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Title: The Desert World

Author: Arthur Mangin

Illustrator: Yan Dargent
Jean Antoine Valentin Foulquier
active 1839-1875‫‏‬William Henry Freeman

Translator: W. H. Davenport Adams

Release date: August 3, 2013 [eBook #43396]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESERT
WORLD ***

Every attempt has
been made to replicate
the original book as
printed. Some
typographical errors
have been corrected.
A list follows the
etext. No attempt has
been made to correct
or normalize printed
botanical names. The
footnotes have all
been moved to the end
of the etext. Some
illustrations have been
moved from within
paragraphs for ease of
reading. (etext
transcriber’s note)
Preface.
Contents.
Index.
List of Illustrations.
Footnotes.

T H E D E S E R T W O R L D.

“For I have learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity.”
Wordsworth

THE DESERT WORLD.
FROM THE FRENCH OF ARTHUR MANGIN.

Edited and Enlarged

BY

THE TRANSLATOR OF “THE BIRD, BY MICHELET.”

———
WITH 160 ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. FREEMAN, FOULQUIER, AND YAN DARGENT.
———

LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
———
1869.

Preface.

HE area of our present work would be very limited if we
understood the word Desert in its more rigorous signification; for
we should then have only to consider those desolate wildernesses
which an inclement sky and a sterile soil seem to exclude for ever
from man’s dominion.
But, by a license which usage authorizes, we are able to attribute to this
term a much more extended sense; and to call Deserts not only the sandy
seas of Africa and Asia, the icy wastes of the Poles, and the inaccessible
crests of the great mountain-chains; but all the regions where man has not
planted his regular communities or permanent abodes; where earth has
never been appropriated, tilled, and subjected to cultivation; where Nature

has maintained her inviolability against the encroachments of human
industry.
Thus understood, the picture we are about to trace assumes not only vast
proportions, but an infinite variety of aspects.
Here and there, it is true, our eyes will rest on the gloomy spectacle of
rugged solitudes, where the soil churlishly refuses almost every kind of
product, where the boldest traveller cannot penetrate without a shudder, and
where the very beast of prey is rather a visitor than an inhabitant:
lugubrious regions, on whose threshold one might write the legend written,
according to Dante, on the gates of hell—
“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.”
(All hope abandon, ye who enter here.)

But, on the whole, these true Deserts offer ample material for the
admiration of the artist, the meditations of the thinker, the researches of the
naturalist and the physician. Theirs is that kind of beauty which borders on
the sublime, and which impresses us so powerfully in the Ocean. And, like
the Ocean, they awake in the soul the feeling of infinity. They render it
forgetful of the tumultuous regions which are perturbed by petty passions,
and vexed by the contentions of ephemeral interests, and transport it to the
boundless space and the eternal spheres, or allow it to draw back within
itself and muse upon its future destiny.
Finally, what grave problems does the Desert place before the man of
science! And first, why do life and fertility prevail elsewhere,—here,
sterility and death? Why does an irrevocable curse seem to weigh upon
certain parts of the world, while others rejoice in Nature’s fairest gifts? It is
by examining the constitution of the soil and the character of the climate
that we discover the key to this enigma, and recognize in this apparent
anomaly a necessary effect of the harmonious laws of the universe. Then
the Desert has a geology and a meteorology of its own; is the theatre of
special phenomena, which we do not observe in more favoured regions.
Life itself is not completely absent from it; specimens of the organic
kingdoms are rare, no doubt, but for this very reason are the more
interesting.
And if, from the Desert properly so called, we pass to those countries
where the genial air and the abundant waters favour the action of the
productive forces, the interest increases with the increasing development of

life. The picture changes every moment, and every moment grows more
animated. The scenes of the savage world unfold before our eyes like a
moving panorama; unexpected incidents and dramatic episodes multiply
one upon another. Every region appears before us with its primitive aspect,
its grand and picturesque landscapes, its characteristic fauna and flora—
frequently, also, with its tribes of white, or tawny, or black, or copper-
coloured men, whose singular manners, brutal instincts, fierce passions, and
wretched condition offer, in all its mournful reality, the spectacle of that
“state of nature” celebrated by a great writer as the ideal of virtue and
happiness.

To conclude: the task which I here pursue is the same which I recently
commenced by the publication of my “Mysteries of the Ocean;”[1] to invite
and prepare the general reader and the young for the study of the physical
and natural sciences, by bringing before them the most interesting results of
the discoveries and the observations with which these sciences have been
enriched. Only, this new essay is entirely descriptive, and has no didactic
pretensions. I have contented myself with sketching the physiognomy of the
great regions not yet conquered by civilization, with indicating the more
remarkable features they present, the peoples by whom they are inhabited,
and the important plants and animals they nourish.
THE AUTHOR.
[The Translator has only to add, that he has made copious additions to
the original work, with the view of rendering its scope more comprehensive
and complete, and of adapting it specially to the requirements of the English
reader. He has also corrected and confirmed M. Mangin’s statements by
reference to the best and most recent authorities, without, he would hope,
any injury to the original scheme, or any detriment to the value of M.
Mangin’s agreeable and highly interesting chapters.]
A.

Contents.

———

BOOK I.
THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND ASIA:—THE LANDES, THE
DUNES, AND THE STEPPES.
Chapter Page
I. THE DESERT IN FRANCE:—THE LANDES OF BRITTANY, 13
II. THE LANDES OF GASCONY, 24
III. THE DUNES, OR SAND-HILLS, 32
IV. WILD SCENES OF ENGLAND:—DARTMOOR AND THE FEN
COUNTRY, 39
V. THE STEPPES:—THE DESERT IN RUSSIA, SIBERIA, AND
TARTARY, 46
VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE STEPPES:—THE WILD HORSE AND
THE CAMEL, 51
VII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE STEPPES:—WILD RUMINATING
ANIMALS, RODENTS, CARNIVORA, BIRDS, 64
VIII. INHABITANTS OF THE STEPPES:—TARTARS, COSSACKS,
KALMUCKS, KIRGHIZ, MONGOLS, 78
———
BOOK II.
THE DESERTS OF SAND:—THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND
AFRICA.
I. THE RAINLESS DESERT—THE BED OF A SEA—THE DEAD
SEA, 95
II. ARABIA DESERTA AND ARABIA PETRÆA, 106
III. THE NUBIAN DESERT—THE GREAT SAHARA—DESERTS OF
AFRICA, 118
IV. PHENOMENA OF THE DESERT, 134
V. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE DESERT—THE OASES, 148
VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE DESERT, 162
VII. THE MEN OF THE DESERT, 174
———
BOOK III.
PRAIRIES, SAVANNAHS, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS.
I. WILD PLAINS OF THE OLD WORLD:—THE AFRICAN
INTERIOR, 186
II. DESERTS OF THE NEW WORLD:—PRAIRIES, PAMPAS,
LLANOS, 207
III. THE AUSTRALIAN INTERIOR, 231
IV. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE AFRICAN PLAINS, 240
V. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS
OF THE NEW WORLD, 258
VI. FLORA OF THE AUSTRALIAN PLAINS, 273
VII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD:—
HERBIVOROUS ANIMALS, 281
VIII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD—
CONTINUED:—THE CARNIVORA, 300

IX. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD—
CONTINUED:—BIRDS AND REPTILES, 317
X. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD:—
HERBIVORA, INSECTIVORA, AND CARNIVORA, 328
XI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD—
CONTINUED:—BIRDS AND REPTILES, 353
XII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE AUSTRALIAN PRAIRIES, 366
———
BOOK IV.
THE FORESTS.
I. THE VIRGIN FORESTS, 379
II. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE OLD WORLD, 397
III. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE GREAT
ISLANDS, 412
IV. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE NEW WORLD, 428
V. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS:—THE
ELEPHANT—THE RHINOCEROS, 447
VI. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE VIRGIN FORESTS:—THE GREAT APES, 463
VII. THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC APES:—ORANGS—GIBBONS—
CHIMPANZEES—GORILLAS, 472
VIII. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE FORESTS:—THE CEBIDÆ, OR
MONKEYS OF AMERICA—THE LEMURS—THE SLOTHS—
THE SQUIRRELS, 487
IX. MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS:—
ANTHROPOPHAGY, 502
X. MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS:—THE
SAVAGE RACES—THE NEGROES, 514
XI. MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS:—THE
MALAYS—POLYNESIANS—THE NORTH AMERICAN
INDIANS, 526
———
BOOK V.
THE POLAR DESERTS—THE MOUNTAINS.
I. THE POLAR DESERTS, 543
II. ANIMAL LIFE AND VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE POLAR
DESERTS, 555
III. THE INHABITANTS OF THE ARCTIC WILDERNESSES:—THE
LAPLANDERS, SAMOIEDES, OSTIAKS, KAMTSCHATDALES,
ESKIMOS (OR ESQUIMAUX), 569
IV. THE MOUNTAINS, 579
V. VEGETABLE LIFE AND ANIMAL LIFE IN THE MOUNTAINS, 598

THE DESERT WORLD.

BOOK I.

THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND ASIA: THE LANDES, THE
DUNES, AND THE STEPPES.

CHAPTER I.

THE DESERT IN FRANCE:—THE LANDES OF BRITTANY.
O those whose imaginations have been kindled by glowing
pictures of the African Sahara and the Arabian wilderness, it will
be, perhaps, a matter of surprise to learn that even fertile and
civilized Europe includes within her boundaries regions which are
scarcely less cheerless or desolate, though, happily, of far inferior extent.
Thus, it would be possible for a Frenchman whom the engagements of
business, the pressure of limited means, or the ties of home, prevented from
undertaking any distant voyages, to obtain a vivid conception of the great
Deserts of the World without crossing the confines of his own country.
In France, so richly cultivated, so laborious, and so blessed by genial
Nature, there are, nevertheless, a few districts where her sons may wholly
forget—may almost disbelieve in the existence of—her cities stirring with
the “hum of men,” her vineyards and her gardens, her grassy pastures, her
prolific meadows, her well-ordered highways, and those “iron roads” which
are the incessant channels of such restless energy, movement, and vigorous
life.
Bare and desolate enough, and as yet unconquered by advancing
civilization, are the mountains of France: among its gigantic ranges of the
Jura, the Vosges, and the Cevennes,[2] the traveller may still ascend
precipitous rocks, may hearken to the deafening roar of foamy torrents, may
contemplate with astonished gaze the masses of stone upheaved in some

convulsion of the ancient world, may listen to the hoarse cry of the eagle, a
s
“Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world he stands.”

In the Alps, profaned as they now-a-days are by noisy tourists; in the
Pyrenees, whither Alpine clubs have not yet extended their encroachments,
he who ascends some 8000 or 9000 feet may still wander among ice and
snow which the sun’s rays never loosen, and gather in his mind’s eye a
picture of the colossal peaks of Asia and the New World, of the virgin
summits of the Himalaya and the Cordilleras. There you may follow with
entranced vision the swooping wing of the lammergeyer; or trace the
nimble feet of the shy chamois; or, like Manfred, muse and wonder, while
“The sunbow’s rays still arch
The torrent with the many hues of heaven,
And roll the sheeted silver’s waving column
O’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular.”

Mayhap, if favoured by Fortune, you may even find yourself face to face, in
the abrupt bend of some obscure ravine, with a bear, which, calm and
unsuspicious, looks on as you pass by, as if he were ignorant of men, and
had never heard the ringing echoes of the hunter’s rifle.

A PYRENEAN LANDSCAPE.

It is less easy—in France, at least—to discover the old shadowy, leafy,
almost impervious forest. The most celebrated—that of Fontainebleau—
despite its enormous trees, its rudely broken surface, its stags and roebucks
reserved for imperial sport, despite its few adders and problematical vipers,
is now little better than a rendezvous for amateur artists and listless idlers.
Its well-kept avenues resound with rapid wheels, and you can scarcely stir a
step without finding the associations of the place interrupted by the stalls of
vendors of cakes or the apparatus of itinerant gamblers. This profanation is
surely to be regretted, for the Forest exhibits many landscapes of surpassing
interest, as the rocks of Franchart, the glens of Apremont, and, above all,
that Sahara in miniature, the sands of Arbonne. Nor would one willingly
forget the historical memories which immortalize the famous palace where
Francis I. received his after-time conqueror, Charles V.; where the wayward
and half-insane Christina of Sweden listened with cruel delight to the
groans of the murdered Monaldeschi; where Madame Du Barry lavished
her shameless graces; where Pope Pius VII. lingered through two years of
gilded captivity; and where Napoleon bade farewell to his dreams of
universal empire.[3]
Among the uncultivated regions of France we may mention the marshes
of the Bresse, of Forez, of the Sologne, of Upper Brittany, and of Picardy.
The greater portion of these marshes, owing to the peat which forms their
bed, is vigorously and not unsuccessfully worked. They are traversed by
trenches dug at right angles, and on whose border are placed the turf-
cutter’s little hut, and the furnace in which the peat is baked. Their lagoons,
and the canals which connect them, swarm with flat-bottomed boats. Man,
in a word, has taken possession of them; braving the unhealthy vapours
which enfeeble his frame and shorten his life, he builds his squalid abode
on the rising ground left uncovered by the waters. The largest of these peat-
bogs are those of Montoir and the Grand Brière, near Savenay, in the
department of the Loire Inférieure. They occupy a considerable area of a
vast desolate plain, where a few lean sheep crop an insufficient food from
the scanty herbage, and whose sole product is turf. “This country,” says
Jules Janin,[4] “has no other harvest, no other wealth than its peat; neither
fruit, nor flowers, nor corn, nor pastures, nor repose, nor well-being; the

earth is wild, the sky one of iron. It is a region of stagnant waters,
pestiferous exhalations, decrepit men, famished animals.”
The swampy levels of Montoir form the natural vestibule to the
Armorican Peninsula, which of all the French provinces has the longest and
the most vigorously withstood the advance of civilization, its ideas, and its
modern institutions, and has the most rigidly preserved its primitive
character. There are many nooks and corners in Brittany scarcely changed
in outward aspect or inner life since the remote days when it was a valued
appanage of the English crown. They seem to have been plunged in a sleep
of centuries, from which the shrill whistle of the steam-engine is only just
awakening them. The country is undulating and broken; in the central
districts it assumes quite a mountainous character. It is true that its heights
are only of moderate elevation, the loftiest not exceeding 2000 feet; but
they are barren, rude, and sombre in appearance. The coast is picturesque
enough to delight the most zealous artist, bordered with high and abrupt
cliffs, and lined, as it were, with a beach where the waters of the Channel
ever break in floods of spray and foam, and where masses of rock lie
scattered of immense size and the most fantastic forms.
Geologically speaking, Brittany may be regarded as a prolongation of
our English mountains, to which, like all the north-west coast of France,
they were anciently united. In some remote era a vast convulsion opened in
the solid land a chasm through which the oceans poured their meeting
waters, and separated our beloved island from the European continent; the
sole condition under which, perhaps, it was possible for the English people
to have accomplished their destiny. Anchored amid the protecting seas, we
are able to regard from afar, like a watchman from a tower, the convulsions
that sweep across the face of Europe. Like the watchman, we cannot refuse
to be moved by the spectacle, by the stir and the tumult; but it is only
considerations of duty that can induce us to descend from our security, and
mingle in the fray.
Brittany belongs to what geologists call the primitive and intermediary
formations. It is divided into three belts or longitudinal trenches: those of
the north and south consist of primitive rocks, granite and porphyry; the
central appertains to a more recent formation, to the group of intermediary
or secondary rocks, composed in the main of schists and mica-schists,
quartz, and gneiss. Schist prevails over a considerable area, and is
prolonged to the very extremity of the peninsula. These hard, compact,

impervious rocks, are entirely bare in many places; elsewhere, and over a
great extent, they are covered but by a thin layer of clayey and sandy earth,
where the sudden slopes of the soil do not allow the rains to settle.
Here are the plains, often of considerable dimensions, which, bristling
with rocks, and broken up by ravines, water-courses, and marshes,
constitute the Landes of Brittany. True deserts these, relieved at distant
points by an isolated hut, or by a wandering herd of swine, lean cows, and
meagre-looking horses, which obtain a scanty subsistence from the heathery
soil, sown here and there with tufts of furze, broom, and fern.
Under a sky of almost continual sombreness, like that which impends
over the pottery districts of England, these landes present a sufficiently
sinister and uninviting aspect. The traveller, as he crosses their sepulchral
wastes, will hardly marvel that they were anciently a chosen seat of
Druidical worship. Like Dartmoor, they would seem to have offered a
peculiarly fitting arena for the rites and ceremonies of a creed which we
know to have been mysterious in character and sanguinary in spirit. They
are covered with its gray memorials: the masses of granite of different
shapes known as Maen hirs, or “long stones,” and peulvens, which appear
to have been employed as sepulchral monuments; dolmens, or “table-
stones;” and cromlechs (crom, bowed or bending, and lech, a stone), which
antiquaries are now agreed to regard as the remains of the ancient
cemeteries or burial places. At Camae, near Quiberon Bay, may be seen a
truly remarkable example of the Parallelitha, or avenues of upright stones,
forming five parallel rows, which extend for miles over the dreary
moorland. What were their uses it is impossible to determine, for there
seems little ground to believe, as some writers would have us believe, that
they were “serpent temples,” where the old Ophite worship was celebrated.
We can only gaze at them in wonder: mile upon mile of gray lichen-stained
stones, some twenty feet high, laboriously fashioned and raised in their
present places by the hand of man some twenty centuries agone.[5]
On these very dolmens, where the priests of the Tentates were wont to
immolate their human victims to their unknown god, the mediæval
sorcerers and sorceresses celebrated the Black Mass, or Mass of Satan, in
terrible burlesque of the Roman Catholic sacrament, concocted their
abominable philtres, and performed their dreary incantations. Alas for
human nature! In every age it is a prey to the wildest credulity. Even in the
present day more than one superstition hovers around the monuments of the

Celtic epoch. The Bretons believe them haunted by demons called
poulpiquets, who love to make sport of the passing stranger, but will
sometimes give both counsel and encouragement to those who know how to
address them in the prescribed formulas; who, like the Ladye in the “Lay of
the Last Minstrel,” at their bidding can bow
“The viewless forms of air.”

For, in the Breton mind, the superstitions of Druidism have not been wholly
uprooted by the teachings of Christianity, still less by those of science and
reason. Many a dark and dismal legend flourishes in the lonely recesses of
the landes.[6]

CELTIC MEMORIALS IN BRITTANY.

Brittany, like England, has its Cornouaille, or Cornwall, and it is here,
particularly in North Cornwall, that we see it under its most desolate aspect,
with its chains of black treeless hills covered with heath and furze; with its
deserts of broom and fern, its ruins scattered along the winding roads, its
attenuated herds wandering at their will across the moors, and its savage,
ignorant, and scanty population. The Bretons of Cornwall, according to a
French writer, are elevated but a little above the true savage life. Those who
dwell upon the coast live on the products of their fishing, except when the
fortunate occurrence of a wreck provides them with temporary abundance.

At bottom, they possess the qualities and defects of characters strongly
tempered, but absolutely uncultivated. They are as hard and bare as their
own granite rocks. Persevering, courageous, resolute, they make excellent
sailors, the best which France can find; the sea is for them a second country.
Progress, which they do not understand, inspires them with a sort of terror,
a gloomy mistrust. When the railway surveyors first intruded upon their
solitudes, these rigid conservatives assailed them with volleys of stones,
and when the railroads were laid down flung beams across the lines to
overthrow the hissing, whirring trains which threatened to disturb their
prescriptive barbarism. They asked but to be let alone—to be suffered to
live as their forefathers lived—to be spared the ingenuities, successes,
vices, and virtues of the New World. But modern civilization, like Thor’s
hammer, or Siegfried’s magic sword Balmung, will break down the last
barriers raised by ignorance and superstition. It will shed its light upon the
wilds and wastes of Brittany, and compel their inhabitants in the course of
years to acknowledge its value and accept its benefits.

CHAPTER II.

THE LANDES OF GASCONY.
HE Breton “Cornwall” has been called by a popular French
writer, “the Arabia Petrea of Brittany.” But we might, perhaps,
with greater justice apply to this sombre region, peopled as it is
with fantastic visions, the name of “Land of Fear,” which the
Arabs bestow on the Great Desert. Less vivid, it may be, but graver and
more profound is the impression produced by the Landes and Dunes of
Gascony. These deserts of the south, which Michelet terms “the vestibule
and threshold of the Ocean,” appeal less powerfully to the imagination.
They are haunted by no historical memories, no traditions or marvellous
legends in which man has rudely embodied his dim conceptions of the
mysteries of nature; they are crowded with no monuments of antiquity to
revive the shadows of the heroes and priests of ancient Gaul; and when
these are wanting, what shall supply their place? But ample scope exists for
the assiduous labours of the naturalist, who here may see at work those

unresting forces which have inspired every revolution of the globe’s
surface; who may contemplate here the phenomena that occur with the
same regularity as in the days when man had not been fashioned after his
Maker’s image—
“Him framing like himself, all shining bright;
A little living sun, son of the living light.”[7]

These despoiled plains, these inhospitable wilds, alternately dry and
marshy; these sullen pools, these mountains of shifting sand, speak forcibly
to his mind of their past history, which is not one of the least curious
episodes of the history of the physical world.
The department which borrows its name from the Landes of Gascony is
divided by the Adour into two wholly dissimilar parts.

THE SHEPHERDS OF THE LANDES.

To the south of the river lies a rich, undulating, vine-bearing country,
rich in pasturage and harvest, sown with pleasant villages and smiling
country houses, and watered by full streams and little rivers. To the north,
the appearance of the country changes abruptly. When the traveller has
crossed the alluvial zone of the Adour he sees before him a thin, dry, sandy
level of a comparatively recent marine formation. Its only products are rye,

millet, and maize; its only vegetation, forests of pines and scattered
coppices of oaks; beyond these, and they do not extend far, all cultivation
ceases, and the soil is stripped of verdure; you enter upon the Landes—
seemingly vast as a sea—occupied by permanent or periodical swamps; and
where, over a space of several square leagues, in an horizon apparently
boundless, you perceive nothing but heaths, sheepfolds or steadings for the
flocks of sheep that traverse these deserts, and shepherds keeping mute
watch over their animals, living wholly among them, and having no
intercourse with the rest of humanity, except when once a week they seek
their masters’ houses to procure their supply of provisions. It is these
shepherds only (Landescots and Aouillys), and not, as is generally
supposed, all the peasants of the Landes, who are perched upon stilts, so as
to survey from afar their wandering flocks, and to traverse more safely the
marshes which frequently lie across their path.
Wild and uncouth are the figures which these stilt-walkers present, as
they move rapidly over the country, often at the rate of six or seven miles an
hour; occasionally indulging in an interval of rest, by the aid of a third
wooden support at the back (curved at the top, so as to fit the hollow of the
body), while they pursue their favourite pastime of knitting. The dress of
the Landescot is singularly rude. His coat or paletôt is a fleece; cuisses and
greaves of the same material protect his legs and thighs; his feet are thrust
into sabots and coarse woollen socks, which cover only the heels and
instep. Over his shoulder hangs the gourd which contains his week’s store
of provisions: some mouldy rye-bread, a few sardines, some onions and
cloves of garlic, and a flask of thin sour wine. From sunrise to sunset he
lives upon the stilts, never touching the ground. Sometimes he drives his
flock home at eventide; sometimes he bivouacs sub jove frigido, under the
cold heaven of night. Unbuckling his stilts, and producing his flint and
steel, he soon kindles a cheery fire of fir-branches, and gathering his
sheepskins round him, composes himself to sleep; his only annoyances
being the musquitoes, and his fears of the evil tricks of wizard or witch,
who may peradventure catch a glimpse of him in the moonlight, as they ride
past on their besom to some unholy gathering or demon-dance.
An English traveller has sketched in vivid colours the landscape of the
Landes. Over all its gloom and barrenness, he remarks, over all its “blasted
heaths,” its monotonous pine-woods, its sudden morasses, its glaring sand-
heaps, prevails a strong sense of loneliness, a grandeur and intensity of

desolation, which invests the scene with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to
itself. Emerging from the black shadows of the forest, the pilgrim treads a
plain, “flat as a billiard-table,” apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in
one unvaried, unbroken garb of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and ridges,
or great ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine; sometimes
belts of scraggy young fir trees appear rising from the horizon on the right,
and sinking into it again on the left. Occasionally a brighter shade of green,
with jungles of willows and water weeds, giant rushes, and “clustered
marish mosses,” will tell of the “blackened waters” beneath—
“Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarlèd bark;
For leagues no other tree doth mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.”[8]

The dwellings which stud this dreary, yet not wholly unpoetic landscape,
are generally mere isolated huts, separated oftentimes by many miles.
Round them spreads a miserable field or two, planted with such crops as
might be expected on a poor soil and from deficient cultivation. The
cottages are mouldering heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones,
clustered round with ragged sheds composed of masses of tangled bushes,
pine-stakes and broad-leaved reeds, beneath which the meagrest looking
cattle conceivable find a precarious shelter.[9]
The Landes are divided into the Little Landes, near Mont-de-Marsan;
and the Great Landes, stretching to the north and west of the department of
which that town is the capital, and uniting uninterruptedly with those that
occupy the vast country situated south of the Gironde. The total superficial
area of these plains is estimated at upwards of 2,400,000 acres, of which
two-thirds belong to the department of the Landes, and the remainder to that
of the Gironde.
Yet the reader must not believe this country to be a desert in the popular
acceptation of the word; it has its forests of pines, where the extraction and
preparation of resinous matter are carried on with considerable activity. It
has its small towns, its pretty villages, its factories, and even its handsome
villas. Finally, modern industry has cut the Landes in two by the Bordeaux
railway, which traverses them from north to south, and bifurcates at Morans
to throw off a line to Bayonne, and another to Tarbes.

In shape, the Great Landes may be compared to an immense rectangular
triangle, having for its base the coast, which, from the mouth of the Gironde
to Bayonne, or for a length of more than sixty leagues, is almost rectilineal.
But they are separated from the sea by a long parallel chain of lakes and
water-courses—a waste of shallow pools—a labyrinth of gulfs and
morasses, and then by the continuous chain of the Dunes, of which we shall
speak in the following chapter.
That which is commonly called the Great Lande is bounded on the north
by the étang, or lake, of Cazau. It is a sandy, treeless plain, and upon which,
for a traject of several leagues from east to west, not one habitation worthy
of the name is perceptible until the traveller arrives at Mimizan, near the
southern point of the lake of Aureilhan. This lake on the south-west pours
its waters into the sea. To the north it communicates, through the canal of
St. Eulalie, with the lake of Biscarosse, which is itself connected with that
of Cazau. East of this chain of lakes lies the Lande; west of it stretches the
range of Dunes, or sand-hills.
The lake or pool of Cazau is a small sea of fresh water, perfectly clear,
profoundly deep, and fourteen to fifteen thousand acres in extent. It has its
whirlwinds and its tempests, so that in certain seasons it is perilous to
embark on its surface. And were its banks clothed with rich woods, or
raised aloft in irregular or precipitous cliffs, it would surely attract as great a
throng of tourists as the mountain-tarns and lochs of Scotland or
Cumberland, or the Arcadian waters of Northern Italy. The lake of
Biscarosse, in form a triangle, with one side formed by the Dunes, covers
about twelve thousand acres. It derives its name from a village situated at
its northern angle, on the bank of the canal which connects it with the lake
of Cazau. The lake of Aureilhan is the smallest of the three; the St. Eulalie
canal, which links it to the preceding, traverses a series of peat-bogs
bounded eastward by gloomy pine-forests, and westward by the
interminable Dunes, which, by arresting the flow of the rain-waters, have
really created these so-called lakes and extensive swamps. Enormous
quantities of rain fall every year in the Landes,—which district the Romans
would certainly have dedicated to Jupiter Pluvius,—and find beneath the
thin superficial stratum or crust of sand and earth, a sub-soil of tufa and
allios—in other words, of compact chalk and sand agglutinated by a
ferruginous sediment. Frequently this tufa possesses all the hardness of
stone, and its imperviousness is its fundamental property. Hence it follows,

that a portion of the heavy annual rainfall remains in the receptacles
provided by the hollows and depressions of the soil, and in due time
accumulates into marshes and lagoons, until gradually evaporated by the
heat of spring.
When of old the scared peasants beheld the irresistible advance of these
strange ministers of destruction, they had no other resource than to fell their
woods, abandon their dwellings, and surrender their “little all” to the
pitiless sand and devouring sea. What could avail against such a scourge?
Efforts were made to repel it. It is said that Charlemagne, during a brief
residence in the Landes, on his return from his expedition against the
Saracens, employed his veterans, and expended large sums of money in
preserving the cities of the coast from imminent ruin; but whether the
means employed were insufficient, or whether the imperial resources failed,
and other urgent needs diverted the population and their leaders from this
struggle against nature, the works were wholly abandoned.
Of late years they have been resumed, and with greater success, by a
skilful agriculturist, M. Desbiey, of Bordeaux, and an able engineer, M.
Bremontier, who have called in nature herself to assist man in his war
against nature. Their system consists of sowing in the driest sand the seeds
of the sea-pine, mixed with those of the broom (genista scoparia), and the
psamma arenaria. The spaces thus sown are then closely covered with
branches to protect them from the action of the winds. These seeds
germinate spontaneously. The brooms, which spring up rapidly, restrain the
sand, while sheltering the young pines, and thenceforth the Dune ceases to
move, because the wind can no longer unsettle its substance, and the grains
are held together by the roots of the young plants. The work is always
begun on the inland side, in order to protect the farmer and the peasant, and
to withdraw the infant forest from the unwholesome influence of the ocean-
winds. And, in order that the sown spaces shall not themselves be buried
under the sands blown up from the shore, a palisade of wicker-work is
raised at a suitable distance, which, reinforced by young plants of sandwort
(psamma arenaria), check the moving sands for a sufficiently long time to
favour the development of the seeds. Finally, the work is completed by the
construction of a substantial wall, or rather an artificial cliff, which
effectually prevents the further progress of the flood, or directs it seaward,
to be arrested on its course by the barrier of the sand-hills. Unable to force a
passage through these natural ramparts, they have excavated certain basins,

more or less extensive, more or less deep, which have formed into inland
seas, communicating with the Atlantic by one narrow issue.
It is a noteworthy fact that, owing to the encroachment of the Dunes,
these lakes have been constantly forced back upon the inland country.
Fortunately, this menacing invasion of the sands has been checked by the
great engineering works executed a few years ago; which, on the one hand,
have fixed, and, as it were, solidified the Dunes, and, on the other, have
provided for the regular outflow of the waters. The Landes have thus been
opened to the persevering labours of the cultivator. The culture of the pine,
and the manufacture of resinous substances, have largely extended, and the
time, perhaps, is not far distant when these deserts will almost completely
disappear; when these desolate and unproductive plains will pleasantly
bloom, transformed into shadowy woods or verdurous meadows.[10]
To so fortunate a result nothing will more powerfully contribute than the
embankment of the Dunes. These have been, in reality, the true scourge of
this country; these were the moving desert, the constantly ascending sea,
which had already engulfed forests, villages, even towns, under its billows
of sand, and driven before it the terrified inhabitants of the coast.

CHAPTER III.

THE DUNES, OR SAND-HILLS.
THE Dunes form the extreme line of the Brittany coast for nearly two
hundred miles, from the Adour to the Garonne. They are hills of white sand,
as fine and soft as if it had been sifted through an hour-glass. Their outline,
therefore, changes every hour. When the wind blows from the land, millions
of tons of sand are hourly driven into the sea, to be washed up again on the
beach and blown inland by the first Biscay gale. A water hurricane from the
west will fill up with sand square miles of shallow lake, driving the
displaced waters into the interior, dispersing them in shining pools among
the “murmurous pines,” flooding and frequently destroying the scattered
hamlets of the people, and inundating their fields of rye and millet.[11]

A FLOOD IN BRITTANY.

Their origin is due to the prevalence of the sea-winds on those points of
the coast which are not protected by rock and cliff, and whose slopes of
sand descend very gradually to the margin of the waves. Their formation is
easily explained. The sand of which they are composed is a silicious
material, reduced to minute grains, generally rounded, by trituration. These
grains, nevertheless, are often too big and too heavy for the wind to take
them up and scatter them afar, like the dust of the highways or the ashes of
volcanoes. But at low tide the sand, dried by the sun’s rays and the action of
the wind, offers to the latter a sufficient holdfast to be dragged up the slopes
which descend seaward, and deposited at a certain distance. This process
being constantly repeated, the heaps are daily increasing in dimensions.
It will easily be understood that this accumulation along the shore cannot
have taken place where the force and direction of the sands experience
periodical or capricious changes; for then the sands cast upon the beach by
the winds of the north and west would be driven back into the sea by the
winds of the south and east. This is noticeable in many places where the
nature of the coast is favourable for the production of such a phenomenon.
But on other shores—as on the Atlantic littoral of France—the winds which
blow most frequently and most violently are from the west and south-west.
And it is there we encounter the Dunes. Those of Gascony are by far the

most remarkable. Northward, they extend as far as the Point de Grave,
which shuts in the mouth of the Gironde; southward, to the bank of the
Adour, and even further, to the cliffs of Béarn. Here the basin of Arcachon
constitutes one vast hollow; and some openings exist, moreover, in the
department of Landes, between that basin and the Adour, for the overflow
of the waters which descend from the interior. To the north and south of the
Teste de Buch the chain of sand-hills measures from 4400 to 6600 feet in
width. At other points it is still wider; but it narrows towards its extremities,
and both at the Point de Grave and near Bayonne does not exceed 450
yards.
Owing to their extreme shiftiness of soil, the Dunes can attain no
considerable elevation. The sand deposited by the wind on the summit of
the hill is always in a state of precarious equilibrium. It has a constant
tendency to be precipitated down the other side; and the higher the summit
the greater is this tendency, so that there comes at last a moment when no
further accumulation in height is possible. The Dune may then extend its
basis, may even increase twofold in dimensions, but it no longer rises.
Let us note, moreover, that owing to its density the sand cannot be
carried even by the most violent winds into the higher regions of the
atmosphere; and that the Dunes, when they have reached a certain
elevation, oppose to them an insuperable obstacle. This circumstance would
consequently have a salutary effect, and the accumulation of sand would be
determined by a law of its own, if the Dunes, once formed, had time to
cohere. But this is not the case. Incessantly does the wind undo or modify
its work; and the loftiest hills being the most exposed to its violence, are
quickly reduced to the common level. In general, the greatest elevation of
the Dunes corresponds to their greatest breadth. Thus the culminating point
of those of Gascony is found in the belt situated between the lakes of Cazau
and Biscarosse, where the chain is from 7500 to 9000 yards across. Their
average height is 180 feet to 200 feet above the sea-level; but some of the
hills in the forest of Biscarosse attain an altitude of 320 feet. In the
neighbourhood of the mouths of the Gironde and the Adour, where the
chain is considerably narrowed, the height of the Dunes is only thirty to
forty-five feet.
The reader must not suppose that the Dunes consist of a single series of
sand-hills ranged along the shore. He will, however, have conjectured, from
our statements respecting their width, that they really compose a chain of

several more or less regular ridges. The hills are separated from one another
by valleys, locally named laites or lettes. These valleys, where the pluvial
waters flow and accumulate, exhibit a striking contrast, in their freshly-
blooming verdure, to the naked, barren Dunes. The general aspect of the
landscape may, therefore, be compared to that of the ocean. There is the
same broken surface, the same extent of undulation, the billows of sand
being upheaved by the wind like the billows of the sea, and sharing in their
mobility. You must see, says a writer, in order to form an idea of those
colossal masses of fine sand, which the wind incessantly skims, and which
travel in this way towards the inland country: you must see their contours so
softened that they look like mountains of plaster of Paris polished by the
workman’s hand, and their surface so mobile that a little insect leaves upon
it a conspicuous track; their slopes, at every degree of inclination; their
everlasting sterility—not a blade of grass, not an atom of vegetation; their
solitude, less imposing than that of the mountains, but still of a truly savage
character. You must see, from the summit of one of these ridges, the ocean
on your right hand, and on your left the extensive lakes which border the
littoral; and, in the midst of this tumultuous sea of tawny sand, green grassy
valleys, rich and fertile pastures, smiling oases of verdure, where herds of
horses graze, and cows half-wild, guarded by shepherds scarcely less wild
than they.[12]
The marked characteristic of the Dunes, as we have already said, is their
mobility, which renders them a constant menace for the neighbouring
populations. To the wind which creates them they owe their frequent
changes and their inland movement. While the sea eats into the coast,
assisted by the breezes which gradually sweep clear the ground before it,
the Dunes extend, and drive before them the shallow lakes: these in their
turn encroach upon the Landes, and until now man has been constrained to
recoil, step by step, before his threefold enemy. It is in this phenomenon,
rather than in the ungrateful soil of the Landes, that we must seek the cause
of the curse which has seemed so long to rest upon this country-side. You
must go back some twenty centuries to trace the origin of the Dunes of
Gascony. Fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago the coast north of the Adour
was inhabited, and comparatively flourishing. Mimizan was then a town
and a sea-port, from which were exported the resinous products of the
neighbouring forests. The Normans disembarked there on several occasions.
Under its walls, in 506, was fought a great battle between the allied Goths

and Ostrogoths on the one side, and the Béarnais, commanded by a bishop
of Lescar, on the other. Both town and port to-day are buried under the
sands. “Full fathom five” lie church and convent, and the busy street, the
noisy mart, and the once peaceful home. The present village has nearly
perished: the Dune was not three yards from the church when its progress
was recently arrested. Other cities, laid down in old charts of the country,
but of which not a trace remains, have in this manner disappeared, and
entire forests have been ingulfed, now under the sands of the Dunes, now
under the sands and waves of the sea.
Some parts of the chain have been rendered to a great extent immovable
by the vegetation which has gradually covered them, and these have
opposed a formidable obstacle to the encroachments of the sands. Yet here
and there the barrier has been defied. For example, in the forest of
Biscarosse the movable Dunes, actually sweeping over the ancient hills,
have not only filled up the valleys, but ingulfed a great number of pines,
and raised themselves several yards above the crest of the oldest trees,
planted on the summit of the highest hills.
In whose favour, in this struggle of science against the elements, will the
victory eventually be decided? The question is one which the future alone
can resolve.[13]

CHAPTER IV.

