora Maritima, v. 109, 122, 388, and 4.08), in the composition of which, as Avienus himself says, (v. 412) he availed himself of the journals of Phcenician ships, the obstacle presented by the sea-weed is referred to in a very circumstantial manner; but its site is placed much farther north, towards Ierne, the “ Sacred Island.”
Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem, Sic segnis humor sequoris pigri stupet. Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites Exstare fucum, et seepe virgulti vice Retinere puppim .
Hee inter undas multa cespitem jacet, Eamaue late gens Hibernorum colit.
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 63
In remarking that the fucus and the mud or mire, (x\és), the shallowness of the sea, and the perpetual calms, are always spoken of by the ancients as characteristics of the western ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, one is disposed, more particularly on account of the mention of the calms,to ascribe something to Punic artifice,—to the desire of a great trading people to deter others, by the apprehension of dangers and difficulties, from entering into competition with them in western navigation and commerce. But even in the genuine writings of Aristotle (Meteorol. ii. p- 1, 14,) he maintains this same opinion of the absence of wind in those regions, and seeks the explanation of what he erroneously supposes to be a fact of observation, but which is more properly a fabulous mariner’s tale, in an hypothesis concerning the depth of the sea. In reality, the stormy sea between Gades and the islands of the Blest or Fortunate Islands, (between Cadix and the Canaries), is very unlike the sea farther to the south between the tropics, where the gentle trade winds blow, and which is called very characteristically by the Spaniards, el Golfo de las Damas, the Ladies’ Gulf. (Acosta Historia natural y moral de las Indias, lib. iii. cap. 4.)
From very careful researches by myself, and. from the comparison of the logs or journals of many English and French vessels, [ infer that the old and indefinite expression, Mar de Sargasso, includes two banks of fucus, of which the greater and easternmost one, of a lengthened shape, is situated between the parallels of 19° and 34° N, lat., in a meridian of 7 degrees to the west of the Island of
64 STEPPES AND DESERTS. ~
Corvo, one ofthe Azores; while the lesser and western-
most bank, of a roundish form, is situated between the
Bermudas and the Bahamas, (lat. 25°-31°, long. 66°-74°.) The longer axis of the small bank which is crossed by ships going from Baxo de Plata (Caye d’Argent, Silver
Cay) on the north of St. Domingo, to the Bermudas,
appears to have a N. 60° E. direction. A transverse band of Fucus natans, running in an Hast and West direction between the parallels of 25° and 30°, connects the greater and lesser banks. I have had the gratification of seeing these in- ferences approved by my honoured friend Major Rennell, and adopted by him in his great work on Currents, where he has further supported and confirmed them by many new and addi- tionai observations. (Compare Humboldt, Relation Histo- rique, tom. i. p. 202, and Examen critique, tom. ili. p. 68-99, with Rennell’s Investigation of the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean, 1832, p. 184.) The two groups of sea-weed,
included together with the transverse connecting band.
under the old general name of the Sargasso Sea, occupy altogether a space exceeding six or seven times the area of Germany.
Thus it is the vegetation of the ocean which offers the most remarkable example of an assemblage of “social plants” of a single species. On terra firma, the savannahs or prairies, or grassy plains of America, the heaths (ericeta), and the forests of the North of Europe and Asia, consisting of coniferous trees, birches, and willows, offer a less degree of uniformity than do those thalassophytes. Our heaths show, in the north, in addition to the prevailing Calluna
SS ee,
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 65
vulgaris, Erica tetralix, E. ciliaris, and HE. cinerea; and in the south, Erica arborea, H. scoparia, and E. medit- terranea. The uniformity of the aspect offered by the Fucus natans is greater than that of any other assemblage or association of plants. Oviedo calls the fucus banks “meadows,” praderias de yerva. Considering that the island of Flores was discovered in 1452, by Pedro Velasco, a native of the Spanish port of Palos, by following the flight of certain birds from the island of Fayal, it seems almost impossible, seeing the proximity of the great fucus bank of Corvo and Flores, that a part of these oceanic meadows should not have been seen before Columbus, by Portuguese ships driven by storms to the westward. Yet the astonishment of the companions of Columbus in 1492, when surrounded by sea-weed uninterruptedly from the 16th of September to the 8th of October, shews that the magni- tude of the phenomenon at least was previously unknown to the sailors. The anxieties excited by the accumulation of sea-weed, and the murmurs of his companions in reference thereto, are not indeed mentioned by Columbus in the extracts from the ship’s journal given by Las Casas. He merely speaks of the complaints and murmurs respecting the danger to be feared from the weak but constant East winds. It is only the son, Fernando Colon, who, in writing his father’s life, endeavoured to depict the fears of the sailors in a dramatic manner.
According to my researches, Columbus crossed the great fucus bank in 1492, in lat. 283°, and in 1498, in lat. 37°, both times in the long. of from 38° to 41° W. This is
VOL. I. F
66 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
deducible with tolerable certainty from Columbus’s re- corded estimation of the ship’s rate, and the “ distance daily sailed over ;” derived indeed, not from casting the log, but from data afforded by the running out of half-hour sand- glasses (ampolletas). The first certain and definite mention of a log (catena della poppa) which I have been able to discover, is in the year 1521, in Pigafetta’s journal of Ma- gellan’s Voyage round the World. (Cosmos, vol. i. p, 259, and Note 405, English ed.) The determination of the ship’s place, while Columbus was engaged in traversing the great meadows of sea-weed, is the more important, because we learn from it that for three centuries and a half the situation of this great accumulation of thalassophytes, whether resulting from the local character of the bottom of the sea, or from the direction of the Gulf stream, has remained the same. Such evidences of the permanency of great natural phenomena arrest the attention of the physical inquirer with double force, when they present themselves in the ever- moving oceanic element, Although the limits of the fucus banks oscillate considerably, in correspondence with the variations of the strength and direction of the prevailing winds, yet we may still in the middle of the 19th century take the meridian of 41° W. from Paris. (38° 38’ W. from Greenwich) as the principal axis of the “great bank.” In the vivid imagination of Columbus, the idea of the posi- tion of this bank was intimately connected with the great physical line of demarcation, which, according to him, divided the globe into two parts, with the changes of magnetic variation, and with climatic relations. Columbus,
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 67
when uncertain respecting his longitude, (February 1493), di- rected himself by the appearance of the first floating streamers of weed (de la primera yerva) on the eastern margin of the great Corvo bank. The physical line of demarcation was, by the powerful influence of the Admiral, converted on the 4th of May, 1493, into a political line, being made the celebrated “line of demarcation” between the Spanish and Portuguese rights of possession. (Compare my Examen Critique, tom. iii. p. 64-99, and Cosmos, English ed. vol. ii. p- 279-280.)
(8) p. 3.—* The Nomadic Tibbos and Tuaricks.”
These two nations inhabit the deserts between Bornou, Fezzan, and Lower Egypt. They were first made known to us with some exactness by Hornemann’s and Lyon’s travels. The Tibbos or Tibbous roam through the eastern, and the Tuaticks (Tueregs) through the western, parts of the great desert. The first are called by the other tribes, from being in continual movement, “ birds.” The Tuaricks are distin- guished into those of Aghadez and those of Tagazi. They are often engaged as conductors of caravans, and in trade. Their language is the same as that of the Berbers; and they belong unquestionably to the number of the primitive - Lybian nations. The Tuaricks present a remarkable phy- siological phenomenon. Different tribes among them are, according to the climate, white, yellowish, and even almost black; but all are without woolly hair or Negro features. (Exploration scientifique de P Algérie, T. ii. p. 348.)
68 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
(9) p. 4.— The Ship of the Desert.”
Tn oriental poems, the camel is called the land-ship, or
the ship of the Desert (Sefynet-el-badyet); Chardin, Voyages, nouv. éd. par Langlés, 1811, T. iii. p. 376.
But the camel is not merely the carrier of the desert, and the link which, rendering communication between different countries possible, connects them with each other: he is also, as Carl Ritter has shewn in his excellent memoir on the sphere of diffusion of these animals, the principal and essential condition of the nomadic life of nations in the patriarchal stage of national development, in the hot parts of our planet where rain is either altogether wanting or very infrequent. No animal’s life is so closely associated by natural bonds with a particular stage of the developement of the life of man,—a connection historically established for several thousand years,—as the life of the camel among the Bedouin tribes” (Asien, Bd. viii. Abth. i. 1847, 8. 610 und 758). The camel was entirely unknown to the cultivated Carthaginian nation through all the centuries of their flourishing existence, until the destruction of their city. The Marusians first brought it into military use, in the train of armies, in Western Lybia, in the times of the Cesars; perhaps in consequence of its employ- ment in commercial operations in the valley of the Nile by the Ptolemies. ‘The Guanches, the inhabitants of the Canary Islands and probably related to the Berber race, were not acquainted with the camel before the 15th century,
ie ———————————
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 69
when it was introduced by Norman conquerors and settlers. In the probably very limited communication of the Guanches with the Coast of Africa, the small size of the boats would prevent the transport of large animals. The true Berber race, diffused throughout the interior of Northern Africa, and to which the-'Tibbos and Tuaricks, as already men- tioned, belong, owes doubtless to the use of the camel throughout the Lybian desert and its Oases, not only the advantages of intercommunication, but also the preservation of its national existence to the present day. On the other hand, the negro races never, of their own accord, made any use of the camel ; it was only in company with the conquer- ing expeditions and proselyting missions of the Bedouins, carrying their prophet’s doctrines over the whole of Northern Africa, that the useful animal of the Nedjid, ofthe Nabatheans, and of all the countries inhabited by Aramean races, spread to the westward and was introduced among the black popu lation. The Goths took camels as early as the fourth century to the Lower Istros (the Danube), and the Ghazne- vides conveyed them in much larger numbers as far as India and the banks of the Ganges.” We must distinguish two epochs in the diffusion of the camel throughout the northern part of the African continent; one under the Ptolemies, operating through Cyrene on the whole of the north-west of Africa; and the Mohammedan epoch of the conquering Arabs.
It has long been a question, whether those domestic animals which have been the earliest companionsof mankind— oxen, sheep, dogs, and camels—are still to be met with in a
70 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
state of original wildness. The Hiongnu, in Eastern Asia, belong to the nations who earliest tamed and trained © wild camels as domestic animals. The compiler of the great Chinese work, Si-yu-wen-kien-lo, (Historia Regionum occidentalium, qu Si-yu vocantur, visu et auditu cognita- rum,) affirms that in the middle of the 18th century wild camels, as well as wild horses and wild asses, still wandered in Kast Turkestan. Hadji Chalfa, in his Turkish Geo- graphy, written in the 17th century, speaks of the frequent chase of the wild camel in the high plains of Kashgar, Turfan, and Khotan. Schott translates, from a Chinese author, Ma-dschi, that wild camels are to be found in the countries to the north of China and west of the Hoang-ho, in Ho-si or Tangut. Cuvier alone (Régne Animal, 'T. i. p. 257), doubts the present existence of wild camels in the interior of Asia. He believes they have merely “ become wild;” because Calmucks, and others having Buddhistic reli- gious affinities with them, set camels and other animals at liberty, in order “ to acquire to themselves merit for the other world.” According to Greek witnesses of the times of Artemidorus and Agatharchides of Cnidus, the Ailanitic Gulf of the Nabatheans was the home of the wild Arabian camel, (Ritter’s Asien, Bd. vin. s. 670, 672, and 746.) The discovery of fossil camel bones of the ancient world by Captain Cautley and Doctor Falconer, in 1834, in the sub- Himalaya range of the Sewalik hills, is peculiarly deserving of notice. These bones were found with other ancient bones of mastodons, of true elephants, of giraffes, and of a gigantic land tortoise (Colossochelys), twelve feet in length
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 71
and six feet in height. (Humboldt, Cosmos, Engl. ed. vol. i, p. 268.) This camel of the Ancient World has received the name of Camelus sivalensis, but does not show any con- siderable difference from the still living Hgyptian and Bactrian camels with one and two humps. Forty camels have very recently been introduced into Java, having been brought there from Teneriffe. (Singapore Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1847, p. 206.) The first experiment has been made in Samarang. In like manner, reindeer have only been introduced into Iceland from Norway in the course of the last century. They were not found there when the island was settled, notwithstanding the proximity to Hast Greenland, and the existence of floating masses of ice. (Sar- torius von Waltershausen physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, 8. 41.)
