resplendent hues, and birds of gorgeous plumage. Many of these birds have notes of exquisite melody. But the malaria engendered by the decomposition of the rank vegetation and the dank soil renders the region one of the most insalubrious upon the globe, and almost uninhabitable by man from the vernal to the autumnal equinox. Here is the birthplace of the dreaded vomito, or yellow fever.

Passing this fatal belt, after twenty leagues the traveler finds himself ascending into a purer atmosphere. The vegetation changes at every league. One by one the vanilla, the indigo plant, the sugar cane, and the plantain disappear; until at the hight of 4,000 feet the unchanging green of the rich foliage of the liquidamber indicates that the traveler has reached the elevation where the clouds and mists settle in their passage from the Gulf, and maintain a perpetual moisture.

Here are the confines of the tierra templada, or temperate region, where the evergreen oaks remind him of the forests of Central Europe. The features of the scenery become imposing. The ascending road sweeps along the base of mighty mountains, now snow-clad, but bearing traces of former volcanic fires. The flanks of the mountains are rent with huge barancas or ravines, down whose steep sides he can look for more than a thousand feet. Cactuses, euphorbia, dracaena, and a multitude of other plants cling to the rocky walls; while at the bottom of the gorge, to which he might apparently almost leap, stand huge laurels and fig trees. Upward still, he passes fields waving with yellow wheat and broad-leaved maize, with plantations of the agave, from which the Mexicans prepare, as they did in the days of the Montezumas, their national beverage of pulque.

At an elevation of 8,000 feet, the forests of sombre pine announce that the tierra fria, or “cold region," the last of the three great terraces, has been reached. Here in the valley of Anahuac, yet at an elevation of 7,500 feet, rests the city of Mexico, the famous capital of the Montezumas, with its shallow lakes, and surrounded by elliptical plains, enclosed by frowning ridges of basaltic and porphyrite rocks. On the south-eastern side rises the snow-crowned cone of Orizaba, whose ever blazing summit, shining like a star through the darkness of night, gained for it its Aztec name of Citlaltepetl, "the Mountain of the Star;" farther west rise Popocatepetl, Iztaci huatl, and Toluca, altogether forming a magnificent volcanic circuit, only equaled by that which girdles the valley of Quito. If the traveler chooses to climb the sides of these volcanoes, in a few days' journey he will have passed through every variety of climate and every zone of production, from the fiercest tropical heat to the confines of perpetual winter; from the towering palm to the lichen which hardly lifts its head above the sterile rock.

Sikkim, on the southern side of the Himalayas, may be considered a vast sloping plain, rising in a gradual ascent from the foot of the chain to the base of the peaks, the highest on the globe. From the shores of the Bay of Bengal is a level plain of a hundred miles in breadth to the foot of the Himelayas. Thence the land rises gently 7,000 feet in eighty miles. Here is the British sanitarium of Dorjiling, where the European debilitated by the burning climate of the lowlands may breathe air as cool and refreshing as those of his native land. Eighty miles further brings him 9,000 feet higher to the limits of perpetual snow. Then arise more steeply, 12,000 feet higher, the lofty summits, rather than peaks, of the Himalayas, looking down upon

the magnificently wooded region below. The highest of these Sikkim peaks is Kinchin junga-the third, but until recently believed to be the first, in hight upon the globe. It falls but a hundred feet below the Dipsang or Karkakorum peak, and about eight hundred below Gaurisanker, which the British have re-named Mount Everest. Kinchin-junga rises to the altitude of 28,172 feet. Not only is its summit untrodden by man or beast, but nothing that breathes has ever mounted so high into the air. The condor, who in his flight looks down upon the dome of Chimborazo, never mounts to within thousands of feet of the hight of Kinchin-junga.*

Humboldt's statement that the condor flies higher than Chimborazo (21,420 feet) has been questioned. But Orton has seen numbers of them hovering at least a thousand feet above Pichincha (16,000 feet), and does not doubt that they fly much higher. Müller, in his ascent of Orizaba, saw falcons flying fully 18,000 feet high; and it is affirmed that wild geese fly over the peak of Kunchan-ghow (22,000 feet). There can be little doubt that the condor attains an elevation greater than any other bird, and that no other creature ever voluntarily ascends so high.

CHAPTER III.

SAVANNAS AND DESERTS OF THE TROPICAL WORLD.

Water and Life-Characteristics of the Savannas.-The Llanos: The Dry Season-Effects upon Vegetable Life-Effects upon Animal Life-Approach of the Rainy Season-Revival of Vegetable and Animal Life-Vast Migrations of Animals.-The Pampas: Horses and Cattle in the New World-Effects of their Introduction upon the Character of the Population-The Mauritia Palm-Living in the Tree-tops-The Grand Chaco-Its Indian Inhabitants-The Guachos-The Lasso and Bolas.-The Plains of Southern Africa: Thorny Bushes-Excessive Droughts-A Great Hunting Ground-Species of Game-Vegetation— Watery Tubers-Esculent Gourds-Possibility of Wells-Water-Pits in the KalahariMode of Pumping Up the Water-Livingstone's Theory of Water-Making Ants-More Probable Explanation-Inhabitants of Southern Africa.-The Lake Region of Equatorial Africa: Little Known-Explorations of Livingstone and Burton-Speke's Journey-lis Notices of the Country-Moderate and Equable Temperature-The Inhabitants-Characteristics of a Real Desert.-The Atacama of Peru: Its Arid Character-The Mule the Ship of this Desert.-The Australian Desert: Its Utter Desolation.-Sturt's ExplorationLeichardt-Lost Rivers.-The Sahara: Extent and General Characteristics-The Capital of Fezzan-Perilous Adventure of Barth-Plains and Hills-Oases-Luxuriant Vegetation of the Oases-Contrasts of Light and Shade-The Khamsin or Simoom-Animals and Reptiles-The Ostrich and its Chase-Fluctuations of Animal and Vegetable Life according to the Seasons.

