Aspects of Nature, Alexander von Humboldt
Aspects of Nature
Alexander von Humboldt
Category: Science
Genres: Non-fiction,Travel,Biology
Level 12.046:52 h
"Aspects of Nature" by Alexander von Humboldt is a detailed account of his scientific expeditions to explore the natural world. Humboldt's observations and analysis of plants, animals, and ecosystems provide valuable insights into the interconnections and dependencies that exist within nature. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding and preserving these delicate systems.

Aspects of Nature

In Different Lands and Different Climates;
with Scientific Elucidations

Volume I

by
Alexander von Humboldt

Translated by Elizabeth Juliana Sabine

Aspects of Nature

Author’s Preface to the First Edition

It 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 the 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 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 contemplation 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, I have subjoined to each treatise scientific elucidations and additions.

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 Andes. To them is addressed the poet’s voice, in the sentence of the Chorus —

“Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit! Der Hauch der Grüfte
Steigt nicht hinauf in die reinen Lüfte;
Die Welt ist vollkommen überall,
Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual.”

Author’s Preface to the Second and Third Editions

The 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 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 Essay 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,” a 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: “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, remoulding 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 the shores of the Caspian Sea), falls between the period of publication of the second and third editions. This expedition 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 temperature. 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 (i. e. the Thian-schan and the Kuen-lün), 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. Appendix a.1.16-a.1.20, and Appendix a.3.17.) 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 altogether restoring 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.

Berlin, 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 is important. The miles are given in geographical miles, 60 to a degree, but in this case the original figures have usually been omitted, the conversion 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.

Steppes and Deserts

A widely 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 mountain 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 broken strata of limestone, several hundred square miles in extent, appear sensibly higher than the adjoining parts. “Banks” 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. 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 clear 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 regarded as true Steppes, — but Steppes of small extent and hilly surface, if compared with the Llanos and Pampas of South America, or even with the Prairies of the Missouri 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 of 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 between 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, infers the vicinity of the widely extended heat-radiating desert. Herds of antelopes 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, the African 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 possibility of which depends upon the existence of the camel, the “ship of the desert,” as it is called in the traditionary 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 between 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 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 Rosaceæ, and with Fritillarias, Tulips, and Cypripedias.

As the torrid zone is characterised on the whole by a disposition in all vegetation to become arborescent, so some of the Asiatic Steppes in the temperate zone are characterised by the great height attained by flowering herbaceous plants, Saussureas and other Synantheræ, and Papilionaceæ 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.

These Mongolian and Tartarian Steppes, interrupted frequently 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 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, Getæ, 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 East, so, at a later period, from the same direction barbaric rudeness has threatened to overspread and involve Europe in darkness. A brown pastoral race, 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 impulse thus given passed from nation to nation, until it reached the ancient land of the Finns, near the Ural mountains. From thence, Huns, Avari, Ghazarés, and various admixtures of Asiatic races, broke forth. Armies of Huns appeared successively on the Volga, in 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, 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, no ruined building, no fruit tree once the care of the cultivator but now wild, speaks of the art or industry of former generations. As if estranged from the destinies of mankind, and riveting attention solely to the present moment, 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, 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 described 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 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. 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 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, 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 plain, resembling many of the Steppes of Central Asia.

It is a highly interesting though difficult task of general geography to compare the natural conditions of distant regions, and to represent by a few traits the results of this comparison. The causes which lessen both heat and dryness in the New World are manifold, and in some respects as yet only partially understood. Amongst these may be classed the narrowness and deep indentation of the 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 Pariña, and then turn suddenly to the west; — the numerous lofty mountain chains rich in springs, and whose snow-clad summits, 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 from the 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.

If, therefore, one side of our planet has a moister atmosphere 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, as an island of swamps and marshes tenanted by alligators and serpents.

There is, indeed, a striking 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 extraordinary 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, 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 over warm heat-radiating continents. The venerable and only lately appreciated father of history, Herodotus, in the 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.

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 mountains covered with perpetual snow, we know only the western part of the Atlas, 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-supporting mount. The eastern prolongation 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 Gætulian rampart, 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, (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 western coast of Peru, is believed to be covered with perpetual 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” 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 germinate, centuries 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 surrounding 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 wilderness; 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 was almost unknown to the original inhabitants of the New Continent. Hardly any of the American tribes have ever availed themselves 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 hunters to 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 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, i. 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, 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, 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 accompanied 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? If 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 the history of the peopling of Japan in the time of Thsinchi-huang-ti offers a memorable example), may have been driven by storms to the coasts of New California.