(10) p. 4.) —“ Between the Altai and the Kuen-liin.”
Thegreat highland, or, asit is commonly called, the mountain plateau of Asia, which includes the lesser Bucharia, Songarei, Thibet, Tangut, and the Mogul country of the Chalcas and Olotes, is situated between the 36th and 48th degrees of latitude, and the meridians of 81° and 118° E. long. It is an erroneous view to represent this part of the interior of Asia as a single undivided mountainous gibbosity, continuous like the elevated plains of Quito and Mexico, and elevated from seven to nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. That there is not in this sense any undivided mountain plateau in the interior of Asia, has already been shewn by me in my “ Researches respecting the Mountains of Northern India.”
-
72 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
(Humboldt, Premier Mémoire sur les Montagnes de l’Inde, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, T. in. 1816, p. 303; Second Mémoire, T. xiv. 1820, p. 5-55.)
My views concerning the geographical range of plants, and the mean degree of temperature requisite for certain kinds of cultivation, had early led me to entertain consider-— able doubts as to the continuity of a great Tartarian plateau between the Himalaya and the Altai. Writers continued to _ characterise this plateau as it had been described by Hippo- crates (De Aire et Aquis, § xcvi. p. 74), as “ the high and naked plains of Scythia, which, without beimg crowned with mountains, rise and extend to beneath the constellation of the Bear.’ Klaproth has the undeniable merit of having been the first to make us acquainted with the true position, extent, and direction of two great and entirely dis- tinct chains of mountains—the Kuen-liin and the Thian- schan, in a part of Asia which is better entitled to the name of “central” than Kashmeer, Baltistan, and the Sacred Lakes of Thibet, (the Manasa and the Ravanahrada). The importance of the Celestial Mountains, the Thian-schan, had indeed been already surmised by Pallas, without his being aware of their volcanic nature; but this highly-gifted investigator of nature, hampered by the then prevailing hypothesis of a dogmatic and fantastic geology, firmly believing in “ chains of mountains radiating from a centre,” saw in the Bogdo Oola (the Mons Augustus, or culminating point of the Thian-schan) such a “central node, from whence all the Asiatic mountain chains diverge in rays, and which dominates over all the rest of the continent !”
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 73
The erroneous idea of a single vast elevated plain occupy- ing the whole of central Asia, the “ Plateau de la Tartarie,” took its rise in France, in the latter half of the 18th cen- tury. It was the result of historical combinations, and of a not sufficiently attentive study of the writings of the cele- brated Venetian traveller, as well as of the naive relations of those diplomatic monks who, in the 18th and 14th centuries, (thanks to the unity and extent of the Mogul empire at that time) were able to traverse almost the whole of the interior of the continent, from the ports of Syria and of the Caspian Sea to the shores of the Pacific on the east coast of China. If a more exact acquaintance with the language and ancient literature of India had dated farther back among us than half a century, the hypothesis of this central plateau, occupy- ing the wide space between the Himalaya and the south of Siberia, would no doubt have had adduced in its support an ancient and venerable authority from that source. The poem of the Mahabharata appears, in the geographical fragment Bhischmakanda, to describe “ Merw”’ not so much as a mountain as an enormous elevation of the land, which supplies with water at once the sources of the Ganges, those of the Bhadrasoma (Irtysh), and those of the forked Oxus. These physico-geographical views were intermingled in Europe with ideas of other kinds, and with mythical reveries relating to the origin of mankind. It was said that the ele- vated regions from which the waters first retreated, (geologists in general were long averse to the theory of elevation), must also have received the first germs of civilisation. Hebraizing systems of geology, and views connected with the Deluge
74 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
and supported by local traditions, favoured these assumptions. The intimate connection between time and space, between — the beginnings of social order and the plastic character of the surface of the earth, lent to the supposed “ uninterrupted Plateau of Tartary” a peculiar importance, and an almost moral interest. Acquisitions of positive knowledge, the late matured fruit of scientific travels and direct measure- ments, as well as of a fundamental study of Asiatic languages and literature especially those of China, have gradually demonstrated the inaccuracies and exaggerations of those wild hypotheses. The mountain plains (6porédca) of Central Asia are no longer regarded as the cradle of civilization and ° the primitive seat of all arts and sciences. The ancient nation of Bailly’s Atlantis, happily described by d’Alembert as “having taught us everything but their own name and existence,” has vanished. ‘The supposed inhabitants of the Oceanic Atlantis had already been treated, in the time of Posidonius, in a no less derisive manner. (Strabo, lib. ii. p- 102; and lib. xiii. p. 598, Casaub.)
A plateau of considerable but ‘very unequal elevation, having the names of Gobi, Scha-mo (sand desert), Scha-ho (sand river), and Hanhai, runs in a SSW.-NNE. direc- tion, with little interruption, from Eastern Thibet towards the mountain knot of Kentei south of Lake Baikal. This swelling of the ground is probably anterior to the elevation of the mountain chains by which it is intersected ; it is situated, as already remarked, between 79° and 116° long. from Paris, (81° and 118° HE. from Greenwich). Measured at right angles to its longitudinal axis, its breadth
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 75
is, in the south between Ladak, Gertop, and H’lassa, (the seat of the great Tama,) 720 geographical miles ; between Hami in the Celestial Mountains, and the great bend of the Hoang-ho near the In-schan chain, hardly 480; and in the north, between the Khanggai, where the great city of Karakhorum once stood, and the chain of Khin-gan-Petscha, which runs north and south (in the part of the Gobi tra- versed in travelling from Kiachta by Urga to Pekin) 760 geographical miles. The whole extent of this. swelling ground, which must be carefully distinguished from the far. more elevated mountain range to the east, may be approxi- mately estimated, taking its inflections into account, at about three times the area of France. The map of the mountain ranges and volcanoes of Central Asia (Carte der Bergketten und Vulkane von Central-Asien), constructed by me in 1839, but not published until 1843, shows in the clearest manner the hypsometric relations between the mountain ranges and the Gobi plateau. It was founded on the critical employment of all the astronomical determina- tions accessible to me, and on a vast amount of orographic description, in which Chinese literature is beyond measure rich, examined at my request by Klaproth and Stanislas Julien. My map marks the mean direction and the height of the mountain chains, and represents the leading features of the interior of the continent of Asia, from 80° to 60° degrees of north latitude, and between the meridians of Kherson and Pekin. It differs materially from any pre- viously published map.
The Chinese have enjoyed a threefold advantage towards
76 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
the collection of so great an amount of orographic data in the highlands of Asia, and more especially in the regions (hitherto so little known in the west), north and south of the Celes- tial mountains, between the In-schan, the mountain lake Khuku-noor, and the banks of the Il and the Tarim. The three advantages I allude to are,—the military expedi- tions towards the west, (under the dynasties of Han and Thang 122 years before our era, and again in the ninth century when conquerors advanced as far as Ferghana and to the borders of the Caspian), together with the more peaceful conquests of Buddhistic pilgrims ;—the religious interest attaching to certain lofty mountain summits on account of sacrifices to be periodically offered there ;—and the early and general use of the compass in giving the directions of mountains and of rivers. The knowledge and use of the “ South pointing” of the magnetic needle twelve cen- turies before our era, has given to the orographic and hydrographic descriptions of countries by the Chinese, a great superiority over the descriptions of the same kind which Greek or Roman writers have bequeathed to us, and which are besides extremely few. The acute and sagacious Strabo, was alike imperfectly acquainted with the direction of the Pyrenees, and with those of the Alps and of the Appennines. (Compare Strabo, hb. i. p. 71 and 128; lib, ii. p. 137 ; lib. iv. p. 199 and 202 ; lib. v. p. 211, Casaub.)
To the lowlands belong almost the whole of Northern Asia to the north-west of the volcanic chain of the Thian-schan ;— the Steppes to the north of the Altai and of the Sayan chain ;—the countries which extend from the mountains of
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 77
Bolor, or Bulyt-Tagh, (“cloud mountains” in the Uigurian dialect) which follow a north and south direction, and from the upper Oxus, (whose sources were found by the Buddhistic pilgrims Hiuen-thsang and Song-yun in 518 and 629, by Marco Polo in 1277, and by Lieutenant Wood in 1838, in the Pamer Lake, Sir-i-kol, Lake Victoria), towards the Caspian; and from Tenghir or the Balkhash Lake through the Kirghis Steppe, towards the sea of Aral and the southern extremity of the Ural moun- tains. As compared with high plains of 6,000 to 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, it may well be permitted to use the expression of “lowlands” for flats of little more than 200 to 1200 feet of elevation. The lowest of the last two numbers corresponds nearly to the altitude of the town of Mannheim, and the highest to that of Geneva and Tubingen. If the word plateau, so often misemployed in modern works on geography, is to have its use extended to elevations which hardly present any sensible difference in climate and vegetation, the indefiniteness of the expres- sions “highlands and lowlands,” which are only relative terms, will deprive physical geography of the means of expressing the idea of the connection between elevation and climate, between the profile or relief of the ground and the decrease of temperature. When I found myself in Chinese Dzungarei, between the boundary of Siberia and Lake Dsaisang, at an equal distance from the Icy Sea and from the mouth of the Ganges, I might well consider myself in Central Asia. The barometer, however, soon taught me that the plains through which the Upper Irtysh flows, between Ustkamenogorsk and the Chinese
78 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Dzungarian Post, Chonimailachu, (sheep-bleating,) are scarcely raised 850, or at the most 1170, feet above the level of the sea. Pansner’s older barometric measurements — (which, however, were not published until after my expedi- tion), are confirmed by mine. Both refute the hypothesis © of Chappe, relative to the supposed high elevation of the banks of the Irtysh, in Southern Siberia; an hypothesis based on estimations of river declivities. Even further to the Kast, Lake Baikal is only 222 toises, or 1420 English feet, above the level of the sea.
In order to connect the idea of the relation of the terms lowlands and highlands and of the various gradations in the height of elevated plains or undulating grounds, with actual examples ascertained by measurement, I have subjoined a table, forming an ascending scale of such districts in different parts of the Globe. What I have said above respecting the mean height of those Asiatic pains, which I have termed lowlands, may be compared
with the following numbers :-— Toises. English feet.