HE presence or absence of water in the Tropical World exerts an influence upon

life not important than the temperature.

Wherever water is absolutely wanting the country is given over to barrenness. Wherever water is perpetual and abundant, the soil is clothed with lofty forests and a profusion of lush vegetation. Midway between these extremes are vast tracts dry at one season and wet at another. These regions, which we may call savannas, embrace the pampas of the Argentine Republic and the llanos of Venezuela and New Granada, and a considerable portion of Southern Africa. They are in general to be characterized as vast plains, never of more than moderate elevation, covered with grass and shrubs; but, except on the banks of the rivers, destitute of extensive forests, the trees standing singly or in small clumps.

There can be no more striking contrast than that presented at different seasons of the year by the great llanos of Venezuela. When the rainy season is over and the sun for weeks blazes in an unclouded sky, pouring his vertical rays upon the thirsty plains, the calcined grass-plains present the aspect of an interminable, monotonous Like the ocean they stretch out till in the distance hazy and quivering with heat, their boundary blends upon the horizon with the sky in an indistinct line. The water pools which nourished the scattered clumps of the Mauritia palm disappear one by one. The tall, dry reeds which indicate the spot which had been a swamp, bear

waste.

high up their stalks the encrusted mud which marks the hight of ooze and slime of the rainy season. The grass has long since withered, and stands a mass of dry stems, ready at the touch of fire to break out into a conflagration which outstrips the speed of the swiftest horse.

Animal life seems to have become extinct. The deer, the aguti, and the peccary, taught by instinct, have migrated to less arid regions, followed by their natural enemies the Indian, the puma, and the jaguar. The vast herds of wild horses and cattle which roamed over the savanna perish in countless numbers, or rush about bellowing, and neighing, and snuffing the thirsty air, seeking to scent out the neighborhood of some pool where a little moisture has survived the general drought. Buried far down in the stiff clay of the dried-up pools, the alligator and huge water snake lie torpid in a long summer sleep, as the bear slumbers through the dreary Arctic winter.

At length, when all nature seems to have expired or to be expiring for want of water, welcome signs announce the approach of the rainy season. The blue, cloudless sky begins to assume a leaden hue; the atmosphere becomes obscured by condensing vapors; the stars which shone with a mild planetary lustre now twinkle faintly even in the zenith, while the bright Southern Cross, low down in the horizon, is hardly discernible, and the phosphoric gleam of the Magellanic clouds expires. Banks of vapor rise in mountainous forms on the horizon, increasing in density, and mounting higher and higher, until at length they burst into rains which pour down in torrents. Scarcely have the showers had time to moisten the thirsty land, when a change comes over the face of nature. The dull, tawny surface of the savanna is transformed as if by magic into an expanse of vivid green, enameled with flowers of every hue. The mimosas expand their delicate foliage, and the Mauritia palm, "the tree of life," puts forth its feathery fronds.

Animal life awakens from its long torpor. On the borders of the swamps the moistened clay heaves, and slowly bursts asunder, and from the tomb in which he lay embedded, rises the form of some huge alligator or water-snake. The newly formed pools swarm with water-fowl. The herds of horses and oxen rejoice in the thick grasses, under whose covert not unfrequently crouches the jaguar waiting for his prey. On the very same spot where a few weeks before the horse anxiously snuffed the air, half-mad with thirst, he is now obliged to lead an almost amphibious life. The mares retreat with their foals to the higher banks, which rise like islands from a lagoon, and swim about in quest of the grasses which lift their heads above the waters. Not unfrequently they become the prey of alligators that strike them down with their scaly tails, and seize them with their enormous jaws. "This sight," says Humboldt, "involuntarily reminds the reflecting observer of the great pliability with which nature has endowed several species of plants and animals. Along with the fruits of Ceres, the horse and the ox have followed man over the whole earth from the Ganges to the Plata, and from the coast of Africa to the mountain plain of Antisana, overlooking the Valley of Quito. Here, the northern birch-tree, and there the tropical date-palm, protects the tired ox from the heat of the sun. The same specics of animal which in eastern Europe contends with bears and wolves, is attacked in another zone by the tiger and the crocodile."

It is scarcely three centuries since the horse and the ox were first introduced into America by the Spaniards. The latter has flourished to such a degree that it is not

improbable that in the pampas and llanas of South America there are more cattle than in all the rest of the globe. Strain, who rode across the pampas, was told that in a single year ten millions of hides were exported from Buenos Ayres. Knowing that the census of 1840 gave but fifteen millions in the United States, this statement seemed incredible. But when day after day he saw from every slight swell herd after herd, blackening the whole expanse, until they became mere specks in the distance, and re

flected that the millions upon millions which he saw were but fractions of those spread for hundreds of thousands of square miles, he could give credit to the statement. The annual slaughter of millions seems to have no sensible effect in diminishing the numbers of the survivors. These herds belong mainly to wealthy estancieros. The extent of some of these estancias and the number of the herds is almost incredible. The estate of San José, belonging to Urquiza, late President of the Argentine Confederation, covered an area of several hundred square miles, and upon it he had 2,000 horses, 40,000 head of cattle, and 70,000 sheep, and this is but one out of his many estates.*

*Page's La Plata, 52, 59.