WILD SCENES OF ENGLAND:—DARTMOOR AND THE FEN
COUNTRY.
CROSSING the Channel, and surveying the limited expanse of our own
“beloved England,” we become aware of certain districts which belong to
the Desert World. Through the ceaseless energy of our race, and the
introduction of mechanical inventions which economize time and labour
and treble the reproductive power of capital, almost all England has been
transformed into a rich and radiant garden, where the waste places are “few
and far between,” where the solitude of desolation is scarcely known; yet,

as already observed, there are districts which retain much of their ancient
wildness of character.
Such a region is Dartmoor, the extensive and romantic table-land of
granite which occupies the south-western part of the county of Devon. In its
recesses still linger the eagle, the bustard, and the crane; its solitudes are
broken by the hoarse cries of the sparrow-hawk, the hobby, and the
goshawk; and the Cyclopean memorials of Druidism which cover its
surface—cromlechs and kistvaens, tolmêns and stone-avenues—invest it
with a peculiar air of mysterious awe. It extends in length about twenty-two
miles (from north to south), and in breadth twenty miles (from east to west).
Its total area exceeds 130,000 acres. It rises above the surrounding country
like “the long, rolling waves of a tempestuous ocean, fixed into solidity by
some instantaneous and powerful impulse.” A natural rampart is cast around
it. Deep ravines, watered by murmuring streams, diversify its aspect, and
lofty hills of granite, locally called tors, of which the principal, Yes Tor, has
an elevation of 2050 feet above the sea. Its soil is composed of peat, in
some places twenty-five feet deep; underneath which lies a solid mass of
granite, occasionally relieved by trap (a volcanic rock), and traversed by
veins of tin, copper, and manganese.[14]
Nearly in the centre of this dismal wilderness lies an immense morass,
whose surface is in many places incapable of supporting the lightest animal,
and whose inexhaustible reservoirs supply the fountains of many a river and
stream—the Dart, the Teign, the Taw, the Tavy—all clear as crystal in the
summer months, but after heavy rains running redly through the “stony
vales.” The roaring of these torrents, when angry and swollen, is sublime to
a degree inconceivable by those who have never heard the wild impressive
music of untamed Nature.
The tors are remarkable for their quaint fantastic outlines, which, like the
clouds, suggest all manner of strange similitudes—to dragons, and griffins,
and hoary ruins, and even to human forms of gigantic size, apparently
confronting the traveller as the lords and natural denizens of the rugged
waste. The principal summits are Yes Tor, Cawsand Beacon, Fur Tor, Lynx
Tor, Rough Tor, Holne Ridge, Brent Tor, Rippen Tor, Hound Tor, Sheep’s
Tor, Crockern Tor, and Great Mis Tor. Not only must their variety of form
delight the artist, but his eye rests well pleased on their manifold changes of
colour; purple, and green, and gray, and blue—now softened by a delicate

vaporous shadow, now glowing with intense fulness in the sun’s unclouded
light.
Dartmoor is traditionally reputed to have been anciently clothed with
forest. The sole relic now existing is the lonely Wistman’s Wood, which
occupies a sombre valley, bounded on the one side by Crockern Tor, on the
other by Little and Great Bairdown; the slopes being strewn with gray
blocks of granite in “admired disorder,” as if the Titans had been at their
cumbrous play. Starting from this chaos of rocks, appears a wood or grove
of dwarf weird-looking oaks, interspersed with the mountain-ash, and
everywhere festooned about and garlanded with ferns and parasitical plants.
None of these trees exceed twelve feet in height, but at the top they spread
far and wide, and “branch and twist in so fantastic and tortuous a manner as
to remind one of those strange things called mandrakes.” Their branches are
literally covered with ivy and creeping plants, and their trunks so thickly
embedded in a coating of moss that at first sight, says Mrs. Bray, “you
would imagine them to be of enormous thickness in proportion to their
height. Their whole appearance conveys to you the idea of hoary age in the
vegetable world of creation; and on visiting Wistman’s Wood it is
impossible to do other than think of those ‘groves in stony places’ so often
mentioned in Scripture as being dedicated to Baal and Astaroth.”[15]
That heathen rites were celebrated here in the pre-historic era seems very
probable, the best etymologists agreeing that the name is a corruption of
Wise-man, or Wish-man; that is, of the old Norse god Woden, who is still
supposed to drive his spectral hounds across the silent wastes of Dartmoor.
Celtic or Cymric memorials, as we have previously hinted, are very
abundant and very various. There are cromlechs, where the Britons buried
their dead; stone pillars, with which they commemorated their priests and
heroes; avenues of upright stones leading up to the circles, where, perhaps,
their priests celebrated their religious rites; kistvaens, or stone-chests,
containing the body unburned; tolmêns, or holed stones, whose meaning
cannot be determined, but which may probably have had some astronomical
uses; bridges, huts, and walled villages, all bearing traces of the handiwork
of our “rude forefathers.” There is no spot in England so thronged as this
with the shadows of a remote, a mysterious, and an irrecoverable past.

From Dartmoor our wanderings take us to the eastern coast, and the
district of The Fens, now so rapidly yielding to the labour of the
agriculturist as to exhibit but rare glimpses of their ancient “savagery.” It
extends inland, around an arm of the North Sea called the Wash, into the six
counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Lincoln, Norfolk, Northampton, and
Suffolk, with an area of upwards of 420,000 acres. Inland it is bounded by
an amphitheatral barrier of high lands, and touches the towns of
Bolingbroke, Brandon, Earith, Milton, and Peterborough. Into this great
basin flow the waters of the greater part of the drainage of nine counties,
which gather into the rivers Cam, Glen, Lark, Nene, Great and Little Ouse,
Stoke, and Welland, these being linked together by a network of natural and
artificial canals.
Anciently, the Fens were pleasant to the eye of the lover of the
picturesque; for they contained shining meres and golden reed-beds,
haunted by countless water-fowl, and strange, gaudy insects. “Dark-green
alders,” says Kingsley,[16] “and pale-green reeds stretched for miles round
the broad lagoon, where the coot clanked and the bittern boomed, and the
sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the notes of all the
birds around; while high overhead hung hawk beyond hawk, buzzard
beyond buzzard, kite beyond kite, as far as eye could see.” What strange
transformations must this wild region have undergone! There was a time, in
all probability, when a great part of the German Ocean was dry land,
through which, into a vast estuary between North Britain and Norway,
flowed together all the rivers of North-eastern Europe—Elbe, Weser, Rhine,
Scheldt, Seine, Thames, and all the rivers of east England, as far north as
the Humber. Meanwhile, the valleys of the Cam, the Ouse, the Nene, the
Welland, the Glen, and the Witham, were slowly “sawing themselves out”
by the quiet action of rain and rivers. Then came an age when the lowland
was swept away by the biting, corroding sea-wash still so powerfully
destructive on the east coast of England, as far as Flamborough Head.
“Wave and tide by sea, rain and river by land; these are God’s mighty mills
in which he makes the old world new.” And as Longfellow says of moral
things, so may we of physical,—
“‘Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though he sit and wait with patience, with exactness grinds he all.’”

These ever-active causes have converted the dry land into the fens. The
mud brought down by the rivers cannot get away to sea; and, with the
débris of the coast, is constantly swept southward by tide and current, and
deposited within the great curving basin of the Wash, between Lincolnshire
and Norfolk. There it is kept by the strong barrier of shifting sands coming
inwards from the sea; a barrier which also confines the very water of the
fens, and spreads it inland into a labyrinth of streams, shallow meres, and
bogs. The rainfall, over the whole vast area of dull level, has found no
adequate channels of escape for centuries; and hence we may understand
how peat—the certain product of standing water—has slowly overwhelmed
the rich alluvium, and swallowed up gradually the stately forests of fir and
oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which once spread far and wide over
the blooming country.
“Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,”

sings Shelley; and this dreary outcome of mudbank and bog and mere had
its wooded isles, very fair and lovely to behold, redeeming the desolation of
the landscape. Such were Ramsey, Lindsey, Whittlesea, whose names
remind us of their whilome characteristics (ea, ey, an island). In these green
places the old monks loved to build their quiet abbeys, rearing their herds in
rich pastures, feeding fat fish in their tranquil streams, and dreaming in the
shadow of green alder and stately ash.
But these Eden-isles were few, and the surrounding marsh was black and
dismal enough to scare the boldest spirit, and pestilential enough to sap and
undermine the strongest frame. The Romans had attempted to drain and
embank it, and their vallum may still be tracked along the surface of the
marsh-lands, marked to this day by the names of Walsoken, Walton, and
Walpoole. In the Middle Ages, however, it returned to its primeval
desolateness—a waste and wilderness, haunted by the foul legends of an
unwholesome superstition. In the immediate neighbourhood of the great
monasteries of Crowland and Ely, and of the thriving towns, the good work
of drainage went on slowly; but elsewhere the land was given up to the
bittern and the heron.
No comprehensive scheme was adopted, however, until Russel, Earl of
Bedford, cut the great Bedford River, twenty-one miles long, and rescued
from the desert the rich tract known by his name—the Bedford Level.

“Erst
A dreary pathless waste, the coughing flock
Was wont with hairy fleeces to deform;
And, smiling with its lure of summer flowers,
The heavy ox, vain struggling, to ingulf;
Till one, of that high-honoured patriot name,
Russel, arose, who drained the rushy fen,
Confined the waves, bade groves and gardens bloom,
And through his new creation led the Ouse
And gentle Camus, silver-winding streams.”[17]

The work was continued by William Earl of Bedford, who added, in
1649, to his father’s old “Bedford River” that noble parallel river the
Hundred Foot, both rising high above the land to allow for flood water. It
was carried on at a later period under the direction of Government
surveyors. Then came Rennie, the great engineer, whose operations
effectually shut out the desert, and handed over to the agriculturist nearly
the whole level of the Fens, some seventy miles in length. Works are now in
progress for rescuing a further portion of the basin of the Wash, to be
formed into a new county, and named after the Queen. So that now, in tracts
once covered by the sea, or knee-deep in reedy, slushy, pestilential slime,
the grass grows luxuriantly, the crops wave in golden abundance, or the
breeze takes up and carries afar—
“The livelong bleat
Of the thick-fleecèd sheep from wattled folds.”

But the dominion of labour has not yet been established over the whole
Fen-district. There are still dreary nooks, and gloomy corners, and
unproductive wastes; wild scenes there are, which few Englishmen have
any conception of as contained within the boundaries of their own
“inviolate isle.” Romantic scenery, remarks Mr. Walter White, must not be
looked for on the Lincolnshire coast. In all the journey from the Wash till
you see the land of Yorkshire, beyond the Humber, not an inch of cliff will
your eyes discover. Monotonous is the prospect of—
“A level waste, a rounding gray”

of sand-hills, which vary but slightly in height, and bristle with marum.
“But tame though it be,” continues our authority,[18] “the scene derives
interest from its peculiarity. Strange perspective effects appear in those
irregular hills: yonder they run out and form a low dark, purple headland,

against which the pale green and yellow of a nearer tongue look bright by
contrast. Here for a few furlongs the range rises gray, cold, and
monotonous; there it has a warmth of colour relieved by deep shadows, that
change their tint during the hours that accompany the sun while he begins
and ends his day. Sitting on the summit of those dry hills, you will remark
the contrasted landscape: on the one side, the level pasture land, league
after league of grassy green, sprinkled with villages, farms, churches, and
schools, where work and worship will find exercise through ages yet to
come; on the other, league after league of tawny sand, sloping gently
outwards to meet the great sea that ever foams or ripples thereupon. On the
one hand, a living scene bounded by the distant wolds; on the other, a
desert, sea and shore alike solitary, bounded only by the overarching sky.
More thoughts come crowding into the mind in presence of such a scene
than are easy to express.”

CHAPTER V.

THE STEPPES:—THE DESERT IN RUSSIA, SIBERIA, AND
TARTARY.
HITHERTO we have only been speaking of miniature deserts, of the more
limited of the world’s wildernesses, where some degree of victory seems to
reward man’s arduous struggle with nature. Those which we have hitherto
described are open to the “breath of civilization.” The pilgrim who visits
them incurs no danger; he has nothing to dread from beasts of prey; the men
he meets with obey the same general laws as himself; he is carried into their
furthest recesses by the all-embracing railroad. He sees on every hand the
efforts of science to confine the desert within ever narrower boundaries; to
reclaim the moor, and the fen, and the sandy waste; to reap from the once
barren soil an abundant harvest. But if he pass from England or France to
Germany, and thence across the provinces of unhappy Poland, he will find
himself daily advancing into a country of more and more savage aspect. He
will observe that vegetation loses its happy variety; that the cultivated fields

become scarcer; the morass and forest more frequent, and of greater extent;
the population poorer, more squalid, and less numerous. Wide and dreary
intervals separate the different towns; here and there, surrounded by gloomy
woods, are scattered the melancholy-looking villages. Travelling becomes
difficult, for the roads are ill-kept; he has left behind him the modern
magician, the engineer; wild wolves haunt his path; and he has good cause
to fear the robber’s knife. Civilization here has left barbarism for centuries
to itself; we are approaching the great Deserts, the Steppes of Northern
Asia.
The Steppes commence near the thirty-fifth degree of longitude, east of
the Dnieper, as soon as we quit the fertile plains of the Ukraine to enter the
country of the Don Cossacks. They are the characteristic feature of the
immense zone which starts from the north-eastern shore of the Sea of Azov,
stretches to the foot of Caucasus, between the Black and Caspian Seas, and
is thence prolonged beyond the Ural range, to the north and south of the
metaliferous Altaï; but mainly between the latter and the Thian-Shian
mountains, to the seas of Okhotsk and Jesso.
The word Steppe, supposed to be of Tartar origin, primarily signifies an
uncultivated plain, a prairie.
The Steppes, in short, are ordinarily plains of very considerable extent
interrupted at intervals by chains of hills or mountains; but, on the whole, of
a level, monotonous character, and with a considerable part below the level
of the ocean. Their area may be roughly computed at 4,200,000 square
miles.
Occasionally, in traversing them, we meet with lakes or brackish ponds,
with forests of pines, even with patches of cultivated ground. Sometimes
they form lofty and extensive plateaux, as in the case of the plateau of Gobi,
also called, but most inappropriately, Scha-mo, or the Sandy Desert, and
Scha-ho, or the Sandy River.
The Gobi begins upon the confines of Chinese Tartary, and thence
extends over thousands of leagues in a vast expanse of sterile wilderness
towards the coast of the Pacific. It chiefly consists of bare rock, shingle, and
loose sand, alternating with firm sand, sparsely clothed with vegetation. But
a large portion of the country, though not less leafless and monotonous,
assumes in the spring season the appearance of an undulating ocean of
grass, supplying pasturage to the flocks and herds of the Mongolian

nomades, who wander at will over its vast prairie grounds, and encamp
wherever they find a stream of water or sheltering crag. The general
elevation above the sea is probably not less than 3500 feet. The Gobi was
crossed by Mr. Grant, in 1863, and, soon afterwards, by Mr. Bishop, a
correspondent of the Times.
Though their general aspect is chill and dreary, the Steppes are not
without their romantic landscapes, and their vegetation is more varied as
well as more abundant than is generally believed. You may find among
them wide meads with a soil of sufficient fertility to produce corn in great
quantities, although too thin to permit the development of plants which
have need of a certain depth. “The most agreeable portion of these plains,”
says Humboldt, “is adorned with small shrubs of the family Rosaceæ,
tulips, and the cypripedium. Just as the Torrid Zone is distinguished by the
tendency of all its plants to become trees, so some of the Asiatic Steppes in
the Temperate Zones have the peculiar characteristic that all their flowering
herbaceous plants attain to a remarkable height, such as the Saussurea and
other synantheraceæ, the leguminous shrubs, and, above all, an infinite
variety of astragals. If the traveller attempts to go forward, in the small
Tartar chariots, across these pathless, trackless prairies, he must keep
standing, to ascertain his direction, and he will see the plants, interlaced as
in a dense forest, bend before his wheels. Some of these Steppes are grassy
plains; others are covered with saline plants, fleshy, articulated, and always
green. Often, too, one sees afar the glitter of saline efflorescence, like
lichens, spreading unevenly over the glassy soil, like newly-fallen
snow.”[19]
Comparing the Asiatic Steppes with the Pampas of South America,
Humboldt does not hesitate to declare that the former are far the richer. “In
that part of the Steppes, inhabited by the Kirghiz and the Kalmucks, which I
have traversed,” he says, “that is to say, from the Don, the Caspian Sea, and
the Oural (Jaïk), to the Obi and the Upper Irtysh, near Lake Dsaisang, over
a space of forty degrees of longitude, one can never discover, even at the
most distant limit, a phenomenon frequent in the Llanos, the Pampas, and
the Prairies of America; that horizon vague and boundless as the sea, which
seems to support the vault of heaven. Seldom in Asia was the spectacle
offered me of even a single side of the horizon. The Steppes are traversed
by numerous chains of hills, or covered with forests of conifers. The
vegetation of Asia, even in the richest pasturage, is nowhere confined to the

families of the Cyperaceæ. A great variety prevails there of herbaceous or
frutescent plants. In the spring season, small rosaceæ and amygdalaceæ,
with rosy or snow-white blossoms—Spiræa, cratægus, prunus spinosa,
amygdalus nana—present a graceful appearance. I have elsewhere spoken,”
he adds, “of the vigorous growth of Synanthers, such as Suassurea amara
and salsa, the artemisias and blue centaureas, which grow profusely in
these deserts, and the leguminosæ, which are there represented by different
species of astragal, cytisus, and caragana. The fritillaria ruthenica,
meleagroides, cypripedium, and tulip, delight the eye with the brilliance of
their colours.”[20]
This almost exclusively herbaceous, but abundant and various,
vegetation of which Humboldt speaks, is conspicuous in the spring, in the
least favoured Steppes, after the rainy season. But it is there of a brief life.
In the month of June the heat grows intense, and the dryness excessive.
Then every herb perishes, cut down by the sun’s keen-smiting rays, like the
Greeks before Troy by the arrows of Apollo.
“Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound;
Fierce as he moved, his silver shafts resound.”[21]

The dust is whirled off the ground by the wind, and swept about in
revolving tornados. The Steppes situated in a comparatively low latitude
thus alternately assume the most discordant aspects. In winter the heavy
rains inundate them, and transform them into impracticable marshes; spring
clothes them with a thick carpet of grasses and other herbaceous plants, so
that they reveal to the eye leagues upon leagues of delightful sward cropped
by numerous flocks. In summer they undergo a third metamorphosis, and
are converted into parched and sun-scathed deserts like those of Nubia or
Arabia.
These periodical transformations are especially remarkable in the
Steppes of the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian Sea; where
winter comes attended with abundant snows and terrific tempests. No
obstacle can arrest the fury of the gale, which accumulates the driven snow
in fearful avalanches, and like the demon in the old German legend, drives
before it the wild horses in an access of violence. Half frozen by the cold,
and exhausted with hunger, they fly in a complete panic. Oftentimes their
giddy headlong course carries them forward upon the crust of ice which
gathers over the waters close to the shore; it cracks, it breaks, and hundreds

perish! The melting snow and heavy rains at the end of winter drown the
plains under vast sheets of water, which, however, quickly evaporate in the
first rays of the sun. Rain, in summer, is extremely rare, and as there are
neither brooks nor springs to refresh the thin layer of earth in which the
herbs and shrubs take root, all these plants enjoy only a butterfly existence;
they bloom, they fade, they die, with startling rapidity.
The hurricanes are neither less numerous nor less furious in the hot than
in the cold season; dust, however, takes the place of snow, when, as is
sometimes the case, no tremendous deluge of rain follows in the track of the
mighty wind. To sum up: the spring and summer of the Steppes are
compressed (so to speak) into two months; all the rest of the year seems
given over to desolation. Two months in the year of bloom, and sunshine,
and colour, and beauty, are all that Nature grants the wandering Mongolian.
Such being the general configuration of the Steppes, one may easily
imagine how stern and gloomy is the aspect of these immense plains, with
no other interruptions of the soil than their tumuli, no other boundary than
the sea. He who has not been habituated from youth to their monotony finds
himself wholly unable to struggle against its depressing influence. Their
dismal solitudes are in truth an immeasurable prison, where he wanders to
and fro without hope of escape. In vain does he interrogate the north and
south, the east and the west; in vain does he turn from one side to the other;
it is always the same uniformity, the same immovability, the same solitude.
[22]

CHAPTER VI.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE STEPPES:—THE WILD HORSE—THE
CAMEL.
REFERENCE has been made to the numerous troops of wild horse which
haunt the Steppes on this side of the Oural. Similar troops of these animals
wander over the whole extent of the Steppes of Central Asia, which the
most accredited modern naturalists repute to be the original cradle of their
race.

The Tarpan, or Wild Horse.

These horses are called tarpans, a word undoubtedly derived from the
Tartar. Shall we look upon them as the representatives of the primitive
breed, whence have sprung all the varieties known at the present day; or
shall we see in them, as well as in the wandering horses of the prairies and
pampas of the New World, the descendants of individuals which had
escaped from the thraldom of man? This latter hypothesis seems to be the
most probable. But there is good ground for believing that, living a wild
life, these animals are gradually returning to the primitive type. They have
lost the harmonious graces of form, the beauty, and the vigour which we
admire in the high-bred steed, perfected by the assiduous care of man.
There seems as great a difference between the Arabian horse and the wild
horse of the Steppes as between the accomplished European gentleman and
a Malagasy savage. They are of small stature; their limbs are lank; their coat
is coarse, woolly, rude, and rough. With the tarpans of the northern Steppes
it is thick, flaky, and frizzled. Their mouth and nostrils are garnished with
long hair, not unlike a goat. Their colour is generally brown, of the shade
called Isabelle, after a certain Queen of France who, in fulfilment of a vow,
wore her linen unchanged for a considerable period. A few are black or
white. They have a large head, with the forehead projecting above the eyes;
a straight chamfer; and long ears, customarily laid back close to the head.
The troops of the tarpans are subdivided into groups of twenty to thirty
individuals, each group usually living apart, and only uniting in a compact
phalanx when a common danger threatens, or a necessity arises of

migrating from one region to another. The gaunt grim wolves, which hunger
drives from their neighbouring forests; and man, who hunts them hotly,
either to reduce them into subjection, or kill them for their flesh, are almost
the only enemies they have any reason to dread. The warlike nomade tribes
of the Black and Caspian coasts, and of Central Asia, have no other
breeding-grounds than the steppe which they inhabit. Thither come
Cossack, and Mongol, and Kirghis, and Kalmuck, to choose their chargers.
They catch them by means of a lasso, which they throw with surprising
dexterity, and in a few days train them into a suitable docility. When in want
of their hide or flesh, the nomades hunt them with gun, arrow, or spear; for
hippophagy, which a few zealous amateurs are now endeavouring to
popularize in France and England, has been practised from time
immemorial by the inhabitants of the Steppes.

WILD HORSES TERRIFIED BY A STORM.

These barbarians, however, respect the life of their domestic animals, or
sacrifice them only in cases of pressing need. They treat them also with a
gentleness unknown to our European grooms and horse-dealers. With them,
as with the Arabs, the horse is a friend rather than a slave; he is, in truth,
one of the family; and it is with great difficulty that his master consents to
part with him. Our travellers describe the Tartar, Mongol, and Kirghiz

horsemen as realizing the celebrated fable of the Centaurs,—as becoming,
so to speak, one with their horses. The exigencies of their wandering life
require that they should be constantly on horseback; it is almost their home,
their abode, their dwelling-place; there they are mounted day and night;
there they sleep, prepare their food, and take their repasts. True that their
cooking is of the rudest and simplest, and their taste not so fastidious as that
of an European epicure! If, for example, they would make ready a piece of
meat, they insert it between the saddle and the horse’s skin, and in this
impromptu oven leave it for a few hours, while it undergoes the processes
of heat, pressure, and frequent friction, serving in some degree to cook it;
then a pinch of salt for seasoning; and lo! a dainty titbit which our cavalier
devours with the best appetite in the world.
But it is to the inhabitants of the Steppes of the Black and Caspian Seas
that the horse renders the most estimable services. To make use of a phrase
of Buffon’s, “He shares with them the fatigue of war and the glory of
battle;” he provides them with the best and swiftest means of transit; he
nourishes them with his flesh, and the mare quenches their thirst with her
milk. In their dairies mares take the place of our European milch-cows, and
are regularly milked once or twice a-day. The milk, warm, is employed as a
medicine. It is thicker and more saccharine than that of ruminating animals,
and this, undoubtedly, is the reason that the Cossacks, Tartars, and
Kalmucks have succeeded, by fermentation, in distilling alcohol from it,
and procuring vinegar by acetifying it. They prepare with it an intoxicating
liquor (koumis), to which they are very partial, and with which the
wealthiest among them consider it an honour to be largely provided.
By the side of the horse, we naturally place his humble congener and
compatriot, the Ass.
Nor need we be ashamed to devote a few lines to this useful animal,
though civilization has appointed to it a very different lot from that of the
horse.
While man has devoted his utmost efforts to ennoble, as it were, and
aggrandize the latter, to perfect his capabilities, develop his qualities,
embellish and vary his form, for the former he has had nothing but
contempt and harsh treatment. He has made the horse the companion of his
campaigns, the minister to his sumptuous pleasures, the instrument of his
grandest labours. He has dismissed the poor ass to the fields to carry the

heaviest burdens, to share in the toil and privation of the peasant. In these
different conditions, who will wonder that while the horse has become a
strong, graceful, and proud-spirited animal, the ass, on the other hand,
remains bowed and bent, with a rough coarse hide, lanky limbs, a heavy
head,—always drooping, as if under the weight of continual lassitude and
unconquerable melancholy,—and long ungraceful ears, which give his
physiognomy an air of ridicule. Everything in him bears the impress of
degradation. How has he merited so obscure a destiny? Alas, he is the
victim of an iniquitous caprice of man. For see him in his natural condition;
contrast with the well-worn servant of civilization the Onagra,[23] the free
wild ass of the Steppes, with the Tarpan, and the parallel will be wholly to
the advantage of the former. The onagra is at least of the same size; his ears
are short; he carries aloft a well-proportioned head; his skin, of a handsome
gray or yellowish-brown, is sleek and shining; his limbs are long, delicate,
and nervous. He lives in very numerous troops, and migrates from north to
south, and south to north, according to the season. The Tartars employ him
as a beast of transport and the saddle rather than as a beast of burden. They
eat his flesh, preferring it to that of the wild horse. Even the domestic ass of
the East differs notably from the slow, dogged, ill-used animal of European
notoriety. Under a more favourable climate, and in the free life of the desert,
he has preserved his tall stature, his vigour, and the haughtiness of his
bearing. The wealthiest and most distinguished personages do not disdain to
mount him or harness him to their carriage. He has a keen eye, a quick
scent, a sure foot, a mild and resolute aspect. He accomplishes with ease
from six to eight miles an hour; and, lastly—a fact worthy of notice—his
life, which with us seldom exceeds fifteen years, in Asia is frequently
prolonged to thirty or thirty-five. He is less subject to sickness than the
horse, and he almost equals the camel in sobriety, docility, and endurance of
hunger and fatigue.

Onagra, or Wild Ass.

Whether the Tartars and Kalmucks, who use mares’ milk as a medicine,
attribute, as we do, certain therapeutical virtues to the milk of the ass, we
are unable to say; but it is certain that this milk forms a portion of their
daily food. On account of the strong proportion of saccharine serum which
it contains, it is well adapted for the preparation of the fermented drink
already spoken of, known to the Tartars under the name of Koumis or
Kamuis. Mr. Atkinson speaks of the large leathern koumis sack or bottle, as
an important piece of Mongolian furniture. One which he saw was five feet
eight inches long, and four feet five inches wide, with a leathern tube at the
corner about four inches in diameter, through which the milk is poured into
the bag, and the koumis drawn out. A wooden instrument is introduced into
this bag, its handle passing through the tube, not unlike a churning staff;
with this the koumis is frequently agitated. The Kirghiz begin making it in
April, and its due agitation and fermentation occupy about fourteen days.[24]

The horse, and a few flocks of sheep and herds of horned cattle, amply
suffice for the wants of the warlike tribes in the south of Asiatic Russia.
These tribes have almost entirely abandoned the use of the camel. But as we
advance eastward, we find these gigantic and mis-shapen ruminants in great
numbers, the faithful companions and indispensable auxiliaries of the
nomades of the East. They wander freely about the Steppes, in troops of
several hundreds, browzing indifferently on the grass of the wide pastures

or the foliage of the bushes. They are without fierceness, and the traveller
who intrudes upon their immense domains seems only to inspire in them a
benevolent curiosity. “It is impossible to describe,” says Madame
Hommaire de Hell, “the astonishment they exhibited as we passed them. As
soon as they caught sight of us, they ran with all speed towards us, and then
stood motionless, with heads turned towards our cavalcade, until we had got
to such a distance as to be no longer distinguishable.”
“Gold and silk,” says Buffon, “are not the true wealth of Asia. The camel
is the treasure of the East.” It is a fact that this animal is wonderfully
adapted to supply the wants of the desert races. It may be said to supply
them with every object of primary necessity; food, clothing, and even
habitation, fire, and the means of transport.
The flesh of the young camel, though inferior to beef or mutton, is
savoury and easy of digestion; the she-camel yields an abundance of milk
as substantial and agreeable to the taste as that of the cow. The camel’s skin
is, it is true, a coarse wool, but long, tenacious, and readily wrought. The
Mongols make it into tissues and cord. Out of the tissues they weave their
clothing, coverings, and tents; with the cord, which is of various
thicknesses, they fabricate the harness of their horses and other objects of
equipment. Camel-leather is not inferior in suppleness and solidity to that
which we make use of in Europe. The dung of these animals, dried in the
sun, serves as fuel not only for cooking food, but even for working metals.
Finally, as a beast of burden, the camel surpasses every other in strength,
swiftness, endurance of fatigue, and, above all, in that proverbial sobriety
which enables him to accomplish a journey of several successive days
without taking either food or drink. From nature he has received a special
organization, which well justifies his Arab name of “the ship of the desert.”
It consists essentially in the structure of his feet, in that of his stomach, and
in the species of hunch or hump which he carries on his back.
We know, in the first place, that the camel’s foot does not resemble that
of other ruminants; it is bifurcated, but the two toes, very strong and much
elongated, are furnished not with a hoof, but with a short nail, adhering only
to the final phalange; they are, moreover, palmated; that is to say, reunited
near the extremity by a carneous membrane, which is supplied underneath
with a veritable thick and horny sole. The foot can thus plant itself on a
wide surface, and seems expressly adapted to the shifting sandy soil which
the camel usually traverses.

As for the stomach, beside the four compartments into which the
stomach of all ruminants is divided, we notice, on the sides of the paunch, a
mass of cubic cells, or partitions, always containing a quantity of tolerably
pure water, very drinkable, and kept as a kind of reserve supply; so that
more than one traveller, when crossing the desert, and perceiving neither
fountain, well, nor stream in which to quench his devouring thirst, has
preserved his life at the expense of that of his camel, by killing the poor
animal, and opening his reservoir to drink its contents.

Bactrian Camel.

The hump, of which the Arabian camel, or dromedary, has but one, while
the Bactrian, or camel properly so called, has two, is, in truth, “a storehouse
of solid nutriment, on which he can draw for supplies long after every
digestible part has been extracted from the contents of the stomach: this
storehouse consists of one or two large collections of fat stored up in
ligamentous cells supported by the spines of the dorsal vertebræ. When the
camel is in a region of fertility, the hump becomes plump and expanded; but
after a protracted journey in the wilderness it becomes shrivelled and
reduced to its ligamentous constituent, in consequence of the absorption of
the fat.”[25]
To be deprived of drink for from eight to ten days is no hardship to the
camel. Accredited authorities testify that without any serious inconvenience
he can go without drink for twenty-three and even twenty-five days. In the
way of solid food, a ball of cake weighing from a pound to a pound and a

quarter, will suffice him for a whole day. Often when he has set out on his
journey fasting, he contents himself with browsing on the way a few green
or dry bushes, and in the evening sups on a handful of dried beans. But this
singular abstemiousness is not his sole good quality; his vigour, his docility,
his swiftness render him equally valuable.
The ordinary burden of a small camel is from 600 to 800 lbs.; a large
camel will carry 1000 lbs. or upwards, from thirty to thirty-five miles a-day;
but the maharis, or those which are used for speed alone, will travel daily
from twenty to thirty leagues.
The camel of the Steppes, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, is, as I
have already hinted, the Bactrian or camel strictly so called. This animal
differs from his African congener in several very important physical
characteristics, and perhaps also in some moral peculiarities. His two
humps are smaller than the one hump of the dromedary. He is a little larger
than the latter; his average stature is from six feet and a half to seven feet.
His hair, of a deep chestnut brown, almost woolly on the humps, the head,
and the upper part of the neck, is short and smooth on the body, and hangs
in long fringes below the neck and around the fore-legs. He endures without
inconvenience the most opposite temperatures, great heat and extreme cold,
so that his habitat naturally ranges over an immense extent of country. He is
found throughout the zone of the Steppes, even to the confines of Siberia,
on the borders of Lake Baïkal; he was formerly still more common in
Hindostan, but has now almost disappeared, owing to the great
consumption entailed by the military expeditions of our East Indian
Government.
The camel is an excellent traveller, but his gait is rough and awkward,
and almost insupportable by those who have not been long habituated to it.
In this relation we may borrow an anecdote from Madame Hommaire de
Hell:[26] Her dragoman, a Frenchman, named Antoine, curious to essay this
new species of equestrian practice, begged a Kalmuck in the escort to lend
him his camel. The request being readily granted, he perched himself on the
extremity of the saddle, in “measureless contentment” with his lofty post,
and by no means mindful of the malicious smiles exchanged between the
Cossacks and the camel-drivers. Scarcely had the beast advanced four
paces, however, before his face turned pale, and he clung to the saddle, with
a most pitiful countenance, and imploring help in the most agonizing tones.
“One need be a Kalmuck,” says Madame de Hell, “to be capable of

enduring the trot of a camel. His jerky gait shakes the body so severely, that
a long journey is a positive punishment, even for the Cossacks. The
unfortunate Antonio, left some distance behind by the escort, made a vain
effort to overtake us; he was compelled, willy-nilly, to retain his steed as far
as the Caspian Sea, where he arrived about two hours after ourselves. I have
never seen a man more demoralized. His groans, when he was lifted off the
camel, were so lamentable, that we really hardly knew what to think of his
condition.”
As for the camel’s moral qualities, the same lively writer furnishes a
very different estimate to what we gather from the majority of travellers.
She represents him as idle, pettish, and very vindictive.
“All that we had read,” says she, “of the rapidity of these ships of the
desert; their insensibility to fatigue, to hunger, to thirst; their tractability to
the will of man exceeding the obedience of the leaf to the wind, was
completely contradicted by the conduct of these quadrupeds, little careful to
maintain their reputation for agility. Despite of a stout cord passed through
one of the nostrils, and which caused them a sharp pain every time they
became refractory, they would not march more than two successive hours
without flinging themselves on the ground. We had to battle with them
incessantly to rouse them from their torpor, and prevent them from biting
one another. Whenever a camel-driver pulled a little roughly his animal’s
guiding-string, we heard a succession of cries, all the more frightful from
their resemblance to the human voice. In a word, these camels behaved so
ill during their short journey, that we entirely lost the good opinion our
great naturalist (Buffon) had given us of their species, in descriptions more
poetical than true.”
Notwithstanding Antoine’s discouraging experience of camel-riding,
Madame de Hell, a few days afterwards, essayed the same experiment, with
the result that, like her poor dragoman, she made a vow never to repeat it.
Somewhat later, she had an opportunity of witnessing a very curious
illustration—and one very amusing to the lookers-on—of the natural
vindictiveness of these rough steeds. We give the adventure in her own
words:—
“Everybody knows that the camel possesses the faculty of ruminating
the food already stored in one of his stomachs, and that he willingly enough
grants himself this pleasure when he has nothing to eat; but it is not

generally known, perhaps, that he possesses sufficient malice to make,
when an opportunity arises, this prerogative a means of vengeance.
“I had noticed in the morning that one of our camel-drivers appeared on
bad terms with his beast. He vainly tried to master him by punishment,
pulling with all his might the cord which passed through the animal’s
nostril; the latter was obstinate, and threw himself every moment on the
ground, a proof of rebellion. The Kalmuck, irritated by the struggle,
profited by a halt to dismount, and inflict severe chastisement on the
recalcitrant; but the camel, disdainfully raising his long neck, followed with
so malicious an eye all his tyrant’s movements, that without doubt he was
revolving some project of revenge in his head. And so it happened that he
quietly waited until the Kalmuck stood opposite to him; then, opening his
great mouth, he ejected full in the camel-driver’s face a double volley of
masticated herbs, mixed with slaver and all sorts of filthiness. It would be
impossible to describe the air of satisfied vengeance with which the camel
raised his neck, and moved his head from one side to another, as if in quest
of applause. What astonished me most in this affair was his master’s
moderation after undergoing such an outrage. He wiped himself coolly,
remounted his saddle, and caressed the neck of the ill-bred animal, as if he
had received the most flattering compliment. A good understanding being
thus strangely re-established, they went on their way peaceably, without
giving another thought to what had taken place.”

CHAPTER VII.

THE ANIMAL LIFE OF THE STEPPES:—WILD RUMINATING
ANIMALS—RODENTS—CARNIVORA—BIRDS.
BESIDES those species of which we have just spoken, and which man has
subjugated to his service, the Steppes nourish a host of other animals which
seem for ever destined to a savage life. Some are spread through the entire
zone of the Steppes, and include representatives of the genera or species
belonging to the temperate latitudes of Europe. But most of them are
circumscribed in more or less limited habitats, out of which they would not

meet with the conditions of climate or provision that are essential to their
existence.
The mammalia which are found in the plains of Eastern Europe and
Central Asia belong principally to the orders of Ruminants,[27] Rodents, and
Carnaria.
Cuvier divides the ruminants into two great sections: one comprising the
ruminants without horns (genera, camel, lama, and chevrotain); and the
other, those with horns. The latter he again divides into ruminants with
decaying or wooden horns (these are the cervidæ of the new nomenclature),
ruminants with membraneous horns (as the giraffes), and ruminants with
hollow horns (oxen, goats, antelopes, sheep).

The Eland (Antilope oreas).

The section of Ruminants without horns is represented in the Steppes by
the camel. Of the three groups of horned ruminants, one only is wanting in
this region of the Old Continent—namely, that of the ruminants with
membranous horns; but we meet there with varieties of all the species
included among the cervidæ, except the reindeer, which is confined to the
glacial countries of both continents. The common European stag is found on
this side of the Oural, in the Steppes bordering on the forests, where he

prefers to seek an asylum. The ahu, or roebuck of Tartary, inhabits the
valleys and plains which stretch to the north of the Himalaya and along the
chain of the Thian-Chan. Deer wander in troops, or in isolated couples, in
all the temperate and fertile portions of the zone of the Steppes, and the
eland is spread over all Asia between the 45th and 41st degree of latitude.
The latter is the largest of all the cervidæ. It ordinarily attains, and
sometimes exceeds, the stature of the horse. His antlers, spread out
perpendicularly to the axis of his head, take at first a nearly horizontal
direction, then spring upwards in an abrupt curve. At their extremity they
terminate in a broad palm, set with sharp snags around its outer edge. Their
weight, for adults, averages from fifty-five to sixty-five pounds. The eland
has a short robust neck, which is necessary to enable him to support the
burden of his branching honours; but which, joined to the projection of his
shoulders, and the disproportionate length of his fore-legs, gives him a very
ungraceful aspect. Nor can he browse the herbage without making a great
digression or falling on his knees. The male, moreover, under the throat has
a sort of goître, or swelling, garnished with a rude pointed beard. The
female wears a beard, but has no goître. The neck is surmounted with a
short, stiff, blackish mane. The rest of the hair is of a pronounced gray.
The eland inhabits the marshy plains and banks of rivers; he dreads the
heat, and to escape it will often remain during the long summer days
plunged up to his neck in the cool waters. He lives with his comrades in
tolerably numerous herds. The first birth of the female is only one;
afterwards she produces two at a time. Frequently the eland attains a
prodigious stature. An individual killed in the Altaï measured four feet and a
half in height to the shoulder, and four feet and a third in length. His flesh is
said to be light and nourishing; his hide excellent for making shoulder-belts;
and his antlers are converted to the same uses as the horns of the stag.