Plateau of Auvergne ............2.. 170 1087 pg Ug NE ae ar 260 1663 ple RT ERE Sis Pere ee eer 350 2239 PO TRORAMEUMARS 15% )0'%- 31> sileieteys o/h{s cous 460 2942 PRUE o's Ys > soc nue 2 9 oye 480 3070 © Mio... A ee eee 900 5756
«© yound Lake Tzana (in Abyssinia) ... 950 6076 * of the Orange River (in South Africa) 1000 6395
© of Axum (in Abyssinia) ........ 1100 7034 PSOE MEREMME eG ea Gee's Way be wate 1170 7483 Rete, MI ATGIN 329 [aides bile kb oe ot bila bo 1490 9528 ** of the Province de los Pastos ..... 1600 10231
© round Lake Titiacta.......-+6- 2010 12853
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 79
No portion of the so-called Desert of Gobi (parts of which contain fine pastures) has been so thoroughly explored in respect to the differences of elevation as the zone, of nearly 600 geographical miles in breadth, between the sources of the Selenga and the great Wall of China. A very exact series of barometric levellings was executed under the auspices of the Academy of St. Petersburgh by two distinguished Savans, the astronomer George Fuss, and the botanist Bunge. In the year 1832 they accompanied the mission of Greek monks to Pekin, to establish there one of the magnetic stations recommended by me. The mean height of this part of Gobi does not amount, as had been too hastily inferred from the measurement of neigh- bouring summits by the Jesuits Gerbillon and Verbiest to from 7500 to 8000 French (8000 to 8500 English) feet, but only to little more than half that height, or barely 4000 French or 4264 English feet. Between Erghi, Durma, and Scharaburguna, the ground is only 2400 French, or 2558 English, feet above the level of the sea, or hardly 300 French (320 English) feet higher than the plateau of Madrid. Erghi is situated midway, in lat. 45° 31’, long. 111° 26’ E. from Greenwich. There is here a depression of more than 240 miles in breadth, na SW. and NE. direction. An ancient Mogul tradition marks it as the bottom of a former inland sea. There are found in it reeds and saline plants, mostly of the same kinds as those on the low shores of the Caspian. In this central part of the desert there are small salt lakes, from which salt is carried to China. According to a singular opinion very
80 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
prevalent among the Moguls, the ocean will one day return and establish its empire anew in Gobi. One is reminded
of the Chinese tradition of the bitter Jake, in the interior ©
of Siberia, mentioned by me in another work. (Hum- boldt, Asie Centrale, tom. ii. p. 141; Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, p. 232.) The valley or basin of Kashmeer, so enthusiastically extolled by Bernier, and but too mo- derately praised by Victor Jacquemont, has also given oc- casion to great hypsometric exaggerations. By a careful barometrical measurement, Jacquemont found the height of the Wulur Lake in the valley of Kashmeer, not far from the chief city Sirinagur, 836 toises, or 5346 Hng- lish feet. Uncertain determinations by the boiling point of water gave Baron Carl von Hiigel a result of 910, and Lieutenant Cunningham only 790 toises. (Compare my Asie Centrale, tom. i. p. 310, with the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. x.1841,p. 114.) Kashmeer,—respect- ing which, in Germany particularly, so much interest has been felt, but the delightfulness of whose climate is considerably impaired by four months of winter snow in the streets of
Sirinagur (Carl von Hiigel, Kaschmir, Bd. ii. 8. 196),—is not
situated, as is often supposed, upon the ridge of the Himalaya, but is a true cauldron-shaped valley (Kesselthal, Caldera,) on the southern declivity of those mountains. On the south- west, where the rampart-like elevation of the Pir Panjal separates it from the Punjaub, the snow-covered summits are crowned, according to Vigne, with formations of basalt and amygdaloid. The latter formation has received from the natives the characteristic name of “ schischak
PRCT SPE Se ea ar
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 81
deyu,” marked by the devil’s small-pox. (Vigne, Travels in Kashmeer, 1842, vol. i. p. 237-293.) The beauty of its vegetation has from the earliest times been very differently described, according as the visitor came from the rich and luxuriant vegetation of India, or from the northern regions of Turkestan, Samarcand, and Ferghana.
It is also only very recently that clearer views have been obtained respecting the elevation of Thibet; the level of the plateau having long been most uncritically confounded with the summits which rise from it. Thibet occupies the interval between the two great chains of the Himalaya and the Kuen-liin, formmg the raised ground of the valley between them. It is divided from east to west, both by the natives and by Chinese geographers, into three portions. Upper Thibet, with its capital city H’lassa, probably 1500 toises (9590 English feet) above the level of the sea ;— Middle Thibet, with the town of Leh or Ladak (1568 toises, or 9995 English feet) ;—and Little Thibet, or Baltistan, called the Thibet of Apricots, (Sari Boutan), in which are situated Iskardo (985 toises, or 6300 English feet), Gilgit, and south of Iskardo but on the left bank of the Indus, the plateau of Deotsuh, measured by Vigne, and found to be 1873 toises, or 11,977 English feet. On examining all the notices that we possess respecting the three Thibets, (and which will have received in the present year a rich augmen- tation by the boundary expedition under the auspices of the governor-general, Lord Dalhousie), we soon become con- vinced that the region between the Himalaya and the Kuen- lin is no unbroken plain or table land, but that it is inter-
VOL. I. G
82 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
sected by mountain groups, undoubtedly belonging to wholly distinct systems of elevation. There are, properly speaking, very few plains; the most considerable are those between Gertop, Daba, Schang-thung (Shepherd’s Plain) the native country of the Shawl-goat, and Schipke (1634: toises, 10,450 English feet) ;—those round Ladak, which have an elevation of 2100 toises, or 13430 English feet, and must not be confounded with the depression in which the town is situated ;—and lastly, the plateau of the Sacred Lakes Manasa and Ravanahrada (probably 2345 toises), which was visited so early as 1625 by Pater Antonio de Andrada. Other parts are entirely filled with crowded mountainous elevations, “rising,” as a recent traveller expresses it, “like the waves of a vast ocean.” Along the rivers, the Indus, the - Sutlej, and the Yaru-dzangbo-tschu which was formerly regarded as identical with the Brahma-putra, poimts have been measured which are only between 1050 and 1400 toises (6714 and 8952 English feet) above the level of the sea; so also with respect to the Thibetian villages of Pangi, Kunawur, Kelu, and Murung. (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, _ T. iii. p- 281-325.) From many carefully collected mea- surements of elevation I think I may conclude that the plateau of Thibet, between 73° and 85° E. long., does not reach a mean height of 1800 toises (11510 English feet); this is hardly equal to the height of the fertile plain of Caxamarca in Peru, and is 211 and 837 toises (1350 and 2154 English feet) jess than the height of the plateau of Titicaca, and the street pavement of the Upper Town of Potosi (2137 toises, 13,665 English feet).
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 83
That outside of the Thibetian highlands and of the Gobi, the boundaries of which have been defined above, there are in Asia, between the parallels of 37° and 48°, considerable depressions and even true lowlands, where one bound- less uninterrupted plateau was formerly imagined to exist, is shewn by the cultivation of plants which cannot thrive without a certain degree of heat. An attentive study of the travels of Marco Polo, in which the cultivation of the vine and the production of cotton in northern latitudes are spoken of, had long called the attention of the acute Klaproth to this point. In a Chinese work, entitled “ Information respecting the recently-subdued Barbarians (Sin-kiang-wai- tan-ki-lio),” it is said, ‘ the country of Aksu, somewhat to the south of the Celestial Mountains (the Thian-schan), near the rivers which form the great Tarim-gol, produces grapes, pomegranates, and numberless other excellent fruits; also cotton (Gossypium religiosum), which covers the fields like yellow clouds. In the summer the heat is exceedingly great, and in winter there is here, as at Turfan, neither severe cold nor heavy snow.” ‘The district round Khotan, Kashgar, and Yarkand, still pays its tribute in home-grown cotton as it did in the time of Marco Polo. (Il Milione di Marco Polo, pubbl. dal Conte Baldelli, T. i. p. 82 and 87.) In the Oasis of Hami (Khamil), above 200 miles east of Aksu, - orange trees, pomegranates, and vines whose fruit is of a superior quality, grow and flourish.
The products of cultivation which are thus noticed imply the existence of only a small degree of elevation, and that over extensive districts. At so great a distance from
84 STEPPES AND DESERTS. ~
any coast, and in those easterly meridians where the cold of winter is known to exceed that of corresponding latitudes nearer our own part of the world, a plateau which should be as high as Madrid or Munich might indeed have very hot summers, but would hardly have, in 43° and 44° latitude, extremely mild winters with scarcely any snow. Near the Caspian, 83 English feet below the level of the Black Sea, at Astrachan in 46° 21’ lat., I saw the cultivation of the vine greatly favoured by a high degree of summer heat ; but the winter cold is there from —20° to —25° Cent. (—4° to —13° Fahr.) It is therefore necessary to protect the vines after November, by sinking them deep in the earth. Plants which live, as we may say, only in the summer, as the vine, the cotton bush, rice, and melons, may indeed be cultivated with success between the latitudes of 40° and 44° on plains of more than 500 toises (3197 English feet) elevation, being favoured by the powerful radiant heat; but how could the pomegranate trees of Aksu, and the orange trees of Hami, whose fruit Pére Grosier extolled as distinguished for its good- ness, bear the cold of the long and severe winter which would be the necessary consequence of a considerable elevation of the land? (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 48-52, and 429.) Carl Zim- merman (in the learned Analysis of his “ Karte von Inner Asien,” 1841, 8. 99) has made it appear extremely probable that the Tarim depression, @. ¢. the desert between the moun- tain chains of the Thian-schan and the Kuen-liin, where the Steppe river Tarim-gol empties itself into the Lake of Lop, which used to be described as an alpine lake, is hardly 1200 (1279 English) feet above the level of the sea, or only twice
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 85
the height of Prague. Sir Alexander Burnes also assigns to that of Bokhara only an elevation of 1190 English feet. It is earnestly to be desired, that all doubt respecting the elevation of the plateaux of middle Asia, south of 45° ’ of latitude, should finally be set at rest by direct barometric measurements, or by determinations of the boiling point of water made with more care than is usually given to them. All our calculations respecting the difference between the limits of perpetual snow, and the maximum elevation of vine cultivation in different climates, rest at present. on too complex and uncertain elements. |
In order to rectify in. the smallest space that which was said in the last edition of the present work, relatively to the great mountain systems which intersect the interior of Asia, I subjoin the following general review. We begin with the four parallel chains, which follow with tolerable regularity an east and west direction, and are connected with each other at a few detached poits by transverse elevations. Differences of direction indicate, as in the Alps of western Europe, a difference in the epoch of eleva- tion. After the four parallel chains (the Altai, the Thian- schan, the Kuen-liin, and the Himalaya), we have to notice chains following the direction of meridians, viz. the Ural, the Bolor, the Khingan, and the Chinese chains, which, with the great bend of the Thibetian and Assamo- Bermese Dzangbo-tschu, run north and south. The Ural divides a part of Europe but little elevated above the level of the sea from a part of Asia similarly circum- stanced. The latter was called by Herodotus, (ed. Schweig-
86 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
haiiser, T. v. p. 204) and even as early as Pherecydes of Syros, a Scythian or Siberian Europe, including all the countries to the north of the Caspian and of the laxartes ; in this view it would be a continuation of Europe “ pro- longed to the north of Asia.”