If, 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 unknown to the aboriginal nations of America, this circumstance 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 Hymenæa 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 trunks. Agoutis, small spotted antelopes, cuirassed armadilloes, which, like rats, startle the hare in its subterranean holes, herds of lazy chiguires, beautifully striped viverræ 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 killing him; — these and many other forms of animal life wander through the treeless plain.

Thus almost exclusively inhabited by these wild animals, the Steppe would offer little attraction or means of subsistence 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 tree are widely celebrated; it alone, from the mouth of the Orinoco to north of the Sierra de Imataca, feeds the unsubdued nation of the Guaranis. 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 habitation never likely to be chosen from motives of religious enthusiasm by an American Stylites. 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, like 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, like the plaintain and almost all tropical fruits, a different kind of nutriment, according as they are eaten after their saccharine substance is fully developed, or in 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 communication 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. 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 multiplication 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 conical-shaped clouds the points of which descend 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 plain. 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, 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. Every 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. The distant palm bush apparently raised by the influence of the contact of unequally 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 dismally, 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 cious and cunning, the mule seeks a different mode of alleviating his thirst. The ribbed and spherical melon-cactus 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 vampires 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! The deep blue of the hitherto perpetually 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 Magellanic 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 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 sensibility to the influence of light, unfold their drooping slumbering 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 cast 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 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. 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 Rastro 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 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. North of the Atlas there dwell nations with long and straight hair, of sallow complexion and 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 boundary of a partial European 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 in 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 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.

Where a sand-bank is left dry by the shallow current, the unwieldly crocodiles lie, with open jaws, as motionless as pieces of rock and often covered with birds. 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.

In the midst of this grand and savage nature live many tribes of men, isolated from each other by the extraordinary diversity of their languages: some are nomadic, wholly unacquainted with agriculture, and using ants, gums, and earth as food; these, as the Otomacs and Jarures, seem a kind of outcasts from humanity: others, like the Maquiritares and Macos, are settled, more intelligent and of milder manners, and live on fruits which they have themselves 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 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 unequally developed flexible languages; which latter belong to the oldest and most imperishable class of historic memorials.

But as in the Steppe tigers and crocodiles fight with horses and cattle, so in the forests on its borders, in the wildernesses 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 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 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 contemplate the silent life of vegetation, and the hidden activities 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.

The Cataracts of the Orinoco

In the preceding section, which was made the subject of an academical lecture, I sought to depict those boundless plains which, according to the varying modification of their natural characters induced by climatic relations, appear to us sometimes as Deserts devoid of vegetation, and sometimes as Steppes, or widely-extended grassy plains or Prairies. In so doing I contrasted the Llanos of the southern part of the New Continent with the dreadful seas of sand which form the African Deserts; and these again with the Steppes of Central Asia, the habitation of world-assailing pastoral nations, who at a former period, when pressed hitherward from the East, spread barbarism and devastation over the earth.

If on that occasion, (in 1806,) I ventured to combine widely distributed portions of the earth’s surface in a single picture of nature, and to entertain a public assembly with images whose colouring was in unison with the mournful disposition of our minds at that epoch, I will now, limiting myself to a narrower circle of phenomena, sketch the more cheerful picture of river scenery composed of foaming rapids and rich luxuriant vegetation. I propose to describe in particular two scenes of nature in the wildernesses of Guiana, — the celebrated Cataracts of the Orinoco, Atures and Maypures, — which, previous to my visit, few Europeans had ever seen.

The impression left on our minds by the aspect of nature is frequently determined, less even by the peculiar character of the strictly terrestrial portion of the scene, than by the light thrown on mountain or plain, either by a sky of azure purity, or by one veiled by lowering clouds; and in the same manner descriptions of nature act upon us more powerfully or more feebly, according as they are more or less in harmony with the requirements of our feelings. For it is the inward mirror of the sensitive mind which reflects the true and living image of the natural world. All that determines the character of a landscape, — the outline of the mountains, which, in the far-vanishing distance, bound the horizon, — the dark shade of the pine forests, — the sylvan torrent rushing between overhanging cliffs to its fall, — all are in antecedent mysterious communion with the inner feelings and life of man.

On this communion rests the nobler portion of the enjoyment which nature affords. Nowhere does she penetrate us more deeply with the feeling of her grandeur, nowhere does she speak to us with a more powerful voice, than in the tropical world, under the “Indian sky,” as, in the early middle ages, the climate of the torrid zone was called. If, therefore, I venture again to occupy this Assembly with a description of those regions, I do so in the hope that the peculiar charm which belongs to them will not be unfelt. The remembrance of a distant richly endowed land, — the aspect of a free and vigorous vegetation, — refreshes and strengthens the mind; in the same manner as our spirits, when oppressed with the actual present, love to escape awhile, and to delight themselves with the earlier youthful age of mankind, and with the manifestations of its simple grandeur.