Among the hollow-horned ruminants I may mention the Saiga, a kind of
antelope which inhabits the Asiatic Steppes, and is met with even in Poland.
In figure he takes the poetical elegance of the gazelle; his horns are of a
clear yellow colour, and of a transparency which rivals that of tortoise-shell.
His forehead is covered with transversal folds; he has no muzzle, properly
speaking, but a kind of snout like that of a hog. It is said that he drinks
through his nostrils. The saigas travel in herds of about two thousand each,

of whom a certain number keep always some distance in advance, in the
rear, and on the flanks of the main host, so as to watch over their security.

Another kind of gazelle, the Dseren, is peculiar to the Mongolian
Deserts, and named by the inhabitants the yellow stag. His stature is little
inferior to that of the deer. The female is without horns.

The Moufflon,[28] the original of our domestic sheep, sometimes strays
into the plains of Central Asia, but prefers the solitude of the mountains. His
general size is that of a small fallow deer, but though clothed with hair
instead of wool, he bears a closer resemblance to the ram than to any other
animal. In summer his hair is close, but in winter it becomes rough, wavy,
and slightly curled. On the upper part of the body it is brown, but the under
part and insides of the limbs are whitish. The hair is considerably longer
under the throat, and about the neck and shoulders, than elsewhere.
We may refer, in this connection, to the Egagra, or wild goat, which
Cuvier considers to have been the original stock of the numerous races of
goats spread over various regions of the globe.

The Steppes nourish two species of Rodents: the Varying Hare (Lepus
variabilis), so called because he changes from tawny gray in summer to
white in winter; and a gray squirrel, which is probably only a variety of our
common European squirrel. He is not a climber and a “haunter of the
woods,” like his congener. He abounds in the Mongolian Steppes, where he
lives in holes excavated under the earth, like the rats and rabbits. He is,
however, much more ingenious than the other troglodyte-rodents; he
shelters the entrance to his abode under a domed roof, skilfully constructed
of dry herbs woven together, and covered with clay. These works closely
resemble the mounds upheaved by moles.

The Carnaria of the Felidæ, or feline family, are wanting, or nearly so, in
the immense zone which we are considering. Except a species of lynx, the
Chilason or Chulon, whose existence has been recognized in the north of
Tartary; and a few tigers which adventure into Mongolia, we may say that
the Asiatic Steppes, and, therefore, also those of Europe, are exempt from

these inconvenient guests. The most dangerous, and almost the only enemy
which man and the herbivora have reason to dread, is the Wolf. This animal,
now very rare in Western Europe, where his race will soon disappear, is still
found in great numbers in the wild Lithuanian forests, in Russia, and all
Northern and Central Asia. To him, as to other animals of the Canidæ, cold
appears more favourable than heat, and it is in countries where the average
temperature seldom rises high he attains his greatest dimensions. In
Lithuania wolves are often met with which measure three feet and a half in
length, without the tail. Those of Northern Asia are also of a great size and
nerve, of terrible strength and audacity; they have been seen to pounce on a
sheep, and carry it off at full speed. They intrude in quest of victims into the
towns, the villages, and the encampments; combat to the last with their
enemies; and when vanquished die without a groan. Generally they lurk in
the woods and forests; but hunger, according to the proverb, drives them
forth from their lairs. Then they assemble in vast hordes; they pursue, they
assail, they defend, with ingenious tactic, skilfully availing themselves of
the disposition and accidents of the ground. Their manœuvres vary
according to the nature of the game or the enemy. In general, if a man
preserve an upright bearing and a bold countenance, they will not attack
him; they follow him stealthily, however, prepared to pounce upon him if,
unhappily, he should stumble or falter. But the wolves of Tartary, far from
sharing in this deference towards the lord of creation, display a singular
bitterness against him. “It is remarked,” says the Jesuit missionary Huc,
“that the Mongolian wolves attack man more willingly than any animals;
one sees them sometimes galloping through innumerable flocks of sheep,
without inflicting any injury, in order to dash upon the shepherd. In the
neighbourhood of the Great Wall they frequently descend upon the Tartar-
Chinese villages, enter the farms, turn aside with contempt from the
domestic animals which they encounter, and penetrate even into the interior
of the houses to select their victims, seizing them invariably by the throat
and strangling them. Not a village in Tartary but has every year to deplore
some calamity of this kind. One might say that the wolves of this country
sought specially to avenge themselves on men for the blood-thirsty war the
Tartars wage against them.” And it is true that in their pursuit of these
animals the inhabitants of the Steppes display not only an ardour which
would be legitimate, but a fierce and uncontrollable cruelty.

Capture of a Wolf by a Kirghiz Horseman.

“They pursue them everywhere à outrance,” remarks M. Huc; “they
regard them as their chief enemy, on account of the terrible losses they
inflict upon their flocks. The news that a wolf has made his appearance in
the neighbourhood is for everybody a signal to ‘mount and ride away.’ And
as each cavalier has always two or three saddled horses in waiting near his
tent, the plain is speedily covered, as if by enchantment, with a cloud of
eager horsemen. Their weapon is a long rod.[29] Thus, in whatever direction
the wolf may seek to escape, he encounters a band of determined
adversaries, whose cry, as they precipitate themselves upon their traditional
foe, is ‘No quarter!’ There are no mountain-sides so rugged or so difficult,
that the nimble horses of the Tartars cannot pursue him thither. The cavalier
who finally overtakes the beast, flings a lasso round his neck as he passes at
full gallop, and drags him in his rapid track to the nearest tent. There they
firmly bind up his muzzle, that they may proceed to torture him with
impunity, closing up the tragic scene by flaying him alive, and then setting
him free. In the summer the miserable animal will live in this condition for
several days; but in winter, exposed without his furry coat to the rigour of
the season, he dies almost immediately, frozen to death.”[30]
It is generally considered that the wolf is an animal as cowardly as he is
fierce, because he flies before man when man does not retreat before him,
and because he kills unoffending animals. But we forget that man acts in a

precisely similar manner. Numerous experiments, and especially those of
Cuvier, have clearly proved that the wolf is fully capable of being
domesticated, is very sensible of kindly treatment, and will as readily grow
familiar with, and attached to, his master, as the best of dogs. We must,
therefore, refer his ferocity to the instinct of self-preservation and of a
vengeance too frequently excited; just as at the Cape of Good Hope, the
unfortunate Bosjesmen, formerly treated like beasts by the Dutch colonists,
though naturally of a peaceable disposition, became active and cruel
aggressors, and daring assailants, against the enemies who had exhausted
their patience.

Two other wild beasts of the dog genus, the Korsak and the Karogun, are
eagerly hunted by the Tartars, especially by the Kirghiz. But the chase, in
this instance, is carried on for industrial purposes. The fur of these animals
is very valuable, and the Kirghiz hunters carry thousands every year to the
great market of Orenburg. The korsak is a species of fox. In colour he
closely resembles the jackal; but he has a long tail, with a black tuft at the
tip, and on each side of the head a brown stripe extends from the eye to the
muzzle. He ranges over all the Steppes of Tartary, and lives in burrows like
the foxes. The natives pretend that he never drinks. He is a very handsome
animal, and when, towards the close of the sixteenth century, several
individuals were brought to Europe, he became quite the fashion. All the
great ladies of the court were desirous of possessing one, which they tended
in their chambers, and when promenading in the parks, often led about like
a spaniel. The mania was of brief duration, but it clearly showed how easily
the animal could be tamed and reared.
Buffon has confounded the karogun with the isatis or polar fox, and
other animals with the korsak. He is equally distinct from the one as from
the other, and the Kirghiz never make a mistake, though they hunt for both
in the same districts. His skin is of an ashen gray on the back, and a pale
yellow under the belly. His fur is not less precious than that of the korsak.

The wild Ornithology of the Steppes comprises some migratory
palmipedes, a few gallinaceæ, and some predatory birds of the falcon
family. Gulls, wild ducks, herons, curlews, and especially pelicans, people
the shores of the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian, with the

banks of the rivers that flow into them, and the neighbouring pools. The
Cossack and Kalmük chiefs, who now ardently cherish the love of falconry
that was so marked a trait in the character of the mediæval nobles, hunt
these birds with much enthusiasm, save, indeed, the pelican, whose flesh is
not edible.
The herons form, in the order Grallatores and the tribe Cultirostres
(knife-like beak), a family (Ardeidæ) composed of numerous species,
several of which inhabit or frequent the marshes, lakes, and streams of the
region of the Steppes.
“O’er yonder lake the while,
What bird about that wooded isle,
With pendant feet and pinions slow,
Is seen his ponderous length to row?
’Tis the tall heron’s awkward flight,
His crest of black, and neck of white,
Far sunk his gray-blue wings between,
And giant legs of murky green.”[31]

The most remarkable species is the great white heron (Ardea alba), or
yellow-billed white egret, clothed in plumage of snowy white, with a long
yellow bill, long lank limbs, and black feet; length about forty inches. On
the nape and the croup his feathers are long and flexible, wavy, and with
tapering ends; they are eagerly sought after for purposes of adornment. We
may also mention the great bittern, the “bird of desolation” (Botauris
stellaris)—which the French expressively name eau-mère, or “water-
mother,” and which derives its zoological appellation from the Latin words
bos and taureau, in allusion to the booming, bellowing sound of his hoarse
voice. His plumage is of a pale yellow, marked with brown and nest-
coloured zig-zag patches and shades. From the fulness of the feathers about
his neck, he presents a very quaint, and even ridiculous appearance; but he
is a bird of courage, and even of ferocity, striking with keen bill at the eyes
of his antagonist. When attacked by dogs or other carnivora, he will throw
himself upon the ground, and fight with both claws and bill unto the very
last.

1. Great Bittern. 2. White Heron or Egret. 3. Curlew.

The curlew is allied to the ibis, differing from it only in secondary
particulars, and notably in the form of his bill, which is thinner, and
rounded in its whole length. His tail resembles the hen’s; the plumage of the
head, neck, and fore part of the back, is light reddish-gray, streaked with
dark-brown; the hind part of the back is white, with dark narrow
longitudinal markings; the tail, breast, and abdomen are white, the former
crossed with black bars, and the latter with dark marks and spots of a
similar shape to those on the back. The female lays four excessively large
pyriform eggs, about three inches long. The cry of the curlew is loud, wild,
and plaintive. These birds assemble in numerous flocks, and live on the sea-
coast and the marsh-border, feeding on worms and molluscs. At breeding-
time they separate into pairs, and haunt the wild hills and dreary moorlands,
—

“Remote from human sight,
In lonely pairs their vernal flight
They speed o’er heathy mountain rude,
On some waste marsh’s solitude,
To the tall grass or bristling reed
Their wild unnestled young to breed.”

The species of Pelican which inhabits the shores of the Black and
Caspian Seas is the Common (Pelicanus Onocrotalus). We must not pass
unnoticed this well-known wader, which has for ages been invested with an
atmosphere of song and fable, and which is specially remarkable for the
bright yellow membranous pouch attached to the lower mandible of his
long robust bill. This pouch, says Broderip, will hold a considerable number
of fish, and thus enables the bird to dispose of the superfluous quantity
which may be taken during fishing excursions, either for his own
consumption or for the nourishment of his young. “In feeding the nestlings
—and the male is said to supply the wants of the female, when sitting, in
the same manner—the under mandible is pressed against the neck and
breast, to assist the bird in disgorging the contents of the capacious pouch;
and during this action the red nail of the upper mandible would appear to
come in contact with the breast, thus laying the foundation, in all
probability, for the fable that the pelican nourishes her young with her
blood, and for the attitude in which the imagination of painters has placed
the bird in books of emblems, with the blood spirting from the wounds
made by the terminating nail of the upper mandible into the gaping mouths
of her offspring.”
It is usually in the evening or the morning that these birds gather about
the lonely shores to fish in company, like a party of sociable Izaak Waltons,
and proceeding, as Nordmann remarks, upon a systematic plan, which is
apparently the result of a kind of concerted agreement. They select a
suitable station—a shallow bay with a smooth bottom. There they arrange
themselves in a half-circle, the bill turned towards the ground, and keeping
at a distance of from ten to twelve feet. With their wings they beat the water
hurriedly, and sometimes plunge in up to their middle, gradually wading
towards the beach, and driving the fish before them into a very narrow
channel. Now the feast commences, and other birds never fail to profit by
the ingenious labours of the pelican. Nordmann counted, on one occasion,

forty-nine pelicans fishing together in this fashion on the shores of the
Black Sea.
“Besides these forty-nine,” he adds, “there were assembled on the heaps
of algæ, confervæ, and shells cast ashore by the sea, hundreds of sea-mews,
sea-swallows, sea-daws, preparing to snatch the fish out of the water, and to
divide amongst themselves the remains of the banquet. Finally, several
grebes swimming in the area circumscribed by the semicircle of fishers,
while this space was still sufficiently broad, played their part at the
welcome feast, frequently plunging after the scared and terrified fish.”
The bustard and the grouse, or heather-cock, are common enough in the
prairies of Central Asia. Crows and numerous birds of prey also flock
thither in search of their dead or living prey. Travellers speak of a black
eagle of Mongolia which the Mongols and Kalkas train to hunt the
moufflon, the yellow goat, and the saiga. We cannot find the bird described
under this name by any naturalist, nor can we determine whether he is an
eagle properly so called, or whether he is not rather the cosmopolitan black
kite (milvus ater), which rises so fiercely on his plumed wings,
“And hunts the air for plunder.”

We may mention, as also proper to Central Asia, the Aquila bifasciata of
Dr. Gray, and several species of buzzards, hawks, and falcons. These
Raptores live very peacefully in the desert solitudes, where none disturb
them; and so little do they fear man, that they venture into the Mongol
encampments and carry off the provisions destined for the travellers’
refreshment. An incident of this nature is recorded by the Abbé Huc, who,
with his companions, was at the time preparing to sup on a quarter of a kid
skilfully “dished up” by their Tartar neophyte, Samdadchiemba.
“We had just seated ourselves,” says M. Huc, “in a triangle on the grassy
sward, having in our midst the lid of the pot which served instead of a dish,
when suddenly a noise like thunder broke over our heads. A great eagle fell
like an arrow on our supper, and rose again with the same rapidity, carrying
off in his claws some slices of kid. When we had recovered from our
surprise, we had nothing better to do than laugh at the adventure. However,
Samdadchiemba could not laugh, not he; he was exceedingly wroth, not on
account of the stolen kid, but because the eagle, in flying off, had insolently
buffeted him with the tip of his wing....

The Eagle of the Steppes, and the Antelope Saiga.

“The eagle,” adds our author, “is found almost everywhere in the deserts
of Tartary. You see him sometimes hovering and wheeling round and round
in the air; sometimes, perched upon a hillock in the middle of the plain, he
remains there for a long time as motionless as a sentinel. Often we
encounter him on the ground, apparently larger than an ordinary sheep;
when we draw near, he is compelled, before he can rise into the air, to make
a long detour, agitating his heavy wings; after which, succeeding in lifting
himself a little above the ground, he soars aloft at pleasure.”

The Erpetological fauna of the Steppes is little known, and is probably
very scanty. Unfortunately, this region has not been explored by scientific
naturalists, and the unprofessional travellers who have visited it do not
appear to have met with any reptiles which seemed to them worthy of
detailed notice. Atkinson, however, speaks of the stony ridges of the plain
as “swarming with serpents.”—“I observed,” he says,[32] “four varieties: A
black one, three feet eight inches long, and about one inch and an eighth in
diameter. Another was of slaty-gray colour, from two to three feet long, and
smaller in diameter than the black snake. This breed was numerous, and
often difficult to see, they so nearly resembled the colour of some of the

rocks. We also found some of an ashy-green and black, with deep crimson
specks on the sides; as they moved along in the sun the colours were most
brilliant.” Another, which Mr. Atkinson’s companions killed, was of a dark-
brown, with greenish and red marks on the sides, and evidently very
venomous. He measured five feet two inches and a half without his head,
and four inches and a quarter round his body.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE INHABITANTS OF THE STEPPES:—TARTARS, COSSACKS,
KALMÜKS, KIRGHIZ, MONGOLS.
THE Steppes of Tartary and Mongolia, interrupted, says Humboldt,[33] by
chains of mountains of various aspects, separate the ruder peoples of
Northern Asia from the primitive races, which have been for ages civilized,
of Hindostan and Thibet. Their existence has influenced the destinies of
mankind in various important ways. They have rolled back the populations
towards the south, and more than the Himálaya, more than the snow-
crowned peaks of Serinagur and Goorkha, have raised an obstacle to the
alliances of peoples, while opposing, in the north of Asia, insuperable
barriers to the refinement of manners and the genius of the arts.
But it is not only as barriers that History should regard the plains of
Central Asia; they have several times let loose on earth a torrent of calamity
and devastation. The pastoral races of the Steppes—Mongols, Getæ, Alans,
and Huns—have convulsed the world. If, in the course of ages, intellectual
culture has directed its course from east to west, like the vivifying light of
the sun, Barbarism at a later period has followed in the same track, when
threatening to plunge all Europe into darkness. A people of tawny
shepherds, Tou-Kin (that is to say, Turkish) in origin, the Hioung-Nou,
inhabited, under tents of skin, the elevated Steppe of the Gobi. Long
formidable to the Chinese power, a horde of the Hioung-Nou was driven
back towards the south into Central Asia. The impulse which they gave
spread uninterruptedly even into the native country of the Fins, on the
borders of the Oural, and thence the Huns, the Avars, the Chasurs, and
various mixtures of Asiatic races, poured forth in furious violence. The

Hunnish hosts first appeared on the banks of the Volga, then in Pannonia,
and finally on the banks of the Marne, and on those of the Po, ravaging the
beautiful fields where, from the days of Antenor, the genius of man had
accumulated its glorious monuments. Thus from the Mongolian deserts
blew a pestiferous wind, which choked even in the Cisalpine plains the
delicate blossom of art, the object of such tender and continual cares.
Our English traveller, Atkinson, has called the Steppes “the cradle of
invasions;” and this not only because from their solitudes issued the hordes
which devastated Europe in the first centuries of the Middle Ages, but
because Russia and Austria have found therein those truculent soldiers of
repulsive aspect who, in their hands, have become, even in our own day, the
scourge of the free and civilized nations they would fain have subjugated.
In the present day the Steppes of Eastern Europe and of Asia are still the
asylum of savagery, if not of barbarism. The tribes scattered over them are
more or less closely allied to that fraction of the human family which
ethnographists designate under the name of the “Turanian.” Those of the
East belong exclusively to the Mongolian branch, and those of the West
partly to the Mongolian and partly to the Turkish, more or less modified by
their mixture with the Slave branch of the great Caucasian family. To all
these peoples we commonly apply the term Tartaro, or Tartars, which
originally “was a name of the Mongolic races, but through their political
ascendancy in Asia after Chingis-Khan (A.D. 1227), it became usual to call
all the tribes which were under Mongolian sway by the name of Tartar.”[34]
It now really belongs to the small tribe of Turkic origin which, after
occupying Turkistan, has spread even into the Crimea. We must distinguish
from it, however, the Cossacks, or Kosaks, who inhabit the Ukraine, the
banks of the Don and the Dnieper, and who are more closely related to the
Slave family than the Mongolian race.
We shall pass in rapid review the principal hordes which inhabit the
Steppes, from the western border to the eastern extremity of these deserts.
The first tribe which we encounter on the shores of the Sea of Azov and
the Black Sea is that of the Tartar-Nogáis, who formerly lived north-east of
the Caspian. “Pressed by the Kalmüks, or Mongolic tribe, the Nogáis
advanced westward as far as Astrachan. Peter I. transferred them thence to
the north of the Caucasian mountains, where they still graze their flocks on
the shores of the Kuban and the Kuma.” Of late years, however, they have

begun to settle themselves in permanent habitations, owing to the exertions
of a French emigré, Count Maison, who was appointed their governor in
1808.
They now occupy (according to Madame Hommaire de Hell) all the
territory comprised between the Sea of Azov and the river of Malochnia-
Vodi. They number about 32,000 souls, spread over seventy villages. Their
huts are small, with a roof constructed of beams of timber, covered with
reeds, which are afterwards loaded with clay and ashes. They occupy
themselves wholly in rearing horses and cattle. The horses of the Kalmük-
Kirghiz breed are of moderate stature, but nimble and robust. All the year
round they roam across the plains, and in winter seek their provender
beneath the snow. The horned cattle are small and puny, the cows yield but
a poor supply of milk, and are of scarcely any value.
The aged Nogáis shave the hair entirely off; the young people preserve a
single tuft on the top of the head. This custom compels them to wear
constantly a bonnet of wool or lamb’s skin. A short caftan over a shirt of
cotton or woollen, bound round the waist by a leather belt; loose, wide
trousers; in winter a pelisse of sheep’s skin and a kind of hood enveloping
the head and shoulders, compose the dress of the males. As for the women,
they wear above the chemise a caftan of cloth, girded about the form by a
large belt ornamented with great metal buckles; they likewise figure in
Turkish trousers and slippers, with a long white veil fastened round the
head, and allowed to fall upon the shoulders; small silver rings adorn the
fingers and the nose; heavy ear-drops hang from their ears, the two being
frequently linked together by a chain passing under the chin. The young
girls dress their hair in a multiplicity of curls, and instead of the veil wear a
small red fez, garnished with pieces of metal and all kinds of trinkets.
The Nogáis are Mohammedans, of the sect called Sunnites (or believers
in the “Sunna,” the sayings and aphorisms traditionally attributed to the
Prophet). Their name is derived from that of their first chief, the grandson
of Chingis-Khán, who, about 1260, declared himself independent of the
Kapchakian empire, and established himself with his warriors on the
borders of the Black Sea.

The Kosaks (or Cossacks) are, as we have said, Slaves rather than
Tartars. They have blue eyes, red hair, thick lips, a flat nose. Nimble, robust,

indefatigable, skilful horsemen, they furnish the Russian army with a
formidable host of irregulars. Some have fixed their homes in the towns,
but the majority inhabit the villages or stanitzas scattered over the Steppes.
Very few are agriculturists. Either they devote themselves to breeding
horses and cattle, or live on the small pension allowed them for their
military services. Nearly all the young and hardy of the males have no other
trade but that of arms. The Cossack chieftains, their Hetmans, or Attamans,
derive their authority directly from the Czar. Their religion is that of the
Russian Greek Church; and they are, we believe, the only Christians in the
entire zone of the Steppes.
Bold and resolute robbers in time of war, the Cossacks “at home” are
peaceable, kindly-natured, and more honest than the Russian Mongiks. The
erroneous ideas which still prevail respecting their character are mainly due
to French prejudices, excited by the disastrous events of 1814 and 1815,
when the jingle of their arms resounded in the streets of Paris. But they are
not really so black as they have been painted. The traveller passes through
the country which they inhabit with the utmost security, and is received in
their stanitzas with a hospitable welcome.
These stanitzas, if we may credit Madame Hommaire de Hell, present a
far more agreeable appearance than the Russian villages. They consist of
small wooden houses, gaily painted. There is but one story, which is
surrounded by a miniature gallery, and seems expressly constructed to
please the eye. The interior is exceedingly neat and pretty, indicating an
intelligence and an idea of comfort which the Russians never exhibit. You
will find it enriched with towels, dishes of delft ware, forks, and all the
most necessary utensils. Usually two huts are built in one block; the first,
which we have just described, is occupied for a summer residence; it
contains, generally, one room hung with paper of a lively design, and
adorned with images, flowers, and trophies of arms, which is reserved for
state occasions and the entertainment of strangers. The second hut, built of
dried clay, resembles the Russian kates, consisting of a single chamber,
where all the household huddle together during the winter to shelter
themselves from the cold.
The traveller seldom sees in these stanitzas any but women and children.
With the exception of a few gray veterans, who have purchased by forty
years of service the right of dying under the home-roof, the entire male
population is under arms. Thus all the work falls upon the shoulders of the

women, who must repair the houses, cleanse and dry the furs, take care of
the children, and watch the cattle.
The Cossack soldiers, regulars and irregulars, are the guardians of the
Steppes. To them is intrusted the security of the traveller, who is much
exposed to the attacks of nomadic Turkomen, whose only occupation is
robbery. The surveillance of these immense plains is not so difficult,
however, nor does it necessitate so large a force as you might suppose.
Small watch-posts, or platforms, of extreme simplicity of design, are raised
at intervals on the higher grounds; they consist of four long stout poles
planted in the earth, and supporting a timber floor, which is sometimes
sheltered by a roof of timber. These are the observatories, the prospect-
towers of the Cossacks, who can thus obtain a survey over an immense
sweep of country, and exchange signals with one another. The horsemen
always remain stationed under the platform, ready to leap into the saddle
and to gallop wherever their presence may be required.

Cossack Horsemen in the Steppes.

In the Steppes of the Caspian Sea the Cossacks give place to the
Kalmüks, or Olöts, a people of the Mongolic race, who originally inhabited
Turkistan, but abandoned that country, in 1778, for the banks of the Volga.

Their life is wholly nomadic. They encamp under tents called kibitkas,
formed of a trellis-work of wood covered with thick felt. In stature they do
not often exceed the middle height; they are thin and ugly, with a swarthy
skin, a large flat countenance, little eyes, broad nose, thick lips, and frizzled
beard. They are inoffensive, hospitable like all Eastern people, but idle and
cunning. Their costume differs but little from that of the Tartars-Nogáis.
They profess the Lamaii religion, and obey the chiefs whom they
themselves elect, and who bear the title of khans. The Russian Government
levies among the Kalmük tribes encamped on its territory a body of
irregular troops, whom it employs in the defence of its eastern and southern
frontiers.
According to Madame de Hell, the Kalmüks are as friendly as the
Cossacks in their reception of a stranger. “The last encampment,” she says,
“where we passed the night, appeared to us one of the most considerable
which we had hitherto met with. The country, almost transformed, was no
longer saddened by the great sandy plains of the Caspian Sea and the
Manitch.... Herds of horses, camels, and oxen furrowed the surface of the
Steppe, announcing the wealth of the hordes to which they belonged. No
hostile manifestation on the part of the latter occurred to disturb our
security. Happy in receiving us in the very midst of their tents, these good
Kalmüks never attempted to rob us even of the most trifling article. Their
desires and their wants are so limited! To tame a wild horse, to roam from
one Steppe to another on their camels, to smoke, and to drink koumis, to
shut out the cold airs of winter with smoke and ashes, and to observe
devoutly the superstitious practices of a religion which they cannot
understand—such is their whole life.”
At intervals, the traveller who crosses the Steppes of the Caspian
encounters with astonishment, in the most dreary localities, far from every
Cossack village and Kalmük kibitka, a group of men, women, and children
with bronzed complexions, with features strongly defined, covered with
squalid and grotesque rags, dragging their naked feet over the damp and
burning soil, and leading small vehicles loaded with implements and
utensils of every kind. He easily recognizes in these beings of sinister mien,
audacious mendicants, skilful thieves, musicians, blacksmiths, conjurers—
what shall I say?—the débris, in a word, of that once great, and perhaps
powerful race, now so degraded and corrupt, whose problematical history is
the despair of the scholar. The scorn and mistrust of every nation—

impatient of all discipline, all education—without law, without religion,
without country—these men speak a language which none can understand.
Of their real name they are themselves ignorant, and they accept with
indifference that which is imposed upon them in different countries: in the
East, Romany; in Moldavia, Tsiganes; in Italy, Zingari; in Spain, Gilanos; in
France, Bohemians; in England, Gipsies.[35] The Germans call them
Zigeuner; the Dutch, expressively but intolerantly, Heathens; the Persians,
Sisech; the Hindus, Kavachee; the Danes and Swedes, Tatars; and the
Arabs, Haramé. Their origin has been a theme of speculation for centuries,
and all that seems certain, after a vast amount of research and discussion, is,
that the cradle of the race was India. To what Indian people they should be
affiliated is still doubtful; whether to the Zuts or Djalts of the north; the
Tshingani, who dwelt near the mouth of the Indus; or the Tshandalas,
chronicled by name in the laws of Menou.
We know that their first immigration into Europe occurred about the
close of the tenth century, for we find them referred to in a paraphrase of the
book of Genesis, written by an Austrian monk, about 1122. They are there
spoken of as “Ishmaelites and braziers, who go peddling through the wide
world, having neither house nor home, cheating the people with their tricks,
and secretly deceiving mankind.” In the fourteenth century a considerable
body settled in Wallachia, Hungary, and the island of Cyprus. Next, they
invaded Germany, broke into Switzerland, and appeared in Bologna and
other Italian cities. Like a besieging army they set down before Paris in
1427, but were not suffered to enter its precincts. A few years later they
crossed into England, and gradually they overspread the whole of Europe.
Their own account of themselves represented that they came from “Little
Egypt;” that about four thousand of their number had been compulsorily
baptized by the king, and condemned to seven years’ wanderings, while the
remainder had been slain. At first, their wealth, their pomp, and their
supposed penitence secured them a favourable reception; but when their
wealth was dissipated, their pomp decayed, and their penitence discovered
to be a sham, a storm of obloquy broke over their heads. Every European
government levelled the most arbitrary decrees against them, which
continued in force down to the middle of the eighteenth century. Various
attempts have since been made to civilize and incorporate them with the
general body of the population, but these have obtained a very limited
success. They still remain a race apart, with their own language (Romany

Tschib), their own traditions, their own customs, their distinct personal
characteristics. They still remain a race cursed with the curse of perpetual
restlessness; a mysterious impulse constrains them to wander; they live
secluded from all other peoples; an atmosphere of secrecy enshrouds their
inner life, their language, and their creed. They are gifted with a remarkable
love of and capacity for music, and a strange wild charm invests their own
gipsy-melodies. Their character is a grotesque combination of the most
opposite qualities; for they are brave and yet cowardly; revengeful, yet
loyal; treacherous, yet capable of the most passionate attachment; indolent,
yet energetic; chaste, yet fond of licentious songs and dances. In a word,
they are a problem to the ethnologist, the moralist, and the historical
student; and fence themselves about with so impenetrable a reserve, that we
may well doubt whether the full truth respecting them will ever be
ascertained.[36]
The Tsiganes or Romany are very numerous in Southern Russia. They
pass from town to town, from village to village, sometimes begging or
stealing, sometimes exercising their peculiar trades and industries, and
providing for their wants more honestly. They never establish themselves
permanently in any place. They halt wherever the evening shades may
chance to overtake them, stretch a few fragments of woollen stuff across the
poles of their vehicles to serve for tents, kindle a fire with herbs, twigs, and
dry branches, partly to cook their food, and partly to scare away the wild
beasts, and fling themselves down pell-mell to sleep on mats or the naked
earth. When morning dawns, they resume their life-long march—giving no
thought to the future, no dream to the past—without object, hope, or
purpose.

Night Encampment of Gipsies in the Steppe.

The Steppes of the interior of Asia, from the Aral river to the Ala-Tau
mountains, are occupied by the great nation of the Kirghiz, who have, from
time immemorial, been divided into the Great, Middle, and Little Hordes.
To the former belongs the territory north of the Ala-Tau, with portions of
China and Tartary. They are subject to the sovereigns of the countries in
which they dwell. The Middle Horde inhabits the district between the
Ishim, Irtish, Lake Balkhush, and Khokan. The Little (and far most
numerous) Horde wanders over the grassy plains bounded by the Yamba
and the Ural, Turkistan (now a Russian province), and the country of the
Middle Horde (or Siberian Kirghizes). Altogether, the Kirghizes number
upwards of one and a quarter million of souls. They are of Turco-Tartaric
origin, and Southern Siberia is their mother country.[37]
Though owing a nominal allegiance to the Russian Czar and the Chinese
Emperor, they are virtually independent, and obey only their sultans or
chiefs. They are frequently at war. Many live wholly by brigandage;
suddenly descending, under cover of night, upon the richest aouls, or
villages, slaying all who resist, and carrying off horses, cattle, and all
objects of value, and men, women and children, whom they sell as slaves.
These nocturnal razzias are designated, in the Kirghiz language, barantas.

The yourt, or tent of these nomades, resembles the kibitka of the
Kalmüks. We borrow a description of one belonging to a Kirghiz chief from
Mr. Atkinson’s entertaining pages.
“It was formed,” he says,[38] “of willow trellis-work, put together with
untanned strips of skin, made into compartments which fold up. It was a
circle of thirty-four feet in diameter, five feet high to the springing of the
dome, and twelve feet in the centre. This dome is formed of bent rods of
willow, one and a quarter inch diameter, put into the mortice-hole of a ring
about four feet across, which secures the top of the dome, admits light, and
lets out the smoke. The lower ends of the willow-rods are tied with leathern
thongs to the top of the trellis-work at the sides, which renders it quite
strong and secure. The whole is then covered with large sheets of voilock,
made of wool and camel’s hair, fitting close, making it water-tight and
warm. A small aperture in the trellis-work forms a doorway, over which a
piece of voilock hangs down and closes it; but in the daytime this is rolled
up and secured on the top of the yourt.
“The furniture and fittings of these dwellings are exceedingly simple; the
fire being made on the ground in the centre of the yourt, directly opposite to
the door voilocks are spread: on these stand sundry boxes, which contain the
different articles of clothing, pieces of Chinese silk, tea, dried fruits, ambas
of silver (small squares, about two and a half inches long, one inch and a
half wide, and about three-tenths of an inch thick). Some of the Kirghiz
possess large quantities of these ambas, which are carefully hoarded up.
Above these boxes are bales of Bokharian and Persian carpets, some of
great beauty and value. In another part of the yourt is the large koumis sack,
completely covered up with voilock to keep it warm and aid the
fermentation.
“And near this bag stands a large leathern bottle, sometimes holding four
gallons, often much ornamented; so are the small bottles made to carry on
the saddle. In another place stands the large iron caldron, and the trivet on
which it is placed when used for cooking in the yourt. There are usually
half-a-dozen Chinese wooden bowls, often beautifully painted and
japanned. These are used to drink the koumis from; some of them hold three
pints, others more. On entering a Kirghiz yourt in summer, one of the
Chinese bowls full of koumis is presented to each guest. It is considered
impolite to return the vessel before emptying it, and a good Kirghiz is never
guilty of this impropriety.

“The saddles are placed on the bales of carpets. Rich horse-trappings
being highly prized by the wealthy Kirghiz, many of their saddles are
beautiful and costly. If of Kirghiz workmanship, they are decorated with
silver inlaid on iron, in chaste ornamental designs, and have velvet
cushions; the bridles and other trappings covered with small iron plates
inlaid in the same manner.
“Leathern thongs and ropes made of camel’s hair are hung up on the
trellis-work, common saddles, saddle-cloths, and leathern tchimbar. This
part of a Kirghiz costume is frequently made of black velvet, splendidly
embroidered with silk, more especially the back elevation.”
Such is the dwelling of a Kirghiz chief in the Steppe.

Kirghiz Aoul Or Villager.

The national garment of the Kirghiz is the khalat, a kind of pelisse, very
long and very full, with large sleeves, in silk or cashmere, and of the most
dazzling colours; but the poorer warriors substitute for this state dress a
horse-skin jacket. Breeches fastened below the hips by a girdle of wool or
cashmere, high-heeled madder-coloured boots, and a fox-skin cap, rising
into a cone on the top, and lined inside with crimson cloth, complete his
costume. His weapons are the spear, the gun, the axe, and the cutlass. The
women wear a long and copious robe, and a veil of numerous folds,

surmounted by a lofty calico head-dress, a part of which falls over the
shoulders and covers up the neck.
The Kirghiz are fierce, cunning, and often cruel, but the life of a guest is
esteemed sacred. They have not so much respect, however, for his property,
and do not always resist the temptation of plundering him of any article
which suits their fancy. Equestrian exercises and falconry are their favourite
amusements. They love the chase, indeed, with a true sportsman’s passion;
they love it for itself rather than for the game it secures, for they have no
greater dainty than a dish of mutton. Their mode of preparing this viand is
exquisitely simple. They content themselves with skinning the animal,
cutting it into quarters, and plunging it into a pot, where they keep it boiling
in a great quantity of water for a couple of hours. Generally, to prevent the
loss of any portion, they cook with the meat the animal’s intestines, without
even taking the trouble of cleaning them. The guests arrange themselves in
a circle on carpets of felt; the men in the foremost rank, the women and
children behind them. The smoking quarters of mutton are removed from
the pot; each man draws his knife, slashes off a slice, eats a portion, and
passes the remainder to his wife and children, who speedily finish it. The
dogs come in for the bones. Afterwards, bowls of the liquor in which the
meat has been boiled are handed round, and not a Kirghiz but swallows the
greasy broth with delight. This broth, koumis, and tea are his customary
drink; the tea is not made in the European fashion, but becomes a veritable
soup, prepared with milk, flour, butter, and salt. In every well-to-do aoul the
women keep constantly upon the fire a vessel full of this beverage, which
they offer to visitors, just as the Turks serve up coffee, the Spaniards,
chocolate, and the French, wine.

To the north of the Great Horde, in the government of Irkutsk (Siberia),
we meet with the Agro-Mongolian people of the Buriäts, numbering about
35,000 families. They are given to Chamanism, an idolatrous worship
widely spread through Eastern Siberia. Their supreme divinity inhabits the
sun, and reigns over a host of lesser gods.