1. The great mountain system of the Altai, (the “ gold mountains” of Menander of Byzantium, an_ historical writer who lived as early as the 7th century, the Altai-alin of the Moguls, and the Kin-schan of the Chinese), forms the southern boundary of the great Siberian lowlands; and running between 50° and 524° of north latitude, extends from the rich silver mines of the Snake Mountains, and the con- fluence of the Uba and the Irtysh, to the meridian of Lake Baikal. The divisions and names of the “Great” and the Little Altai,” taken from an obscure passage of Abulghasi, are to be altogether avoided. (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 247.) The mountain system of the Altai comprehends (a) the Altai proper, or Kolywanski Altai, the whole of which is under the Russian sceptre ; it is west of the transverse opening of ‘the Telezki Lake, which follows the direction of the meridian ; and in ante-historic times probably formed the eastern shore of the great arm of the sea, by which, in the direction of the still existing groups of lakes, Aksakal-Barbi and Sary-Kupa (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 138), the Aralo-Caspian basin was connected with the Icy sea :—(4) Hast of the Telezki chain which follows the direction of the meridian, the Sayani, Tangnu, and Ulangom or Malakha chains, all running tolerably parallel with each other and in an éast and west direction. The Tangnu, which sinks down and terminates
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 87
in the basin of the Selenga, has from very ancient times formed a boundary between the Turkish race to the south and the Kirghis (Hakas, identical with Zé«ac) in the north. (Jacob Grimm, Gesch. der deutschen Sprache, 1848, Th. i. S. 227.) It isthe original seat of the Samoieds or Soyotes, who wandered as far as the Icy Sea, and who were long regarded in Europe as a nation belonging exclusively to the coasts of the Polar Sea. The highest snow-clad summits of the Altai of Kolywan are the Bielucha and the Katunia- Pillars. The height of the latter is about that of Etna. The Daurian highland, to which the mountain knot of Kemtei belongs, and on the eastern side of which is the Jablonoi Chrebet, divides the depressions of the Baikal and the Amur.
2. The mountain system of the Thian-schan, or Celestial Mountains, the Tengri-tagh of the Turks (Tukiu) and of the kindred race of the Hiongnu, is eight times as long, in an east and west direction, as the Pyrenees. Beyond,—7. e. west of its intersection with the transverse or north and south chain of the Bolor and Kosuyrt, the Thian-schan bears the names of Asferah and Aktagh, is rich in metals, and has open fissures, which emit hot vapours, luminous at night, and which are used for obtaining sal-ammoniac. (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 18-20.) East of the transverse Bolor and Kosyurt chain, there follow successively in the Thian-schan,— the Kashgar Pass (Kaschgar-dawan) ; the Glacier Pass of Djeparle, which leads to Kutch and Aksu in the Tarim basin ; the volcano of Pe-schan, which sent forth fire and streams of lava at least as late as the middle of the seventh century ; the
88 , ‘STEPPES AND DESERTS.
great snow-covered massive elevation Bogdo-Oola; the Sol- fatara of Urumsti, which furnishes sulphur and sal-ammoniac (nao-scha), and is situated in a coal district ; the still active volcano of Turfan (or volcano of Ho-tscheu or Bischbalik), almost midway between the meridians of Turfan (Kune- Turpan), and of Pidjan. The volcanic eruptions of the Thian-schan chain, recorded by Chinese historians, reach as far back as the year 89, a.p., when the Hiongnu of the sources of the Irtysh were pursued by the Chinese army as far as Kutch and Kharaschar (Klaproth, Tableau hist. de Asie, p. 108). - The Chinese General, Teu-hian, surmounted the Thian-schan, and saw “the Fire Moun- tains which send out masses of molten rock that flow for many Li.”
The great distance from the sea of the volcanoes of the interior of Asia is a remarkable and solitary phenomenon. Abel Rémusat, in a letter to Cordier (Annales des Mines, T. v. 1820, p. 137), first directed the attention of geologists to this fact. The distance, for example, in the case of the volcano of Pe-schan, to the north, or to the Icy Sea at the mouth of the Obi, is 1528 geographical miles; to the south, or to the mouths of the Indus and the Ganges, 1512 geographical miles; to the west, 13860 geographical miles to the Caspian in the Gulf of Karaboghaz ; and to the east, 1020 geogra- phical miles to the shores of the sea of Aral. The active volcanoes of the New World were previously supposed to offer the most remarkable instances of such phenomena at a great distance from the sea; their distance, however, is only 132-geographical miles in the case of the voleano of Popo-
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. &9
catepetl in Mexico, and only 92, 104, and 156 geogra- phical miles in those of the South American volcanoes Sangai, Tolima, and de la Fragua, respectively. I exclude from these statements all extinct volcanoes, and all trachytic moun- tains which have no permanent connection with the interior of the earth. (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 16-55, 69-77, and 341- 356.) Hast of the voleano of Turfan, and of the fertile Oasis of Hami rich in fine fruit, the chain of the Thian- schan gives place to the great elevated tract of Gobi which follows a S.W. and N.E. direction. ‘This interruption of the mountain chain, caused by the transverse intersection of the Gobi, continues for more than 94 degrees of longitude ; but beyond it the mountains recommence in the somewhat more southerly chain of the In-schan, or the Silver Moun- tains, running (north of the Pe-tscheli) from west to east almost to the shores of the Pacific near Pekin, and forming a continuation of the Thian-schan. As I have viewed the In-schan as an easterly prolongation (beyond the interruption of the Gobi) of the cleft above which the Thian-schan stands,so one might possibly view the Caucasus as a westerly prolonga- ‘tion of the same, beyond the great basin of the Aral and Caspian ‘Seas or the depression of Turan. The mean parallel of latitude or axis of elevation of the Thian-schan oscillates between 402° and 43° N. lat.; that of the Caucasus, according to the map of the Russian Etat-Major (running rather E.S.E. and W.N.W.), is between 41° and 44° N. lat. (Baron von “Meyendorff, in the Bulletin de la Societé géologique de France, T. ix. 1837-1838, .p. 230.) Of the four parallel ‘chains which traverse Asia from east to west, the Thian-
90 STEPPES AND DESERTS,
schan is the only one in which no summits have yet had their elevation above the sea determined by measurement.
3. The mountain system of the Kuen-liin (Kurkun or Kulkun), if we include in it the Hindu-Coosh and its western prolongation in the Persian Elbourz and Demavend, is, next to the American Cordillera of the Andes, the longest line of elevation on the surface of our planet. Where the north- and-south chain of Bolor intersects the Kuen-liin at right angles, the latter takes the name of the Thsung-ling (Onion Mountains), which is also given to a part of the Bolor at the eastern angle of intersection. The Kuen-liin, forming the northern boundary of Thibet, runs very regularly in an east and west direction, in the latitude of 86°. In the meridian of H’lassa an interruption takes place from the great moun- tain knot which surrounds the alpine lake of Khuku-noor, the Sing-so-hai, or Starry Sea, so celebrated in the mythical geography of the Chinese. The somewhat more northerly chains of Nan-schan and Kilian-schan may almost be re- garded as an easterly prolongation of the Thian-schan. They extend to the Chinese wall near Liang-tscheu. West of the intersection of the Bolor and Kuen-liin (the Thsung- ling) I think I have been the first: to shew (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 23, and 118-159; T. i. p. 431-434 and 465) that the corresponding direction of the axes of the Kuen-liin and the Hindu-Coosh (both being east and west, whereas the Himalaya is south-east and north-west) makes it reasonable to regard the Hindu-Coosh as a continuation, not of the ‘Himalaya, but of the Kuen-liin. From the Taurus in Lycia to Kafiristan, through an extent of 45 degrees of longitude,
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 91
this chain follows the parallel of Rhodes, or the diaphragm of Dicearchus. The grand geognostical view of Erastos- thenes (Strabo, Lib. u. p. 68; Lib. xi. p. 490 and 511; and Lib. xv. p. 689), which is farther developed by Marinus of Tyre, and Ptolemy, and according to which “ the con- tinuation of the Taurus in Lycia extends across the whole of Asia to India, in one and the same direction,” appears to have been partly founded on statements which reached the Persians and Indians from the Punjaub. “The Brahmins affirm,” says Cosmas Indicopleustes, i his Christian Topo- graphy, (Mountfaucon, Collectio nova Patrum, T. ii. p. 187) “that a line drawn from Tzinitza (Thine) across Persia and Romania, exactly cuts the middle of the inhabited earth.” It is deserving of notice that Hratosthenes had so early remarked that this longest axis of elevation in the Old Continent, m the parallels of 354° and 36°, points directly through the basin (or depression) of the Mediterranean to the Pillars of Hercules. (Compare Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 23 and 122- 188; T. ui. p. 430-434, with Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 222 and 438, p.188, and note 292, Engl. ed.) The easternmost part of the Hindu-Coosh is the Paropanisus of the ancients, the Indian Caucasus of the companions of Alexander. The now generally used term of Hindu-Coosh, belongs, as may be seen from the Travels of the Arab Ibn Batuta (English version, p- 97), toa single mountain pass on which many Indian slaves often perished from cold. The Kuen-liin, like the Thian-schan, shews igneous outbreaks or eruptions at many hundred miles from the sea. Flames, visible at a great, distance, issue from a avcity in the Schin-khieu Mountain.
92 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
(Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 427 and 483, where I have followed the text of Yuen-thong-ki, translated by my friend Stanislas Julien.) The highest summit measured in the Hindu- Coosh, north-west of Jellalabad, is 3164 toises above the sea (20132 English feet); to the west, towards Herat, the chain sinks to 400 toises (2558 English feet), until, north of Teheran, it rises again to a height of 2295 toises (14675 English feet) in the voleano of Demavend.
4. The mountain system of the Himalaya. The normal direction of this system is east and west when followed from 81° to 97° E. long. from Greenwich, or through more than fifteen degrees of longitude from the colossal Dhawalagiri (4390 toises, 28071 English feet) to the breaking through of the long-problematical Dzangbo-tschu river (the Irawaddy, according to Dalrymple and Klaproth), and to the chains running north and south which cover the whole of Western China, and in the provinces of Sse-tschuan, Hu-kuang, and Kuang-si form the great mountain group of the sources of the Kiang. The next highest culminating point to the Dhawalagiri, of this east and west part of the Himalaya, is not, as has been hitherto supposed, the eastern peak of the Schamalari,. but the Kinchinjmga. This mountain is situated in the meridian of Sikhim, between Bootan and Nepaul, and between the Schamalari (3750 ? toises, 23980 English feet) and the Dhawalagiri: its height is 44.06 toises, or 26438 Parisian, or 28174 English feet. It was first measured accurately by trigonometrical operations in the pre- sent year, and as the account of this measurement received by me from India says decidedly, “that a new determination,
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 93
of the Dhawalagiri leaves to the latter the first rank among all the snow-capped mountains of the Himalaya,” the height of the Dhawalagiri must necessarily be greater than that of 4390 toises, or 26340 Parisian, 28071 English feet, hitherto ascribed to it. (Letter of the accomplished bota- nist of Sir James Ross’s Antarctic Expedition, Dr. Joseph Hooker, written from Dorjiling, July 25, 1848.) The turning point in the direction of the axis of the Himalaya range is not far from the Dhawalagiri, in 79° E. long. from Paris (81° 22’ Greenwich). From thence to the westward the Himalaya no longer runs east and west, but from SH. to NW., connecting itself, as a great cross vein, between Mozuffer-abad and Gilgit south of Kafiristan, with a part of the Hindu-Coosh. Such a bend or change in the direction or strike of the axis of elevation of the Himalaya (from E-W. to SE-NW.), doubtless points, as in the western part of our European Alps, to a difference in the age or epoch of elevation. The course of the Upper Indus, from the sacred lakes Manasa and Ravana-hrada (at an elevation of 2345. toises, 14995 English feet) in the vici- nity of which the great river rises, to Iskardo and to the plateau of Deo-tsuh, (at an elevation of 2032 toises, 12995 English feet) measured by Vigne, follows in the Thibetian highlands the same north-westerly direction as the Hima- laya. Here is the summit of the Djawahir, long since well measured and known to be 4027 toises (25750 English feet) in elevation, and the valley of Kashmeer, where at an elevation of only 836 toises, (5346 English feet), the Wulur Lake freezes every winter, and, from the perpetual calm, no wave ever curls its surface.
94, STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Having thus described the four great mountain systems of Asia, which in their normal geognostic character are chains coinciding with parallels of latitude, I have next to speak of the series of elevations coinciding nearly with meri- dians, (or more precisely, having a SSE.-NNW. direction), which, from Cape Comorin opposite to the Island of Ceylon to the Icy Sea, alternate between the meridians of 66° and 77° E. long. from Greenwich. To this system, of which the alternations remind us of faults in veins, belong the Ghauts, the Soliman chain, the Paralasa, the Bolor, and the Ural. The interruptions of the series of elevations are so arranged that, beside their alternate position in respect to longitude, each new chain begins in a degree of latitude to which the preceding chain had not quite reached. The im- portance which the Greeks (although probably not before the second century) attached to these chains induced Aga-~ thodemon and Ptolemy (Tab. vii. and vui.) to represent to themselves the Bolor, under the name of Imaus, as an axis of elevation extending as far as 62° N. lat. into the low basin of the Lower Irtisch and the Obi. (Asie Centraie, T. i. p. 138, 154, and 198; T. ii. p. 367.)
As the perpendicular elevation of mountain summits above the level of the sea (unimportant as in the eyes of the geologist the circumstance of the greater or lesser corruga- tion of the crust of the earth may be), is still, like all that is difficult of attainment, an object of popular curiosity, the following historical notice of the gradual progress of hypso- metric knowledge may here find a suitable place. When I returned to Europe in 1804 after a four years’ absence, not — a single Asiatic snowy summit either in the Himalaya, the
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 95
Hindu-Coosh, or the Caucasus, had been measured with any exactness; and I could not therefore compare my determi- nations of the height of perpetual snow in the Cordilleras of Quito, or the mountains of Mexico, with any corresponding determinations in the Hast. The important journey of Turner, Davis, and Saunders, to the highlands of 'Thibet, does indeed belong to the year 1783, but Colebrooke justly remarks, that the elevation given by Turner to the Schama- lari (lat. 28° 5’, long. 89° 30’, a little to the north of Tassi- sudan) rests on foundations as slight as those of the so-called measurements of the heights seen from Patna and the Kafiristan by Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant Macartney. (Compare Turner, in the Asiatic Researches, vol. xi. p. 234, with Elphinstone’s Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1815, p. 95, and Francis Hamilton, Account of Nepal, 1819, p. 92.) The excellent observations and writings of Webb, Hodgson, Herbert, and the brothers Gerard, have thrown great and certain light on the elevation of the co- lossal summits of the Himalaya; yet, m 1808, the hypso- metric knowledge of this great Indian chain was still so uncertain that Webb wrote to Colebrooke: “The height of the Himalaya still remains a problem. I find, indeed, that the summits visible from the high plain of Rohilcund are 21000 English feet above that ie but we do not know the absolute height above the sea.”
It was not until the beginning of the year 1820 that it began to be reported in Europe, that not only were there in the Himalaya, summits much higher than those of the Cordilleras, but also that Webb had seen in the Pass of Niti,
96 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
and Moorcroft in the Thibetian plateau of Daba and the
Sacred Lakes, fine pastures and flourishing fields of corn, at’
altitudes far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. These accounts were received in England with much incredulity, and were met by doubts respecting the influence of refrac- tion. I have shown the groundlessness of these doubts in two memoirs (Sur les Montagnes de l’Inde), printed in the _ Annales de Chimie et de Physique. The Tyrolese jesuit, P. Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 penetrated into the provinces of Kemaun and Nepal, had already divined the importance of the Dhawalagiri. We read on his map, “ Montes Albi, qui Indis Dolaghir, nive obsiti.” Captain Webb always uses the same name. Until the measurements of the Djawahir (lat. 30° 22’, long. 79° 58’, altitude 4027 toises, or 25750 English feet) and of the Dhawalagiri (lat. 28° 40’, long. 83° 21’, altitude 4390? toises, 28072 English feet) were made known in Europe, the Chimborazo (3350 toises, or 21421 English feet), according to my trigonometric measurement, (Recueil d’Observations astronomiques, T’. i. p. 78) was still everywhere regarded as the highest summit on the surface of the earth. The Himalaya now appeared, according as the comparison was made with the Djawahir or the Dhawalagiri, 676 toises (4323 English feet), or 1040 toises (6650 English feet), higher than the Chimborazo. Pentland’s South American travels, in the years 1827 and 1838, fixed attention (Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, 1830, p. 820 and 323) on two snowy summits of Upper Peru, east of the Lake of Titicaca, which were supposed to surpass the height of the Chimborazo respectively by 598 and 403
| ae
_ ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 97
toises, (3824 and 2577 English feet.) I have remarked above, pp. 53-54, that the latest calculation of the measure- ments of the Sorata and [llimani shews this view to be in- correct. The Dhawalagiri (on the declivity of which, in the valley of the Ghandaki, the Salagrana Ammonites, so cele- brated among the Brahmins as symbols of one of the incar- nations of Vishnu, are collected) therefore still shews a difference between the culminating points of the Old and the New Continents of more than 6200 Parisian, or 6608 English feet.
The question has been raised, whether there may not exist behind the southernmost more or less perfectly mea- sured chain, other still greater elevations. Colonel George Lloyd, who in 1840 edited the important observations of Captain Alexander Gerard and his brother, entertains an opinion that in the part of the Himalaya which he calls somewhat vaguely “the Tartaric chain,” (ineaning therefore in north Thibet towards the Kuen-liin, and perhaps in Kailasa of the sacred lakes, or beyond Leh) there are summits of from 29000 to 30000 English feet,—one or two thousand feet higher therefore than the Dawalagiri. (Lloyd and Gerard, Tour in the Himalaya, 1840, vol. i. p. 143 and 312; Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 324.) So long as actual measure- ments are wanting, one cannot decide respecting such possibi- lities; as the indication, from which the natives of Quito, long before the arrival of Bouguer and La Condamine, recognised the superior altitude of the Chimborazo (namely, from the portion of its height above the region of perpetual snow being greater than in any of the other mountains), might
VOL. I. H
98 ; STEPPES AND DESERTS.
prove very deceptive in the temperate zone of Thibet, where radiation is so active in the table-land, and where the lower limit of perpetual snow does not form a regular line at an equal elevation, as it does in the tropics. The greatest elevation above the level of the sea ever attained by human beings on the declivity of the Himalaya, is 3035 toises, or 18210 Parisian, or 194.09 English feet, reached by Captain Gerard, with seven barometers, on the mountain of Tarhi- gang, a little to the north-west of Schipke. (Colebrooke, in the Transactions of. the Geological Society, vol. vi. p. 411.) This happens to be exactly the same height as that reached by myself on the 23rd of June, 1802, and thirty years later by my friend Boussingault, on the 16th of December, 1831, on the declivity of the Chimborazo. The unattained summit of the Tarhigang is, however, 197 toises, or 1260 English feet, higher than that of the Chimborazo.
The passes across the Himalaya, leading from Hindostan into Chinese Tartary, or rather into Western Thibet, more particularly between the rivers of Buspa and Schipke or Langzing Khampa, are from 2400 to 2900 toises, or 15346 to 18544 English feet. In the chain of the Andes I found the pass of Assuay, between Quito and Cuenca on the Ladera de Cadlud, having a similar elevation, being 2428 toises, or 15526 English feet, high. A great part of the mountain plains of the interior of Asia would be buried throughout the year in perpetual snow and ice, if it were not, that by the great radiation of heat from the Thibetian plateau, by the constant serenity of the sky, by the rarity ot the formation of snow in the dry atmosphere, and by the pow-
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 99
erful solar heat peculiar to the eastern continental climate, the limit of perpetual snow is wonderfully raised on the northern slope of the Himalaya,—perhaps to 2600 toises, or 16625 English feet. above the level of the sea. Fields of barley (Hordeum hexastichon) are seen in Kunawur up to 2300 toises, or 14707 English feet ; and another variety of barley called Ooa, and allied to Hordeum celeste, even much higher. Wheat succeeds extremely well in the Thibetian highlands up to 1880 toises, or 12022 English feet. On the northern declivity of the Himalaya, Captain Gerard found the upper limit of the higher birch woods ascend to 2200 toises, 14068 English feet ; and small bushes which serve the inhabitants for fuel to warm their huts, attain, in the latitude of 302° and 31° of north latitude, a height of 2650 toises (16945 English feet), or almost 200 toises (1279 English feet) higher than the limit of perpetual snow under the equator. From the data hitherto collected it would follow, that we may take the lower limit of perpetual snow on the northern side of the Himalaya, on the average, and in round numbers, at 2600 toises, or about 16600 English feet ; whilst on the southern declivity of the Himalaya the snow- line sinks to 2030 toises, or about 18000 English feet.
But for this remarkable distribution of temperature in the upper strata of the atmosphere, the mountain plain of Western Thibet would be uninhabitable to the millions whe dwell there. (Compare my Examination of the Limit of Perpetual Snow on the two declivities of the Himalaya, in the Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 485-437; T. i. p. 281-326,
100 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
and in Kosmos, Engl. ed. vol. i. note 403; 8.483 of the original.)
A letter which I have just received from India from Dr. Joseph Hooker, who is engaged in meteorological and geological researches, as well as those connected with the geography of plants, says: “Mr. iodgson, who we regard here as the geographer best acquainted with the hypsometric relations of the snow ranges, completely recognises the correctness of your statement in the third part of the Asie Centrale, respecting the reason of the inequality in the height of the limit of perpetual snow on the northern and southern declivities of the Himalaya. In the ‘trans Sutlej region’ in 36° lat. we often saw the snow hmit only com- mence at an altitude of 20000 English feet, while in the passes south of the Brahmaputra, between Assam and Bur- man, in 27° lat,, where the most southern Asiatic snowy mountains are situated, the limit of perpetual snow sinks to 15000 English feet.” I believe we ought to distinguish between the extreme and the mean heights, but in both we see manifested in the clearest manner the formerly contested differences between the Thibetian and the Indian declivities. a Ae statements respecting the mean) wxtremes according. to Dr. Joseph
ight of the Snow-line in the Hima- laya. (Asie Centrale, tom. iii. p. 326.) Hooker’s letter.