Favouring winds and currents bear the voyager westward across the peaceful Ocean arm, which fills the wide valley between the New Continent and western Africa. Before the American shore rises from the liquid plain, he hears the tumult of contending, mutually opposing, and inter-crossing waves. The mariner unacquainted with the region would surmise the vicinity of shoals, or a wonderful outbreak of fresh springs in the middle of the ocean, like those in the neighbourhood of Cuba. On approaching nearer to the granitic coast of Guiana, he becomes sensible that he has entered the wide embouchure of a mighty river, which issues forth like a shoreless lake and covers the ocean around with fresh water. The green, and on the shallows the milk-white, tint of the fresh water contrasts with the indigo-blue colour of the sea, and marks with sharp outlines the limits of the river waves.

The name Orinoco, given to the river by its first discoverers, and which probably originated in some confusion of language, is unknown in the interior of the country. Nations in a rude state designate by proper geographical names only such objects as can be confounded with each other. The Orinoco, the Amazons, and the Magdalena rivers, are called simply “The River,” or “The Great River,” or “The Great Water;” whilst those who dwell on their banks distinguish even the smallest streams by particular names.

The current produced by the Orinoco, between the mainland and the Island of Trinidad with its asphaltic lake, is so strong, that ships with all sail set, and with a favourable breeze, can with difficulty make way against it. This deserted and dreaded part of the sea is called the Bay of Sadness (Golfo Triste); the entrance forms the Dragon’s Mouth (Boca del Drago). Here detached cliffs rise like towers above the foaming floods, and seem still to indicate the ancient site of a rocky bulwark, which, before it was broken by the force of the current, united the island of Trinidad with the coast of Paria.

The aspect of this region first convinced the great discoverer of the New World of the existence of an American continent. Familiar with nature, he inferred that so immense a body of fresh water could only be collected in a long course, and “that the land which supplied it must be a continent, not an island.” As, according to Arrian, the companions of Alexander, after crossing the snow-covered Paropanisus, on reaching the Indus imagined, from the presence of crocodiles, that they recognised in that river a branch of the Nile; so Columbus, unaware of the similarity of physiognomy which characterises the various productions of the climate of Palms, readily supposed this new continent to be the eastern coast of the far-projecting continent of Asia. The mild coolness of the evening air, the ethereal purity of the starry firmament, the balsamic fragrance of the flowers wafted to him by the land breeze, — all led him (as Herrara tells us in the Decades), to deem that he had approached the garden of Eden, the sacred dwelling-place of the first parents of the human race. The Orinoco appeared to him to be one of the four rivers descending from Paradise, to divide and water the earth newly decked with vegetation. This poetic passage from the journal of Columbus’s voyage, or rather from a letter written from Hayti, in October 1498, to Ferdinand and Isabella, has a peculiar psychological interest. It teaches us anew that the creative imagination of the poet exists in the Discoverer as in every form of human greatness.

In considering the quantity of water which the Orinoco bears to the Atlantic, the question arises — Which of the great South American Rivers, — the Orinoco, the Amazons, or the River Plate, — is the largest? The question, however, thus put is not a determinate one, the idea of size in this case not being altogether definite. The River Plate has the widest embouchure, being 92 geographical miles across; but, like the British rivers, its length is comparatively small. Even at Buenos Ayres its depth is already so inconsiderable as to impede navigation. The Amazons is the longest of all rivers: its course from its origin in the Lake of Lauricocha to its mouth is 2880 geographical miles. But its breadth in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, near the cataract of Rentama, as measured by me at the foot of the picturesque mountain of Patachuma, hardly equals that of the Rhine at Mayence.

The Orinoco is narrower at its mouth than either the River Plate or the Amazons; and its length, according to positions astronomically determined by me, only amounts to 1120 geographical miles. But, on the other hand, far in the interior of Guiana, 560 miles from its mouth, I still found its breadth, when full, 16200 Parisian (17265 Eng.) feet. The periodical swelling of the river annually raises its level at this part of its course from 30 to 36 feet above its lowest level. Sufficient materials for an accurate comparison of the enormous rivers which intersect the continent of South America are still wanting. For such a comparison it would be needful to know in each case the profile of the river-bed, and the velocity of the water, which differs very greatly in different parts of the same stream.