Finally, between Lake Baïkal and the Altaï Mountains to the north, the
Ala-Tau mountains west, the Great Wall of China south, and the sea east,
stretches the immense territory commonly known as Mongolia, and

inhabited in part by the tribes which represent the Mongol type in all its
primitive purity. This great desert, where grassy lands alternate with dry and
sandy or saline plains, was formerly the seat of a flourishing empire,
established by Chingis-Khán in 1227, which gave birth to the three Mongol
kingdoms of Krim, Kasan, and Astrachan. Mongolic empires, at a later
period, arose in China, Turkistan, Siberia, Southern Russia, and Persia. The
Mongolian dynasty lost its hold on China in 1360, and a century later was
driven out of Russia. In Central Asia it was rehabilitated in 1369, by the
illustrious Timur; but a hundred years afterwards the empire was again
crushed by its own weight. Baber, a descendant of Timur, conquered India,
and erected there a Mongolian throne, which endured until the soldiers of
Great Britain defeated Tippoo Saib and captured Delhi. Most Mongolic
tribes are now under the rule of the nations whom they once had conquered,
the Tungusic sovereigns of China, the Russian Czars, and the Turkish
Sultans.[39]
The ruins of Mongolian grandeur are still visible in those solitary cities,
which the traveller in the desert discovers half overwhelmed in sand. “We
met,” says the Abbé Huc, “with an imposing and majestic memorial of
antiquity. It was a great city, desolate and abandoned. The crenellated
ramparts, the watch-towers, the four great gates, situated at the four cardinal
points, were all in perfect preservation; but all was buried three-fourths
deep in the ground, and covered with a thick sward. We entered its vast
precinct with a profound emotion of awe and melancholy. We saw neither
débris nor ruins, but only the outline of a beautiful and spacious city,
wrapped in grass and weeds as in a funeral shroud.” Similar relics of the
past are scattered over the deserts of Mongolia, but everything connected
with their origin is enveloped in shadow.
The Mongolian family includes several branches, each subdivided into
tribes, obeying chiefs of unequal rank. The most numerous people are the
Kalkas, who occupy all the northern districts. The Mongols of the south,
dwelling near the Great Wall, have been affected in their habits and
manners by the neighbourhood of the Chinese; they have become
industrious, and engage eagerly in commercial affairs. But the Kalkas, and
the other tribes of the Great Gobi, are still nomadic, reckless, and indolent.
Their religion is Buddhism; they profess for its head, the living Buddha or
Great Lama (Dalai-lama, or Ocean-priest—i.e., wide as the ocean), a
reverence and a blind obedience, which they also pay to the inferior lamas.

“Under an external aspect of savagery,” says Huc, “the Mongol hides a
character full of mildness and kindly feeling; he passes suddenly from the
wildest and most extravagant gaiety to a sadness which has nothing
forbidding. Timid to excess in his ordinary life, when impelled by
fanaticism or revenge, he displays an irresistible impetuosity of courage. He
is simple and credulous as a child, and passionately loves stories and
legends of the marvellous.”
The Mongols are ugly in feature, of the middle height, agile and robust;
their sight is wonderfully keen, their hearing of an extraordinary acuteness.
[40] Their wants are restricted to the indispensable necessities of life; of
luxury they have no conception; their few pleasures are easily enjoyed; their
instincts lead them rather in the path of good than of evil, and their defects,
to use an expression of M. Huc’s, are those of ill-trained children. They
need, perhaps, but a well-directed impulse to develop their intellect, and
guide them onward to a far higher civilization. In the great human family, it
is true that as yet they do but fill the children’s place, and it is impossible to
say whether their national genius is capable of any great or lasting work.

BOOK II.

THE DESERTS OF SAND:—THE DESERTS OF EUROPE AND
AFRICA.

CHAPTER I.

THE RAINLESS DESERT—THE BED OF A SEA—THE DEAD SEA.
HE Sandy Deserts may with equal, nay, with greater accuracy, be
entitled Salt Deserts, Rainless Deserts, Seas of Sand; for they
present at one and the same time all these characters, and the three
last, though less generally known than the first, are the most
essential.
The soil is generally covered with a thick stratum of sand; but in several
places it also exhibits great walls of rock, and in others masses of rolled or
shattered pebbles. The subsoil is nearly always of a gypseous or calcareous
nature, rarely clayey; wherever it is porous and permeable, it is impregnated
with salt, which rises to the surface, or is held in solution in the
subterranean basins of water, the thermal springs, the ponds, and the lakes.
The saline efflorescences of the deserts of Persia and Oriental Asia not only
suffice for the wants of the inhabitants, but supply the great Asiatic
caravans with their principal article of exportation.
The atmosphere of the Deserts is not less dry than their sands and rocks.
The sky wears a perennial azure, more or less veiled in haze, or rather
spotted with a few clouds. Johnstone represents them, in his admirable
“Physical Atlas,” by two white unequal bands, characterised as “Rainless
Districts.” Of these the larger occupies all the northern region of Africa, and
the greater portion of Arabia, Syria, Persia, and Beloochistan, embracing an
area of 80° of longitude over 17° of latitude. The other extends over the
table-lands of Thibet and the Gobi. It is in form an irregular ellipsis,
obliquely inclined from south-west to north-east. Its length is about 1100

leagues; its width, 450. From the former it is only separated by a narrow
belt. In the region marked by these two species rain is an extraordinary
phenomenon; several years will pass without the clouds shedding a single
drop of water. This permanent, and nearly absolute, aridity, establishes a
very marked difference between the Deserts properly so called, and the
Landes, Steppes, and Prairies, condemned as these are during the hot season
to a deadly dryness, but in winter inundated with rain or covered with snow;
and in spring converted into immense marshes, where an exuberant
vegetation makes its appearance, frequently capable of resisting the action
of the summer sun and the withering winds.
In the Rainless Districts vegetation is a nullity; it becomes reduced to a
very small number of saline plants and dwarf bushes, nourished by the
brackish waters which, the soil conceals. Finally, the desert region may not
only be compared to a sea in its aspect and immensity, but it is a true sea, or
at least the bed of an ancient sea, which formerly communicated, and,
perhaps, was confounded with the Mediterranean, and whose drying up,
though still incomplete, took place at a recent geological epoch. We may
reasonably conclude that, owing to a series of gradual upheavals, this sea
was at first broken up into vast lagoons; that most of these successively
disappeared, but not without leaving some certain evidences of the
primitive submersion of the continent. “If we might hazard a conjecture,”
says a recent writer,[41] “it would be that the same convulsions and
upheavals which at the close of the tertiary epoch indented the southern
coasts of Europe, at the same time drained the ocean which hitherto had
rolled over the plains of the Sahara, and submerged the low-lying lands,
which probably united the Canaries and Madeira to the mainland.” To a
similar cause must be attributed the existence of the subterranean waters,
springs, ponds, and salt lakes, of which I have already spoken, and of the
inland seas—the Caspian, the Sea of Aral, and the Dead Sea; while the
Black Sea and its offshoots, the Sea of Azov and the Sea of Marmora, must
have had the same origin. I shall discuss this subject further when
describing the Great Sahara.
In Eastern and Central Asia, the Sandy or Salt Deserts alternate with the
Steppes, and with lands susceptible of a certain amount of cultivation. The
vast region which geographers designate the Great Gobi, or the Shamo, is
intersected by many grassy Steppes and even by fertile fields, where the
sedentary Mongols, and especially the Artons, yearly sow and gather hemp,

millet, and buckwheat. The sombre picture of “a barren plain of shifting
sand blown into high ridges where the summer sun is scorching, no rain
falls, and when thick fog occurs it is only the precursor of fierce winds,”[42]
is true only of special districts, such as the Han-hai, or “Dry Sea,” or the
Desert of Sarkha. There, for instance, we meet with no other vegetable than
the salsolæ, or salt-worts, which flourish around the small saline pools. Of
these pools, when seen from a distance, Mr. Atkinson notices a remarkable
characteristic: the salt crystals which accrete upon their banks frequently
reflect the orange or crimson hues of flowers, and resemble glowing rubies
set in a rich mounting.
As we advance in a south-easterly direction, we find the features of the
desert region more prominently marked.
Immense plains of sand, with a bare and brackish surface, called
Bejaban, traverse the whole of Persia, from the Caspian Sea to the Indus.
They comprise the Deserts of Kerusan, Seistan, Beloochistan, and Mekran,
rich in salts with a basis of soda. “The coasts of the Persian Gulf,” as Mrs.
Somerville remarks, “are burning hot sandy solitudes, so completely barren,
that the country from Bassora to the Indus, a distance of 1200 miles, is
nearly a sterile waste. Three-tenths of Persia is a desert, and the tableland is
nearly a wide scene of desolation. A great salt-desert occupies 27,000
square miles between Irak and Khorasan, of which the soil is a stiff clay,
covered with efflorescence of common salt and nitre, often an inch thick,
varied only by a few saline plants and patches of verdure in the hollows.
This dreary waste joins the large sandy and equally dreary desert of
Kerman. Khelat, the capital of Beloochistan, is 7000 feet above the level of
the sea; round it there is cultivation, but the greater part of that country is a
lifeless plain, over which the brick-red sand is drifted by the north wind into
ridges like the waves of the sea, often twelve feet high, without a vestige of
vegetation. The blast of the desert, whose hot and pestilential breath is fatal
to man and animals, renders these dismal sands impassable at certain
seasons.”
The Desert of Mekran is separated from that of Moultan by the Indus.
That which lies to the east of Kom, in the centre of Persia, is more than
sixty leagues in extent. Of Persia, M. Forgues observes that the actual
reality differs strangely from those glowing eastern landscapes which poets
and romancists love to paint. Even in those provinces where the winter rains

encourage the growth of vegetation, the scene would hardly remind the
traveller of
“That delightful province of the Sun.
The first of Persian lands he shines upon,
Where all the loveliest children of his beam.
Flowerets and fruits, blush over every stream.”[43]

“To bare, dry mountain-ridges,” says M. Forgues, “succeed plains,
sometimes incrusted with hard clay, sometimes clothed with thick sand. At
the outset of spring, in the months of April and May, the country is coloured
with some softer tints, the grass breaks here and there through the granite
and the gravel; but in the first summer heats everything grows dry, and the
soil resumes its monotonously brown or gray livery. Water fails for
cultivation, which in the best districts is confined to a few scattered oases.
In these vast spaces, when the eye surveys them from some mountain-crest,
there occurs nothing to arrest the gaze; and when once the spring has past,
the cultured fields become blended with those which the plough has
suffered to lie fallow, the clay-built villages with the earth of which their
walls are constructed. In these confused landscapes even a considerable
town scarcely traces its blurred outline among the accumulated ruins in
whose centre it persists in living, and whose extent attests its decadence. It
is a marvel if, on arriving at the limit of these monotonous plains, the
traveller distinguishes them from the deserts to whose threshold they have
generally conducted him. He only recognizes the latter by the dazzling
gleam of their saline efflorescence, which stretches far out of sight, and
where at intervals abruptly projects some mass of ebon-black rock,
transformed by the solar refraction, and assuming in quick succession the
most fantastic aspects.”
I have spoken of the inland seas and salt lakes which testify to the
primitive submersion of the whole region of the Great Deserts. Let us
pursue our route towards the west, and we shall encounter the most
remarkable of these vestiges of a remote past.
First, I shall speak of the Dead Sea, the Lake Asphaltes, which Dean
Stanley justly designates “one of the most remarkable spots in the world,”
and which, as the reader knows, is situated in the south of Palestine, at a
short distance from Jerusalem. It is true that “a great mass of legend and
exaggeration, partly the effect, partly the cause, of the old belief that the

cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were buried under the Dead Sea, has been
gradually removed in recent years. The glittering surface of the lake, with
the thin mist of its own evaporations floating over its surface, will now no
more be taken for a gloomy sea, sending forth sulphurous exhalations. The
birds which pass over it without injury have long ago destroyed the belief
that no living creature could survive the baneful atmosphere which hung
upon its waters.” But still, for the scientific no less than for the historical
student, it possesses an absorbing interest. It is the most depressed sheet of
water in the world, lying fully thirteen hundred feet below the level of the
Mediterranean: as the Lake Sir-i-Kol, where the Oxus rises
“In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere,”

is the most elevated.[44] “Its basin,” to quote Dean Stanley’s graphic
description, “is a steaming caldron—a bowl which, from the peculiar
temperature and deep cavity in which it is situated, can never be filled to
overflowing. The river Jordan, itself exposed to the same withering
influences, is not copious enough to furnish a supply equal to the demand
made by the rapid evaporation. Its excessive saltness is even more
remarkable than its deep depression. This peculiarity is, it is believed,
mainly occasioned by the huge barrier of fossil-salt at its south-west corner,
and heightened by the rapid evaporation of the fresh water poured into it.
Other like phenomena, though in a less striking form, exist elsewhere. But,
without entering into its wider relations, this aspect is important, as that
which most forcibly impressed the sacred writers. To them it was ‘the salt
sea,’ and nothing more. They exhibit hardly a trace of the exaggerations of
later times. And so it is in fact. It is not gloom, but desolation, which is the
prevailing characteristic of the Sea of Death. Follow the course of the
Jordan to its end. How different from the first burst of its waters in Mount
Hermon, amongst the groves of Dan and Paneas! How different from the
‘riotous prodigality of life’ which has marked its downward course, almost
to the very termination of its existence! Gradually, within the last mile from
the Dead Sea, its verdure dies away, and the river melts into its grave in a
tame and sluggish stream; still, however, of sufficient force to carry its
brown waters far into the bright green sea. Along the desert shore the white
crust of salt indicates the cause of sterility. Thus the few living creatures
which the Jordan washes down into the waters of the sea are destroyed.
Hence arises the unnatural buoyancy and the intolerable nausea to taste and

touch, which raise to the highest pitch the contrast between its clear, bitter
waves, and the soft, fresh, turbid stream of its parent river. Strewn along its
desolate margin lie the most striking memorials of this last conflict of life
and death: trunks and branches of trees, torn down from the thickets of the
river-jungle by the violence of the Jordan, thrust out into the sea, and
thrown up again by its waves, dead and barren as itself. The dead beach
shelves gradually into the calm waters. A deep haze—that which to earlier
ages gave the appearance of the ‘smoke going up for ever and ever’—veils
its southern extremity, and almost gives it the dim horizon of a real sea. In
the nearer view rises the low island close to its northern end, and the long
promontory projecting from the eastern side, which divides it into its two
unequal parts. This is all that I saw, and all that most pilgrims and travellers
have seen, of the Dead Sea.”[45]
The sinister aspect of the valley of the Jordan, especially at the
embouchure of the river, impresses itself on the mind of every spectator.
There the traveller finds the path narrowed between two abrupt gigantic
walls. On the right rises the Arabian chain, black and perpendicular; on the
left, the Judæan range, less elevated, more irregular, and resembling a
dismantled ruin. “The valley comprised between these two chains,” says the
Père Laorty-Hadji, “exhibits a soil closely resembling the bed of a sea
which has long been dry. You can discern but a few stunted trees. Ruined
towns and castles appear in the distance. At the moment of flinging itself
into the Dead Sea, the Jordan itself, traversing a muddy soil, changes its
physiognomy and colour. It seems to drag reluctantly, towards the
motionless lake, a burden of slow and tawny waters. The shores of the Dead
Sea are low on the east and west; to the north and south high mountains
enclose it.” “These mountains, separated by a formidable cleft, exhibit their
beds of red sandstone, overlain by a thick stratum of compact chalk,
interrupted by silicious fragments. One is surprised not to see a volcanic
crater, when all about, in this convulsed site, the action of fire is visible—
the violent, bitter struggle of the two Neptunian and Plutonian principles,
which, during the geological eras, contended for the empire of the world.
One might say that here the two antagonistic forces exhausted themselves,
that they have equally lost their potency; so much so, that at the close of the
combat all has sunk into the silence and immobility of death. And who
knows if the volcanic crater, whose absence at first astonishes the observer,
is not the Dead Sea itself? Is it unreasonable to admit that after the upheaval

of the mountains which inclose it, and which a terrible explosion of
subterranean fire will have separated, the neighbouring waters were
precipitated into and swallowed up in the yawning gulf which they still fill
to-day?... This hypothesis is so much the more probable, because in this
fire-scathed region the lake affords manifest indications of an igneous
travail even now accomplishing itself sullenly in the bowels of the globe.
We know that its name of Lake Asphaltites is due to the semi-fluid
bituminous matter which constantly rises to its surface and accumulates on
its shores. With the vapours exhaled by this bitumen under the influence of
heat, mingle sulphurous and ammoniacal exhalations, which render the
atmosphere of the Dead Sea dangerous to breathe.”[46]
Before 1835 no one had ventured upon its waters. An Irish traveller,
named Cottingham, was their first navigator; but after a five days’ voyage
he returned to Jerusalem, and died of exhaustion. Two years later Messrs.
Moore and Beke made a new attempt. For several days they withstood the
pestilential exhalations of the lake, and succeeded in proving the deep
depression of its basin; but at length, both of them being taken ill, they were
compelled to cut short their explorations. In 1847 the enterprise was
undertaken by a Frenchman—Lieutenant Molyneux—who sounded it in
many places, but was speedily carried off by fever. The following year
Lieutenant Lynch, of the American navy, embarked on the lake in iron
boats, with competent crews. He navigated its waters for three weeks; but
all who composed the expedition were more or less severely attacked, and
one of them, Lieutenant Deane, succumbed.

THE DEAD SEA.

Though, as we have said, geographical research has dissipated most of
the wild stories formerly accepted in reference to the peculiarly fatal
concomitants of the Dead Sea, it well deserves its expressive name. It is a
dead sea: it has neither the ocean’s living movement nor deep-sounding
roar; the surf and the spray never sparkle on its rocks; that “multitudinous
laughter” which Homer ascribes to the sea is wholly wanting; the wind
never wakes a smile on its passive and sombre countenance. By its shores
one might realize Shelley’s mournful wish, and feel
“In the warm air
His cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o’er his dying brain its last monotony.”[47]

It is lifeless, untenanted; the fish found there, and brought down by the
Jordan, are dead. Unlike the Caspian, it is never stirred by the whirr of
wings—by the flight of gulls, or pelicans, or sea-mews. The migratory birds
sweep across it without even a pause, without seeking the prey which they
could not find. Its waters are denser than those of other seas: their
constituents are different, and mingled in different proportions.
Laorty-Hadji is mistaken in his idea that they repose on a bed of rock
salt. Rock salt is the chloride of sodium in a nearly pure condition. But the

Dead Sea holds in solution a comparatively small portion of this salt, mixed
with large proportions of other salts. Its water was analyzed for the first
time in 1778 by Lavoiser, Macquer, and Sage. Experiments have also been
made by Arcet, Klaproth, Gmelin, Gay-Lussac, and, more recently, by
Boussingault. According to the latter, it contains:—
Chloride of magnesium, 10.7288
Chloride of sodium, 6.4964
Chloride of calcium, 3.5592
Chloride of potassium, 1.6110
Bromide of magnesium, 0.3306
Sulphate of lime, 0.0424
Sal-ammoniac, .0013
Water, 77.2303
100.0000
It will be seen that it possesses neither chloride of manganese nor chloride
of aluminium, no nitrates, and no iodines; that it is, therefore, not sea water,
properly so called, but a mineral water sui generis.
The enormous proportion of saline matter accounts for its exceptional
density, and justifies the assertion of travellers that a man floats upon its
surface like a log of wood; though we can hardly credit the statement of
Pococke that it is impossible to sink to the bottom. Its gravity undoubtedly
endows it with extraordinary buoyancy, and to dive to any considerable
depth is a matter of difficulty; but in the Dead Sea, as in other seas, man
must employ his strength and skill to keep his body afloat.

CHAPTER II.

ARABIA DESERTA AND ARABIA PETRÆA.
THE traveller who starts from the southern extremity of the Dead Sea
encounters a succession of deserts. To the east extend wide plains, covered
with ruins, where upwards of thirty cities are to be traced in their decay, like
Palmyra, by the trunks of shattered columns and the wrecks of desecrated

temples. This is the once flourishing country of the Nabatheans, now
haunted by some tribes of Idumean Arabs. One might not inappropriately
call it the vestibule of Arabia Deserta; a name applicable to all the central
and southern districts—that is to say, to nearly three-fourths of the Arabian
peninsula. There the sea of sand reveals itself in all its nakedness, in all its
horrors; with its implacable sky and fiery atmosphere, its sandy billows, its
masses of salt, and, in certain places, with its hidden quicksands capable of
devouring entire armies. The Desert of Akhaf, situated towards the
extremity of the peninsula, conceals, it is said, several of these abysses,
where the hapless traveller, if he set his foot upon them, would be instantly
swallowed up. Thus even the Arabs regard it with an unconquerable dread.
It owes its name to a Saffite king who would fain have traversed it with his
troops, and who saw them perish therein even to the last man. The tradition
does not inform us how he himself escaped this immense disaster.

CARAVAN IN THE DESERT.

A European traveller, Baron de Wrede, undertook nevertheless, some
twenty-five years ago, to penetrate into this soul-appalling desert, and
attempted to measure the extent and depth of one of these abysses. Starting
in the morning from Saba, under the guidance of a few Bedouins, he
reached, after six hours’ marching, the threshold of the desert of Akhaf.

“A sandy plain, extending as far as the eye could reach,” he says, “and
upon which arose innumerable hills in the semblance of waves,—such was
the scene presented to my gaze. Not the least trace of vegetation was
perceptible; not a bird interrupted with its song the tomb-like silence which
prevailed around the graves of the Sabean army. I remarked three tracts
distinguished by a dazzling whiteness. ‘Yonder are the abysses,’ said the
Bedouins; ‘they are inhabited by the spirits who have covered with this
deceitful sand the treasures intrusted to their charge. He who dares approach
them will assuredly be dragged down under the sand! Do not venture
there!’
“Naturally, I paid no attention to this counsel; on the contrary, I
demanded to be guided towards them, according to agreement. Two hours
were consumed by our camels in reaching the bottom of the plateau, where
we arrived at sunset, taking up our quarters for the night on the lee side of
two enormous rocks. On the following day I insisted that the Bedouins
should guide me over these tracts. My trouble was in vain; fear rendered
them unable to utter a word. Furnished with a plumb-lead weighing about a
pound and a quarter, to which was attached a rope nearly 350 yards in
length, I accomplished this dangerous enterprise. I occupied thirty-six
minutes in reaching the first abyss; it was thirty-six feet long by twenty-six
feet broad, and formed an inclined plain towards the centre, about six feet
deep, which I attributed to the action of the wind. I approached at first with
the utmost precaution, in order to examine the sand, and found it to be
almost impalpable. I cast my plumb-lead as far as I could; it disappeared
immediately; however, the rapidity with which the rope shortened gradually
diminished; in five minutes, it had wholly disappeared.”
Baron de Wrede has made no attempt to account for this strange
phenomenon, which is not, I may add, peculiar to Arabia. The late Doctor
Cloquet, who for many years acted as chief physician to the Shah of Persia,
relates that he had seen similar gulfs in the great Salt Desert, which he
considered to occupy the place of lakes suddenly vanished. This hypothesis
is certainly admissible, and perhaps very probable; but while in some
degree explaining the existence of these abysses of sand, it raises fresh
questions which are by no means easily answered; for instance, why have
these lakes disappeared, and why have they been replaced by this
impalpable and incoherent dust in which heavy bodies sink as in a void?

Consider, moreover, the remarks made by Doctor Cloquet in a letter
addressed in 1851 to the Academy of Medicine at Paris:—
“At fifteen parasangs from Teheran,[48] commences the Salt Desert,
which, from east to west, extends to the very frontiers of India. This
immense basin, eastward, has no other limits than the horizon; to the west,
to the north, to the south, it is bounded by hills of sand which completely
represent the Dunes of France. The soil, of a fawn-coloured yellow, is
composed of clay and sand, exactly resembling the mud which occupies the
bottom of a dried-up basin. It is said that at many points a man on
horseback will disappear without his body being ever again discovered.[49] I
have seen one of these places, near Sivas; the soil is everywhere
impregnated with salt mingled with nitre, which crystallizes on the surface.
For the rest, if you dig two or three inches deep, you find water, though
very brackish in quality. The general opinion is that the desert was once
occupied by a sea, which suddenly disappeared on the night that
Mohammed was born. And it seems to me that there is no reason to doubt
this sudden disappearance, since even in our own days, and only a few
years ago, the salt lake of Ourmiah (Urumiyeh), in the province of
Azerbaïdjan, vanished completely for twenty-four hours; it is true that the
waters emerged again from their subterranean basin. I think it almost
absolutely demonstrated, from inspection of these localities, that at a remote
epoch this sea communicated with the Caspian, and formed one united
basin of water. I am not sure but that in the south it also communicated with
the Indian Sea, for I have not travelled in that direction. The apparition of
the Elburz chain has cloven the two basins, and the sea, receiving only
inconsiderable streams, insensibly receded, until the day when it was
wholly dried up, leaving only two lakes: one, the lake of Sivas, which
disappeared in the seventh century; the other, the lake of Seistan, which is
still extant, and receives several of the important rivers of Afghanistan. At
all events, the great sea itself had disappeared some generations prior to the
epoch of Alexander.
“The great humidity of the soil,” adds Doctor Cloquet, “struck me
vividly. Does not this humidity appear to indicate the presence of vast
subterranean sheets of water, which sweat, so to speak (transsuderaient),
through the porosities of the earth?”
The desert table-land of Nadjed, which fills all the central part of Asia, is
bounded on the west and south by the more fertile and fortunate countries

of the Hedjaz and the Hadramant, which skirt the Indian Ocean. To the
north-east lies the desert of the Tih, whose deep sand-drifts lie between
Palestine and the Isthmus of Suez, and which the Mediterranean washes on
the north, on the south-west the Gulf of Suez, and on the south-east the Gulf
of Akaba. This is the small triangular peninsula which was known to
ancient geographers as Arabia the Stony. A group of ever-famous
mountains, hallowed by the sublimest associations, Sinaï, Horeb, Jebel
Mûsa, Jebel Bestîn (St. Epistème), raise their granitic summits on the
southern point of this peninsula. “They are ‘the Alps’ of Arabia; but the
Alps planted in the desert, and therefore stripped of all the clothing which
goes to make up our notions of Swiss or English mountains; stripped of the
variegated drapery of oak, and birch, and pine and fir, of moss, and grass,
and fern; which to landscapes of European hills are almost as essential as
the rocks and peaks themselves.” Sinaï, or St. Catherine, the loftiest peak in
the range, reaches an elevation of 8160 feet. It is so closely connected with
Mount Horeb, to the north, that the two mountains really seem but one.
Ravines, and narrow valleys planted with palm-trees, thorny acacias,
tamarisks, and some other shrubs, wind between the abrupt trunks of this
grand chain. In one of these valleys stands the Monastery of the
Transfiguration, and on Mount Horeb rises the Church of St. Catherine, a
shrine held in great esteem by devout Greeks. The pilgrims ascend on their
knees a large staircase laboriously constructed by the monks.
I have no space to recapitulate the sublime historic memories which
invest these solemn heights with an interest of their own. The presence of
the Almighty has clothed their summits with a glory that might not be
borne; the thunders of the Most High have echoed through their deep dark
valleys. At their base the people of Israel watched and waited while Moses
received from Heaven the code which thenceforth determined their
religious and civil polity. Down the side of yonder mighty peak came their
Prophet and Leader, his face bright with a radiance such as was never
before on the face of mortal man. They were the scene of a singularly
unique history; by which, as Dean Stanley remarks, “the fate of the three
surrounding nations—Egypt, Arabia, Palestine—and through them the fate
of the whole world, has been determined.”

Mount Sinai.

The locality, consecrated by such glorious associations, is also rich in
geological interest. It exhibits indubitable traces of the great volcanic
convulsions which have so profoundly shaken the shores of the Dead Sea,
and which still growl sullenly under the accumulated rocks. In the time of
Procopius, the legend runs that men fled from Sinaï on account of the
gruesome noises which haunted it; and modern travellers, notably Stutzen
and Gray, declare that they have heard at intervals a sound comparable to
the dull heavy throbbing of a Cyclops’ pulse. It might be said that one of the
vast arteries which provide for the circulation of the ever boiling and
seething flood of lava of our globe passes in this direction at an
insignificant depth below the surface. The springs of thermal waters which
well out at the mountain-base, the masses of bitumen and lava scattered
over the soil, the gigantic rocks which bristle over the whole desert of El-
Tîh, and whose hue, to adopt the expression of a modern traveller, is that of
calcined and fire-scathed matter, are sufficient evidence that this country
has been the theatre of dreadful volcanic phenomena.
Messrs. Bida and Hachette describe a place named Wâdy-Nassoub,
situated a short distance from Sarabit-el-Kadim, on the road from Sinaï to
Suez. It is gained after traversing Ramleh (“the sandy”), a sandy ravine

which serves as a retreat for horrible black serpents, both big and little, and
for enormous lizards, and which is followed by a narrow valley. “Wâdy-
Nassoub,” according to these travellers, “is one of the most magnificent
spectacles we have ever seen. It is a circus of twenty to twenty-five leagues
in extent, surrounded by huge rocks arranged in successive terraces, and of
incomparable beauty of form and colour. Its arena is an immense sheet of
black basalt, furrowed here and there by torrents of yellow sand. A dazzling
sun kindles up this landscape, which is one of incredible splendour.”

LAKE BAUDOUIN (A SALT LAKE).

As you approach the Isthmus of Suez—which will soon be annihilated,
so to speak, by M. de Lesseps’ great ship-canal—the desert resumes the
character which we have seen it bear in Persia and Central Arabia. The
rocks, much rarer and less lofty, gradually give place to mountains of sand.
Salt lakes and fields of salt re-appear. Near the shores of the Mediterranean
lies a pool of salt, still known by that name of Lake Baudouin (Baldwin),
which the Crusaders imposed upon it. There the salt forms a firm and
tenacious crust, on which the camel safely plants its foot. Sometimes the
iron hoof of a horse breaks through, but beneath this first frail stratum it
meets with another of astonishing hardness. “You might think yourself,”
says a traveller, “on the Mer de Glace of Mont Blanc. Our camel-drivers

collected some large pieces from the surface. Nothing can be more brilliant
or more transparent than these crystals. It is by tasting them only that you
can distinguish them from rock crystal. As we advance, the impression
grows overpowering. A plain of dazzling whiteness surrounds us, and is
prolonged far beyond our ken. Dimly on the left may be perceived, like an
indigo-coloured ribbon, the line of the distant sea. The sky itself appears jet
black. The reverberation of sound is unendurable.” Still further, between
Suez and Cairo, the same traveller speaks admiringly of a natural
amphitheatre, enclosed between two mountain-spurs, and strewn with
débris of rock, and especially with petrified wood. It might be compared to
a forest-clearing which the woodmen had just quitted. The splinters are
quite fresh, the cloven fragments still expose the notches made by the axe.
Great trees, divided into beams, resemble long serpents which have been
slain by blows from a hatchet. The division is so clear that each gash
reveals the concentric tissues perfectly preserved by this mineral
embalming, this natural silification. Similar petrifactions may be seen in
abundance on the plateaux of the Makattam, and the amphitheatre now
described is not far from the hill, visited by every tourist, which has
received the name of the Petrified Forest.
Thus it appears that the Land Deserts, despite the proverbial monotony
of their aspect, do not fail to offer to the artist as well as the savant, the
philosopher no less than the historian, objects worthy of patient study.
Everywhere the handiwork of God and the evidences of Almighty design
awaken the admiration of the thoughtful. Whether the picture be sombre or
beautiful, grand or appalling, we see that it was conceived and filled up by
superhuman power. But we are now in Egypt, on the threshold of the
world’s vast deserts. Egypt, kept alive by the fertilizing and genial Nile, is
but an island in the great ocean of sand which encircles it, and which, far
more truly than the Red Sea or the Mediterranean, isolates it from the rest
of the globe.

CHAPTER III.

THE NUBIAN DESERT—THE GREAT SAHARA—DESERTS OF
AFRICA.
AS soon as we pass beyond the narrow borders of the Nile valley we
encounter the Desert. Egypt is, in fact, the Nile; the Nile makes, recreates,
preserves, fecundates Egypt, which, without this grand and ever-famous
river, would immediately cease to be.
“Everything in Egypt,” says Miss Martineau,[50] with equal truth and
eloquence, “life itself, and all that it includes, depends on the state of the
unintermitting conflict between the Nile and the Desert. The world has seen
many straggles; but no other so pertinacious, so perdurable, and so sublime
as the conflict of these two great powers. The Nile, ever young, because
perpetually renewing its youth, appears to the inexperienced eye to have no
chance, with its stripling force, against the great old Goliath, the Desert,
whose might has never relaxed from the earliest days till now; but the giant
has not conquered it. Now and then he has prevailed for a season, and the
tremblers whose destiny hung on the event have cried out that all was over;
but he has once more been driven back, and Nilus has risen up again to do
what we see him doing in the sculptures—bind up his water-plants about
the throne of Egypt.”
The traveller, ascending the famous river which has so long been mixed
up with an apparently insoluble geographical problem, sees the Desert
everywhere present; its yellow boundary-line is vividly traced against the
rich emerald-green of the fertile valley, and, as he advances, that line seems
to draw nearer and nearer, until the cultivated soil appears reduced to a
narrow strip on the river-bank. It has encroached upon many once
prosperous and busy sites, and buried deeply the memorials of the old
Egyptian civilization.
“Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Everywhere outside the valley of the Nile, I repeat, lies the Desert. West
of the Arabian chain of heights stretch the vast sandy plains frequented by
the Arab tribes of the Beni-Wassel and the Arabdé. Beyond the eastern
chain spread the Libyan Deserts, which, in the remote distance, merge into
the Great Sahara, and those of the Thebaïd, where the early Christian

anchorites found a dismal asylum. Lower, to the south of Egypt, extend the
Deserts of Lower Nubia.
Let us ascend the Nile as far as Korosko, on the right bank of the river,
and cross the huge chain of rocky hills which separates the cultivated zone
from the Desert to which the village just spoken of gives name. These hills,
all of equal elevation, assume the form of truncated cones. They are layers
of granite superimposed horizontally, and with a depth of colour which
makes them resemble at the first glance masses of basalt. They are
absolutely bare, and separated from each other by abrupt sinuous gorges,
whose bottom is covered deep in sand of golden lights, brought from the
desert on the wings of the south-west. Long streams of the same brilliant
sand descend the slopes opposed to the direction of the wind with graceful
undulations, which subside imperceptibly in the blown sand that carpets the
floor of these mysterious valleys. The crests of the hills can only be
distinguished by their different colours; some are lightly shaded with gray,
others with blue or green, and others again with rose or crimson. The reflets
of the setting sun on these uniform and many-coloured summits have a
marvellous splendour, lighting up the scene until it assumes a fairy aspect,
“And all puts on a gentle hue,
Hanging in the shadowy air,
Like a picture rich and rare.”

At certain times it would rather remind the spectator of another of
Coleridge’s conceptions:
“A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!”[51]

Yet the spectacle is generally one of a rare and peculiar loveliness. “If
nature,” says M. Trémaux,[52] “had invested with this kind of beauty our
verdurous fields of the West, they would have been veritable Edens; but to
produce, blend, and harmonize these inimitable hues, it requires, under the
last beams of the sun, the emanations from the heated sands and those
which the day has called into existence from the burning surfaces of the
denuded rocks. It is by the side of her greatest horrors nature places her
grandest beauties.”

The horror of the Desert does not lie only in its aridity, in its vacuity—
this vacuity is not absolute; in default of life, Death peoples its solitudes.
The glens or gorges frequented by the caravans are lined with stones,
symmetrically disposed at certain intervals. These stones mark the places
where rest the remains of the hapless pilgrims who have attempted to cross
the wilderness, and perished in the attempt. Round and about each rugged
tomb lie the skeletons of animals which none have troubled themselves to
bury in the sand. Frequently you may see, on the sandy wastes of Africa, or
the desolate plains of Asia and the New World, these carcasses laid out in
two interminable rows; indicating the gloomy track which should be
followed by the traveller, and never failing to remind him of the tribute
Death levies upon mankind in these accursed regions. Thus does the Desert
show itself more relentless than even the hungry ocean, which at least
devours its victims whole, and affronts the eye with no traces of its
murders. But the Moloch of the Desert has no shame; it cynically exposes
the hideous remains of those whom it has killed; it strews the earth with
their bones; it has its museums of skeletons, or rather of preserved animals.
M. Trémaux observed this curious phenomenon in the ravines of
Korosko, but it probably occurs elsewhere under similar conditions. On
closely examining the carcasses which he met at every step, he was
astonished to find them covered with their skin, and presenting still their
natural forms, as if the animals had been stuffed or embalmed. He readily
distinguished horses, oxen, asses, camels. He observed with no less surprise
that these corpses exhaled no odour. They had been dried by the heat before
decomposition could commence its frightful work. The skin had hardened;
the muscles and internal organs had been reduced into dust and gradually
blown away by the wind through the yawning apertures at the two
extremities of the body. There remained nothing more, literally, but skin and
bone.
“This skin had such a consistency,” says our author, “such a degree of
solidity, that all my efforts to split it were without result. The heaviest
stones which I could raise rebounded upon their carcasses with a loud noise,
but did not pierce them. If a man dies while a caravan is on its march, he is
buried in the sand. I have had no opportunity of examining whether the
desert-heat produces the same effect upon his body as upon the corpses of
the animals just mentioned; but it ought not to be so, since the human skin
has not the same consistency.”

On issuing from these gorges, we enter upon the Desert proper by a
sandy plain which the Djellahs have named the “River without Water,” and
which, very low at first, slowly rises into a plateau of very slight elevation,
intersected by some veins of a sandstone similar to that of the conical
mountains. Then the plain declines anew, and we emerge upon the Sea of
Sand, where the pulverized sandstone alternates with fields of rotted or
broken pebbles, and mounds of porphyry and granite. At the foot of one of
these mounds, the Tallat-el-Guindé, flourish a few wretched vegetables,
among others some gum-trees and doum-palms. The latter trees are also
found in solitary mournfulness scattered about the plain. Otherwise the
Desert of Korosko is wholly deprived of vegetable life, of
“The glory in the grass, and the splendour in the flower.”

As for water, it must needs be content with that of a few brackish wells,
grouped, about twelve in number, at a spot called El-Mourath. It is there
only that the caravans can fill their ill-tanned leather-bottles, in which the
already nauseating liquid grows hot, and quickly becomes putrid. Its stench
and its taste are then so disgustful that the very camels reject it several
times before they can constrain themselves to drink of it.

Ravines of Korosko.

The Desert of Bahiouda, situated in about the same latitude as that of
Korosko, but on the other bank of the Nile, is of a less absolute aridity and
nakedness. Water is more abundant and less brackish; vegetation is less
scanty; and one meets on every side with giraffes, gazelles, wild cattle, and
even, it is said, with lions and elephants. Great numbers of reptiles, lizards,
serpents, and tortoises inhabit the sand and the crevices of the rocks.

South of the above-named Deserts, towards 17° N. lat., is placed the
limit of the Rainless District. Under the 18th parallel the rains do not last
above one or two months in the year, and in some years are absolutely
wanting; but when they do fall, it is generally in impetuous torrents. As we
advance towards the Equator they become more regular, and last for longer
periods. According to Humboldt, the average yearly rainfall in 19° N. lat.
measures 80 inches; under the equator, 96 inches. In these tropical climes
the year is divided into two seasons—one of excessive drought, and one of
excessive rain. During the former, the sky is ever cloudless; during the
latter, completely overcast.
There are, in fact, two rainless belts or districts, one on each side of the
Equator. In the old world, the northern belt commences on the west side of
Africa; includes the Sahara between 16° and 28° of latitude; and narrowing
as it extends easterly, comprises on the banks of the Nile from 19° to 27°. It
also embraces the low coast; and portions of the interior of Arabia; passes
through Beloochistan to the base of the Himalayas, and terminates with the
rainless tableland of Thibet. The southern district occurs north of the
Gareep or Orange River in South Africa, and includes wide tracts in
Australia, and a narrow belt in South America.
Where the earth is blessed with copious showers, vegetation will
abound; grass, and herb, flower, bush, and tree;
“Fields of grain
Will bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops.”