Paris feet. Eng. feet. Paris feet. Eng. feet. Northern declivity 15600...16626)| Northern declivity 18764...20000 Southem “ 12180...12981|Southen “ 14073...15000
Difference 3420 3645 Difference 4691 5000
The local differences vary still more, as may be seen from
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 101
the list of extremes given in my Asie Centrale, T. ui. p.
295. Alexander Gerard saw the snow limit ascend, on the
Thibetian declivity of the Himalaya, to 19200 Parisian feet
(20465 English); and on the southern Indian declivity, Jacquemont once saw it, north of Cursali on the Jumnotri,
even as low as 10800 Parisian (11,510 English) feet.
(1) p. 6.—“A brown Pastoral Race, the Hiongnu.”
The Hiongnu (Hiong-nou), who Deguignes, and with him many historians, long considered to be the Huns, inhabited that vast region of ‘Tartary which is bounded on the east by Uo-leang-ho (the present Mantschu dominion), on the south by the Chinese wall, on the west by the U-siiin territory, and on the north by the country of the Eleuthes. But the Hiongnu belong to the Turkish, and the Huns to the Finnish or Uralian race. The northern Huns, a rude pastoral people, unacquainted with agriculture, were dark brown (sunburnt); the southern Huns or Haja- | telah, (called by the Byzantines Euthalites or Nepthalites, and dwelling along the eastern shore of the Caspian), had a fairer complexion. ‘The latter cultivated the ground, and possessed towns. They are often called the white, or fair Huns, and d’Herbelot even declares them to be Indo- Scythians. On Punu, the Leader or Tanju of the Huns, and on the great drought and famine which, about 46 a.p., caused a part of the nation to migrate northwards, (see Deguignes, Histoire gén. des Huns, des Tures, &c., 1756, T..i. pt. i. p. 217; pt. u. p. 111, 125, 223, 447.) All the accounts of the Huns taken from the above-mentioned
102 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
celebrated work have been subjected to a learned and strict examination by Klaproth. According to the result of this research the Hiongnu belong to the widely diffused Turkish races of the Altai and Tangnu Mountains. The name Hiongnu, even in the third century before the Christian era, _ was a general name for the Ti, Thu-kiu or Turks, in the north and north-west of China. The southern Hiongnu over- came the Chinese, and in conjunction with them destroyed the empire of the northern Hiongnu. ‘These latter fled to the west, and this flight seems to have given the first impulse to the migration of nations in Middle Asia. The Huns, who were long confounded with the Hiongnu, (as the Uigures with the Ugures and the Hungarians), belonged, ac- cording to Klaproth, to the Finnish race of the Ural moun- tains between Europe and Asia, a race which was variously mingled with Germans, Turks, and Samoieds. (Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, p. 183 and 211; Tableaux Historiques de l’Asie, p- 102and 109.) The Huns (Oévvor) are first named by Dio- nysius Perigetes, a writer who was able to obtain more accu- rate information respecting the interior of Asia, because, asa learned man born at Charax on the Arabian Gulf, Augustus had sent him back to the East to accompany thither his adopted son Caius Agrippa. Ptolemy, a century later, writes the word (Xotvor) with a strong aspiration, which, as St. Martin observes, is found again in the geographical name of Chunigard.
(2) p. 7.— No carved Stone.” On the banks of the Orinoco near Caicara where the
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 103
forest region joins the plam, we have indeed found repre- sentations of the sun, and figures of animals, cut on the rocks: but im the Llanos themselves no traces of these rude memorials of earlier inhabitants have been discovered. It is to be regretted that we have not received any more complete and certain information respecting a monument which was sent to France to Count Maurepas, and which, according to Kalm, had been found by M. de Verandrier in the Prairies of Canada 900 miles west of Montreal, in the course of an expedition intended to reach the Pacific. (Kalm’s Reise, Th. ii. §. 416.) This traveller found in the middle of the plam enormous masses of stone, placed in an upright position by the hand of man, and on one of them was something which was taken to be a Tartar inscription. (Archeeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts, published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, vol. viii., 1787, p. 304.) How is it that so important a monument has remained unexamined? Can it really have contained alphabetical writing ? or is it not far more probably a pictorial history, like the supposed Pheenician inscription on the bank of the Taunton River? I consider it, however, very probable that these plains were once traversed by civilised nations : pyramidal sepulchral mounds, and entrenchments of extre- ordinary length, found in various places between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, and on which Squier and Davis (in the “ Ancient Monuments of the Mississipi Valley”) are now throwing a new light, appear to confirm this supposition. (Relation Hist., T. iii. p. 155.) Verandrier had been sent on his expedition by the Chevalier de Beauharnois,
104 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
the French Governor-general of Canada, in 1746. Several Jesuits in the city of Quebec assured Kalm that they had themselves had the supposed inscription in their hands: it was engraved upon a small tablet which had been let into a pillar of cut stone, in which position it was found. I have asked several of my friends in France to search out this monument, in case it should really be in existence in the collection of Count Maurepas, but without success. I find older, but equally doubtful, statements as to the existence of alphabetical inscriptions belonging to the primi- tive nations of America, in Pedro de Cieca de Leon, Chronica del Peru, P.i. cap. 87 (losa con letras en los edificios de’ Vinaque); in Garcia, Origen de los Indios, 1607, lib. ii. cap. 5, p. 258; and in Columbus’s Journal of his first voyage, in Navarrete, Viages de los Hspanoles, T. i. p. 67. M. de Verandrier moreover affirmed, (and earlier travellers had also thought they had observed the same thing), that in the prairies of Western Canada, throughout entire days’ journeys, traces of the ploughshare were discoverable; but the total ignorance of the primitive nations of America with regard to this agricultural imple- ment, the want of draft cattle, and the great extent of ground over which the supposed furrows are found,—all lead me to conjecture that this singular appearance of a ploughed field has been produced by some effect of water on the surface of the earth.
(13) p. 7.—“ Like an arm of the Sea.” The great Steppe, which extends from east to west from
4}
ee ee
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 105
_ the mouth of the ‘Orinoco to the snowy mountains of Merida, turns to the south in the 8th degree of latitude, filling the space between the eastern declivity of the high mountains of New Granada, and the Orinoco, the course of which is, in this part, from south to north. This latter portion of the Llanos, which is watered by the Meta, the Vichada, the Zama, and the Guaviare, connects the valley of the Amazons with the valley of the Lower Orinoco. The word Paramo, which I often employ in these pages, signifies in Spanish America all those mountainous regions which are elevated from 1800 to 2200 toises above the level of the sea (11500 to 14000 English feet ini round num- bers), and in which an ungenial, rough, and misty climate prevails. Hail and snow fall daily for several hours in the upper Paramos, and furnish a beneficial supply of moisture to the alpine plants; a supply not arising from a large absolute quantity of aqueous vapour in these high regions, but from the frequency of showers, (hail and snow being so termed as well as rain), produced by the rapidly changing currents of air, and the variations of the electric tension. The arborescent vegetation of these regions is low and spreading, consisting chiefly of large flowering laurels and myrtle-leaved alpine shrubs, whose knotty branches are adorned with fresh and evergreen foliage. Escalloma tubai, Escallonia myrtilloides, Chuquiragua insignis, Aralias, Wein- mannias, Frezieras, Gualtherias, and Andromeda reticulata, may be regarded as representatives of the physiognomy of this vegetation. To the south of the town of Santa Fé de Bogota is the Paramo de la Suma Paz; a lonely mountain
106 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
group, in which, according to Indian tradition, vast treasures are buried. The torrent which flows under the remarkable natural bridge of the rocky ravine of Icononzo rises in this Paramo. In my Latin memoir entitled “ De distributione geographica Plantarum se- cundem cceli temperiem et altitudinem montium, 1817,” I have sought to characterise those mountain regions: “ Altitudine 1700-1900 hexapod. Asperrime solitudines, que a colonis hispanis uno nomime Paramos appel- lantur, tempestatum vicissitudinibus mire obnoxi, ad quas solute et emollite defluunt nives; ventorum flatibus ac nimborum grandinisque jactu tumultuosa regio, que szque per diem et per noctes riget, solis nubila et tristi luce fere nunquam calefacta. Habitantur in hac ipsa altitudine sat magne civitates, ut Micuipampa Peruvianorum, ubi thermo- metrum centes. meridie inter 5° et 8°, noctu —0°.4 consistere vidi; Huancavelica, propter cinnabaris venas_ celebrata, ubi altitudine 1835 hexap. fere totum per annum temperies mensis Marti Parisiis.’ (Humboldt de distrib. geogr. Plant, p. 104.)
(14) p. 8.—‘< The Andes and the eastern mountains
send forth detached spurs which advance towards
each other.”
The vast region situated between the eastern coast of South America and the eastern declivity of the Andes is narrowed by two mountain masses, which partially divide from each other the three valleys or plains of the Lower Orinoco, of the Amazons, and of the River Plate. The
er ee ae
ER Dyes ny tee ote amine «
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 107
most northern mountains, called the group of the Parime, are opposite to the Andes of Cundinamarca which project far to the east, and assume in the 66th and 68th degrees of longitude the form of high mountains, connected by the narrow ridge of Pacaraima with the granite hills of French Guiana. On the map of Columbia constructed by me from my own astronomical observations, this connection is clearly marked. ‘The Caribs, who penetrated from the missions of the Caroni to the plains of the Rio Branco, and as far as the Brazilian boundary, crossed in the journey the ridges of Pacaraima and Quimiropaca. The second mountain mass, which divides the valley of the Amazons from the River Plate, is the Brazilian group. In the province of Chiquitos (west of the Parecis range of hills), it approaches the pro- montory of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.. As neither the group of the Parime which causes the great cataracts of the Orinoco, nor the Brazilian group of mountains, are absolutely connected with the Andes, the plains of Vene- zuela have a direct connection with those of Patagonia. - (See my geognostical view of South America, in Relat. Hist. T. ii. p. 188-244.)
(15) p. 8.—* Troops of dogs.”
European dogs have become wild in the grassy plains or Pampas of Buenos Ayres. They live in society, and in hollows in which they hide their young. If the society becomes too numerous, some families detach themselves and form new colonies. The European dog, which has become
wild, barks as loud as the original American hairy race.
108 ‘STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Garcilaso relates, that before the arrival of the Spaniards the Peruvians had dogs, “perros gozques.” He calls the native dog, Allco: it is called at present in the Quichua language, to distinguish him from the European dog, “ Runa-allco,” ‘ Indian dog” (dog of the imhabitants of the country). The hairy Runa-allco seems to be a mere variety of the shepherd’s dog. He is small, with long hair, (usually of an ochry yellow, with white and brown spots,) and with upright sharp-pointed ears. He barks a great deal, but seldom bites the natives, however disposed to be mischievous to the whites. When the Inca Pacha- cutec, in his religious wars with the Indians of Xauxa and Huanca (the present valley of Huancaya and Jauja), con- quered them, and converted them forcibly to the worship of the sun, he found them paying divine honours to dogs. Priests blew on the skulls of dogs, and the worship- pers ate their flesh. (Garcilaso de la Vega, Commentarios Reales, P. i. p. 184.) This veneration of dogs in the valley of Huancaya is probably the reason why skulls and even entire mummies of dogs have been found in the Huacas, or Peruvian graves belonging to the earliest epoch. Von Tschudi, the author of an excellent Fauna Peruviana, has examined these skulls, and believes them to belong to a peculiar species of dog which he cali. Canis ingee, and which is different from the European dor. The Huancas are still called derisively by the inhabitants of other provinces, “dog- eaters.” Among the natives of the Rocky Mountains, cooked dog’s flesh is set before strangers as a feast of honour. © Near Fort Laramie, (one of the stations of the Hudson’s -
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 109
Bay Company for the fur trade with the Sioux Indians), Captain Frémont attended a feast of this description. (Fré- mont’s Exploring Expedition, 1845, p. 42.)
