Aspects of nature, in different lands and different climates (Vol. 1 of 2) / with scientific elucidations

[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 is a 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 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 connects 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 Cumana 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 sea, which became suddenly connected with the ocean. The islands of Cuba, Hayti, and Jamaica, still contain the remnants 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 (Montañas 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 d’un Tableau Géologique de l’Amerique 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 l’hist. 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 chains 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 remarkable, European wheat. The southern margin of this valley adjoins the beautiful lake of Valencia, whose old Indian name is Tacarigua. The contrast between its opposite 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 in 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 Aparecidas. 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 in the lake a Typha (Cats-tail), identical with the European Typha angustifolia; a singular 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, Caña criolla; and the cane recently introduced from the Pacific, Caña 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 distance 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. Bougainville 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-fruit tree to Jamaica by the brave but unfortunate Captain Bligh, and was introduced 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 caña criolla, which has a thinner stalk and smaller joints. As, moreover, the West India islands begin to suffer great want of fuel, (in Cuba 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 commencement 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 decided 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 (a very 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 Caña de Otaheiti and the Caña Criolla, a reddish African variety, called Caña 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.

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 in 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 provinces of New Barcelona and Cumana, and particularly in the moist woody district between Cariaco and the Golfo Triste.

[2] 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 conglomerate 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 and 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 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 it is 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 planities.” 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. If, 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 singular aspect of this sea-like desert plain. 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 earthquakes. Instead of the banks standing higher than the surrounding rock, we found here solitary strata of gypsum from 3 to 4 toises (19 to 25 English feet) lower. Farther to the west, near the junction of the Caura with the Orinoco, and to the east of the mission of S. 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, Hymenæas, 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 forests both to a very restricted field of view, and to the aspect of a rich and highly luxuriant vegetation. Ineffaceable 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.

[4] 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 distributed lichens, we find small islands of soil, covered with low and always flowering plants which give them the appearance of little gardens. The monks of the Upper Orinoco regard these bare and perfectly level surfaces of rock, when 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 atmosphere, 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 respecting 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 recent 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 America 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 hemispheres two ranges of mountains exist at a short distance from the eastern coast; they are more nearly parallel to each 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 highest 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 Aguapehi (to the south of Villabella) approach the lofty Andes of Cochabamba 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 opening into the plains 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 Pomabamba (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 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°-3° N. lat.), a similar line divides the basin of the Orinoco from that of the Amazons and the Rio Negro. These risings or swellings in the plains (called, by Frontin, terræ tumores) might be regarded as undeveloped systems of mountains, which would have connected 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-covered plain or Hylæa.

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 equatorial 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 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, become 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 containing 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 Popocatepetl (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 dependent, in the absence of barometrical observations, on uncertain estimations of the declivity of streams. As a trigonometrical measurement can hardly ever be undertaken 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. ii. pp. 36, 362, 382, App. p. xxxvii.) It was from a similar deficiency of barometrical measurements that the true elevation 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 remaining. (Critical Researches on Philology and Geography, 1824, p. 144.)

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 5½° north of Spanish Peak. Its height, 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, 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, geographically by astronomical observations; so that a district which, with the windings of the route, amounts to 3600 geographical 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 undertook 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 Frémont’s map. In the middle latitudes of 37° to 43° the Rocky Mountains present, besides the higher snowy summits comparable with the Peak of Teneriffe in elevation, lofty plains of an extent hardly met with elsewhere on the surface 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 uncritical discussion on the assumed non-existence of a great 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; Frémont, Upper California, 1848, p. 9; and, also, Duflot de Mofras, Exploration de l’Oregon, 1844, T. ii. p. 40.) Gallatin says expressly, in the Memoir on the Aboriginal Races in the Archæologia Americana, vol. ii. 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 extensive 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, between the states on the Atlantic Sea Board opposite Europe, and the new settlements on the Oregon and Columbia opposite China. The itinerary 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 English 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 call this point “the South Pass.” (Frémont’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, particularly 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 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 Mountains, 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. iii. S. 8, Abth. II. Bd. i. S. 386, with his Archiv für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland, Bd. vi. S. 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 continuation 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 Coast Chain, where Fort Vancouver and the Walahmutti 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 la Nouvelle Espagne, T. ii. 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.) below the summit of Etna. It is extremely 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 mountains 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 E. 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;” “côtes brûlées,” 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 shews itself principally in the district of the Upper Missouri, and still nearer to the eastern declivity of the Rocky Mountains, where a river bears the native name of Mankizitah-Watpa, or the “river of the smoking earth.” Scoriaceous 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 in 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 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, i. e. the altitude of its several parts above the sea, has been elucidated by the valuable labours of the highly-talented French astronomer, 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 240 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 Historique 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 (côteaux des prairies, and côteaux 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. Such a 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 (1492 to 1599 English) feet. From St. Louis, a little to the south of the junction of the Missouri and the Mississipi, to the mouth of the latter river at Old French Balize, it has only a fall of 357 (380 English) feet in an itinerary distance of more than 1280 geographical miles. The surface of Lake Superior is 580 (618 English) 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 expedition 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. It was not until the scientific expedition of Nicollet, in 1836, that a clear knowledge 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 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 innere Nord-America, Bd. i. 1839, S. 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 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 Canadian 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 uncultivated 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 Carolina), 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 sixteenth 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 Kentucky, 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. (Archæologia Americana, vol. ii., 1836, p. 139.)

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 into 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 exceeding in linear distance the interval which in the Old Continent 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 interior continues to act, through the medium of the cleft, upon the upheaved wall-like mass. That which we now call a 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 outpouring 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 Sorata and Illimani were first measured by a distinguished 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 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 trigonometrical 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 Chimborazo, 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.)