To meet with the true Desert we must, therefore, direct our steps in a north-
westerly course, and penetrate into The Sahara.

M. Charles Martins, in his elaborate monograph on this remarkable
region, divides it into three distinct sub-regions: the Desert of the Table-
lands, the Desert of Erosion, and the Sandy Desert.[53]
In Algeria, and in Barbary generally, the Mediterranean littoral does not
come into immediate contact with the Sahara; but is separated from it by the
Atlas chain. But the Atlas does not rise abruptly from the plain: on either
side it ascends by a succession of rocky steps or terraces, which form the
sub-region of the elevated Table-lands. Vast denuded surfaces, sprinkled
with chotts, or salt lakes, deprived of all arborescent vegetation, traversed in
summer by immense herds which feed on the plants even to their very
roots, bare mountains starting abruptly from these horizontal surfaces; such
is the general aspect of the landscape. The richly-varied culture of the
Mediterranean littoral has disappeared, and barley is the only cereal which
the husbandman relies upon for his harvest. At many points, however, the
“purple vine” and “golden olive” succeed admirably, and are destined one
day to clothe the nakedness of these plateaux which the free-pasturing herds
and the careless Arab have stripped of their blooming verdure.
Descending these rocky terraces of gray old Atlas, we enter the desert
region in its first phase: the Desert of the Table-lands, or Saharan Steppe.

LANDSCAPE IN THE ATLAS (REGION OF TABLE-LANDS).

Here, horizontal strata of mud and gypsum, or sulphate of lime, are
deposited upon the shores, as it were, of the great Sandy Sea. The gypsum
reposing on the mud is composed of plates in such close juxtaposition as to
resemble an artificial pavement. “It covers the surface of vast plateaux
which have not been encroached upon by the waters; whether those waters
were marine currents at the epoch when the Sahara was a vast sea, or
diluvian torrents which descended from the mountains after their elevation,
little matters; the gypsum, produced by the violent evaporation of the
Saharan sea, has withstood their operation, and composes the plateaux of
which we are speaking. Their surface is so smooth, that vehicles might roll
for leagues upon this natural pavement, which echoes like a vault under the
horses’ hoofs. A plateau of this kind, the small Desert of Mourad, extends

from Biskra to the banks of the great salt lake called Chott Mebrir by the
Arabs. The gypseous surface is not everywhere exposed: most frequently it
is covered by a layer of small rounded pebbles, nearly all quartzose,
exhibiting the greatest variety of tints, from the purest white to the most
vivid red; they are mixed with black calcareous stones split on the surface.
Whence came these pebbles, which have evidently been ‘rolled’ by the
waters? We know not. They are the mysterious witnesses of those grand
diluvian torrents which have left the traces of their passage over the surface
of the whole earth, though the geologist cannot always discover the
mountains or rocks that furnished the materials of this diluvium.”[54]
From the Desert of the Table-lands we must needs make another descent.
The town of Batna is situated at the extremity of the lowest of the Atlantean
terraces, whose elevation is still some 3300 feet above the level of the sea.
To the north-west rise the lofty spires of the colossal chain, with their
diadems of cedars sharply defined in black upon the azure of the sky.
Loftiest of all soars the Jebel-Tougour, or “Peak of Cedars,” reminding the
spectator of the Pyrenean crests. Towards the south-east stretch the rounded
shoulders of the mountains of the Aurès, clad with dense dark forest of oak
and pine. In a fold of the mountains lurk the ancient Lambessa and the
mouldering ruins of a Roman camp. Four miles to the south of Batna is a
large depressed hill, whose base mingles with the table-land, above which it
rises only three hundred and thirty feet. This ridge marks the watershed; all
the streams on the north flowing towards the Mediterranean, and, on the
south, gradually disappearing in the arid bed of the ancient Saharan sea. On
the frontier line, like a Cyclopean landmark, is planted the Peak of Cedars,
while from its loins a torrent issues, and through a deep ravine whirls and
leaps and flows towards the desert. Springs, abundant and warm, bubble up
through the chalky marls, and take the same direction. Beyond the French
military post, called Les Tamarins, the road descends the ravine-cloven
mountain-slopes, and passes over the torrent which bifurcates at the foot of
the majestic Metlili. On the left is seen a steep wall of rock, the Jebel-
Gaouss, cleft midway by a chasm, or breach, which the Arabs expressively
designate “The Mouth of the Desert,” and which, gradually enlarging,
opens upon the first oasis of the Sahara, El Kantara (“the bridge,” from a
Roman arch which spans the torrent), the most northerly limit of the palm-
tree. “A magnificent, semi-alpine, semi-tropical scene. Below, a tumultuous
foaming stream, its banks on either side clad with palms bending their

feathery foliage towards the river, and sheltering fig, apricot, peach,
almond, and pomegranate trees.”[55] Above, a range of snowy heights,
wreathed in ever ascending and descending clouds.
We now enter the Desert of Erosion, a mass of mountainous highlands;
of ridges, peaks, and cols, intersected and, as it were, gashed by ravines
where roll the winter torrents and the rivers which the heats of summer dry
up, and which, hollowing and gnawing into the stony soil, spread
themselves over the valleys and awake a transitory vegetation. The erosive
action of the waters is, then, the special characteristic of this part of the
desert, which the Arabs call Kifar, or “the abandoned country.” Most of the
streams which water it have their sources in Mounts Aurès and Zibans,
which form its northern boundary. They have excavated wide intermingling
furrows, whose intervening spaces are occupied by gypseous plateaux. The
formations of less resisting power, the marls, clays, and sands, have been
washed away.

THE SAHARA (DESERT OF EROSION).

The waters, whether proceeding from rain, or the melting of the snows
on the loftiest peaks, are very pure at first, and roll in deep beds with
vertical sides; when they reach the plains, their channels grow wider and
shallower. In the wet season, the floods burst the banks, and overflowing,

carry down immense quantities of rolled pebbles, which are distributed over
an extensive area; in ordinary weather they are reduced to thin threads of
silver, which, on arriving in the desert, vanish completely. You must
excavate the soil to obtain a supply of water, and when found, it is brackish.
Frequently the beds unite, forming basins of greater or less extent and
depth, which fill themselves at the close of the winter floods, and a few of
which preserve, even in the winter season, a certain quantity of water.
Elsewhere, the soil is only humid, thanks to the abundance of salt, which
retains the moisture. In such places numerous slimy marshes occur, where
the traveller may not adventure without peril. But in general the surface is
dry, cracked, cloven, and completely parched.
The Desert of Erosion is not completely inhabited. At intervals you meet
with a few squalid villages, and a multitude of camel’s-skin tents are
scattered like black spots over the yellow or grayish plains, on the borders
of the chotts or scanty water-courses. Herds of goats and flocks of sheep
wander in the valleys, browsing on the rare short grass. Columns of smoke
arise from the Arab bivouacs, and the women of the Sahara group
themselves around the wells and springs to fill the water-bags with which
they load their asses.
When, from the summit of the rocks which fence round and bristle over
the Desert of Erosion, we perceive for the first time the Desert of Sand, the
impression is very similar to that which we derive from the sight of ocean.
M. Martins had already become sensible of this peculiar effect when, from
the Col de Sfa, he had gazed down upon the Desert of the Plateaux. “A
grand circular arch,” he says, “extended before us, bounding a violet
surface, smooth as the sea, and blending at the horizon with the azure of
heaven; it was the Sahara. The arc eastward rested against the chain of the
Aurès; westward, against that of the Zibans, some of whose offshoots, in
the neighbourhood of Biskra, arose like reefs upon that sea which seemed to
have been frozen suddenly into immobility. The actual sea ever trembles
and shivers on the surface; a light wavering, imperceptible to the eye,
propels towards the shore the expiring wave, fringed with a border of foam.
Here, nothing like this may be seen; it is a motionless, a congealed sea, or,
rather, it is the smooth bed of a sea whose waters have disappeared. Science
teaches us that such is the fact; and now as ever the expression of the reality
is more picturesque, more eloquent than all the comparisons created by the
imagination.”[56]

An eminent French artist, M. Fromentin, whose skill with the pen equals
his talent with the brush, has also painted this “congealed sea” in grand and
poetic language. “The first impression,” he says, “produced by this glowing
lifeless picture, composed of the sun, space, and solitude, is keen, and
cannot be compared to any other. Little by little, however, the eye grows
accustomed to the grandeur of the lines, to the emptiness of space, to the
denudation of the earth; and if anything can still astonish, it is that one
becomes sensible to effects which change so little, and is so powerfully
affected by spectacles in reality of the simplest character.”[57]
I must also enumerate among the “artists in words” who have painted the
wonders of the Sahara, General Daumas, not one of the least distinguished
of the Franco-Algerine warriors. He describes it in the following language:
—“It is a naked and barren immensity,—this sea of sand, whose eternal
waves, agitated to-day by the choub, will to-morrow be heaped up
immovable, and which are slowly furrowed by those fleets called
caravans.”
General Daumas, it is evident, confines himself to the scientific realism,
which M. Martins prefers to the glowing and inexact imagery of the poets,
and conveys in a few words an accurate yet very picturesque idea of that
arid sea, where the wind stirs up rolling waves of sand instead of foaming
billows, and which the Arabs call Falat. I shall place before the reader,
however, the description given by M. Martins himself, for it represents both
the ensemble and the details of the picture.
“If the Desert of the Plateaux,” he says,[58] “be the image of a sea
suddenly fixed during a level calm, the Desert of Sand represents to us a sea
which may have been solidified during a violent tempest. The Dunes, or
sand-hills, like waves, rise one behind another even to the limits of the
horizon, separated by narrow valleys which represent the depressions of the
great billows of the ocean, all whose various aspects they simulate.
Sometimes they narrow themselves into keen-edged crests, or shoot
upwards in pyramids, or swell into cylindrical domes. Seen from a distance,
these Dunes also remind us at times of the appearances of the névé (or
granulated snow) in the amphitheatres and on the ridges which lie
contiguous to the loftiest Alpine summits. Their colours still further
enhance the illusion. Moulded by the winds, the burning sands of the desert
assume the same forms as the névés of the glaciers.”

Whoever has seen the Dunes on the coast of Norfolk, or more
particularly in Gascony, may gain a very accurate conception of the Desert.
The only notable differences are in the extent, which here seems infinite,
like that of ocean; the purity of the heaven, which is seldom sullied by a
cloud; and the colour, which is of a soft, intense blue. The nature of the soil
is the same; it is a very fine, shifting, silicious sand, white sometimes, like
that of Fontainebleau, and sometimes reddened by the presence of oxide of
iron. In the Sahara this sand gathers in veritable Dunes, hillocks which the
wind upheaves, displaces, and transforms from one day to another. Only the
lettes, or valleys, which in our Dunes receive the pluvial waters and
preserve a sufficient amount of fertility, are here just moistened by rare
saline infiltrations, and almost always remain in a condition of absolute
sterility. Nevertheless, in some localities, the presence of gypsum gives the
sand a certain fixity, which permits a small number of plants to germinate
and develop themselves. This gypsum is never found but in the valleys, and
never in tabular masses, as on the plateaux, but only in crystals of various
forms, penetrated by silica. “You pick up a pebble,” says M. Martins, “and
find it to be a crystal.” The villages are surrounded by crenellated ramparts
built of crystals; the houses which compose these villages are constructed of
the same materials; and very weird and splendid is the scene presented by
these edifices with their sun-illuminated walls. Notwithstanding their small
dimensions and mean architecture, when thus lit up in glorious radiance,
they seem to realize the wonders told in fairy tales of the enchanted palaces
of the genii!

CHAPTER IV.

PHENOMENA OF THE DESERT.
THE desert has its own meteorology; it is the theatre of peculiar phenomena,
which one observes in no other part of the globe. Its climate, at least in the
sandy region, is remarkably uniform; it varies only, according to latitude, in
a greater or less elevated thermometrical mean. Hippocrates, the ancient
philosopher, rightly called “the Father of Medicine,” states the three
elements of climate to be, the atmosphere, the soil, and the waters.

Throughout the desert these are identically similar, and consequently
originate identically similar phenomena.
The atmosphere, in fact, is everywhere of an almost unchanging purity.
It is only in the neighbourhood of mountains that clouds accumulate, to
spend themselves at periodical seasons in more or less abundant rains. In
the plains it never rains, and during the day no veil is interposed between
the earth and the sun’s burning glare, nor during the night do any refreshing
dews weaken the force of the terrestrial radiation. There result constant
alternations of devouring heat while the sun is above the horizon, and of
rapid and frequently intense cooling when he has disappeared.
The soil is everywhere as smooth as “the liquid main.” This uniformity
contributes, in addition to its silicious, argillaceous, or calcareous character,
to render more abrupt the changes of temperature which occur from
morning to evening and from evening to morning. In truth, the earth reflects
the sun’s heat in proportion as it receives it; it absorbs but insignificant
quantities, which it loses in a few minutes when the calorific source begins
to fail. On the other hand, in these immense plains where no inequality of
surface can oppose the atmospheric movements, the wind acquires an
increasing force and swiftness, vires acquirit eundo, and soon assumes all
the characteristics of a tempest. Hence arise those terrible typhoons, those
appalling hurricanes, of whose destructive effects history records so many
instances, and of which I shall presently be called upon to speak. As for
water, we have seen that its entire absence is a characteristic feature of the
Sandy Desert.
To sum up, an overpowering degree of heat during the day,—a freshness,
often even an excessive cold, during the night (in the Sahara the
thermometer frequently rises above 120° F. at noon, and not infrequently
sinks below 32° about two or three o’clock A.M.); an ever transparent and
azure sky,
“Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue;”

the absence of rains and dews, of gales and thunder; but a frequent
recurrence of terrible hurricanes: such is the meteorological constitution of
the arid zone, which embraces all the northern districts of Africa, except the
Mediterranean region—that is, from the snowy heights of Atlas to the fertile
pastures of Soudan—and which extends in Asia from the west to the north-
east, for all but one narrow belt, as far as the 119th meridian of longitude.

Foremost among the phenomena peculiar to this zone we must place
those famous tempests which, in default of humid clouds, traverse with
startling swiftness the changing surface of the Desert, driving before them
whirlwinds of burning sand, and striking the traveller’s heart with a sense of
unconquerable awe. The wind of the Desert is called by the Arabs the
choum or khamsin; but is more generally known in European books as the
Simoun, Simoom, or Samoun. It is the Samiel of the Turks; and, under a
somewhat milder form, the Scirocco of the Mediterranean. Wherever, or
however it blows, it is a pernicious and hateful wind; the blast, in all
probability, which destroyed the hosts of Sennacherib at the bidding of the
Divine Word,—
“The angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed.
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still.”

Torrents of burning sand sweep before it, a thick veil of darkness envelopes
the firmament, and the sun assumes a blood-red hue.
“That crimson haze
By which the prostrate caravan is awed
In the red desert when the wind’s abroad.”[58]

When the Simoom rises, says M. Martins,[59] the air is filled with dust of
such extreme fineness that it makes its way through objects hermetically
sealed, penetrates into the eyes, the ears, and the organs of respiration. A
burning heat, like that which breathes from the mouth of a furnace,
possesses the air, and paralyzes the strength of men and animals. Seated on
the sand, with their backs turned to windward, the Arabs, wrapped in their
burnous, wait with fatalistic resignation the end of the torment; their camels
crouching, exhausted, panting, stretch their long necks upon the scorching
soil. Seen through this powdery haze, the sun’s disc, shorn of its beams,
shows pale and ghastly as that of the moon.
Fortunately, the phenomenon never prevails over any very considerable
area, and beyond its limits the atmosphere remains serene and calm; so that
travellers who have watched it approaching in the form of a reddish cloud,
without being able to calculate on its direction, have often escaped with no

worse result than a panic, and have only witnessed its terrible effects at a
distance.
It must not, however, be confounded with the sand-storms which the
pilgrim encounters in the Arabian Desert, and which seem confined to that
region. Dean Stanley, on his route from Suez to Sinai, met with one which
prevailed the whole day. “Imagine,” he says, “the caravan toiling against
this,—the Bedouins each with his shawl thrown completely over his head,
half of the riders sitting backwards,—the camels, meantime thus virtually
left without guidance, though from time to time throwing their long necks
sideways to avoid the blast, yet moving straight onwards with a painful
sense of duty truly edifying to behold. Through the tempest, this roaring and
driving tempest, which sometimes made me think that this must be the real
meaning of ‘a howling wilderness,’ we rode on the whole day.”[60]
A French cavalier, M. Trémaux, while crossing the Desert of Korosko,
had the good fortune to witness the course of a Simoom, while himself in a
position of safety.
It was the 8th of February 1848. The horizon in the south-west wore a
hue of the evillest augury. Gusts of wind, which seemed to have issued from
some red-hot brazier, beat in the face of the travellers. The camel-drivers,
accustomed to interpret these sinister signs, and assured that a tempest was
at hand, felt themselves called upon to give M. Trémaux a few counsels,
which were by no means reassuring.
“As soon as the storm darkens the air,” said one of them, “by
surrounding us with a cloud of sand, we must throw ourselves prone on the
ground, wrap our heads in our finest stuffs, to protect our respiration from
this sand, which burns the throat. It will be useless to trouble ourselves
about the camels; they will lie down of their own accord, bend their head
against their burden, and never stir so long as the tempest lasts. If the sand
accumulates by our side, we must move in such a manner as to prevent it
from covering us, making it roll under itself, but without exposing our
heads. Remember these things carefully; and the will of God be done!”
“That is not all,” added another; “when the water-bags are partly
shrunken, as are ours at this moment, and the Khamsin blows for some
time, it finishes by completely drying them up.”
Thus warned, M. Trémaux was compelled to face, with all the
resignation he was capable of, the melancholy alternative of perishing

suffocated by the sand, or, a little later, of succumbing to the tortures of
thirst. He continued to journey, or rather to drag himself towards the centre
of the choking atmosphere, and to watch the scourge which rapidly drew
near. This lasted a couple of hours, after which the travellers had the
satisfaction of seeing the Simoom glide by on their right, and depart with
the same rapidity.
A column of the French army, commanded by the Dukes of Aumale and
of Montpensier, had met with a less happy chance on the 7th of March
1844, in the Souf, or Algerine Sahara; it was attacked by a Simoom, which
prolonged its furious assaults during fourteen hours. On the day following,
M. Fournel, a mining engineer who accompanied the expedition,
ascertained that the meteor had swept but a narrow zone parallel to the
Aurès range, and that at the mountain base the tranquillity of the
atmosphere had been undisturbed.
The Simoom, or Khamsin, is, however, more troublesome and painful
than really dangerous. M. Martins speaks of the annihilated army of
Cambyses, the Persian king, which perished in the Libyan Desert (B.C.
524),[61] and of whole caravans engulfed in the sepulchral sands. “The
numerous skeletons of camels,” he adds, “which we met with on our way
prove that these catastrophes are still of frequent occurrence.” It is more
probable, however, that they died from dearth of water and want of food. As
for the Persian host, it was probably swallowed up in one of those
quicksands, those hidden treacherous gulfs, which are found in the deserts
of Libya, as well as in those of Persia and Arabia. The evil effects of the
Simoom have, in fact, been exaggerated by the Arabs, whose highly-
coloured narratives have been too easily adopted by credulous travellers. It
heats the blood, it dries the skin, it renders respiration troublesome; but it
does not kill.

A FRENCH COLUMN IN ALGIERS SURPRISED BY THE SIMOOM.

Whirlwinds of Sand (Sand-Spouts).

It is not always a single wind which blows in the Deserts; but sometimes
two or three currents, from opposite directions, cross and clash and drive
against one another with increasing fury. Then is produced the singular

phenomenon of the sand-spout, often witnessed on a magnificent scale in
the sandy plains of Eastern Asia and Southern America. The sand is not now
driven in voluminous masses in a rectilineal direction; but raised aloft in the
form of long tortuous columns, which whirl to and fro like gigantic spectres
in the mazes of a wild demon-dance. At the same time, the azure of the sky
grows pale and troubled, the sun’s light obscured, the boundaries of the
horizon seem to meet together; the burning dust held in suspension in the
air renders it irrespirable, and if one of these whirlwinds encounters any
object which offers a resistance, it carries it upward and hurls it a
considerable distance. Fortunately the phenomenon is one of brief duration.
The atmospheric equilibrium is speedily restored; the heavens recover their
serenity; the atmosphere grows clear, and the sand columns, falling in upon
themselves, form a number of little hills or cones, apparently constructed
with great care, like those mimic edifices of sand or snow built up by
children in their pastimes.
It is said that these furious whirlwinds have occasionally engulfed whole
caravans in their tremendous vortex,—
“Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush,
Hosts march on hosts, and nations nations crush;
Wheeling in air the wingèd islands fall,
And one great sandy ocean covers all.”

Whether this be true or not, there can be no doubt that the spectacle is one
of great magnificence, and calculated to inspire the traveller with emotions
of awe and dread. Mr. Atkinson describes it as seen by him, on one
occasion, when traversing the Mongolian Desert:—
“As we passed,” he says,[62] “in the middle of a space sown with
innumerable hillocks of sands, we saw about thirty of them suddenly raise
themselves around us, lengthen into long elliptical columns, and glide with
many a whirl and sweep over the surface of the Desert with the hissings and
contortions of gigantic serpents which had awakened at our approach.
These spouts, for the phenomenon was no other, varied in diameter; the
smallest measured between twenty and thirty feet; a few attained to a
hundred; and one, which absorbed in its vortex all that it approached, rose
to nearly two hundred. One might have said, on seeing them bending, rising
again and crossing one another in space amidst an atmosphere of dust, that
they were antediluvian monsters emerging from their geological bed, and

returning into the feverish activity of existence. But soon, the atmospheric
forces which had raised them beginning to fail, we saw these sand-spouts
fall away one after another, and form on the surface of the Desert a number
of moving hillocks similar to those from which we had just emerged.”

The poet, invoking the judgment of Heaven on the traitor, would fain
doom him to the misery of cherishing hopes that shall never be realized.
“May he,” cries the minstrel—
“May he, at last, with lips of flame,
On the parched desert thirsting die,
While lakes that shone in mockery nigh
Are fading oft, untouched, untasted.”[63]

The image here is borrowed from that most singular phenomenon of the
Desert, the Mirage; an atmospheric illusion due to the refraction of the
sun’s rays upon the sand, and the intense expansion of the lower strata of
the air,—in other words, it arises from the total reflection of the rays of light
from the lower surface of a stratum of air. “This occurs when, from any
cause, such a stratum of air possesses a higher refractive power than the one
immediately below it. Such a condition of the atmosphere causes remote
objects to be seen as if reflected in a mirror, or to appear as if suspended in
the air. When the effect is confined to apparent elevation, the English sailors
call it looming; when inverted images are formed, the Italians give it the
name of Fata Morgana. The Arabs call it Serab, or Suhrab, the ‘Water of
the Desert;’ and the Hindus, Tchittram, or ‘the Picture.’”
The effects of the illusion are extraordinary, but undoubtedly they are
heightened by the imagination of observers, generally over-excited by
fatigue, by privations, or sometimes by fever. These causes contribute to
vary the nature of the phenomenon as seen by different eyes. Thus some
gaze enraptured on verdurous islands bright as Armida’s enchanted garden,
with feathery palms and blooming flowers, and delicious sparkling lakes;
others see, in that dim far-off which is never reached, the laughing waves of
ocean, with ships resting calmly at anchor, or
“Veering up and down, they know not why,”

and camels browsing quietly upon its shores; others, again, see before them
the rolling river, its banks studded with groves and palaces; and all this,

while there is not a solitary real object on the horizon whose presence might
serve in some degree as a foundation for their visions. It is the very
phantasmagoria of nature; her wildest, most wayward, and most fantastic
sport. The reflection of the sky, modified by the inequalities of the soil and
the vibratory movements of the air, can alone account for the singular
deception. Imagination shows its victim, in the reflected image of the
cloudless sky, a sheet of water, which is variously taken for a sea, a lake, or
a river; it invests the slightest objects on the earth’s surface with forms,
colours, and dimensions, which are easily metamorphosed into houses,
ships, men, animals; and it seems certain that those which in Nubia our
fancy converts into camels would, in the Soudan, be transformed into
elephants, and at Venice into gondolas. Imagination makes us its dupes, and
gives to airy nothings
“A local habitation and a name.”

It becomes absolutely necessary, therefore, to distinguish these wholly
personal illusions born of a heated brain, from those which are really due to
a definite physical cause. The latter necessarily suppose the existence of
actual objects, below or very little above the horizon. Under such
conditions, the most frequent illusion is that which shows the sky or rocks
reflected in the expanse of rarified air superincumbent on the earth’s
surface, and which through this cause alone resembles water. It is then that
the ignorant or inexperienced traveller, overwhelmed with fatigue and
devoured by thirst, hastens his eager steps to reach more quickly that limpid
water, where he hopes to refresh and reinvigorate himself, but which flies
before his advance, and speedily vanishes altogether. Sometimes it is an
inverted representation of terrestrial objects which appears in the air; or
rather, these same objects, several times reflected, appear to multiply
themselves. M. Trémaux relates that he saw the latter form of mirage in
Nubia. He observed a row of doum-palms, which were about two thousand
yards distant, repeated in several similar rows, each with a like number of
trees, so as to produce the effect of a quincunx; among these trees floated
several seeming sheets of water.

A Mirage in the Desert.

We must remember, moreover, that the immensity, uniformity, and
vacuity of the Desert, singularly contribute to render optical illusions
frequent. The very serenity of the air assists in destroying the perspective to
which we are accustomed in temperate climates, which are always more or
less misty. Objects appear much nearer than they are in reality, because they
are more distinctly visible, and also because nothing intervenes between
them and the observer. Their dimensions, too, become arbitrary, for want of
standards of comparison by which to measure them. So the trees and the
mountains where the weary traveller hopes to obtain a temporary repose
and a passing shelter from the Pythian’s fiery arrows, seem constantly to
recede before him, like the rainbow when pursued by the ignorant peasant;
and, until experience has taught him to rectify the apparent testimony of his
senses, he is doomed, like Tantalus, to be the victim of continual
deceptions,—
“Ev’n in the circling floods refreshment craves,
And pines with thirst amidst a sea of waves;
When to the water he his lip applies,
Back from his lip the treacherous water flies.”[64]

Nor is this all; hunger, thirst, weariness, and especially the action of the
solar heat upon the brain, determine a peculiar pathological condition, a
species of mental intoxication or delirium which powerfully predisposes the
victim to hallucinations, and deprives the mind of that self-control which
would enable it to chase away the phantoms that haunt it. To this affection,
whose symptoms are frequently but erroneously confounded with those of
the mirage, the Arabs have given a specific name. They call it Ragle. A
distinguished French traveller has described it with exhaustive fulness,[65]
and he attributes it to fatigue, excessive heat, and want of sleep.
It shows itself most commonly at night, and in dreams, attacks of
nightmare, and a somnambulism of which the sufferer is perfectly
conscious, without being able to throw it off. By day strange hallucinations
affect the sight, the hearing, and even, though less powerfully, the senses of
taste and smell. The aberration extends, as far as the sight is concerned, to
the objects which we are in the habit of seeing; a small stone, for instance,
expands into a rock; the rut of a carriage-wheel enlarges into the furrow of a
freshly ploughed field; a tuft of grass or a bush will assume the grand
proportions of a forest; and, what is remarkable, these objects seem always
close at hand. Another frequent error is the elevation of horizontal surfaces;
the horizon becomes a wall or a mountain. “It has happened to myself,”
says M. d’Escayrac, “to meet with walls constantly reappearing before me.
My extended arm has plunged into the masonry, but my body never
encountered any obstacle; the rampart opened to give me a free passage.”
Hearing is, in its turn, affected. Then, any sound whatsoever, such as a
footfall, the blow of a stone, the whisper of the wind, is changed into
melodious sounds, keen cries of distress, the murmur of woods, the
harmony of familiar songs.
One day, says M. d’Escayrac, I heard the click-clack of a village mill.
Endeavouring to collect my senses, and to obtain an explanation of the
sound, I perceived that it arose from the clink of my sword-belt against the
pommel of my saddle, to which I had buckled my sabre.
Jomard, the savant, who experienced the effects of the ragle during his
travels in Egypt, confirms in every respect the foregoing description. On his
way from Rosetta to Alexandria, he kept along the border of the sea, and
found his feet painfully staggering in the thick fine sand. Such a journey is
necessarily one of extreme fatigue. After the first night, this fatigue grew

overwhelming; the traveller lost all accurate perception of objects, or of the
form of places. The surface of the lake Medeah appeared not so much a
sheet of water as a monotonous plain. Constantly pressing forward, he
maintained a hard fight against the overpowering sense of slumber. Half-
asleep, half-awake, his brain was dazzled with the most fantastic phantoms,
and the hallucination was so great that he plunged into the lake before him,
without perceiving it, though the water was very deep. But the freshness
caused by the evaporation of the water warned him of his error, and the
vision suddenly passed away.
Such being the phenomena of the Desert, one can understand the dreary
picture which Dante paints in his “Inferno,” of—
“The plain
Which from its bed rejecteth every plant;”

whose soil is—
“Of an arid and thick sand;”

and where—
“With a gradual fall
Are raining down dilated flakes of fire.
As of the snow on Alp, without a wind.”[66]

CHAPTER V.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE DESERT:—THE OASES.
THE Flora of a region where nature provides no genial fertilizing rains, and
whose soil is simply a shifting sand, moistened only in certain places by a
brackish water, must necessarily be one of extreme poverty.
It is reduced very nearly, as we have seen, to a few plants of the genus
Salsola (salt-wort), flourishing on the borders of the salt pools and lakes.
Nevertheless, at a few points, where a certain degree of fixity obtains in the
sand, we meet with the thornless bushes or shrubs, the Ephedra alata and
the retama Duriœi; some pistachios (pistacia lentiscus and p. terebinthus);
the “drin” (aristida pungens), a tall grass, with linear leaves, some seven

feet high, to which the camel is very partial; and the “ézel,” a member of
the family of Polygonaceæ, which botanists class with the allied buckwheat
and knot-grasses, and which attains the stature of three to four feet. The
latter plant throws out roots, which are generally uncovered, to a distance of
twenty to twenty-five feet; its woody stem spreads in its upper portion into
gnarled branches, terminated each by a cluster of green, cylindrical and
leafless twigs, which fall during winter. Elsewhere rise the tall trunks of the
doum-palms, either isolated or assembled in scanty clumps, under which
the traveller obtains with difficulty a modicum of shade, but which are
otherwise of no value to him.
In districts where the surface is more broken up, notably in Palestine, on
the banks of the Jordan and the Dead Sea; in the Sinaitic Peninsula of
Arabia; in the Nubian deserts of Naga, Aredah, and Bahiouda; finally, even
in the Sahara, in the “Desert of Erosion,” and the table-land region,
vegetable life becomes more abundant and more varied, though still but of
mediocre interest. However, a curious arbustus, the Limioniastrum
Guyonianum, shows itself very frequently in these damp localities, where it
attains sometimes the dimensions of a tree. Its attenuated leaves are covered
with saline efflorescence, and its particles of rosy flowers relieve the
monotony of the wilderness. In the permanent salt marshes, or chotts, some
of the plants are analagous to those formed in the bogs of Languedoc.
Among the plants of the Desert I must not forget the rose of Jericho
(Anastatica hierochuntica),[67] an annual which contracts itself into a ball,
and, blown about by the breeze, seems a dead and withered mass of twigs.
But plunge it into water, and it expands, regains the bloom of life, affording
a remarkable example of what is called “revivification.” The fable
respecting it is, that the first time it ever bloomed was on the eve of the
Nativity, and that its flower remained open until Easter.
Several other vegetable species grow on the table-lands of the Algerine
Sahara, which are found elsewhere under similar conditions of soil and
climate. They are thorny shrubs and underwood, almost wholly belonging
to the family of Salsolaceæ, or littoral plants, which only thrive on ground
impregnated with salt; there are also sub-frutescent plants, partly dried up
by the sun. In some places the nakedness of the earth is concealed by the
bloom of geraniums and heliotropes. Further, you may notice in the region
of the table-lands, the Melantha punctuata, a member of the Colchicum
tribe, which bears a bouquet of very white flowers grown upon the sand,

and surrounded by a crown of ensheathed leaves. Not unworthy of rejoicing
the eyes of the most fastidious connoisseurs, it lives and dies unknown in
the solitudes of the Sahara.

Vegetable Life in the Desert.
1. Jujube Tree. 2. Lentiscus. 3. Tamarisk.

In the hollows, where the earth preserves some degree of humidity, a fine
soft sward prevails, of the most delicious emerald green; two herbs, the Alfa
(stipa tenacissima) and the White Wormwood (artemisia alba),[68] often
cover extended areas; the jujube trees clothe themselves in profuse foliage;
the coloquinta stretches over the ground its branches loaded with spherical
fruit; and the tamarisk, developed into a tree, waves in the wind its tufts of
snowy and rose-hued flowers. It is in these meadows that the Arab rears his
tent and pastures his flocks under a winter sky. The industrious and
sedentary tribes seek in the oases a more benignant nature,—

“The yellow down
Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow;”

and a soil which will repay their toil with liberal harvests. And it is there
only, in truth, that vegetation presents a development, a continuity, and
sometimes even a variety, which recalls the fortunate countries of the
Mediterranean region.
The old geographer, Ptolemæus, compared the Sahara to a panther’s
skin, sprinkled with black spots on a tawny ground. These spots which, by
an effect of contrast, are set off in black on the yellowish tint of the desert,
are the far-famed oases, which have furnished our poets and romancists
with so many an appropriate image. Ptolemy’s comparison is the more
accurate because these islands of verdure scattered over the sandy ocean,
“Like precious stones set in a silver sea,”

have, in general, a circular form. We must except, however, the grandest
and most beautiful of all, Egypt. That immemorial land of mystery and
power is enchased in the Desert region like any other oasis, and only differs
in its greater extent and more elongated figure. It stretches along the Nile
like a ribbon—
“And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.”

Its length, from Cairo to Assouan, is 450 miles. Its breadth does not
exceed nine to twelve miles, except at Cairo, where it measures about
eighty miles along the sea-coast, which forms the base of a triangular
district known as the Delta (Δ) of the Nile. The two other angles are marked
by the cities of Pelusium and Alexandria. This long strip of fertility is
narrowly shut in between deserts of almost incredible sterility.
A peculiarity worthy of attention, because it is the unique cause of the
fertility of Egypt, is, that the valley of the Nile, instead of sloping down on
either side to the river-bank, assumes a gently convex form. It is owing to
this slight convexity that, at the epoch of the inundation—beginning in June
and ending in October—the Nile waters overflow to the right and to the left,
rest upon the soil, and there deposit their precious mud. How different the
aspects of the country at different seasons of the year! First, the bright
sparkling sheets of far-spreading and fertilising water; then the emerald

green of the growing crops; lastly, the ripe warm yellow hues of the full
harvest. Well might Amrou, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, remark to the
Caliph Omar, that, “according to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of
the country is adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep
gold of an abundant harvest.”
The soil of Egypt is, then, simply an alluvium mixed with the sand
which the winds bring from the Desert. Its aspect is that of a rich, well-
cultivated land, but bears the impress of a wearisome monotony. You see
there neither the dark dense forest, the rolling prairie, nor the undulating
woodland; from the shore of the Mediterranean to the tropics you meet
everywhere with the same cultivation; the same mud-built villages, with
their dirty and winding streets; and ever the same clumps of palms, which
would end by becoming tedious if it were not that their elegance of form
invests them with an eternal beauty—if a glorious radiance did not gild with
“refined gold” everything it touches—if, finally, an after-glow of wondrous
loveliness, of which the eye and soul can never weary, which whenever
seen suggests some new and subtle emotions, did not terminate every day
by a crepuscular pomp of indescribable magnificence.

Vegetable Life in the Desert.
1. Doum-Palm. 2. Date-Palm. 3. Alfa (Stipa tenacissima).

The Palm-tree is, in Egypt, as in all the oases, the principal element of
the arborescent vegetation. But you also meet there with the banana, the
gum-tree, the orange, the jujube, the mulberry, the sycamore, and other tall
trees, which were planted by command of Mehemet Ali, and have perfectly
succeeded. The green banks of the river are diversified by coppices of
acacias and tamarisks. In the Fayoum district bloom impervious hedges of
cactus, and plantations of roses for the production of rosewater. Cereals
yield four crops a-year; flax, hemp, indigo, cotton, the sugar-cane, prosper
admirably; and under a climate where ice, snow, and hail are unknown, not
a month but has its burden of flowers and fruits. Abundant crops of
vegetables are raised, even as in those days when the Israelites in the
wilderness bewailed “the cucumbers and the melons, the leeks, the onions,
and the garlics” of Egypt.

M. Charles Martins classes the Oases of the Sahara under three heads,
corresponding to his three sub-regions.[69]
The oasis of the Table Lands is watered by a stream or a copious spring.
That of the valleys of Erosion, by natural or artificial Artesian wells. That of
the Sandy Desert wants water. In the latter the palm-trees are planted in
conical cavities hollowed by the hand of man, that their roots may strike
down to the subterranean reservoir which is to nourish them.
Every oasis is composed, in the main, of date-palms, which seem to form
a continuous forest; but in reality they are planted in rows, and in gardens
separated from one another by walls of earth, which are pierced with an
aperture to admit of the entrance of the irrigating rill into the enclosed
square. The soil employed in the construction of the walls is removed from
the paths, which are consequently below the surface, and can be employed
for a double purpose; they facilitate circulation in the oases, and the waters,
after having refreshed the gardens and revived the soil, discharge
themselves into these hollow ways, whence they flow towards the chotts, or
stagnate in swamps, which the lethargic Moslem never thinks of draining.
From such hotbeds of infection issues the monster Fever every year, and
slays its hundreds.
In case of need, every oasis becomes a fortress. Each “square of flowery
ground” is a redoubt; the assailant’s bullet lodges in the earth wall, or if it
pierces through, forms a new loophole in which the Arab plants his gun to

aim at his enemy. The villages themselves are encircled with walls, flanked
by towers, which remind the spectator of the picturesque fortifications of
mediæval times.