The Peruvian dogs had a singular part to play in eclipses of the moon: they were beaten until the eclipse was over. The Mexican Techichi, a variety of the common dog, which latter was called in Anahuae Chichi, was completely dumb. Techichi signifies literally stone-dog, from the Aztec, Tetl, a stone. The Techichi was eaten according to the old Chinese fashion. The Spaniards found this food, before the intro- duction of European cattle, so indispensable, that almost the whole race was gradually extirpated. (Clavigero, Storia antica del Messico, 1780, T. i. p. 73.) Buffon confounds the Techichi with the Koupara of Guiana. (T. xv. p. 155.) The latter is identical with the Procyon or Ursus can- crivorus, the Raton crabier, or crab-eating Aquara- guaza of the Patagonian coast. (Azara sur les quadrupédes du Paraguay, T. i. p. 315.) Linneus, on the other hand, . confounds the dumb variety of dogs with the Mexican Itzcuintepotzotli, a kind of dog still only imperfectly de- scribed, said to be distinguished by a short tail, a very small head, and a large hump on the back. The name signifies humped-dog, and is formed from the Aztec, itzcuintli (another word for dog), and tepotzotli, humped, a humpback. J was particularly struck in America, and especially in Quito and generally in Peru, with the great number of black dogs without hair, called by Buffon “chiens tures” (Canis egyptius, Linn.) Even. among the Indians this variety is common, but it is generally despised
110 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
and ill-treated. All European breeds of dogs perpetuate themselves very well in South America, and if the dogs there — are not so handsome as those in Europe, the reason is partly want of care, and partly that the handsomest varieties (such as fine greyhounds and the Danish spotted breed) have never been introduced there.
Herr von Tschudi makes the singular remark, that in the Cordilleras, at elevations of 13000 feet, tender races of dogs and the European domestic cat are exposed to a particular kind of mortal disease. ‘“ Innumerable attempts have been made to keep cats as domestic animals in the town of the Cerro de Pasco, 13228 French (or 14100 English) feet above the level of the sea, but such attempts have failed, both cats and dogs dying at the end of a few days in fits, im which the cats were taken at first with convulsive movements, then tried to climb the walls, fell back ‘exhausted and motionless, and died. In Yauli I had several opportunities of observing this chorea-like disease ; it seems to be a consequence of the absence of sufficient atmospneric pressure.” In the Spanish colonies, the hair- less dog was looked upon as of Chinese origin, and called Perro Chinesco, or Chino. The race was supposed to have: come from Canton or from Manila: according to Klaproth, it has certainly been extremely common in China since very early times. Among the animals imdigenous to Mexico there was an entirely hairless, dog-hke, but very large wolf, called Xoloitzcuintli (from the Mexican xolo or xolotl, servant or slave). On American dogs, see Smith Barton’s Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, P.i. p. 34.
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. lll
The result of Tschudi’s researches on the American indi- genous races of dogs is the following. ‘There are two kinds almost specifically different: 1. The Canis caraibicus of Lesson, quite without hair, except a small bunch of white hair on the forehead and at the point of the tail, of a slate grey colour, and silent ; it was found by Columbus in the Antilles, by Cortes im Mexico, and by Pizarro m Peru, where it suffers from the cold of the Cordilleras, but is still abundant in the warmer parts of the country, under the name of perros chinos. 2. The Canis inge, with pointed nose and pointed ears ; this kind barks: it is now employed in the care of cattle, and shews many varieties of colours, from being crossed with Huropean breeds. The Canis inge follows man to the high regions of the Cordilleras. In ancient Peruvian graves his skeleton is sometimes found resting at the feet of the haman mummy. We know how often the carvers of monuments in our own middle ages employed the figure of a dog in this position, as an emblem of fidelity. (J. J. v. Tschudi, Untersuchungen iiber die Fauna Peruana, 8. 247-251.) At the very beginning of the Spanish conquests European dogs became wild in the islands of San Domingo and Cuba. (Garcilaso, P. 1. 1723, p- 326.) In the prairies between the Meta, the Arauea, and the Apure, voiceless dogs, (perros mudos,) were eaten in the 16th century. Alonso de Herrara, who, in 1535, undertook an expedition to the Orinoco, says the natives called them “Majos” or “ Auries.” A well- informed traveller, Giesecke, found the same non-barking variety of dog in Greenland. ‘The Esquimaux dogs pass their lives entirely
112 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
in the open air; at night they scrape holes for themselves in the snow; they howl like wolves, in accompaniment with
a dog that sits in the middle of the circle and sets them off. — In Mexico the dogs were subjected to an operation to make them fatter and better eating. On the borders of the province of Durango, and farther to the north on the slave: lake, the natives, furmerly at least, conveyed their tents of buffalo skins on the backs of large dogs when changing their place of residence with the change of season. All these traits resemble the customs of the mhabitants of eastern Asia. (Humboldt, Essai polit. T. ii. p. 448; Rela- tion hist. T. ii. p. 625.)
(16) p. 8.— Like the greater part of the Desert of Sahara, the Llanos are in the torrid zone.”
Significant denominations,—particularly such as refer to the form in relief of the earth’s surface, and which have arisen at a period when there was only very uncertain information respecting the countries in question and their hypsometric relations,—have led to various and long- continued geographical errors. The ancient denomination of the “ Greater and Lesser Atlas” (Ptol. Geogr. lib. iu. cap. 1) has exercised the prejudicial influence here alluded to, No doubt the snow-covered western summits of the Atlas in the territory of Morocco may be regarded as the Great Atlas of Ptolemy ; but where is the limit of the Little Atlas? Is the division into two Atlas chains, which the conservative tendencies of geographers have preserved for 1700 years, to be still maintained in the territory of Algiers, and even between Tunis and Tlemse? Are we to seek between the
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. | 113
coast and the interior for parallel chains constituting a greater and a lesser, Atlas? All travellers familiar with geognostical views, who have visited Algeria since it has been taken possession of by the French, contest the meaning conveyed by the generally received nomenclature. Among the parallel chains, that of Jurjura is generally supposed to be the highest of those which have been measured ; but the well-informed Fournel, (long Ingenieur en chef des Mines de l’Algérie), affirms that the mountains of Aurés, near Batnah, which were still found covered with snow at the end of March, are higher. Fournel denies the existence of a Little and a Great Atlas, as I do that of a Little and a Great Altai (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 247-252). There is only one Atlas, formerly called Dyris by the Mauri- tanians, and “this name is to be applied to the “ foldings,” (“rides”) or succession of crests which form the division between the waters flowing to the Mediterranean, and those which flow towards the Sahara lowland. The strike or direction of the Eastern Mauritanian portion of the Atlas . is from east to west ; that of the elevated Atlas of Morocco from north-east to south-west. The latter rises into summits which, according to Renou, (Exploration Scientifique de P Algérie de 1840 & 1842, publiée par ordre du Gouverne- ment, Sciences Hist. et Geogr. T. viii. 1846, p. 364 and 378), attain an elevation of 10,700 Fr. (11400 Eng.) feet; exceeding, therefore, the height of Etna. A singularly formed highland of an almost square shape, (Sahab el Marga), bounded on the south by higher elevations, is situated in 33° lat. From thence towards the sea to VOL. I. I
414 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
the west, about a degree south of Mogador, the Atlas declines in height: this south-westernmost part bears the name of Idrar-N-Deren.
The northern Mauritanian boundaries of the widely extended low region of the Sahara, as well as its southern limits towards the fertile Soudan, are still but little known. If we take on a mean estimation the parallels of 163° and 324° as the outside limits, we obtain for the Desert, including its Oases, an area of more than 118500 square German geographical miles; or between nine and ten times the area of Germany, and almost three times that of the Mediterranean exclusive of the Black Sea. From the best and most recent intelligence, for which we are indebted to the French Colonel Daumas and MM. Fournel, Renou, and Carette, we learn that the desert of Sahara is composed of several detached basins, and that the number and the population of the fertile Oases is very much greater than had been imagined from the awfully desert character of the route between Insalah and Timbuctoo, and that from Mourzouk in Fezzan, to Bilma, Tirtuma, and Lake Tschad. It is now generally affirmed that the sand covers only the smaller portion of the great lowland. A similar opinion had been previously propounded by the acutely observant Ehrenberg, my Siberian travelling companion, from what he had himself seen (Exploration Scientifique de PAlgérie, Hist. et Geogr. T. 1. p. 332). Of larger wild animals, only gazelles, wild asses, and ostriches are to be met with. “ Le lion du désert,” says M. Carette, (Explor. de ’Alg. T. ii. p. 126-129; T. vii. p. 94 and 97), “est un mythe popularisé par les artistes et les podtes. I
} §
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ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 115
n’existe que dans leur imagination. Cet animal ne sort pas de sa montagne ou il trouve de quoi se loger, s’abreuver et se nourrir. Quand on parle aux habitans du désert de ces bétes féroces que les Européens leur donnent pour compagnons, ils repondent avec un imperturbable sang froid, il y a done chez vous des lions qui boivent de lair et broutent des feuilles? Chez nous il faut aux lions de Peau courante et de la chair vive. Aussi des lions ne paraissent dans le Zahara que la ot il y a des collines boisées et de eau. Nous ne craignons que la vipére (lefa) et d’innombrables essaims de moustiques, ces derniers la ot il y a quelque humidité.”
Whereas Dr. Oudney, in the course of the long journey from Tripoli to Lake Tschad, estimated the elevation of the southern Sahara at 1637 English feet, to which German geographers have even ventured to add an additional thousand feet, the Ingenieur Fournel has, by careful barometric measurements based on corresponding observa- tions, made it tolerably probable that a part of the northern desert is below the level of the sea. That portion of the desert which is now called “le Zahara d’ Algérie” advances to the chains of hills of Metlili and el-Gaous, where the northernmost of all the Oases,—that of el-Kantara, fruitful in dates,—is situated. This low basin, which touches the parallel of 34° lat., receives the radiant heat of a stratum of chalk, (full of the shells of Inoceramus), inclined at an angle of 65° towards the south (Fournel sur les Gisemens de Muriate de Soude en Algérie, p. 6 in the Annales des Mines, 4me Série, T. ix., 1846, p. 546). “ Arrivés a Biscara,” (Biskra), says Fournel, “un horizon indéfini
i116 STEPPES AND DESERTS.
comme celui de la mer se déroulait devant nous.” Between Biscara and Sidi Ocba the ground is only 228 (243 Eng.)
feet above the level of the sea. The inclination increases’ considerably towards the south. In another work, (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 320), where I have brought together everything relating to the depression of some portions of continents below the level of the sea, I have already noticed that according to Le. Pére the “bitter lakes’ on the isthmus of Suez, when they have a little water,—and, according to General Andréossy, the Natron lakes of Fayoum,—are also lower’ than the level of the Mediter- ranean.