The Date-Palm (Phœnix dactylifera) is the tree of the Desert; there only
will its fruits ripen; without it, the Desert would be uninhabitable and
uninhabited. Arab poesy represents it as a living being, created by God on
the sixth day, at the same time as man. To express under what conditions it
prospers, the imagination of the Saharan exaggerates the true, to render it
the more palpable. “This king of the oasis,” he says, “must plunge his feet
in the water and raise his head in the fire of heaven.” Science, to a certain
extent, confirms this seeming hyperbole; for it needs 5100° of heat
accumulated during eight months for the date to ripen its fruit perfectly. If
the sum of heat be less, the fruits set, but they do not grow to their full
dimensions, remain bitter to the taste, and fail in the sugar and farina, which
form their nutritive properties.
These conditions are realized in the climate of the Sahara. The mean
temperature of the year averages from sixty-eight to seventy-six degrees,
according to the locality. The heat commences in April, and does not cease
until October. The thermometer seldom sinks in the cold season more than
two degrees below zero, and the date can endure six degrees below zero.
Rain, as already stated, is rare in the Sahara; it falls in winter, and
stimulates into a newly awakened life the vegetation which has been
drained of vigour by a summer sun. Sometimes they descend in torrents, but
these torrents, like our summer showers, are of briefest duration. At
Tongourt and Ouraegla whole years pass by without a drop of rain. Does
not the reader understand, then, the gratefulness of the Arabs towards a tree
which can derive its nourishment from the burning sand, the scarcely less
burning airs of heaven, and the brackish waters beneath the soil which are
fatal to all other kinds of vegetation—which retains its verdure fresh in the
glare of a pitiless sun—which resists successfully the winds that bow to the
ground its flexible stem—which provides him with beams and coverings for
his tent, cordage for the harness of his horses and camels, fruit to satisfy his
hunger and wine to quench his thirst—which is, moreover, “a thing of
beauty,” and gladsome to the eye?
“Those groups of lovely date-trees bending

Languidly their leaf-crowned heads,
Like youthful maids, when sleep descending,
Warns them to their silken beds.”[70]
What the vine is to the Italian, the oak to the Englishman, the cocoa-nut
tree to the Polynesian, is the date-palm to the Arab. And more—far more.
This single tree has peopled the Desert. A civilization, rudimentary
compared with that of the West, sufficiently advanced if you contrast it with
that of the Malay or the South Sea Islander, finds in it its standing-point, its
centre, its support. And without it the tribes of the Sahara would cease to be.
[71]

The wealth of an oasis is computed by the number of its palm trees. All
of them, however, are not fruitful; for the date is diœcious. It has its males
and its females. The males have flowers furnished with stamens only, and
form a closed-up, folded, grape-like ball, previous to the ripening of the
pollen in an envelope called the spathe. The females, on the contrary, bear
clusters of fruit also wrapped up in a spathe, but incapable of development
until fecundated by the pollen or dust of the stamens. To multiply the date-
trees, the Arabs do not sow the kernels of the fruits, though they germinate
with extreme facility, for it is impossible to tell beforehand of what sex the
tree will be; they prefer, therefore, to detach a slip from the trunk of a
female tree, and this becomes fruitful at the expiry of eight years.
The male trees blossom, says Mr. Tristram,[72] in the month of March,
and about the same time the case containing the female buds begins to
open. To impregnate these, a bunch of male flowers is carefully inserted and
fastened in the calyx. Towards the beginning of July, when the fruit begins
to swell, the bunches are tied to the neighbouring branches.
The dates are ripe in October, at which time any premature rain is fatal to
the crop, though the roots require a daily watering. Not less injurious are
east winds in March and April. The tree when it begins to bear is about
seven feet high. Each year the lowest ring of leaves falls off, so that the age
of a palm may be roughly computed from the notches on its stem. Its fruit
begins to decline after a century, and the tree is then cut down for building
purposes; but it will live for at least a couple of hundred years. Some trees
produce as many as twenty bunches, but the average in a favourable season
is from eight to ten bunches, each weighing from twelve to twenty pounds.
Before the dates ripen, each proprietor is bound to set apart one tree in his

garden, whose fruit is consecrated for the service of the mosque and the use
of the poor.
From the juice of the date the Arab obtains a sweet fermented liquor,
called “laguni,” of which he is inordinately fond. He makes an incision in
the top of the tree, taking care to strike home to the centre. A funnel is
attached, by which the sap flows into a vessel at the rate of about three
quarts every morning for ten to sixteen days. The incision requires to be
opened afresh daily.
The cabbage, or soft pith and young unfolded leaves at the summit of the
stem, in taste approaching the chestnut, is also eaten, but only when the tree
has fallen or been felled, as the loss of its crown invariably destroys it.
There are fifteen varieties of dates, of which the dghetnour is considered
the best for keeping, and three other kinds are preferred fresh.
The crest of the full-grown trees rises about fifty feet above the ground.
The air circulates freely under the leafy canopy formed by their interlacing
branches, but the sun’s rays do not penetrate. Shade, air, and water—these
three elements permit the most varied cultivation in the palm-gardens,
despite the scorching heats of summer. The fruit trees which flourish are the
fig, the pomegranate, the apricot; less frequently, the vine and the olive; still
more rarely, the peach, the pear, and the orange. Vegetables are commonly
cultivated during winter; such as turnips, cabbages, onions, carrots, beans,
and pimento (Capsicum annuum), an indispensable condiment for those
Arab sauces (merga) destined to stimulate the digestive energies of a people
who abstain from alcoholic liquors. You may also remark pumpkins,
gourds, and water-melons; small squares of lucerne, which yield as many as
eight crops yearly; the henna (Lawsonia inermis), which tints with yellow
the nails of the Arab women; and tobacco (Nicotiana rustica), cultivated
most largely in the Souf. In winter you may refresh your eyes in the
clearings of the oasis with verdurous fields, green with barleys and early
wheats springing vigorously from the earth. The cultivation of cotton,
though considerably stimulated by the failure of the usual supply from the
Southern States of America, is still in its infancy. There can be little doubt,
however, that with improved methods of irrigation it will be considerably
and successfully developed.

The oases of the table-land region, fertilized, as we have already seen, by
the streams of fresh water which flow down from the mountains and spread
abroad in natural or artificial channels, are much the most fertile, and also
the most healthy. They possess, moreover, the inestimable advantage of
being but a short distance from the Mediterranean region, in a country less
arid and less desolate than the remainder of the Desert. I may name, among
these oases, those of El-Kantara, Biskra, and El-Outaïa, which form a sort
of chaplet, and are watered by the same river.
The oasis of El-Kantara is the first we encounter on quitting the
Mediterranean region to penetrate into the Sahara through the gloomy and
precipitous ravine entitled “The Mouth of the Desert.” It is situated 1800
feet above the sea-level. Its length is 5000 yards. Fournel, the first geologist
who examined it (in 1864), christened it the Hyères of the Sahara. Its
temperature is cool and equable, and does but just suffice to enable the
dates to ripen. It possesses upwards of 76,000 palm-trees, sheltering under
their leafy shadow legions of apricots, pomegranates, and fig-trees. In the
centre of this pleasant and fruitful shade houses of brick, with flat roofs and
narrow loop-holed windows, surround a square tower. The ancient watch-
towers have fallen into decay. Before France took under its “protection” the
peaceful Berbers who cultivate the oasis, these towers were useful as posts
of observation whence to descry the approach of the wandering Arabs, who
resort in summer to the pastures of the mountains, and in winter to those of
the Sahara.

As a type of the oasis of the Desert of Erosion, let us take that of
Ouargla, the last which submitted to the French in South Algeria.

A Street in Ouargla.

It is situated in a profound hollow. In form it is elliptical, with its major
axis measuring about five thousand yards, and its minor about three
thousand. The palms are planted at the rate of ten to eleven hundred a
hectare (two acres); they attain to extraordinary dimensions, and their dense
foliage over-arches a small world of fruit trees. Outside the gardens grow
some wild date-palms, which yield a smaller crop, but whose fruit is much
more savoury. Two avenues, or clearings, bisecting the forest from north to
south, lead to the q’sour, or village, of Ouargla. This q’sour, like every
other, is built of sun-dried earth, and surrounded by a circular rampart in
very bad condition, six to thirteen feet in height, and four and a-half feet
thick at the base. It is flanked with loop-holed towers, and encircled
externally by a muddy moat, crossed by six causeways leading to as many
gates.
Before some of these gates are planted the small entrenched camps,
wherein the Arab shepherds of the neighbourhood take refuge with their
flocks what time the oasis is menaced by an enemy.
The q’sour of Ouargla is divided into three quarters, inhabited by three
tribes, who do not live always on the most friendly terms. In appearance it
resembles the Saharan q’sours, which have all a strong family likeness;

there are the mosque, and the governor’s residence, and the open market-
place, and the narrow squalid streets, often obstructed by heaps of unclean
and unsavoury rubbish; and the low dull houses, pierced with holes instead
of windows, which have seldom any shutters; so that the traveller, when he
penetrates into these dismal quarters, is startled by the contrast which they
present to the picture of enchanted palaces full of shade, perfume, and
freshness, drawn by his eager imagination. Our poets and romancists have
much to answer for. Their ideal East is very different from that actual East,
in all its heat, and noisomeness, and glare, which the voyager finds around
him, and which seems to have lost much of its beauty along with its
grandeur and its power. Pleasant to the fancy is the palm-grove, pleasant the
garden with its golden and purple fruitage, but the warm (and often mineral)
waters which irrigate, or rather inundate the soil, exhale the most
deleterious emanations, so that the unfortunate inhabitants are constantly
decimated by fever, blinded by ophthalmic disease, and devoured by
insects!
We have already seen that the Desert of Erosion is watered by means of
artesian wells, natural or artificial. The latter have been known to the
peoples of the Sahara from the remotest antiquity; but the implements and
the methods employed to bore or preserve them were, as the reader will
suppose, very rude and unsatisfactory. The sides of the well are only
supported by a framework of palm-wood, which decays very quickly; the
well gets choked; divers descend with baskets to clear away the sand; but
after awhile the evil exceeds their power of remedying it. “Then, for want
of water,” says M. Martins, “the palms grow sick and perish; the villages
are emptied of their population; the oasis contracts its boundaries, and
gradually disappears. The Desert resumes possession of the demesne which
the labour of man had temporarily won for it.” Fortunately, in the track of
the French army have trodden the French engineers, with all the wonderful
apparatus that Science places at their disposal, and in numerous places they
have excavated true artesian wells, similar to those which supply some of
our great towns. And thus many oases which were on the point of perishing
have been saved, others have been created, and the conquest of the Desert
by modern industry is henceforth no more than a question of time.

The oases of the Sandy Desert, as I have said, are not watered. They only
possess such wells as suffice, more or less, for the needs of the poor

cultivators. As for the palms, and other nutritive vegetables, they are
planted at the bottom of conical excavations some eighteen, twenty-five, or
thirty feet in depth; so that at a short distance you only see their crests rising
above the sandy soil like large tufts of herbage. The slopes around these
hollow gardens are stayed indifferently well by a matting of palm leaves.
The well itself is placed in the centre, and its depth does not exceed five-
and-twenty feet. Nothing can be more precarious than these oases, which a
gust of wind may bury under an avalanche of sand. Yet the men are cleaner
in their person, neater in attire, and livelier in spirit—the women are less
wretched and less oppressed—and the houses better built and better
provided than in the great q’sours of the upper regions. In the Souf, the
sandy region of the Eastern Sahara, the industrious inhabitants of these
oases remain at peace in the midst of the tumults and insurrections of their
turbulent neighbours, and appear fully sensible of the advantages they
undoubtedly derive from the firm and impartial rule of the French
Government.

CHAPTER VI.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE DESERT.
THE artist who wishes to represent the broad expanse of Ocean’s “liquid
plain,” does not fail to animate it with the white canvas of the labouring
ships. If he paints the Desert, his picture would be divided by a horizontal
line into two parts—the blue heaven, the yellow sand; the latter, an
undulating sea, with a few clumps of palms in the background, and in the
foreground, to enliven the too monotonous scene, a group or so of camels.
The camel is, in fact, the indispensable accessory of every view of the
Desert, as the ship of every marine painting; which justifies once more the
Arab designation of “ship of the Desert” or “terrestrial ship” (gouareb el
beurr).
In Book the First I have spoken of the Camel properly so-called, or
camel with two humps, which is peculiar to Central and Eastern Asia. The
camel of Arabia and Africa is the dromedary. The latter is employed
conjointly with the two-humped camel in the westernmost countries of

Asia: in Egypt, and in Nubia, he is much more widely spread than his
congener, which is nearly unknown in the rest of Africa. The dromedary has
but one hump. His hair is soft, woolly, moderately long about the body,
longer and much thicker on the hump, the head, the neck, and the shoulders.
Its colour varies from a reddish-brown to a clear yellow. Zoologists
recognize three varieties of this species:—The Brown dromedary, also
called, but improperly, the Caucasian dromedary—he is brown, like the
Bactrian camel, and his short squat limbs indicate strength rather than
agility; the White dromedary, of a very transparent colour, and of slender
figure; and the Egyptian dromedary, larger than either of the preceding, and
with body and limbs uniformly clothed in short gray hair. But the Arabs
distinguish only two races: the Djemel, or camel of burden, which is no
other, probably, than the Caucasian dromedary; and the Mahari, or camel
for the saddle and war, whose name seems to apply equally to the two other
varieties.

1. The Mahari. 2. The Djemel.

The mahari is to the djemel what our chargers are to our carthorses, or,
as the Arabs say, what the djend (noble) is to the kheddim (the servant). He
has a very sure foot, a free, sustained, and rapid trot; he is sober, enduring,
and courageous; a true courser, and the nomade’s inseparable friend and

companion. His training is a matter of the highest importance, and skilfully
adapted to develop all his best qualities and highest faculties.
The Arabs of the Tell assert that the maharis accomplish in one day ten
times the march of a caravan, or a hundred leagues; but the best in blood
and breeding do not generally exceed a daily journey of from thirty-five to
forty leagues.
The young mahari has his place in the Arab’s tent. The children play
with him; he is a recognized member of the family; custom and gratitude
attach him to his masters, whom he divines to be his friends.
If the djemel be not as noble as the mahari, he is not less useful. Without
him, all relations would be suspended between the peoples of the Sahara;
the Soudan, wide, populous, and fertile as it is, would be a terra incognita;
he is the sole means of intercommunication possible in the arid wastes of
the Desert.
Alike living and dead, he is the fortune of his master.
Living, he carries the tents and the provisions; he makes war, he carries
on commerce; that he might be patient, God (say the Arabs) created him
without gall; he fears neither hunger nor thirst, fatigue nor heat; his hair is
woven into the burnous and the tent-stuff; the milk of the female nourishes
rich and poor, and fattens the horses; it is “a spring which does not dry
up.”[73]
Dead, all his flesh is excellent eating; his hump (deroua) forms the
daintiest dish at the banquet; in the bottles made of his skin, the water is
neither consumed by wind nor sun; the shoes fashioned from it may tread
unhurt upon the viper, and will save the traveller’s feet from burning
wounds (haffa); denuded of its hair, afterwards soaked in water, and simply
applied to a wooden saddle, without nails or pegs, it adheres to it, like the
bark to the tree, and communicates to the whole a solidity which will defy
war, the chase, and the foray.
The superiority of the mahari consists in this, that to all his own peculiar
qualities he adds those of the djemel. His inferiority arises from the
difficulty of his training, which consumes for more than a year all his
master’s time without compensation, and from the fact that animals of his
race are few in number.

Striped Hyænas of the Sahara.

If we turn to the poet or the artist for a picture of the Desert, we find it
peopled with animals of a very unsatisfactory character: the lion, the
leopard, the panther, in quest of prey, seeking whom they may devour, or
troops of hyænas and jackals, tearing with keen teeth the corpses of men
and animals.
“With these, lean dogs in herds obscene repair,
And every kind that snuffs the tainted air.”—(Lucan.)

Jackals disintering Dead Bodies.

Others diversify the scene with the graceful form of the gazelle, with the
ungainly body, immensely long neck, and spotted hide of the giraffe; or
with the ostrich, the camel of the bird-world, spreading his plumes to the
wind, and flying with swift feet from the hunter or the wild beast that
pursues him. But, in truth, these are bold fancies, artistic or poetic licenses,
rather than exact representations of what one really sees in the Desert; and
most of the animals with which we people, at our pleasure, the immense
solitudes of Africa and Asia actually belong to neighbouring regions of a
less arid character. And, in the first place, the lion of the Desert is a myth, or
nearly so. “When you speak,” says Carrette, “to the inhabitants of the
Desert of these ferocious beasts which Europeans give them as companions,
they reply with imperturbable coolness, ‘You have, then, in your own
country, lions which drink air and browse on leaves? But, among us, lions
must have running water and live flesh. Therefore they only appear in those
parts of the Sahara where are wooded hills and an abundance of water. We
dread nothing but the viper (lefa) and the innumerable swarms of
mosquitoes; the latter being found wherever any humidity prevails.’”[74]

1. Gypaëtos, or Bearded Vulture. 2. Sociable Vulture. 3. Cathartes Percnopterus.

What Carrette relates of the lion is also true of the other carnivora, of the
panther and the leopard, as well as of the hyæna and the jackal. It is surely
easy to understand that these animals greatly prefer to sojourn in fertile and
well-watered countries, where they enjoy freshness, shelter, copious
supplies of water, and abundant prey, than in hot glaring plains of sand,
which offer them no asylum, and where they run the risk of perishing of
hunger and thirst. It is, then, only on exceptional occasions that the lions
and other large felidæ of Africa issue from their caverns or their lairs, and
wander into the Desert (properly so called) in pursuit of prey. The hyæna
and the jackal venture there more willingly. We know that these carnivora
only attack living animals at the last extremity; their food is the dead and
even putrid flesh; it is a nutriment which costs them less trouble to obtain,
and probably, also, most pleases their taste. Thus, it is by no means an
uncommon occurrence to see them in the towns and q’sours, devouring the
carrion, or in the cemeteries disinterring the corpses; they follow also in the
Desert the caravans and detachments of troops on the march, and at night
prowl around their encampments, in the hope of some windfall, which they
seldom expect in vain, but which the dogs, the vultures (Cathartes
percnopterus and vultur fulvus), the gypaëtos, and the crows rarely fail to
dispute with them.
The region of the table-lands, or Saharan Steppes, the valleys of Erosion,
and certain parts of the Gobi—Persia, Syria, and Arabia—which are not
absolutely deprived of rain, or which are refreshed by mountain-streams,
nourish several species of mammifers: gazelles, hedgehogs, porcupines,
hares, offering both to man and the carnivora an abundant variety of game.
Of all these animals, the most interesting are the gazelles, several species of
which inhabit the desert region. I shall refer in the first place to the gazelle
properly so called, or Antilope dorcas, so remarkable for the grace of his
movements, his slender limbs, and the expressive gentleness of his eyes.
This beautiful species is common in Central Sahara, Nubia, and Asia. He
lives in numerous troops, is of small stature, with a yellowish or yellow-
brown skin on the back, and a white belly, a brown or blackish belt marking
the sides. The horns, larger and stronger in the male than in the female,
have a double curve, are lyrated, and without projections. The Ariel Gazelle
is about twenty inches high at the shoulder. The Gazella Sœmmeringii
belongs to Abyssinia and Sennaar. The gazelle nanguer is found as far as
Morocco, Nubia, and in the Cordofou; some varieties occur at the Senegal.

Finally, the oryx-leucoryx inhabits Tropical Africa, and rarely makes his
appearance in the Deserts; he differs from the gazelle in his arched horns,
but his skin is nearly the same. Although the gazelles are generally
considered extremely timid animals, which, moreover, their weakness
would fully justify, they display on emergency a surprising courage. When
they cannot escape from danger through agility, they bravely confront the
enemy which attacks them. Menaced by a panther or a leopard, they form
themselves into a circle, which, bristling everywhere with keen-pointed
horns, compels the antagonist to retreat.

1. Gazelle. 2. Antelope (Oryx-leucoryx).
3. Gazelle (of Sœmmering). 4. Nanguer.

In the deserts of Africa and Arabia the traveller frequently meets with
small rodents, which excavate their burrows in the sandy soil, and only
issue from them at night in quest of food. These are the jerboas and
jerbilles. The jerboas are easily recognized by the length of their hind-legs
and the disposition of their toes—three to each hind-foot, the middle larger
than the rest; five to each fore-foot; and all furnished with sharp, strong,
crooked claws; their structure resembling that of the raptores among birds.
These animals leap with great celerity, and to an extraordinary distance. The
tail, which is a fifth longer than the body, and terminated by a tuft of black
hair, forms at one and the same time a sort of balance, a rudder, and a lever.

It enables the jerboa to preserve his equilibrium, and to direct himself when
he has taken his spring; or, in a state of repose, furnishes him with a
substantial support.

Gazelles of Arabia opposing a Panther.

The jerboas constitute, in the family of dipodidæ, a tribe composed of
several species, which are found in eastern and central Europe, Asia, and
Africa.
The jerbilles, owing to the similarity of name, are often confounded with
the jerboas; but the only things they have in common are a certain
conformity of habits, and a nearly equal aptitude for leaping.
Otherwise, their organization rather resembles that of the rat, along with
which it is classed by zoologists. Their hind-legs are much shorter than
those of the jerboa, and their tail is garnished with but a few short, stiff
hairs. Like the jerboas, they inhabit the sandy wildernesses of Africa, Asia,
and eastern Europe.

Jerboas Attacked by a Horned Viper.

These small animals, exclusively frugivorous and graminivorous, seem
able, in the solitary places where they make their retreats, to multiply
themselves ad infinitum; but, while a great number perish through famine,
they are also decimated by a host of enemies in the reptiles of the Desert,
and especially by the terrible horned viper, or cerastes, and a great saurian,
intermediate between the lizard and crocodile—the “varan of the Desert.”
The horned viper (vipera cerastes) is thus named on account of the two
horns or protuberances on its forehead, which give it a physiognomy more
hideous, perhaps, than that of any of its congeners. It attains the length of
two to three feet. Its head is depressed, very obtuse, swollen behind the
eyes, and, so to speak, truncated in front. Its body, cased in shells of a
tawny-like yellow, marked with brown spots, blends curiously with the
sand, half-buried in which it lurks to surprise its prey or escape from its
enemies. The cerastes frequents the deserts of Lybia, Arabia, the Sahara,
and the valley of the Nile. Its bite is exceedingly dangerous.

1. Varan of the Nile. 2. Varan of the Desert.

The varans, or monitors, called also tupinambis by the ancient
naturalists, form a genus represented in tropical climes by several species of
great size. English writers commonly designate them monitors, the French
sauvegardes, because they frequent the haunts of crocodiles and alligators,
and give warning of their approach by a whistling sound. Two species
belong to Africa: one, aquatic, the varan of the Nile (varanus dracæna); the
other, sand-burrowing, the varan of the Desert (varanus sunius, or
arenarius), called by the Arabs onaran-el-ard. Their usual size is from three
feet to three feet four inches. The varan of the Nile wears an armour of
alternately green and black scales. Its congener exhibits a mixture of brown
and yellow, more suitable to its sandy lairs. It is rare in the Sahara, but
common enough in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Nubia.
Poor as may be the Fauna of the Desert, there is yet cause enough for
astonishment that the species which compose it, especially the herbivora,
should be able to find subsistence in these seas of sand, where they can find
but a few saline plants scattered at rare intervals, and where fresh water is
almost wholly wanting. It is, however, well known now-a-days that the
wilderness provides its denizens with an aliment, which is sometimes very
abundant, suitable for man, the camel, and the beasts, and is considered
identical by many authorities with the manna of the Bible.[75] This
substance is a cryptogamous vegetable, variously christened lichen
esculentus (Acharius), lecanora esculenta (Pallas), luttarut (by the Arabs),

and vasseh-el-ard, or “earth-dung” (by the Algerines). It sometimes forms
on the sand, in the morning, a layer one or two inches in thickness, and
appears to have dropped from heaven, or to have sprung spontaneously
from the soil, during the night. It is probable that its spores, transported by
the wind, are developed by the humidity which is condensed through the
nocturnal coldness.
A shower of this lichen was observed, in April 1846, in the Russian
government of Wilna. It covered the soil for three or four inches in depth,
and the inhabitants lived upon it for several days. Its form is that of a small,
anfractuous, rounded grain, about the size of a pea, externally of a gray
colour, but white and farinaceous within. Its taste is weak, amygdalaceous,
with a faint, mushroom-like aroma. Boiled in water, it swells, becomes
gelatinous, and may be served up in various ways. In the Sahara, as well as
in Arabia, it adheres to any foreign body. Cattle feed upon it eagerly. It
certainly facilitates digestion, and contains all the assimilating principles
which form the constituents of the wholesomest vegetable food. Such as it
is, the lichen esculentus is an inestimable boon to the wandering tribes of
the Desert, who would perish of hunger in years of famine but for its
heaven-sent nutriment.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MEN OF THE DESERT.
WHEN I use the terms “Men of the Desert,” “Populations of the Desert,”
evidently I must not be understood to employ them in their absolute sense.
Man, no more than that other so-called “lord of animals”—the lion, makes a
voluntary sojourn in countries where game, verdure, and fresh water are
wanting. The peoples whom we entitle “Inhabitants of the Desert” are then,
in reality, those who dwell upon its borders or in its oases, but whom the
necessity of traversing and frequently abiding in it has familiarized with its
gloom and its peril, as a similar necessity has familiarized the mariner with
the ocean. We have seen, however, that some pastoral tribes pitch their tents
and pasture their flocks in those districts where vegetation is favoured and
cherished by a supply of rain or subterranean waters, and which should

more accurately be designated as Steppes than Deserts. Some authorities
have, indeed, affixed the name of “the Saharan Steppe” to the region of
high table-lands which lies at the base of the Atlas range.
Other groups, who are partly shepherds and partly hunters, inhabit, in the
Southern and Western Sahara, those plateaux where ostriches, gazelles, and
hares abound. The more peaceful and industrious tribes occupy the oases.
As for those who encamp or habitually wander in the Sandy Desert—where
all cultivation is impossible, where the herds can obtain but an insufficient
pasture, where game very seldom shows itself-the reader will suppose that
they can only subsist by plundering or ransoming the caravans. These are
the rovers, the pirates of the Sea of Sand. There are “land-rats,” Shakspeare
tells us, as well as “water-rats.” Others, again, there are who seem
convinced that “honesty is the best policy,” who give themselves up
exclusively to commercial transactions, and act as agents and intermediaries
between nations separated from one another by leagues of rock and sand,
for the exchange of their respective products. It might be said of these that
they discharged a useful and honourable function, if the purchase and sale
of slaves were not the most ordinary, and unfortunately the most lucrative,
of their operations.
In our previous examination of the peoples of the Steppes, we
discovered that all were more or less directly sprung from the same sources;
—the yellow or Mongolian race, which blends in the north with the
Hyperborean race, and in the west with the Japhetic or Indo-Germanic. We
have now to note a not less remarkable fact—that the whole Desert zone is
likewise occupied by one family, the Semitic, modified in certain parts of
Africa by commixture with the Negro race. Soon we shall see the latter
peopling of itself the plains of Central and Southern Africa; the Malayo-
Polynesian and Papuan, but slightly distinguished from the preceding, in
possession of the islands of the Indian Ocean, those of Oceania, and the
Australian continent; the Hyperborean race, scattered through the Arctic
solitudes; and, finally, the “Red Man,” gradually dying away among the
prairies and forests of the two Americas: so that, to each of the great
divisions of the Savage or Desert World corresponds one of the great
fractions of the human species.
The Shemites—so named because the Bible attributes their origin to
Shem, the eldest son of Noah—are now-a-days represented only by the
Jews and the Arabs, though they formerly included also the Assyrians, the

Chaldæans or Babylonians, the Syrians, Phœnicians, and Ethiopians. Of
their modern representatives, the Jews alone have displayed any real
aptitude for civilization. The Arabs, whose name is derived from the word
Arâba, which signifies “desert,” seem almost exclusively adapted for a
nomadic life; and it is to them can most correctly be applied the
characteristics which Renan too broadly attributes to the entire Shemitic
race.
“As far as concerns the civil and political life,” says that distinguished
orientalist, “the Shemites are distinguished by the same character of
simplicity. They have never understood civilization in the sense which we
apply to the word. We do not find among them any great organized empires,
or commerce, or public spirit—nothing which recalls the absolute
monarchy of Egypt and Persia. The true Shemitic society is that of the tent
and the tribe: it owns no political or judiciary institution; its principle is,
man free, without any controlling authority, and without any other security
than that of the family tie. The questions of aristocracy, democracy,
feudality, which sum up all the history of the Aryan peoples, have no
meaning for the Shemites. Aristocracy, not having among them a military
origin, is accepted without protest and without repugnance. The Shemitic
nobility is purely patriarchal: it owes nothing to conquest; it has its origin in
blood.”
As far as their physique is concerned, the Arabs are in general tall, thin,
nimble, not very strong. Their face is pale and long, their forehead low,
their nose aquiline, their mouth large, their chin receding. The complexion
is brown, as becomes those who live for months under a glaring sun; the
eyes are keen and glowing; the port is free and even haughty. They have
black hair and beard.
Of their history, prior to the day when Mohammed’s genius knit them
into a great proselytizing military people, little certain is known. A Shemitic
tribe, descended from Joktan, grandson of Shem, settled in Arabia at a
remote period of antiquity, and Joktan’s great-grandson, Himzar or Homin,
founded a dynasty which ruled in Yemen for upwards of two thousand
years. Even the Romans could not utterly subdue them, but gradually the
different tribes fell apart from one another, and for centuries waged against
each other the most desperate wars, until Mohammed supplied them with a
rallying-point in the creed of Islam. Thenceforth their mission was to
propagate the new faith by fire and sword, and bursting from their rocky

highlands like a torrent, they poured along the shores of the Mediterranean
to Gibraltar on the north, and Tangier on the south. In Northern Africa they
gradually mingled with the Berbers, the Numidians, and the Getulians, and
from the fusion sprang the Kabyles, the Tibbous, and the Touaregs, while
the Shemites themselves lost a portion of their original character.
All the tribes of the desert are Moslems. The precepts of the Koran, and
certain traditional usages, are almost the only laws which they recognize.
The Koran authorizes polygamy, and the Arab women, therefore, are less
the wives than the slaves of their husbands, who enforce upon them the
strictest seclusion, and impose upon them the most arduous labours. The
tyranny which weighs upon the women is, however, in inverse proportion to
the degree of welfare and civilization of the various tribes. Among the poor
and almost barbarous peoples of the desert, these unfortunate creatures are
reduced to a condition of degradation and brutishness which inspires in the
European almost as much disgust as pity.
The instinct of rapine which most writers have signalized as one of the
leading features of the Arab character, appears to have been greatly
exaggerated, or, at least, too much generalized. This vice is a special result
of their position, and, we must own, of the very antiquated views they hold
upon the “rights of man,” which, indeed, they sum up in much the same
manner as Wordsworth’s Rob Roy:—[76]
“The creatures see of flood and field,
And those that travel on the wind!
With them no strife can last; they live
In peace, and peace of mind.

“For why?—because the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”

We must also take into account the spirit of hostility which their religion
fosters against the infidel—against, that is, all who do not accept the laws of
the Prophet. “The sword,” says Mohammed, “is the key of heaven and of
hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of
more avail than two months of fasting or prayer: whosoever falls in battle,
his sins are forgiven: at the day of judgment his wounds shall be
resplendent as vermilion and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs
shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.” Such a declaration

could not but fire the enthusiasm of the Arab, and whet their swords against
the enemies of Islam.
The leading features of his character have been discriminated by Gibbon
with his usual sagacity, and described with his wonted stateliness of
language.
“In private life,” he says,[77] “every man, at least every family, is the
judge and avenger of his own cause. The nice sensibility of honour, which
weighs the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the
quarrels of the Arabs; the honour of their women, and their beards, is most
easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be expiated
only by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient inveteracy, that
they expect whole months and years the opportunity of revenge. A fine or
compensation for murder is familiar to the barbarians of every age; but with
the Arabs the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to accept the atonement, or
to exercise with their own hands the law of retaliation. Their refined malice
refuses even the head of the murderer, substitutes an innocent for the guilty
person, and transfers the penalty to the best and most considerable of the
race by whom they have been injured. If he falls by their hands, they are
exposed in their turn to the danger of reprisals, the interest and principal of
the bloody debt are accumulated; the individuals of either family lead a life
of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may sometimes elapse before the
account of vengeance be finally settled. This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of
pity or forgiveness, has been moderated, however, by the maxims of
honour, which require in every private encounter some decent equality of
age and strength, of numbers and weapons....
“According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are equally
addicted to theft and merchandize; the caravans that traverse the desert are
ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbours, since the remote times of Job
and Sesostris, have been the victims of their rapacious spirit. If a Bedouin
discovers from afar a solitary traveller, he rides furiously against him,
crying, with a loud voice, ‘Undress thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a
garment.’ A ready submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke
the aggressor, and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes
to shed in legitimate defence. A single robber, or a few associates, are
branded with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band
assume the character of lawful and honourable war. The temper of a people

thus armed against mankind, was doubly inflamed by the domestic license
of rapine, murder, and revenge.”
The name of “Bedouins” (from bedaouî, “man of the Desert”) has been
bestowed on the nomades of Arabia, Egypt, and the Northern Sahara. The
majority of them are shepherds; a few add to this industry the much less
honourable occupation of plundering trade-caravans; some prefer to devote
themselves wholly to this pursuit. All the Bedouins are children of the
sword. They exult in strife and the clash of arms. It is their acmé of
happiness to mount the war-steed and ride against the foe. The theme of the
Arab and his horse, of the attachment which subsists between them, of the
services which the latter renders to his master, of his physical and moral
qualities, his courage, his swiftness, his fidelity, has been worn so
threadbare that I need not here insist upon it.
I must state, however, that as there are two varieties of Arab camels, so
are there of Arab horses: the noble and the common, the beast of blood and
the beast of burden. The former seem to be growing scarcer every year. He
is named koleïl. The nobility of a horse depends entirely upon that of his
mother, so that an authentic certificate of birth is always delivered to the
purchaser of a “high-bred steed.” This certificate is enclosed in a small bag,
which also contains a mysterious writing, and suspended to the animal’s
neck will be an omen of good fortune, it is hoped, to him and his owner.

Bedouin Shepherds and Bedouin Nomades.

The arms of the Bedouins are the curved sword, the yataghan, and the
long musket. Pistols are sometimes added, and the lance. They fight hand to
hand, and without any strategical method. They never venture upon night
attacks. They seek to surprise the enemy by rapid marches and unexpected
diversions, by ensnaring him in ambuscades, and harassing him when he is
the strongest in numbers. The most trifling fortification, however, arrests
them—a wall of brick, a simple ditch, a hedge of the fig-tree, will suffice to
protect a village from their depredations.

Touaregs.

Attack upon a Q’sour.

The nomades of the Southern Sahara have not, like the Bedouins,
preserved in its purity the Shemitic type, but they have fostered and
developed the spirit of adventure and rapine which characterizes the Arab of
the desert, and they have added something of the ferocity of the still
barbarous tribes of Ham, with whom they have intermarried. These
nomades form two principal groups—the Tibboos on the east, and Touaregs
(Touarick, Touereug, or Tawarik) on the west. The former, according to
Humboldt, are called “birds,” on account of their agility; they are still
imperfectly known to Europeans, despite of the labours of Richardson,
Clapperton, and Barth. The second are divided into the Touaregs of
Aghadez and the Touaregs of Tagazi. It was not until 1862 that the French
army, crossing the Sahara from north to south, entered into direct relations
with these fierce children of the desert. In the same year their ambassadors
attracted the curiosity of ever-curious Paris. They are the despots, the
tyrants of the southern Sahara. The charge of their lean flocks is their least
occupation. They are, it is true, skilful and enthusiastic hunters; but their
veritable industry is the exploration of the desert: an exploration which
changes in form according to circumstances. For a proper remuneration
they undertake the guidance and protection of the caravans; but whoever

has not purchased their safeguard they treat as an enemy, and if not
adequately ransomed sell into slavery. The Berbers of the oasis not unjustly
regard these marauders with alarm. For they pitilessly exact from the
peaceful cultivator a share of his harvest, which is always the lion’s share;
the right of the strongest being the only right they recognize, and each man
for himself the only principle they respect. A troop of Touaregs, for
instance, descends upon an oasis, and summons its inhabitants to deliver up
immediately a certain number of bags of dates. In case of refusal they
withdraw, but the people of the oasis may prepare to defend themselves
with arms, for the dreaded blow will very shortly be delivered. The
Touaregs, leaving their maharis and their baggage at a convenient distance,
penetrate at night into the palm-gardens, scale the walls, and, unless very
energetically repelled, seize upon the tribute they had demanded.
Nothing is there to be remarked in the Arabs of the q’sours but their
misery and degradation. A French officer, M. Tremblet, has described with
exactness and force their physiognomy, manners, character, ideas, and
history.[78] One rises from the perusal of his book with a painful impression.
In the narrow and pestilential streets of the q’sours, where vermin are as
numerous as men and women, in those mud palaces where the sultans are
enthroned in rags, the same passions, the same ambitions, the same all-
potent appetites, the same struggles, intrigues, and crimes prevail, as
occupy so large a place in the history of the great states of Europe and Asia.
Among the inhabitants of the Desert I would include the possessors of
the great Egyptian oasis,—that ancient cradle of civilization—that strange
and mysterious land which, after throbbing with so full and brilliant a life in
the days of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, slumbered for centuries under
the leaden domination of the Moslem. Let us note only that the Egyptian
people have undergone no special modification; the features of the fellahs
of to-day are exactly those which we trace in the pictures that cover the
walls of palace and tomb, the monuments that carry us back in imagination
to the erection of the Pyramids or the glories of hundred-gated Thebes. It is
the old Egypto-Berber race, wherein we recognize the mixture of the black
and Shemitic blood, or perhaps the still incomplete result of the influences
which have transformed into negroes the whites who emigrated, some
thousands of years ago, from Western Asia into Africa.

Nubian Women.

The Egyptians establish, very clearly, the transition between the
Shemites and the population of Nubia and Ethiopia. With the latter the skin
is black or of a deep bronze; but the form, the features, the hair, approach
much more nearly the Caucasian than the Negro type. The Nubian women
especially exhibit a grace and dignity of movement which reveal the
nobleness of their origin. “It is in these far lands,” says Trémaux, “we meet
with the modern Rebecca, attired with the antique Biblical simplicity, and
carrying the water vessel on her head. Their air, at once easy and reserved,
their black modest eyes, recall those images of the holy history which every
one has seen; only, instead of a cotton stuff gaily coloured, imagine a piece
very dirty and often in tatters, and you will have the portrait of the Nubian
woman; this garment is otherwise so naturally draped and so proudly worn,
that it yields in nothing to the ancient models.”

BOOK III.

PRAIRIES, SAVANNAHS, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS.

CHAPTER I.

THE WILD PLAINS OF THE OLD WORLD:—THE AFRICAN
INTERIOR.
HEN we have crossed the 18th parallel (or nearly so) of north
latitude in Africa and the 30th in Asia—the southern boundary of
the Rainless District—countries of extreme fertility and exuberant
product succeed to the dreary solitudes we have hitherto
traversed.
At intervals, indeed, the traveller encounters some vast blighted and
accursed area, where, for a part of each year, a deadly aridity prevails; but
ever there comes a happy moment, even in these desolate wastes, when
genial Nature resumes her rights, abundant rains nourish vegetable and
animal life, and the glowing scene constrains us to exclaim with thankful
heart, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.”
The Asiatic plains in the south, are, however, preserved from such abrupt
alternations; numerous water-courses, leaping downward from the snowy
fountains of the Himalayan chain, refresh and fertilize these countries,
which are almost everywhere subject to the dominion of man. Analagous
causes, in the grand rich islands of the warm Indian seas, produce similar
effects; there, also, the very deserts are humid regions, and tall grasses,
bushes, shrubs, reeds, and climbing plants grow in a rank and luxuriant
chaos which we designate by the name of jungles, in whose dense obscurity
the tiger makes his lair, and the serpent conceals his deadly venom!
In the immense triangle defined by that portion of the African continent
which extends from the Mountains of the Moon to the Cape of Good Hope,

nature has maintained almost intact her savage independence; but she
displays there her most varied forms, from the snow-crested ice-bound
mountain to the lowest and most monotonous plain, from the impenetrable
forest to the nakedest and barrenest steppe.
To enable the reader to comprehend these widely different aspects, and
to describe the peculiar characteristics of each region of this immense
continent, it will be necessary for us to recapitulate its most important
geographical features.

A vast plateau, of comparatively slight elevation, occupies all Southern
Africa, extending eastward as far as the fifth or sixth degree north of the
equator. To the north-west, it is bounded by the mountains of Senegambia;
to the north-east, by those of Abyssinia. On the east and west, the
mountains descend to the very shore in secondary chains; to the south the
table-land is brought down to the sea in a series of terraces which separate
the mountain-ranges.
At its southern extremity, the African continent is from 550 to 600 miles
broad. It is occupied by the British colony of the Cape, which is bounded on
the north by the Orange River. The most striking features of the physical
geography of this part of Africa, and which determine in the main its
climate and natural productions, are three chains of mountains disposed
parallel to one another and to the southern coast. These are separated by
terraces or upland plains, each range forming the boundary of the lower and
the abutment of the higher terrace. The communication is maintained by
transverse valleys, which are often of a highly romantic character. The
loftiest and most inland chain is christened in different parts of its course
the Roggeveld Bergen, the Nieuveld Bergen, and the Sneeu Bergen, or
“Snowy Mountains.” Of these the loftiest summit is the Compass Berg,
10,000 feet in altitude. The second chain, the Black Mountains, though not
so lofty are more massive, and, in truth, composed of two or three chains in
close juxtaposition. The third, or last chain, in proceeding from south to
north, varies from eighteen to fifty-four miles, enlarging towards the west.
The plain or terrace between the Black and the Snowy Mountains is
much loftier than the two other steps by which we descend to the southern
extremity of the continent. The lowest terrace, bordering on the sea, is well-
watered and fertile. The second, or central terrace, consists of fertile

districts, equally well watered, but intersected by vast dry deserts, called
(from a Hottentot word) Karroos. The third terrace, commonly designated
the Great Karroo, at the base of the Roggeveld and Nieuveld chain, is 300
miles in length, 80 miles in breadth, and 2000 feet above the sea-level. Its
soil, says a writer in the Quarterly Review, presents throughout its whole
extent, for the greater portion of the year, not a trace of vegetation. These
gloomy solitudes assume a character of picturesque grandeur through their
very wildness of desolation. The scene might convey to a fanciful mind the
dreary image of a ruined world, where the witches and demons of Goethe’s
Walpurgis-Night might fitly celebrate their revels.
“And through the cliffs with ruin strewn,
The wild winds whizz, and howl, and moan.”[79]

During the long dry summer months, the smallest birds would not find
wherewithal to sustain their existence in these sombre deserts, whose
solemn silence not even the murmur of an insect interrupts.

NIGHT-SCENE IN THE AFRICAN INTERIOR.

Yet these regions, deprived of springs and running waters, are not always
sterile deserts, are not always desolate plains. In the dry season, the soil, a
yellow ferruginous clay, acquires the hardness of brick, just as if it had been
exposed to the fire of a furnace; but the roots and bulbs, protected by a

ligneous covering, resist the devouring heat. The first rains revive them;
they put forth their stems and branches; a myriad flowers reveal their
sparkling colours; and the country which, a day or two before, had shown to
the eye a bare and dreary surface, shines out in a panoply of splendour, as if
a magician’s spell had suddenly transformed it into a terrestrial paradise!
But as the days lengthen, and the sun’s power increases, the bloom and the
beauty vanish, and the curse of fire once more descends upon the gloomy
scene.
In several districts north of the Cape Colony whole years pass by
without the sight or sound of running water rejoicing the wistful wanderer.
Dr. Livingstone, while residing among the Bakouans, in the Bechuana
country, saw the natives excavating the bed of the Kolobeng to extract a few
drops of water. A centigrade thermometer, sunk two and a half inches in the
earth, at noon, marked 56°. Insects placed on the surface of the ground died
in a few seconds. The grass was so dry that it crumbled into powder when
plucked.
The coast of Natal is rich in trees and herbage. The Zambesi, and other
rivers which descend from the central plateau, refresh the plains of
Mozambique and Zanzibar. But from the 4th parallel of north latitude to
Cape Guardafui extends an almost continuous desert. The southern
extremity of the Lupata chain also presents a vast naked country, where the
presence of gold has encouraged the Portuguese to found some
establishments.
The neighbouring zone of Kaffraria consists of great far-spreading,
gently-undulating plains, characterized by extreme aridity. The western
districts are much less broken than the central, and exhibit no undulations
except in the vicinity of the ocean. There an immense level territory exists
under the name of the Kalihari Desert, whose southern boundary is marked
by the Gariep or Orange River, which drains rather than waters it. To the
north this awful wilderness stretches as far as the Lake Ngami, thus
covering the area comprised between the 29th and 30th parallels of south
latitude. The pastoral country of Namaqua and Damaras bounds it on the
west. Eastward it extends to the 24th meridian of west longitude.
Moisture is not wholly wanting in this vast region. The Kalihari has been
called a desert, says Livingstone,[80] because it contains no running water,
and very little in wells. Far from being destitute of vegetation, it is covered

with grass and creeping plants, and there are large patches of bushes, and
even trees. It is remarkably flat; and prodigious herds of antelopes roam
over its trackless plains. The soil is composed in general of a fine soft sand,
lightly coloured—that is, of a nearly pure silica. In the ancient beds of
dried-up rivers lie immense patches of alluvial soil, which, hardened by the
sun, form great reservoirs, retaining the rain-water for several months of the
year. The quantity of grass flourishing in this region is remarkable. It grows
generally in thick tufts, occasionally intermingled with spaces where the
earth is naked or closely overgrown with creeping plants. These, deeply
rooted in the soil, suffer but little from the effects of the excessive heat.
Most of them have tubercular roots, and are so organized as to furnish both
food and liquid during the long droughts—an epoch when one vainly seeks
elsewhere anything which can appease one’s hunger or one’s thirst.
The rich vegetation of the Kalihari is due to its geological constitution. It
consists of a great valley, or rather of a vast basin, whose bottom is formed
of a diluvial earth, and which is encircled by a belt of rocks, cloven at
several places. It follows that where the rain is abundant, the slope of the
hills directs it towards the centre of the basin, and this rain filters and
deposits itself beneath the surface of the soil. And it appears to be a proof of
this statement, that on digging in the sand cisterns are formed, or “sucking-
places,” which are filled with water supplied by subterraneous conduits.
This so-called Desert is not without its utility. Not only does it nourish
innumerable multitudes of animals of every kind, but it has become the
asylum of fugitive tribes. Here at first the Bakalabaris found a refuge; and
then, in their turn, other peoples of the Bechuana, whose territories had
been invaded by the Kaffirs.
The Kalihari has its mirage and its sirocco. During the excessive drought
which precedes the rainy season, a burning wind traverses this desert from
north to south, and during its three or four days’ duration it withers and
dries up everything in its path. It is so loaded with electricity that a bundle
of ostrich feathers, which remained exposed to it for a few seconds, was
itself charged as if it had been in contact with a powerful electrical machine,
and produced a lively disturbance, accompanied by cracking noises, when
taken in the hand. As often as this wind prevails, the electricity of the
atmosphere is so abundant that every movement of the natives causes
sparks to be given off their karosses, or cloaks made of the skin of beasts.

The contrast is striking between the well-watered east coast of South
Africa and the arid western coast. After the scarped mountains of the Cape,
which ascend northward to the ocean, come the less lofty chains—the hills
of sand which separate the interior sandy desert from the equally sandy
district of the littoral. With the exception of the Walvish Bay, the coast for
eight hundred miles—from the great Orange River to Cape Negro—has not
a stream of water.
At Cape Negro commences a series of terraces, separated from one
another by long bands of sunken ground. This ensemble describes a curve
towards the interior, and leaves on the coast a level plain of about 110 miles
in breadth.
In Benguela the plains are healthy and cultivated. More to the north, one
encounters nothing but monotonous savannahs and forests with gigantic
trees. The soil, at a great number of points, is saturated with water, and, so
to speak, enveloped in a shroud of pestilential vapour, which the breeze
never scatters.
The low plains of Biafra and Benin, and especially the Delta of the
Niger, are unwholesome, rank, and foul-smelling marshes. In their
mangrove swamps lurks fever, and a legion of deadly diseases.
“Macies et nova febrium
Terris incubuit cohors.”—(Horace.)

Until the early years of the present century very little was known of the
interior of Southern Africa. At this epoch some native merchants traversed
the country from one sea to another—from St. Paul de Loanda to the coast
of Mozambique and Zanzibar. This exploit was repeated and outstripped by
Dr. Livingstone, who, from 1850 to 1856, accomplished a marvellous
journey of six thousand miles, through regions never before trodden by the
white man’s foot.
Setting out from Kolobeng, the most advanced of the English missionary
stations, he arrived, after having crossed some three hundred miles of a
region without water, at the beautiful river Zouga, which issues from the
western extremity of Lake Ngami.
“A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides,
Nor sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount

Appears, to refresh the aching eye;
But barren earth, and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon round and round.”[81]
Lake Ngami is from 45 to 60 miles long, and from 56 to 110 in
circumference. Its direction is N.N.E. to S.S.W. Its southern portion curves
westward, and it receives from the north-west the Teoughé. The water, very
fresh when the lake is full, grows brackish during the dry season. At the
latter period it is very shallow, and at eighteen or twenty miles from the
shore canoes can be manœuvred with the help of a pole. The banks are
everywhere low. At the west a considerable space, utterly bare of trees,
proves that the lake was formerly larger. During the months which precede
the arrival of the northern waters, cattle, to quench their thirst, make their
way with difficulty through the belt of reeds dried up by the sun. The
natives, says Livingstone, who reside on the shores of the lake, tell us that
trees and antelopes are carried down by the waters during the annual
inundation.
The same traveller informs us that the vast regions lying to the north of
the lake at such great distances—regions copiously watered, and deluged
every year by the heavy tropical rains—pour towards the south the excess
of the waters which saturate their soil; and a certain quantity of these
waters, encountering the lake on their way, flow into it. It is in March and
April that the inundation begins. The waters, on descending, find the rivers
dried up, and the lake itself exceedingly shallow. The rivers in this part of
Africa flow in channels capable of containing a far greater volume of water
than they generally hold. When looking at them, you might believe yourself
in some desolated Oriental garden where all the irrigating canals still exist,
but where the dams permit only a mere thread of water to take its course.
“The water,” adds Livingstone,[82] “is less absorbed by the earth than
lost between banks too wide apart, where the air and the sun evaporate
them. I am persuaded that there is not in the whole of this country a river
which loses itself amid the sands.”
The country situated to the north is exceedingly level for some hundreds
of miles, and abundantly provided with lakes and rivers, which the slightest
undulations of the soil divert into innumerable windings. The plain is
alternately covered with sombre thickets, lofty forests, and dense herbage.
On the banks of some rivers this herbage assumes gigantic proportions, and
by its tenacity opposes an effectual barrier to animals. In many places the

wide green pastures are enlivened by large herds of cattle, which the natives
breed. The land of the Barotses possess immense prairies of this
description, the home of numerous herds of elephants. But this richness of
the soil is counterbalanced by the insalubrity of the climate. These vast,
periodically flooded surfaces become, when the waters recede, the nurseries
of deadly fevers, and other formidable maladies, whose destructive
influence extends to a great distance.
The magnificent river Zambesi, known in its upper course by the local
appellation of Leambye—both words having the same signification in the
native tongue, “the River”—fertilizes and brightens these productive
regions. Flowing at first from north to south, it makes a sharp bend
westward, to march with stately step from south to north, and from west to
east, until, with a south-eastern inclination, it moves onward to the Indian
Ocean.
It was at a point nearly midway between the two oceans—the Indian and
the Atlantic—that the intrepid Livingstone first descried the Zambesi,
regarding its fertile banks and noble stream with much the same emotions
of delight and surprise as thrilled to the heart of Balboa, when
“With eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent,upon a peak in Darien.”[83]

He arrived there near the close of the dry season, and yet a grand volume of
water still sparkled in the river’s bed, which varied from 950 to 1900 feet in
breadth. At the epoch of the great floods, the Zambesi rises perpendicularly
more than eighteen feet, and at certain points extends more than forty miles
from its bank. From the borders of the Chobé to those of the Zambesi
spreads a low, level country, whose uniform expanse is only broken by the
gigantic hillocks of the termites. At intervals the traveller lights upon spots
where the waters have formerly settled, then on great morasses and deep
rivers, winding their slow way through an almost impervious jungle. There
is a certain fatal beauty about the whole region, like that of a Circe or a
Lucrezia Borgia; but its atmosphere breathes disease and death.
A general depression and flatness of surface seems to be the physical
characteristic of this part of Central Africa. Thus, on the route adopted by
Livingstone, in a N.N.E. direction, from the chain of Bamunguatos to the

Zambesi, all is level. Mount N’goua, an isolated mass in 18° 27´ 20´´ south
latitude, and 24° 13´ 63´´ east longitude, is a wholly exceptional accident.
The Kandehy Valley, which deploys on the northern slope of this narrow
colossus, is one of the most picturesque scenes that greeted the eyes of
Livingstone during his adventurous pilgrimage. Fruit trees, loaded with
emerald foliage, adorn its sides; a crystal brook ripples in the centre. Under
the shade of an enormous baobab the graceful antelopes browse
undisturbed, until alarmed by the footfall of the approaching traveller. Gnus
and zebras contemplate the strange intruder with an air of surprise. A few
continue to crop the grass indifferent; others pause in the banquet, uncertain
whether to stay or take to flight. The huge hulk of a white rhinoceros drags
labouring up the shady valley. Buffaloes, and condors, and giraffes stray far
into its pleasant depths as peaceful and almost as trustful as those of their
race which, in days remote, wandered among the beauties of Eden, in
“That delicious grove,
That garden, planted with the trees of God.”

Further to the north, even to the river Sanshureh, the country increases in
richness and beauty, the water-courses multiply, and the herbage aspires to
such a height that vehicles and animals are lost amongst it.
An exceeding gentleness, an almost Arcadian calm, characterizes the
landscape on the banks of the Leeba, a great affluent of the Leambye. This
river drags its slow and ever-winding waters through a delightful meadow-
land, which is probably flooded every year, for there is no wood except
where the ground rises four or five feet above the general level of the plain.
The soil of these tree-crowned plateaux, or knolls, is sandy, while that of
the prairies consists of an alluvial earth, gray and black, and mixed with
numerous river-shells.
Ascending the Leeba, we enter on a plain more than eighteen miles in
breadth, where the water rises to the traveller’s ankles. This water, says
Livingstone, does not proceed from the overflow of the river; but the level
of the ground is so horizontal that the rain-water cannot pass away, and
abides there for months. Still more humid are the adjacent plains of Lobala.
This vast submerged area forms a watershed between the rivers of the north
and those of the south. Up to this point all the rivers wend their way
southward; but from this point they adopt a northerly course, to empty their
tribute into the Kasaï or Loké.

The interior table-land, especially towards the mid-course of the
Zambesi, is intersected by lofty mountain-chains. It is in this region, and at
the southernmost point of the river’s great Delta, which is 270 miles in
length, that the famous Falls occur, named by the natives “Mosioatounya,”
or “Smoke-resounding,” re-christened by Livingstone, the Victoria. Their
vast columns of vapour are visible at a distance of five or six miles, and
might suggest to an American traveller the rolling clouds that ascend from a
burning prairie. The banks and islands of the river are here enriched with
sylvan vegetation of every variety of form and colour: the mighty baobab,
each of whose enormous arms would form the trunk of a large tree; the
graceful palm, with its crest of plume-like foliage; the silvery mohonams,
whose leaves sparkle in the sunshine like Achilles’ shield; and the nutsouri,
abounding in clusters of pleasant scarlet fruit.
The Falls are bounded on three sides by densely-wooded ridges 300 or
400 feet in height, and may be likened to a flood of water a thousand yards
broad, suddenly hurled over a basaltic precipice 100 feet in depth, and then
as suddenly compressed into a narrow gully not more than fifteen or twenty
yards across.
“If one imagines,” says Dr. Livingstone,[84] “the Thames filled with low
tree-covered hills immediately below the Tunnel, extending as far as
Gravesend, the bed of black basaltic rock instead of London mud, and a
fissure made therein from one end of the Tunnel to the other, down through
the keystones of the arch, and prolonged from the left end of the Tunnel
through thirty miles of hills; then fancy the Thames leaping bodily into the
gulf, and forced there to change its direction and flow from the right to the
left bank, and then rush boiling and roaring through the hills, he may have
some idea of what takes place at this the most wonderful sight I have
witnessed in Africa.”

VICTORIA FALLS, RIVER ZAMBESI.

In descending into the narrow abyss already spoken of, the cataract
breaks into five separate streams, which send up, to an elevation of 200 or
300 feet, as many columns of luminous vapour—pillars of shivering spray,
and foam, and diamond sparkle, which in the sunlight are gloriously
wreathed with the rare hues of Iris.
“How profound
The gulf! and how the giant element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a vent
To the broad column which rolls on.”—(Byron.)

In descending the Zambesi, we encounter the great river Kafue, which
flows from the north. Beyond the point of confluence the country becomes
opener, freer, and healthier, and we arrive at the Portuguese town of Tété.
About 200 miles to the north-west of Tété lies the great lake of fresh
water, Niyanyizi-Nyassa, or “Lake of Stars,” which stretches far away to
the north-west across Unyamuezi, or “The Land of the Moon.” It is rather
shallow, sprinkled with numerous fairy islands, and seems to be the remains
of an ancient lake of much greater extent. To the south-west a belt of fertile
country separates it from another lake called Shirwa, whence issues a

beautiful river, tributary to the Zambesi, impeded in its course by numerous
rapids, but traversing a level and unwholesome country.
At the same time (1856-58) that Livingstone accomplished these great
discoveries, Equatorial Africa was penetrated from the coast of Zambesi by
Captains Burton and Speke. These undaunted and indefatigable travellers,
after having ascended the river Pangany for a hundred and thirty miles,
through a rich and cultivated but pestiferous plain, arrived in February 1858
at Lake Tanganyika, of which the natives had spoken to Livingstone,
describing the country lying to the westward of that mass of water as bare
of wood, and solely covered with marshy plains.
Lake Tanganyika lies 200 miles S.W. of the Victoria N’yanza, between
lat. 3° and 7° 45´ S., at an elevation of 1844 feet above the sea. The 30th
meridian of east longitude strikes it in the centre. Its length is 320 miles; but
its breadth seldom exceeds 15 or 20, and never 60 miles, so that it has been
compared to a beach inclining its head towards the north. To the north-east
its shores are bold and elevated; the water is fresh and deep. The country
around it is rich in pasture, where a thriving population breed numerous
flocks and herds.
About two hundred miles to the north-east of this lake, and 3740 feet
above the sea-level, lies the vast basin of the Victoria N’yanza, discovered
by Captain Speke in 1859, and more fully explored by Speke and Grant in
1862. Its northern shore runs nearly parallel to the Equator, at a distance of
about twenty miles from it; its southern is in lat. 2° 46´ S., and long. 33° E.
It would seem at some remote period to have occupied a much larger area
than it does at present, though even now it is supposed to measure 220
miles in length and fully as much in breadth. Speke describes it as very
shallow. Fleets of canoes cover its surface; but the natives on the one shore
never venture across to the other, and no intercommunication has ever
existed between them. The surrounding landscapes are of a pastoral
character, genial and fertile, with quiet breadths of rich meadow land,
dotted by hundreds of white hornless cattle, and scarcely distinguishable
from our midland English scenery, were they not interspersed with groves
of the banana, the coffee-tree, and the date-palm. At its north-eastern
extremity, and probably connected with it, lies a long narrow basin which
the natives call Lake Baringo. On the west it receives the tributary waters of
the Kitangulé, and from the north throws off the various streams which
unite in one channel to form the famous Nile.

North-west from the N’yanza lies the little Lúta N’zigé, or Albert Lake,
discovered by Sir Samuel Baker in 1864; a long, narrow, and shallow basin,
surrounded by mountains 7000 feet high, about 230 miles in length, and
2488 feet above the sea-level, which apparently serves as the great reservoir
of the Nile.[85]
The discoveries of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Grant, and Baker, seem
to confirm the theory put forward by Sir Roderick Murchison, that the
central portion of South Africa is a large and elevated basin, abounding in
immense plains, in fertile lands, besprinkled with numerous lakes fed by a
thousand currents descending from the lofty mountains that surrounded it.
The rains, says Morin, cause these lakes to overflow, and their waters,
prevailing over every obstacle, break through the barrier of the high lands,
and descend into the lower levels in a series of cataracts, to make their way
eventually towards the ocean. Livingstone has proved the truth of this
felicitous induction as far as the Zambesi is concerned. The Nile also issues
from the lofty table-lands through deep and rocky ravines. The great
reservoir of the mysterious Egyptian river, the N’yanza Spekii, may be
accepted as the final confirmation of Sir Roderick’s theory, and the
conspicuous feature of the African people. The southern extremity of this
lake stretches as far as the watershed between North and South Africa.
Starting from the same viewpoint, Speke concludes that another great lake
will be found under the Equator, to the west of the Tanganyika and the
N’yanza Victoria. This will be the reservoir of the Congo. To establish this
fact will be to solve the last problem of the hydrographic system of Africa.
[86]

The western region of the African equatorial zone has been but
superficially explored, and in this direction numerous hypotheses remain to
be verified. Lake Tchad, situated in Central Nigritia, between Bornou on the
west and the south-west, and the Kanem to the north and east, was
discovered in 1823 by Major Denham, and explored by Dr. Barth in 1852.
The latter traveller grows eloquent in his description of the delicious
perspective which he had supposed it would offer to the gaze. He met with
numerous slaves on their way to cut grass for the horses. But instead of a
lake, an immense treeless plain stretched as far as the eye could reach. The
herbage became fresher and greener, thicker and taller; a marshy bottom,
describing a curve which projected here and receded there, embarrassed his
progress more and more; and after a useless and prolonged struggle to

escape from the quagmire, seeking in vain on the horizon some mirror-like
surface, he retraced his steps, dabbling in the slimy water, and consoling
himself with the reflection that at least he had seen some traces of the
“liquid element.” But the scene was strangely different when, in the winter
of 1854-55, more than one-half of the Ngornou was destroyed by the
inundation; and to the south of that town lay a deep sea, swallowing up the
whole plain even to the village of Koukiya! The lower stratum of the soil,
composed of limestone, appeared to have given way in the preceding year,
and had lowered the shore of the lake several yards; hence the inundation.
But apart from this evidently exceptional geological catastrophe, the
character of the Tchad is clearly that of an immense lagoon whose borders
change every month, and of which it is consequently impossible to lay
down any strictly accurate map.[87]
Lake Tchad lies between lat. 12° 30´ and 14° 30´ N., long. 13° and 15°
30´ S. Its length varies from two hundred to three hundred miles, according
to the amount of rainfall and similar circumstances; at its broadest it
measures one hundred and seventy miles; and it has an elevation of eight
hundred feet above the sea-level. The actual margin of its waters is lined by
a deep fence of papyrus and tall reeds, from ten to fourteen feet high. Its
islands are densely peopled. Fish and water-fowl abound, and not less do
crocodiles and hippopotami. The lake has no outlet, but receives several
rivers, of which the Waube and the Shari are the most notable.
The country watered by the Niger is also broken up by vast plains which,
fertile and glowing in the rainy season, are scorched and withered by the
summer heats. The famous port of Kabara, not far from Timbuktù, is
several miles from the river, and only accessible for five months in the year
at the epoch of the great rains.
Beyond this belt of vegetation, this girdle of fertility, Nature wears a
sombre aspect—the stony look of a corpse; for the immense Desert of the
Sahara begins. The transition from the one region to the other, from the land
of plenty to the land of want and famine, from the land of bright lakes, and
copious streams, and green pastures, to the land of rocky heights and barren
sandy wastes, is as startling as the change which sometimes occurs in
human life—the change of a moment, from bustling and exuberant
happiness to profound sorrow. It is such contrasts, however, that enable us
fully to appreciate the beauty and wealth of Nature.

“The scorching winds from arid deserts borne,”

teach us to prize the balmy breath of the “sweet south” that wanders “o’er a
bank of violets.” Fresh from the dreary Sahara plain, burnt and scathed by a
Tropic sun, we can feel all the loveliness of the woodland and the leafy
vale, of each
“Melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless.”

Thus, in the material world as in the moral and intellectual, the law of
compensation prevails, and the wayfarer in the Desert of Life may cheer
himself with the recollection that in due time the silence will be succeeded
by music, the desolation by beauty, and the wilderness by
“Verdurous glooms, and winding mossy ways.”

CHAPTER II.

DESERTS OF THE NEW WORLD:—PRAIRIES, PAMPAS,
LLANOS.
THEY who study the philosophy of history, of which men talk so much, and
know so little; they who seek in the general laws of nature and the physical
economy of the globe an explanation of its ethnological phenomena, may
find, it seems to me, a curious subject for investigation in the singular
destiny of the New World. They will have to ascertain by what concurrence
of circumstances the two Americas, separated from us by an immensity of
waters, and revealed to the world of the East but some four centuries ago,
shall have traversed in so brief a period the successive phases of conquest,
colonization, and emancipation; why European emigration was directed
thitherward at the very beginning; and thitherward continues still to flow
from every quarter; finally, by what tacit and unanimous agreement this
New World has become the adopted country of all the proscribed and
disinherited of the Old; while almost the entire area of the African
continent, which is so much more readily accessible, is scarcely less
favoured in its climatic conditions, and upon which the white race has

rested, from the remotest antiquity, its political institutions, its arts, and its
industry, has remained uninfluenced by the advancing tide of civilization.

PRAIRIES OF NORTH AMERICA—STAMPEDO OF WILD BISONS.

I limit myself to indicating this problem, which, however, it is not within
my present province to examine, but which naturally suggests itself when
we think of the swift development undergone by the European societies
planted on the American continent—when we remember how rapidly they
are narrowing the area of the desert and the wilderness. At the epoch of the
discovery of the New World it was one vast desolation, with the exception
of Mexico and Peru; and these were but the seats of a civilization which
seemed to have passed without transition from infancy to old age, from
vigour to decrepitude, and which crumbled into dust under the pitiless
blows of the Spanish conquerors. Neither Cortez nor Pizarro would have
overthrown a great empire with a handful of foot-soldiers and men-at-arms,
a squadron or two of horse, and a few unwieldy guns, had not the Colossus
already nodded to its fall, had not the Column been hollow at the base. But
soon the European nations shared among themselves this immense country
and the neighbouring islands. The Slave race, whose destiny it seemed to be
to reign among the polar ice and snow, long contented itself with the
inclement and inhospitable region of the extreme north-west, which it has
but recently surrendered to the United States Government. The Anglo-

Saxon race, in the northern continent, has seized the lion’s share. It now
holds between the two oceans, from the fifty-fifth to the thirtieth parallels of
north latitude, a fertile and life-breathing territory, well fitted to be the
cradle of great empires; the flourishing Confederation of Canada, the
colony of British Columbia, and the mighty republic of the United States.
Virgin forests have fallen before the restless axe of the hardy pioneer;
hundreds of populous cities have risen as if by enchantment in districts
haunted within the memory of men by the bear and the wild buffalo; a
network of railways spreads from the Atlantic almost to the base of the
Rocky Mountains; crops of waving corn bloom over wide prairies that a
few years ago yielded only the tall grass and waving reed; the aboriginal
tribes of the Red Indians have melted away before the impetuous tide of an
ever-advancing civilization; and the exhaustless energies of our race have
already raised in less than a century two mighty empires on the Mississippi
and the St. Lawrence, destined to a marvellous, a changeful, and
doubtlessly a glorious history. And both these empires have sprung from the
loins of England, are governed in the main by the same laws, hold the same
religion, are animated by the same aspiring and unwearied genius, and
“Speak the tongue
That Shakspeare spoke; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held;”

in everything, as we believe,
“Are sprung
Of Earth’s first blood, have titles manifold.”[88]

Southward from the thirtieth parallel stretches the domain of the Latin
races, already mingled with and being absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon, in
Canada, California, and the Southern States of the Union. Vast as this
region is, for it comprehends all Central America and all the Southern
Continent, it is infinitely less prosperous, less powerful, less peopled, than
what we may call Saxon America. Mexico is a byword and a reproach for
savage anarchy and murderous license. Neither Chili, nor Peru, nor even
Brazil approaches Canada in solid power and the auspicious promise of
future greatness. The Latin race seems dwarfed and cowed by the
neighbourhood of the energetic Anglo-Saxon, is swiftly retiring before it in
North America, and in the course of centuries will probably be subjugated
by it, even in the southern division of the great Continent.

A considerable portion of South America, however, is uncultivated,
unpeopled, and but imperfectly explored. There the Desert re-appears with
—
“The pale, cold aspect of a wearied friend,”[89]

under its most sharply defined forms and most impressive conditions. The
supremacy of the whites over the indigenous tribes is almost nominal; and
if the latter are gradually dying out, the catastrophe, in this instance, is due
rather to their own lack of vigour, energy, and capacity, than to the pressure
of civilization.
However rapid may be the growth of population in North America,
however great the rapidity—shall we say the avidity?—of the American
squatters in their conquest and appropriation of the soil, the Desert still
occupies, principally in “the far West” and the North—that is to say, in the
angle comprised between the line of the great lakes and the Rocky
Mountains—an area almost equal to the whole of Continental Europe.
There we find, as Mr. Johnstone points out, the largest plains in the world.
One such, for example, is that immense basin which extends from the
mouths of the Mackenzie, in the icy Arctic Sea, even to the remote Delta of
the Mississippi, and from the huge chain of the Rocky Mountains, with
their piny recesses and snowy peaks, to the less rugged and more pastoral
range of the Alleghanies; a total area of 4,400,000,000 square yards
(3,245,000 square miles). A table-land of gentle elevation, nowhere above
1500 feet, and rarely more than 700 feet high, separates this territory into
two secondary basins.
The north-east, which pours its waters into the Arctic Ocean, Hudson’s
Bay, and through the Canadian lakes and River St. Lawrence, into the
Atlantic; and,
The south basin, of the Missouri-Mississippi, whose mighty waters flow
into the Gulf of Mexico.
It is in the latter that the traveller encounters the great grassy plains of
the Prairies or Savannahs which are so remarkable a feature of North
America, and which chiefly lie along the western bank of the Mississippi.
“There are no prairies,” says Sir J. Richardson, “to the north of Peace River,
and the level lands which border the Rocky Mountains do not extend
beyond the Great Salt Lake.”

Under so wide a range of latitude the plain necessarily embraces a great
variety of soil, climate, and productions; but being almost in a state of
nature, it is characterized in its central and southern parts by interminable
grassy savannahs and enormous forests, and in the far north by deserts not
less dreary than those of Siberia.[90]
Southward, a bare sandy waste, 400 or 500 miles wide, skirts the base of
the Rocky Mountains to the forty-first parallel of north latitude. The dry
plains of Texas and the upper region of the Arkansas have all the features of
Asiatic table-lands; further to the north, the lifeless, treeless steppes on the
high grounds of the far West are burnt up in summer, and frozen in winter
by biting blasts from the Rocky Mountains. Towards the Mississippi the soil
improves, but its delta is a labyrinth of streams, and lakes, and dense
brushwood, and the rank marshes at its mouth cover an area of 35,000
square miles. “There are also,” says Mrs. Somerville, “large tracts or forest
and saline ground, especially the Grand Saline between the rivers Arkansas
and Neseikelongo, which is often covered two or three inches deep with
salt, like a fall of snow. All the cultivation on the right bank of the river is
along the Gulf of Mexico and in the adjacent provinces, and is entirely
tropical, consisting of sugar-cane, cotton, and indigo. The prairies, so
characteristic of North America, then begin.”
And what are these prairies?
Leagues upon leagues of rolling meadow-land, sometimes as level as an
English pasture, always as boundless, apparently, as the sea; richly covered
with long rank grass of tender green, and lighted up by flowers of the
liliaceous kind which scent the air with fragrance. Here and there, in the
north, occur clumps of oak and black walnut; in the south, groups of tulip,
and cotton, and magnolia trees. Occasionally the monotonous scene is
relieved by a lazy brook, whose banks bloom with a brilliant mass of
azaleas, kalmias, rhododendrons, and andromedas; the low howl of the
cayeute, or prairie dog, breaks the silence; and life is given to the landscape
by the frequent appearance of herds of bison, deer, and wild horses. At
times, in the remote districts, the prairie wolves will be seen in some leafy
covert awaiting the approach of a victim; or flights of birds darken the air,
and tempt the traveller with the promise of an abundant provision.
On the right bank of the Missouri, and on the borders of the White River,
in the territory of Nebraska, lies a dreary desert valley, some 30 feet deep,

which the French expressively designate les Mauvaises-Terres. It may be
doubted whether the whole world offers a stranger or a more impressive
landscape. Here geology recognizes the vestiges of an astonishing diluvian
labour, and it is impossible to venture a step without striking one’s foot
against the fossil relics of vanished animals.
It is a kind of world apart, says an American writer; a large valley which
seems to have been excavated, in the first place, by an immense vertical
out-throw, and then modelled by the prolonged and incessant action of
denudating agents. With a mean breadth of 28, and a total length of 90
miles, it develops itself in a westerly direction, at the foot of the sombre
mountain-chain known as the Black Hills. On issuing from the immense,
uniform, and monotonous prairie, the traveller finds himself suddenly
transported, after a descent of 100 to 200 feet, into a depression of the soil
where rise a myriad of abrupt rocks, irregular or prismatic, or like columns
dressed with enormous pyramids, and from 110 to 220 feet in height.

VIEW OF THE “MAUVAISES-TERRES,” NEBRASKA, U.S.

These natural towers are so multiplied over the surface of this
extraordinary region, that the roads wind through them in narrow passages,
and the labyrinth may be likened to the irregular streets and narrow alleys
of some mediæval European city. Seen from afar, the interminable
succession of rocks resembles the massive monuments of antiquity; nor are
turrets wanting, nor flying buttresses, nor graceful arches, nor vaulted
portals, groups of columns, façades, and taper spires. If at one place the eye
lights upon the ruins of a feudal fortress, at another it surveys the graceful
ensemble of a Saracenic mosque. Or you might almost say, in the distance,
that it is a fantastic “city of the dead” which looms before you; or the
gigantic palace of a race of unseen beings, fashioned by the power of spell
and enchantment. And if the illusion vanishes when, descending from the

heights, you penetrate into the mazes of this Dædalian marvel, the reality is
not less calculated to inspire you with astonishment, and the imagination
remains confused before this wild, this grand, yet ominous freak of Nature
—ominous, for the place seems like a colossal Golgotha, and the rocks may
be the monuments consecrated by invisible hands to the things and
creatures, the life and majesty, of a forgotten Past!
A spectacle unexpected by the European traveller comes at intervals to
heighten and confirm the illusion. Here and there are reared constructions
of manifest human work, but of a truly primitive character. They consist of
four poles, supporting a rude platform of wicker. Mount any adjacent
hillock, and you will see corpses and human skeletons outstretched upon
the platform. These constructions are, in truth, the burial-places of the Sioux
Indians, who wander still in the neighbouring districts.
The whole coast of the Mexican Gulf, from the Pearl River eastward,
through Alabama and a great part of Florida, is occupied by the so-called
“pine barrens,” which extend far into the interior. These “vast monotonous
tracts of sand, covered with forests of gigantic pine trees,” are not less a
characteristic feature of North America than the “rolling prairies.” They are
not limited to this part of the United States, but occur to a great extent in
Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere. Tennessee and Kentucky, though
the plough has passed over extensive areas, still possess large forests, and
the Ohio flows for hundreds of miles among patriarchal trees, with a rich
undergrowth of azaleas, rhododendrons, and other beautiful shrubs, bound
together in chains of flowers by creeping plants. When America was
discovered, one mass of unbroken forest spread over the mainland, from the
Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Canadian Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and
from the Atlantic Ocean it crossed the Alleghany Mountains, and spread in
gloom and grandeur over the valley of the Mississippi—an ocean of
vegetation swelling and sinking for upwards of one million of square miles.
“Then all the broad and boundless mainland lay,
Cooled by the interminable wood, that frowned
O’er mound and vale, where never summer ray
Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his way
Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild;
Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms gay,
Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild,
Within the shaggy arms of that dark forest smiled.”[91]

Prairies which, in their general aspect, resemble those of the Missouri
and the Mississippi, are found to the east and west of the American Desert,
in Arrisona, in Texas, in California, and various provinces of Mexico.
Vegetation, however, nevertheless differs according to the conditions of
each region, and the alternatives of deluging rains and extreme dryness
become more and more conspicuous as we approach the Equator.
Nevertheless—and this, perhaps, is the feature most distinctive of the
Prairies, or Savannahs, from the Pampas and Llanos—the dryness is never
sufficiently severe in the former to destroy vegetation, as is the case in the
latter. But the herbs and grasses often grow so dry in summer that the most
trivial accident—such as a lighted match flung carelessly away, or the ashes
dropped from a hunter’s pipe—will kindle the most awful conflagrations,
and the flames will spread devouringly over leagues of open ground,
consuming trees and shrubs, and burning to death the cattle or wild animals
which haply fall within their range. With the crackling, hissing, seething
noises of the fire mingle the groans of the perishing beasts, while huge
clouds of smoke roll before the wind, like the billows of a wind-swept
ocean, and live tongues of flame ever and anon light up the terrible scene
with lurid splendour. These “Prairie-fires” are sometimes kindled in revenge
by the Indians, and occasionally the settlers resort to this dangerous but
summary method of clearing the encumbered ground. However caused, the
spectacle is one of infinite grandeur, which might have furnished Dante
with a fresh image of horror for his “Inferno.”

A PRAIRIE ON FIRE IN CENTRAL AMERICA.