Among other manuscript notices of M. Fournel, I possess a vertical geological profile, which gives all the inflexions and inclinations of the strata, representing a section of the surface the whole way from Philippeville on. the coast to the Desert of Sahara, at a spot not far from the Oasis of Biscara. The direction of the line on which the barometric measurements were taken is south 20° west; but the elevations determined are projected, as in my Mexican profiles, on a different plane,—a north-south one. Ascend- ing uninterruptedly from Constantine, at an elevation of 332 toises (2122 Eng. feet), the culminating point is found between Batnah and Tizur, at an elevation of only 560 oises (3580 Eng. feet). In the part of the desert situated between Biscara and Tuggurt, Fournel has had a series of Artesian wells dug with success (Comptes Rendus de I’ Acad. des Sciences, t. xx. 1845, p. 170, 882, and 1305). We Jearn from the old accounts of Shaw, that the inhabitants of the country knew of a subterranean supply of water, and
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 117
relate fabulous tales of a “sea under the earth (bahr toht el-erd).” Fresh waters flowing between clay and marl strata of the old cretaceous and other sedimentary deposits, under the action of ‘hydrostatic pressure form gushing fountains when the strata are pierced (Shaw, Voyages dans plusieurs parties de la Berbérie, t. i. p. 169; Rennell, Africa, Append. p. lxxxv). That fresh water in this part of the world should often be found near beds of rock salt, need not surprise geologists acquainted with mimes, since Hurope offers many analogous phenomena.
The riches of the desert in rock-salt, and the fact of rock-salt having been used in building, have been known since the time of Herodotus. The salt zone of the Sahara (zone salifére du désert), is the southernmost of three zones, stretching across Northern Africa from south-west to north- east, and believed to be connected with the beds or deposits ~ of rock-salt of Sicily and Palestine, described by Friedrich Hoffman and by Robinson. (Fournel, sur les Gisements de Muriate de Soude en Algérie, p. 28-41; Karsten tiber das Vorkommen des Kochsalzes auf der Oberfliche der Erde, 1846, S. 497, 648, and 741.) The trade in salt with Soudan, and the possibility of cultivating dates in the Oases, formed by depressions caused probably by falls or subsi- dences of the earth in the gypsum beds of the tertiary cretaceous or keuper promotions, have alike contributed to enliven the Desert, at least to some extent, by human intercourse. The high temperature of the air, which makes the day’s march so oppressive, renders the coldness of the nights, (of which Denham complained so often in the African Desert, and Sir Alexander Burnes in the Asiatic),
115 STEPPES AND DESERTS,
so much the more striking. Melloni, (Memoria sull’ abas- samento di temperatura durante le notti placide e serene, 1847, p. 55), ascribes this cold, produced doubtless by the radiation from the ground, less to the gréat purity and serenity of the sky, (irrigiamento calorifico per la grande serenita di cielo nell’ immensa e deserta pianura dell’ Africa centrale), than to the profound calm, the nightly absence of all movement in the atmosphere. (Consult also, re- specting African meteorology, Aimé in the Exploration de P Algérie, Physique génerale, T. 11., 1846, p. 147.)
The southern declivity of the Atlas of Morocco sends to the Sahara, in lat. 32°, a river, the Quad-Dra (Wady-Dra), which for the greater part of the year is nearly dry, and which Renou (Explor. de lAlg. Hist. et Geogr., T. viii. p. 65-78) considers to be a sixth longer than the Rhine. It flows at first from north to south, until, in lat. 29° N. and long. 5° W., it turns almost at right angles to its former course, runs to the west, and, after passing through the great fresh water Lake of Debaid, enters the sea at Cape Nun, in lat. 28° 46’ N. and long. 11° 08’ W. This region, which was so celebrated formerly in the history of the Portuguese discoveries of the 15th century, and was afterwards wrapped in profound geographical obscurity, is now called on the coast “the country of the Sheikh Bei- rouk,” (a chief independent of the Emperor of Morocco.) It was explored in the months of July and August 1840, by Captain Count Bouet-Villaumez of the French Navy, by order of his government. From the official Reports and Surveys which have been communicated to me in
manuscript, it appears evident that the mouth of the
il
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. _ 119
Quad-Dra is at present very much stopped up with sand, having an open channel of only about 190 English feet wide. A somewhat more easterly channel in the same mouth is that of the still very little known Saguiel el-Hamra, which comes from the south, and is supposed to have a course of at least 600 geographical miles. One is astonished at the length of these deep, but commonly dry river beds. They are ancient furrows, such as I have seen in the Peruvian desert at the foot of the Cordilleras, between those moun- tains and the coast of the Pacific. In Bouet’s manuscript “ Relation de Expédition de la Malouine,” the mountains which rise to the north of Cape Nun are estimated at the great elevation of 2800 metres (9185 English feet). Cape Nun is usually supposed to have been discovered in 1433, by the Knight Gilianez, acting under the command of the celebrated Infante Henry Duke of Viseo, and foun- der of the Academy of Sagres, which was presided over by the pilot and cosmographer Mestre Jacomé of Majorca; but the Portulano Mediceo, the work of a Genoese Navi- gator in 1351, already contains the name of Cavo di Non. The passage round this Cape was then as much dreaded as that of Cape Horn has since been, although it is 23’ north of the parallel of Teneriffe, and could be reached in a few days’ voyage from Cadiz, The Portuguese proverb, “ quem passa o Cabo di Num, ou tornara ou nao,” could not deter the Infante, whose heraldic French motto, “talent de bien faire,” expressed his noble, enterprising, and vigorous cha- racter. ‘The name of the Cape, in which a play of words on the negative particle has long been supposed, does not appear to me to have had a Portuguese origin. Ptolemy
120 _. STEPPES AND DESERTS.
placed: on the north-west coast of Africa a river Nuius, in the Latin version Nunii Ostia. Edrisi speaks of a town, Nul, or Wadi Nun, somewhat more to the south, and three days’ journey in the interior: Leo Africanus calls it Belad de Non. Long before the Portuguese squadron of Gili- anez, other European. navigators had advanced much beyond, or to the southward of, this Cape. The Catalan, Don Jayme Ferrer, in 1346, as we learn from the Atlas Catalan pub- lished by Buchon at Paris, had advanced as far as the Gold River, (Rio do Ouro), in lat. 23° 56’; and Normans, at the end of the 14th century, as far as Sierra Leone in lat. 8° 30’. The merit of having been the first to cross the equator on the western coast of Africa belongs, however, like that of so many other memorable achievements, to the Portuguese.
(17) p. 8.—* As a grassy plain, resembling many of the Steppes of Central Asia.”
The Llanos: of Caraccas and of the Rio Apure and the Meta, over which roam large herds of cattle, are, in the strictest. sense of the term, “ grassy plains.” Their preva- lent vegetation, belonging to the two families of Cyperaceze and Graminez, consists of various species of Paspalum, P. leptostachyam and P. lenticulare; of Kyllingia, K. monocephala (Rottb.), K. odorata; of Panicum, P. granuli- ferum, P. micranthum; of Antephora; Aristida; Vilfa; and Anthistiria, A. reflexa, and A. foliosa. Only here and there are found, interspersed among the Graminee, a few herbaceous dicotyledonous plants, consisting of two very low-growing species of Mimosa, (Sensitive Plant), Mimosa:
a
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 121
intermedia, and Mimosa dormiens, which are great favourites with the wild horses and cattle. The natives give to this group of plants, which close their delicate feathery leaves on being touched, the expressive name of Dormideras— sleepy plants. For many square miles not a tree is seen; but where solitary trees are found, they are, in moist places, the Mauritia Palm; im arid districts, a Proteacea, described by Bonpland and myself, the Rhopala complicata (Chaparro bobo), which Wildenow, regarded as an Embo- thrium; also the highly useful Palma de Covija, or de Sombrero ; and our Corypha inermis, an umbrella palm allied to Chamerops, which is used to cover the roofs of huts. How far more varied is the aspect of the Asiatic plains! Throughout a large portion of the Kirghis and Calmuck Steppes, which I have traversed from the Don, the Caspian, and the Orenburg Ural river the Jaik, to the Obi and the Upper Irtysh near Lake Dsaisang, through a space of 40 degrees of longitude, I have never seen, as in the Llanos, the Pampas, and the Prairies, an horizon like that of the ocean, where the vault of heaven appears to rest on the unbroken pla. At the utmost this appearance pre- sented itself in one direction, or towards one quarter of the heavens. The Asiatic Steppes are often crossed by ranges of hills, or clothed with coniferous woods or forests. Even in the most fruitful pastures the vegetation is by no means limited to grasses; there is a great variety of herbaceous plants and shrubs. In spring-time small snow-white and red-flowering rosacee and amygdalee (Spirea, Crategus, Prunus spinosa, and Amygdalus nana) present a smiling aspect. I have already mentioned the tall and luxuriant
122 STEPPES AND DESERTS,
Synantheree (Saussurea amara, 8. salsa, Artemisias, and Centaureas), and of leguminous plants, species of Astra- galus, Cytisus, and Caragana. Crown Imperials, (Fritillaria ruthenica, and F. meleagroides), Cypripedias, and tulips, rejoice the eye by the bright variety of their colours.
A contrast to the pleasing vegetation of these Asiatic plains is presented by the desolate salt Steppes, particularly by the part of the Barabinski Steppe which is at the foot of the Altai mountains, and by the Steppes between Barnaul and the Serpent Mountain and the country on the east of the Caspian. Here Chenopodias, some species of Salsola and Atriplex, Sali- cornias and Halimocnemis crassifolia, (each species growing socially”), form patches of vegetation on the muddy ground. See Gobel’s Journey in the Steppes of the South of Russia (Reise in die Steppe des siidlichen Russlands, 18388, Th. u. S. 244 and 301). Of the 500 phanerogamous species which Claus and Gdbel collected in the Steppes, the Syran- there, the Chenopodee, and the Cruciferee, were more numerous than the grasses; the latter being only ;'- of the whole, and the former +th and jth. In Germany, from the mixture of hill and plain districts, the Glumacez (7. e. the Graminee, Cyperaceee, and Juncacee collectively), form ath ; the Synanthere or Composite ith ; and the Cruciferee sth of all our German phanerogamia. In the most nor- thern parts of the flat Siberian lowlands, the fine map of Admiral Wrangell shews that the extreme northern limit of tree and shrub vegetation (Coniferee and Amentacez) is, in the portion towards the Behring’s Straits side, in 674° lat. ; and more to the west, towards the banks of the Lena, in 71°, which is the parallel of the north cape of Lapland.
Te le ee rl 7
OE II tO,
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ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 123
The plains which border the Icy Sea are the domain of cryptogamous plants. ‘They are called Tundras (Tuntur in Finnish) : they are swampy districts extending farther than the eye can reach, partly covered with a thick carpet of Sphagnum palustre and other mosses, and partly with a dry snow-white covering of Cenomyce rangiferina (Rein-deer moss), Stereocaulon paschale, and other lichens. Admiral Wrangell, in describing his perilous expedition to the new Siberian islands so rich in fossil wood, says: “ These Tun- dras accompanied me to the extreme arctic coast. Their soil has been frozen for thousands of years. In the dreary uniformity of landscape, the eye of the traveller, surrounded by rein-deer moss, dwells with pleasure on the smallest patch of green turf showing itself now and then on a moist spot.”
(18) p. 8.—* The causes which lessen both heat and dryness