From the fortieth to the thirty-fifth parallels of north latitude the Desert
appears in North America under a form more like the “seas of sand” of
Africa and Arabia; the vast areas of the Llanos and the Pampas. These two
words are nearly synonymous. They are used to designate wide level plains,
inundated and fertile in the rainy season, but in the hot season stripped by
the sun’s rays of every apparent trace of vegetation. Between the
Californian Alps and the Rio-Colorado withers a grand, sandy, and utterly
barren plain, which touches the northern borders of La Sonora. Somewhat
further to the east extends the Llano-Estacado, which eventually merges
into the American Desert. But the most considerable Pampas and Llanos
belong to South America. Of these, the most arid and the most desolate—
which most vividly recall the rainless deserts of the Old World—are the
Pampa of Atacama, between the Andes and the Pacific, with Taracapa on
the north, and Copiapo on the south; that of Sechura, which forms a great
portion of the littoral of the Peruvian department of Truxillo; and that of
Pernambuco, which forms the major part of the plateau north-east of Brazil.
These Deserts, no less than those of Africa and Arabia, merit the name of
the “Land of Fear.”
Their surface is as smooth as that of the calm sea, and bounded only by
the circular line of the horizon; the eye frequently ranges over a space of

twenty-five square miles without meeting a clump of trees on which to rest;
nor is the monotony relieved by the slightest undulation of the soil.
Everywhere is nothingness, silence, desolation, death. More than one
wayfarer has never escaped from their mazy solitudes. Fatigue, hunger,
thirst, decimate the caravans which undertake to traverse them, and the
track is marked by whitened skeletons, whose flesh has been devoured by
vultures, and which unknown hands have piled up and arranged with a
ghastly symmetry of order.
However, since the discovery of America, certain portions of the Llanos
have become habitable. Towns have risen at intervals on the banks of the
rivers which water them. These centres of population are connected with
each other by huts of reeds, covered with ox-hides, and separated by about a
day’s march. Here reside the Llaneros, to whose charge are intrusted the
innumerable herds of cattle, horses, and mules, which subsist on the
pasturage of the Steppes.
The inhabitants of the Llanos possess characteristics as marked as those
of their plains. The hatos wherein they assemble are situated at long
distances apart; but the true home of the llanero, a bold and skilful
horseman, is his saddle. Firmly seated on his rapid steed, he gallops at will
across the trackless plain, and combining the two extremes of solitude and
activity, confines his half-savage existence to the custody or the ownership
of his herds of horses and cattle. Thus, born in the Llanos like his father, a
descendant of the first Spanish settlers, he has no idea of any other country
than his southern pastures, of any other career than his dreamy pastoral life.
Clothed in a picturesque costume, half Spanish, half Indian; his machete (or
cutlass) thrust through a belt of leather, his poncho (a chequered mantle)
over his shoulder, and the redoubtable lasso suspended in a coil to his
saddle-bow; armed with the clumsy lance, which serves to drive his herd
before him, and, at need, to vindicate its owner’s courage in some partisan
affray; the llanero, never thinking of the past, never dreaming of the future,
on the alert in every danger, and accustomed to the severest privations,
enjoys with intoxication the rude happiness of his wild freedom.

PAMPAS OF SOUTH AMERICA.

The Llanos of Venezuela occupy a superficial area, estimated, according
to Humboldt, at 153,000 square miles, between the deltas of the Orinoco
and the river Coqueta. They are as flat as the surface of the sea, and covered
with long rank grass. You might travel over the dreary level for 1100 miles
from the delta of the Orinoco to the foot of the Andes of Pasto, and
frequently not encounter an eminence a foot high in 270 square miles. Their
length is twice that of their breadth; and as the wind blows constantly from
the east, the climate is the more ardent the further west. “These Steppes, for
the most part,” says Mrs. Somerville,[92] “are destitute of trees or bushes,
yet in some places they are dotted with the mauritia and other palms.” Flat
as they are, two kinds of inequalities will sometimes occur: one consists of
banks or shoals of grit or compact limestone, five or six feet high, perfectly
level for several leagues, and imperceptible except on their edges; the other
inequality can only be detected by the barometer or levelling instruments; it
is called a Mesa, and is a gentle knoll swelling very gradually to an
elevation of a few fathoms. Yet slight as is this altitude, a Mesa forms the
watershed from south-west to north-east, between the affluents of the
Orinoco and the streams flowing to the northern coast of Terra Firma. In the
wet season, from April to the end of October, the tropical rains pour down
in torrents, and hundreds of square miles of the Llanos are inundated by the

overflow of the rivers. In the hollows the water is sometimes twelve feet
deep, and such numbers of horses and other animals perish, that the ground
smells strongly of musk, an odour peculiar to many quadrupeds. “From the
flatness of the country, too, the waters of some affluents of the Orinoco are
driven backwards by the floods of that river, especially when aided by the
wind, and form temporary lakes. When the waters subside, these Steppes,
manured by the sediment, are mantled with verdure, and produce ananas,
while occasional groups of fan palm-trees and mimosas skirt the rivers.
When the dry weather returns, the grass is burnt to powder; the air is filled
with dust raised by currents occasioned by difference of temperature, even
when there is no wind. If by any accident a spark of fire falls on the
scorched plains, a conflagration spreads from river to river, destroying
every animal, and leaves the clayey soil sterile for years, till vicissitudes of
weather crumble the brick-like surface into earth.”
When this takes place, the rending of the indurated soil is sudden and
violent, as if from the shock of an earthquake. If at such a time two
opposing currents of air, whose conflict produces a rotatory motion, come
in contact with the surface of the earth, the Llanos assume a strange and
singular aspect. Like cone-shaped clouds, whose extremities seem to touch
the ground, the sand rises through the rarefied air in the electrically-charged
centre of the whirling current; like the sand-spouts of the Saharan Desert, or
the waterspouts which formerly were the awe and dread of the mariner.
Then does the lowering sky cast a “dim uncertain light,” like a November
fog in London, on the desolate plain. The horizon draws suddenly nearer;
the Steppe seems to contract, and a nameless terror seizes the heart of the
wanderer. The hot dusty air increases in suffocating heat; and the east wind,
blowing over the long-heated soil, yields no refreshment, but rather
oppresses with its burning glow. The pools, hitherto protected from
evaporation by the yellow fading branches of the fan palm, begin to
disappear. As in the north the animals grow torpid with the mortal cold, so
under the influence of the parching drought the boa and the crocodile fall
asleep, buried deeply in the dry mud. Everywhere the drought prevails, and
yet everywhere the refracted rays of light delude the traveller with the
image of gleaming lakes and rushing rivers. The distant palm bush hovers
above the ground like a spectre, apparently raised by the influence of the
contact of unequally heated, and, therefore, unequally dense strata of air.
Half hidden by the rolling clouds of dust, restless with the pangs of thirst

and hunger, the horses and cattle roam around, the cattle dismally lowing,
and the horses stretching out their long necks and snuffing the wind, in the
hope some moister current may betray the neighbourhood of a not wholly
failing pool. More sagacious and astute, the wary mule seeks a different
mode of alleviating his thirst. Under its prickly envelope the melon-cactus
conceals a watery pith. The mule first strikes the prickles aside with his
fore-feet, and then cautiously approaches his lips to the plant and drinks the
cool juice. But the experiment is not always without danger, and many
animals are lamed by the spines of the cactus.
When the overpowering heat of the day is followed by the cooler
temperature of the night, which is always of the same length in these
latitudes, even then the cattle can obtain no repose. Enormous bats suck
their blood like the fabled vampires during their sleep, or attach themselves
to their backs, causing festering wounds in which mosquitoes, horse-flies,
and a host of stinging insects, niche themselves. Thus the animals lead a
weary life during the hot season. But at length, after the long drought and
the parching glow, comes the welcome rain! Then takes place a
transformation such as the fancy of the poet never surpassed or equalled.
The deep blue of the hitherto unclouded sky grows lighter; the dark space in
the constellation of the Southern Cross is hardly distinguishable at night;
the soft phosphorescent lustre of the so-called Magellanic clouds “fades,
fades, and falls away;” even the stars in Aquila and Ophiucus in the zenith
beam with a tremulous and less planetary radiance. And lo, yonder in the
south, a single cloud, like the peak of some remote mountain, soars
perpendicularly from the horizon. Gradually the gathering vapours fold
over the sky. Hark! The thunder is pealing in the distance, and louder and
nearer come its awful reverberation. It heralds the life-restoring rain!
Scarcely has the genial moisture refreshened earth, before a blessed
fragrance breathes from the previously barren Steppe, and its nakedness is
clothed upon with the bloom and beauty of a thousand grasses. The
herbaceous mimosas, with renewed sensibility to the influence of light,
open their drooping leaves to greet the rising sun; and the rosy-fingered
morn is saluted with a glad chorus of birds, and by the opening blossoms of
the water-plants. Now the horse bounds over the plain in keen ecstasy of
spirit, and the cattle grazes plentifully on the fresh green herbage. Yet the
new life is not without its peril. Anguis latet in herbâ. Among the tall thick

grass lurks the spotted jaguar, the tiger of the New World, and measures
carefully the distance that separates him from his unsuspecting victim.
Sometimes (so say the natives) the moistened clay on the margin of the
swamps will blister and swell slowly into a kind of mound until, with a
violent noise, like the outbreak of a small mud volcano, the accumulated
earth is cast high into the air. The spectator who comprehends the purport of
this strange scene immediately retreats, for he knows that the birth of the
portentous travail will be a gigantic water-snake or huge crocodile roused
from its torpidity.
The rivers which bound the plain to the south—the Arauca, the Apure,
and the Pajara—gradually swell, and now Nature compels the same
animals, which 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
assumes the aspect of a vast inland sea.[93] The brood mares retire with their
foals to the more elevated banks, which rise like islands above the watery
expanse. Every day the dry space grows smaller. It is a miniature
reproduction of the Noachian Deluge. The animals, crowded together, swim
about for hours in quest of other pasture, and feed sparingly on the tops of
the flowering grasses that spring above the seething surface of the turbid
waters. Many foals are drowned, and many are surprised by the crocodiles,
killed by a blow from their powerful tails, and devoured. It is no uncommon
thing to see the marks of these monsters’ cruel teeth on the legs of horses
and cattle which have narrowly escaped from their blood-thirsty jaws. Such
a sight reminds the thoughtful observer of that capability of adaptation to
the most varied circumstances with which the all-powerful Creator has
endowed certain animals and plants.[94]
The Pampas of Pernambuco and Buenos Ayres have three times the
superficial area of the Llanos of Venezuela. So great is their extent, that
while forests of palms border them on the north, they are covered with
snow in the south, during a great part of the year, like the northern Steppes
of Tartary. According to the climatic divisions generally adopted, these
regions belong to the Temperate Zone; but in truth they comprehend a great
variety of climates. Their character is not less grand or original than that of
the Llanos which precede them. “The Pampas,” says an American writer,
“surpass in majesty all the marvels of the new continent, and yet they
astonish the traveller by the air of abandonment and sadness which is
impressed upon them, especially in the low country watered by the Plata.

Traces of life are there infrequent; still rarer are the objects which attract
attention. Here, at the bottom of a crevasse, a cactus conceals its head
bristling with spines; there, a solitary tree rises majestically toward heaven.
Sometimes, upon the plain, the eye discovers the monstrous skeleton of an
animal which flourished in those remote times when the Alps still slept in
the depths of ocean, and dreamed not of blending their snow-burdened
peaks with the clouds. The Pampas serve as the burial-place for races of
gigantic men, now extinct, who seem to issue from their silent graves in
testimony to the former being of vanished generations, and to bear witness
to the Creator of all things. Above your head, and far away in the azure of
heaven, you perceive a black point; it is a condor describing slowly its
sinister circles. In the distance passes and disappears the ungainly figure of
an ostrich. The inexpressible charm of these solitudes is their absolute
freedom. And while traversing them the wayfarer comprehends the love
with which they inspire the Indian, whose hope it is to meet beyond this
world with yet vaster horizons for the indulgence of his wandering tastes.”
At the southern extremity of South America spreads a sterile plain, sown
with pebbles and blocks of porphyry: it is Patagonia. As we retrace our
steps towards the north, the soil rises before us in terrace after terrace, till it
reaches the base of the Cordilleras. In the northern districts the pebbly soil
gives place to verdant meadows, where the Patagonians breed numerous
herds of horses and cattle. Water is wanting in this country. The rains are
rare, and the dry seasons very prolonged. The summer heat is
overwhelming; in winter violent winds sweep the Savannahs, which are
covered with nocturnal frosts. Under such climatic influences the soil
produces only a dry coarse grass. In the interior a few beeches and cacti are
met with, and then broad swamps, fringed with reeds and rushes. In the
spring a mantle of clover spreads over the earth, but only to be withered up
by the first heats of summer.
Along the banks of the Rio Negro the Pampas of Buenos Ayres stretch
from the coast of the Atlantic to the foot of the Andes. On a considerable
portion of this vast area marshes of salt water encroach—a phenomenon all
the more curious because the salt lies only on the surface, and all the wells
artificially excavated yield fresh water. During the rains the low grounds are
flooded; but as soon as the sun has dried up the plain, it is clothed in rich
pasturage, while the elevated table-lands are dry and withered. There, too,
the dryness is often attended with disastrous results. From 1827 to 1830, as

Mr. Darwin records, not a drop of water fell; all traces of vegetation
disappeared; the rivers ran dry, and the herds perished in incalculable
numbers; in the single province of Buenos Ayres, the loss was estimated at
more than a million head of cattle.
To the north of the Rio Salado, at the portals of the Andes, the country
assumes a look of implacable desolation; no winds ever agitate the lower
strata of the atmosphere. The water-courses which descend from the
mountains lose themselves in the sand; salt marshes, whence the very birds
hold aloof, alone alternate with a soil everywhere intersected by crevices.
The district of the Pampas which stretches northward to the spurs of the
Andes consists of a sandy soil, free from salt, but wholly unproductive.
These solitudes, however, are ploughed by running streams, none of which
communicate with the sea. They descend from the Andes, traverse the
Pampas from east to west, and empty themselves into the saline lakes.
Somewhat further to the north, and nearer the Equator, lies an almost
unknown region of salt—a region of indescribable gloom, where neither
tree, nor bush, nor blade of emerald grass, delights the eye. Eighteen
months frequently elapse in this land of desolation, worthy of being one of
the circles in Dante’s “Inferno,” without the cheering sound of a shower of
rain, and when at length it arrives, it splits the rocks of salt and melts them
into wide pools of brackish mud. As soon as the sun has absorbed the
excessive humidity of the soil, myriads of salt crystals glitter on the surface,
and convert the Desert into one immense mirror.
To the north-west of La Plata extends a desert of very different character
—the Despoblado, or uninhabited land, a plateau of the Andes, rising some
4200 feet above the level of the sea. This desert is cloven into two portions
by a deep valley, bordered with sharp rocks, which affords the only
practicable route from Bolivia to Buenos Ayres. Winter, in this sombre
world within a world, is a time of horror, when the spirit of Desolation goes
to and fro in wrath unchained. Yet even here humanity drags about the
fetters of existence. The traveller occasionally alights upon the wretched
huts where the unfortunate descendants of the ancient Peruvians linger
through life. Their wealth consists in a few llamas. Their occupation, in
hunting the alpaca, the guanaco, and the chinchilla; in filtering the river
sands for scanty grains of gold; in collecting salt, and disposing of it to the
inhabitants of the nearest towns.

“The aspect of the Puna, or Despoblado,” says Von Tschudi,[95] “is
singularly monotonous and dreary. The expansive levels are scantily
covered with grasses of a yellowish-brown hue, and are never enlivened by
fresh-looking verdure. Here and there, at distant intervals, may be seen a
few stunted Quenera trees,[96] or large patches of ground covered with the
Ratanbia shrub.[97] Both are used by the Indians as fuel, and for roofing
their huts. The cold climate and sterile soil are formidable impediments to
agriculture. Only one plant is cultivated in these regions with any degree of
success. It is the maca, a tuberous root grown like the potato, and, like it,
used as an article of food. In many of the Puna districts it constitutes the
principal sustenance of the inhabitants. It has an agreeable and somewhat
sweetish flavour, and when boiled in milk it tastes like the chestnut.”
The most imposing spectacle presented by the Deserts of South America
is that of their frequent hurricanes. As the Simoom to the Sahara, so is the
Pampero to the Pampas. Its approach is foretold by signs which the native’s
experienced eye readily recognizes. All at once the air seems stricken
motionless, and over the solitude broods a solemn silence. A cloud white
and light as snow—a cloud “no bigger than a man’s hand”—rises in the
south-west. It advances, and as it advances enlarges its proportions. Other
clouds appear, and all gather into one imposing mass. The dust rises and
whirls round in thick columns suspended between heaven and earth. Lower
and lower descend the congregated vapours, until they envelop the earth in
a funeral shroud, whose folds the hurricane incessantly agitates, and which
the forked lightnings seem to rend in fragments. Suffocating gusts of a fiery
wind traverse space. And now the sudden tempest stoops down from the
summit of the Andes, and sweeps the Savannah with resistless fury.
Enormous masses of sand, upgathered by the rafale, obscure the clearness
of day; at noon the earth is covered with a darkness that may be felt. The
thunder mingles its roar with the strident voices of the storm. All that lives,
all that breathes, is at the mercy of the unchained elements, which are as
pitiless in their wrath as a roused people. Thousands of animals perish in the
Savannahs; and prostrate, with his face to the earth, man tremblingly awaits
the expiring breath of the grand convulsion!
The horses and cattle of Europe are replaced in the Pampas of South
America by the herds of guanacos and llamas which covered them at the
epoch of the Spanish conquest. Their owners, descendants of the Spaniards

intermingled with the native races, possess many of the characteristics of
the Arab.
Like the llanero of Venezuela, the guacho of the Pampas realizes the idea
of the ancient centaur; and from the throne of his saddle, to which hangs the
inseparable lasso, he surveys the plains where he is lord and king with the
fiery glance of a free and independent spirit. He owes scant allegiance to
any established authority, and under the blue sky of heaven enjoys the
blessings of uncontrolled freedom. And what to him the fever and turmoil
of civilization, when, mounted on his noble steed, he can roam at will, with
none to say him nay, over leagues and leagues of grassy prairies!

CHAPTER III.

THE AUSTRALIAN INTERIOR.
GEOGRAPHERS have given the name of the “fifth division of the globe” to
that immense archipelago, or rather, that mass of archipelagoes which
remote geological convulsions have elevated in the Pacific Ocean, between
the three continents, Asia, Africa, and America, and whose existence was
first revealed to the Western World by the maritime explorations of the
Portuguese and the Dutch, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From
the epoch when these enterprises commenced, the spherical figure of the
earth was established beyond dispute; and after the discovery of America, it
became only reasonable to suppose that, in virtue of a law without which
our planet could not have maintained its equilibrium in space, there must
exist a continent intended to balance those of the Northern Hemisphere. But
for many years all the researches of intrepid navigators only led them to the
shores of small islands and islets, not a few of which were barren,
uninhabited, and swept by the winds of ocean; while others, girdled with
palms, enriched with vegetation, and blessed by bland and genial airs,
seemed to realize the poetical idea of the Fortunate Islands,

“Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea.”

At length, however, by directing their investigations towards the less
submerged region of the Indian Ocean, and by sailing beyond the great
eastern islands which seem to have been formerly connected with the Indian
Peninsula, the Portuguese mariners were the first to descry a long line of
coast which they did not doubt was that of an Austral Continent, whose
satellites, so to speak, were the previously discovered islands. This
supposed continent is still represented in the old maps published at the close
of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, by a mass
of ill-defined contours, with this indication: Terra Australis incognita. The
succeeding voyages of Carpenter, Nuyts, Tasman, and the illustrious Cook,
proved that this Austral or Southern Land was in effect a continent, or, at
least, an island of extraordinary dimensions, whose coasts alone—and these
but a small extent inland—were inhabited by miserable tribes, with black
skin, and hideous features, placed at the extreme limit which separates man
from the brute. The Dutch navigators, who had first determined the
principal outlines of this continent, named it New Holland, but after it
passed into the hands of England, it received, as it still preserves, the
appellation of Australia.
Take away from this Australian Continent its fertile districts in the south-
east, where have sprung up and developed with amazing rapidity the
flourishing colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland, and
what remains? A country entirely wild, and, one might almost venture to
say, an immense Desert. The gloomy aspect and the barrenness of its
northern shores, with few exceptions, had repulsed the early Portuguese and
Dutch navigators, who little suspected what splendid treasures were hidden
among its auriferous sands and rocks. They saw but insufficient rivers and
scanty vegetation, and went no further.
None of the rivers of New Holland are navigable to any great distance
from their mouths. The want of water is severely felt in the interior, where a
treeless desert of sand, swamps, and jungle is intersected by streams called
“creeks,” which are dry for the greater portion of the year; yet a belief long
prevailed that a large sea or fresh-water lake occupied the centre—a belief
founded partly on the nature of the soil, and partly on the circumstance that
all the rivers that flow into the sea on the northern coast, between the Gulf

of Van Diemen and Carpentaria, converge towards their sources, as if they
served for drains to some large body of water.

AUSTRALIAN LANDSCAPE.

The eastern side of the country is traversed by a great range of thinly
timbered down, clothed with grasses and herbage, and rising to an elevation
of 3500 feet. These are known as the Blue Mountains, and stretch from
north to south over nearly thirty degrees of latitude, from Cape York to
Cape Wilson. All their western slopes descend gradually towards the
interior, until they are lost in the vast desert plain of the interior.
The streams which flow in this direction either pour their waters into the
great rivers, such as the Darling and the Murray, which has an internal

navigation of 1800 miles, or lose themselves in the marshes and lakes,
which the great summer heats periodically dry up.
Another chain of mountains stretches from south to north along the
western coast of Australia, from Point d’Entrecasteaux to Murchison River.
A third chain, in the northern region, runs from east to west, between
Camden Harbour and the Gulf of Carpentaria. The interior of the country is,
as I have already indicated, in all probability an immense plain, thinly sown
with trees of the two families of Acaciæ and Eucalypti, and tenanted by the
wombat and the kangaroo.
Over this vast portion of Australia, which still remains a blank upon the
map, numerous expeditions of discovery have been attempted since the
earliest days of European colonization. Hardy pioneers—those men who are
the real, but obscure, and speedily forgotten founders of empires—have
sacrificed their lives in the endeavour to lay down a track across the great
island-continent from north to south. Anglo-Saxon enterprise no sooner
found itself securely planted on the sea-coast, than it felt that behind it lay a
continent to acquire, and the indomitable instinct of the race bade it
continue its mission of colonization. During the last quarter of a century, the
colonial governments have liberally encouraged these explorations, and the
annals of Australian discovery have been illuminated by the names of Eyre
(1840), Sturt (1845), Leichardt (1846-48), Kennedy (1848), and M’Douall
Stuart (1858-62), second to none among our English discoverers in
patience, resolution, and heroic daring.
The problem remained: to cross the central wilderness of Australia, and
prove the possibility of a passage from the southern shores to the northern,
from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. This problem was finally
solved, at no light cost, by the intrepid Burke and energetic Wills.
On the 20th of April 1860, there set out from Melbourne, under the
auspices of the Government of Victoria, a small troop of gallant explorers,
under the immediate direction of Robert O’Hara Burke, a man well-fitted
for his post: born in the county of Galway in 1821, after having served as
captain in a Hungarian regiment, he had discharged for several years the
duties of inspector of a body of the colonial police.
The second in command was a brave young Englishman, William John
Wills, twenty-six years of age, an assistant in the Observatory at
Melbourne.

The expedition consisted of eighteen persons, and was provided with
horses, camels which had been expressly imported from Arabia, waggons,
all kinds of scientific instruments, and the necessary amount of stores and
provisions for a protracted journey.
Cooper’s Creek, which marked about a third of the whole distance, was
fixed upon as place of rendezvous and as the final starting-point. Thither, to
save time, Burke and Wills, with six men, six camels, five horses, and some
months’ provisions, proceeded in advance of the main body; and arriving
there on the 13th of December, Burke established a depôt, left it in charge
of Brahé, a petty officer, and three assistants, and with Wills, a couple of
men (King and Gray), the camels, and one horse, plunged on the 16th into
the trackless Australian wilds.[98]
Keeping nearly due north, and near or upon the meridian of 140° E., they
traversed, day after day, well-watered plains, with numerous clumps of
wood, and tolerable indications of a good grazing country. On the 12th of
February 1861, the four travellers had conquered every obstacle, and struck
the marshes on the Albert River, which flows into the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Their goal was reached, and the problem of a connecting route between
north and south successfully solved.
The vast Australian solitudes hitherto traversed had presented every
variety of aspect, from the stony plateaux and the watery sands where the
rivers can keep no regular channel, and where wide spaces of dry bare
ground separate great shallows of brackish water, to finely irrigated plains,
clothed with herbs or bushes, and promising abundant resources for future
colonists. Meteorological phenomena present in these regions the greatest
uncertainties: either the dry season is so protracted as to ruin all vegetation,
or the rains so thoroughly deluge the soil as by a contrary cause to ensure
the same result. These climatic contradictions explain the variations
observable in the narratives of the different travellers who have visited the
interior. One point, however, is beyond all doubt; the hopeless sterility of
Nuyts Land,—that immense sandy tract which, over an extent as yet
unknown, is regarded as impassable, and stretches along the southern coast
between Spencer Gulf and King George Harbour. As before said, the
primary cause of the barrenness of Central Australia is the lack of water—
running water and rain water. Yet the most sterile portions lie far nearer the
coast than was formerly credited; and monotonous as may be the
descriptions of explorers, so far as the landscapes of Central Australia are

concerned, we may from to-day consider that, with the exception of certain
points, no obstacles exist sufficiently powerful to arrest the expansion of
European colonization, in a country especially where cattle-breeding is the
principal industry, and the one which takes precedence of all others.
The chief difficulty encountered by each exploring party has been the
penury of natural products of the soil adapted for human food. The traveller
is compelled to carry with him a sufficiency of provisions to last him from
his departure until his return. It was this insufficiency of rations which
wrought the fatal dénouement of the glorious enterprise of Burke and Wills.
After reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria, there remained nothing more for
Burke and his three companions but to retrace their steps to their depôt at
Cooper’s Creek. But their energies were exhausted, and from the beginning
of April their provisions failed them. At the close of ten or twelve days’
march, they were constrained to kill a horse. In the following week, Gray
succumbed to the excessive fatigue. The three survivors dragged themselves
on to the depôt, where they arrived on the morning of the 21st of April. But
the men whom they had left in charge had taken their departure that very
morning, after waiting long beyond the time originally fixed for their return.
“You may imagine our consternation,” says Wills in his Journal, under
the date of April 21st; “four months of harassing marches and privations of
every kind had completely exhausted our strength. It was an extremely
difficult task for either of us to accomplish a distance of only a few yards.
The effort necessary to ascend the smallest elevation of the ground, even
without a burden, induces an indescribable sensation of pain and
helplessness, and the general lassitude makes one unfit for anything.”
There was no resource now but to rejoin Brahé and his men, if possible.
Before quitting the depôt, the latter had left a small supply of provisions,
which proved eminently serviceable. On the 23rd Burke, Wills, and King
resumed their march, at the rate of four or five miles a-day, in the direction
of Mount Despair, which was about sixty miles distant, and where were
placed the most advanced posts, northward, of South Australia. A terrible
fatality, however, seemed to pursue them; one of their camels, Landa,
perished in a bog; the other, Rajah, they were soon forced to kill for food;
then they themselves were compelled by sheer exhaustion to return to the
depôt, which, meanwhile, had been revisited by Brahé without his
discovering a trace of their brief sojourn. Thus abandoned to perish in the

Desert, they existed upon the bounty of such natives as they met with, and
who occasionally supplied them with a few fish and a little nardoo, an
aquatic plant whose pounded seeds the aborigines make into bread. Such a
regimen was insufficient to restore their exhausted strength.

Burke, Wills, and King in the Deserts of Central Australia.

Early in June their afflictions were aggravated by a deplorable
catastrophe. The flames of their bivouac fire, driven by a strong wind,
reduced to ashes their hut and all that they possessed. There was nothing for
them now but to live with the friendly natives who had succoured them.
Unfortunately, they had disappeared. It was in vain they attempted to seek
them out; Burke and Wills never saw them again.
On Saturday the 29th of June, the latter, utterly exhausted, insisted that
his companions should leave him in the wilderness, while they continued
their search after the natives. Unwillingly they consented, and taking a
solemn farewell of their unfortunate comrade, they dragged themselves
away with aching hearts. Four or five days afterwards, King returned with
some birds he had contrived to kill, but found Wills asleep in the arms of
death. King was now alone, for the intrepid Burke had also fallen a victim
to the cruel spirit of the wilderness, resting on the barren ground, with his
face upturned to the southern stars. The sole survivor was fortunate enough

to fall in with the natives, who welcomed him cordially, and carried him
with them from camp to camp. After two months and a half of this strange
existence, he was discovered by a relief party sent out from Melbourne,
under the command of Mr. Howitt (September 15, 1861), who also gathered
the remains of the two gallant but ill-fated leaders, and reverently consigned
them to a decent grave.
They had not died in vain. From the shores of Port Philip to those of the
Gulf of Carpentaria they had discovered and marked out a practicable route;
and when the great Australian colonies shall have pushed forward into the
interior, and have occupied the borders of the northern gulf, they will
remember with gratitude the brave explorers who sacrificed their lives to
effect the passage from one sea to the other.

CHAPTER IV.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE AFRICAN PLAINS.
THE facts actually ascertained in reference to the Flora of the plains of
Central Africa, although as yet of a limited character, form as a whole too
comprehensive a subject to be fully discussed in these pages. I must,
therefore, confine myself to a rapid survey of the principal botanical
features of the countries whose general features and physical aspect I have
sketched in the preceding chapters.
Senegambia and Upper Guinea, on the west coast of Africa, form a low
table-land, situated upwards of 3000 feet above the sea-level, and furrowed
by deep gorges, in whose rocky beds the rivers roll and foam, fed by the
waters of numerous streams. Grassy savannahs and wide cultivated areas
are here inhabited by a numerous population. Several travellers have
explored these regions; but all have specially applied themselves to make
known the colossal plants which flourish therein, and those, first and
foremost, which have a particular interest, either from their Anak-like
stature or the manifold uses of their products. I shall have occasion to speak
of the arborescent species which, in this part of the Old Continent, blend in
immense and impenetrable forests. But owing to this very circumstance we
possess few details respecting the plants which clothe the vast plains of

Senegambia and Upper Guinea. We only know that there, as everywhere,
the great family of the Gramineæ is largely represented. In general these
species far exceed in height the plants which make the wealth and glory of
our English meads; and they chiefly belong to the tribe of Paniceæ. A legion
of Cassias inhabit the low fresh hills of the Senegambian lands; and some
are held in high estimation for their fruit, as the Cassia, or Senna, which is
considered one of the most active purgatives. The species generally
recognized as best adapted for medicinal purposes are those with oboval
and those with obtuse leaves—Cassia obovata and Cassia obtusifolia. The
former is a perennial herbaceous plant, from one to two feet high, with
smooth egg-shaped leaves and racemes of yellow flowers; the latter differs
only in the form of its leaves, which are short and broad, or obtuse.
Many of the cereals are cultivated in Senegambia on a very large scale;
but they differ wholly from those which engage the attention of the
European agriculturist. Barley will not grow even on the most elevated
plateaux, on account of the constant and excessive heat. It is true that it will
germinate; but it develops so rapidly that it passes through all the phases of
its vegetation in the space of a few weeks, and yields but impoverished ears
empty of grains; it is useless to the people of Senegambia except as forage.
But, on the other hand, there are numerous Gramineæ adapted to hot
regions, which the natives cultivate for their uses. Among others I may
name the Tocussa and the Coracan (Eleasine Tocussa and E. Corocana),
with their curved digitate spikes and productive seeds; the Pennicellaria
spicata, or Guinea Corn, a very tall grass, somewhat resembling maize,
whose long cylindrical culms or blades bear each a multitude of white
round grains, which, ground into meal, form very savoury cakes, as you
may read in Mungo Park’s Travels; and the Durra, Doura, Indian Millet, or
Sorgho Grass (Sorghum), a coarse, strong, broad-leaved grass, four to eight
feet high, with a round grain a little larger than mustard seed; it is the
principal corn-plant of Africa, and exceedingly nutritious, the natives
employing it in the preparation of a favourite dish named Kouskoussou.
The cereals most widely cultivated in Senegal include the Colonial
Millet (Oplismenus colonus); the Abyssinian Meadow Grass (Poa
Abyssinica), called “Teff” in Abyssinia, whose seeds are used for making
bread, and whose blades yield an abundant herbage; Rice (Oryza sativa),
and different varieties of maize. Leguminous plants appear wanting in
Senegal. Their absence is probably due to the same causes as those which

we have indicated as affecting the growth of barley. Cabbages and the
different salads grow, in fact, with a rapidity which prevents them from
maturing; they flower in two or three weeks after being sown. The
inhabitants consequently resort to those alimentary species which belong to
hot countries, and which can only be obtained in Europe at an enormous
expense and by artificial means. Among the plants with edible roots are
various kinds of Yams (such as the Dioscorea alata); Batatas (Convolvulus
Batatas); and the Manioc or Manihot (Jatropha Manihot),[99] better known
as Cassava, which, although in itself a deadly poison, is easily deprived by
heat of its noxious properties, and when roasted or boiled becomes a
nutritious and highly savoury food. It yields the valuable farinaceous
material of Tapioca. Its leaves are cooling and healing; from its seeds an
excellent oil is procured; and the juice which drops from its root serves for
empoisoning arrows. Good and evil are both strangely mixed in this
important plant.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE AFRICAN PLAINS.

1. Guinea Corn (Pennicillaria 3. Manihot (Jatropha 5. Screw Pine (Pandanus
spicata). Manihot). candelabrum).
2. Sorgho Grass (Sorghum
4. Yam (Dioscorea alata). 6. Black Pepper (Piper nigrum).
cernuum).

The Corchorus olitorius,[100] an annual cultivated in Egypt as a potherb,
is largely grown in Senegal for the tenacious fibres of its root and the oily
juices of its seeds. The Black Pepper (Piper nigrum) of India and the Sunda
Isles we find perfectly acclimatized in this part of Africa, and it flourishes
even in a wild state. Finally, the Coffee-tree (Coffea Arabica), the Cocoa
(Theobroma Cacao), Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), and the Cocos oleracea,
are among the cultivated plants of Senegambia.
In northern Guinea and the Gaboon, recently made famous by Du
Chaillu’s discovery of the gorilla, Savannahs and cultivated districts are
intermingled, though their flora is still imperfectly known. A great number
of grasses adorn the fresh and humid prairies, and sedges and reeds abound,
while, on the river-banks, in shady nooks, flourish some of the Screw-pine
tribe,[101] notably the Pandanus Candelabrum, a highly curious plant,
which attracts one’s attention by its mode of vegetation, its graceful ribbon-
like foliage, and its small fragrant flowers. Thatching and cordage are
obtained from the fibrous leaves; the fruit resembles a richly-coloured pine-
apple, but is insipid to the taste.
The Savannahs of the neighbouring provinces, and especially those of
the Gold Coast, are in general sparsely inhabited, nor are those on the banks
of the Niger an exception; man shrinks from a region which the deadly
malaria seems to claim as its own. The flora is very poor, consisting chiefly
of aquatic grasses, with blades of moderate height, and leaves of
comparatively little succulence. The herbaceous plants, suitable for food or
industrial uses, which are most frequently met with in Guinea and the
Gaboon, resemble those already described as belonging also to Senegambia.
But there are many different Arums, such as the Caladium segmium and
Colocasia mucronatum, properly known as Taro, Tara, or Tayo, and
employed in making granulate sugar from the stem of the former, and in
boiling or roasting for food the rhizomæ of the latter; Tobacco; the ox-heart
Annona, a plant sometimes cultivated in Europe, where it never fructifies,
though its aromatic fruits are its most valuable product, and are highly
esteemed by the Africans,—these “Custard Apples” resembling thick
cream, and being eaten, like cream, with a spoon; the Banana,[102] with its
gigantic foliage—precious “Musa Sapientum “—valuable not only to “wise
men,” but foolish men, as a substitute for wheat or the breadfruit tree, and
gratifying the savage with a succulent and nutritious food. Forty or fifty
banana plants will flourish in a square space of one thousand feet, and an

acre of ground will yield sufficient provision for fifty men. That area of
land which, sown with wheat, would feed only one man, will nourish five-
and-twenty if planted with bananas.
I must not forget the Pistachios,[103] which flourish spontaneously in the
vast plains of Central Africa, and the highly valuable Sugar Cane
(Saccharum officinarum), which, like the Cotton Plant, has rendered
inestimable services to man, and yet has been the origin of unutterable
crime and misery, promoting by its cultivation the accursed slave-trade. The
Vine (Vitis vinifera) is cultivated in a few districts. Among the herbaceous
or sub-frutescent plants peculiar to this region, and which enjoy a certain
reputation on account of the utility of their products, I may name the
following:—
The Calebash Nutmeg (Monodora myristica), one of the Annonaceæ,
remarkable for its withered fruits, which, when rasped like its seeds, furnish
a condiment deservedly esteemed by the natives; Guinea Pepper (Uvaria
Æthiopica), whose properties are well known and appreciated in this part of
Western Africa; and finally, one of the Cucurbitaceæ, the Telfairia pedata,
whose seeds enclose a very oleaginous substance.
To the east, in Nigritia or the Soudan, the country is nearly level,
although situated at an elevation of 1200 to 1300 feet above the sea. The
vegetation here is very scanty; yet the copious tropical rains favour the
growth of plants suitable for the provender of cattle; pastures are abundant,
and formed by the principal Grasses (Panicum Setaria, and the like), the
Sedges, Rushes, &c. These meads are clothed with verdure for three or four
months of the year, and much frequented by the shepherds who dwell in the
vicinity of Lake Tchad.
Still further eastward, if we continue our wanderings, we plunge into the
warm regions of Darfour and Kordofan. Here the country is cast in bold
outlines; numerous lofty mountain-chains are intersected by narrow valleys
and smooth expanses of meadow-land. All that portion of Kordofan which
lies west of the White Nile is a Prairie some thirty-five miles long by
twenty-eight broad, stretching towards the rising sun, and relieved by small
patches of shrubs of the family Leguminosæ, especially the Mimosa, with
its graceful shrinking foliage, which shudders at the lightest touch, and its
spherical rose-hued or snow-white blossoms.

These meadow-lands suffer from excessive aridity; it is only with an
arduous struggle that a few grasses resist the dryness which almost
constantly prevails; and frequently, as is the case in other parts of Western
Africa, the inhabitants can only procure water for their needs by sinking
wells of extraordinary depth. Less arid, the southern part of Kordofan is
better clothed with vegetation; the country is more broken, and increases in
picturesqueness of aspect as we approach the neighbourhood of Mount
Tegeler. Sennaar, which is traversed by the Blue Nile, is far from offering
an equally luxuriant vegetation: along the river extends a vast belt of
meadow, generally barren, or only blessed with a few herbaceous plants, a
few Leguminosæ, with deeply-buried roots; and its aspect, therefore, is one
of great gloom. The landscape wants
“The glory in the grass, and the splendour in the flower”

which appeal so potently to the sensibilities of the poet. Nor does the
scenery improve as we ascend the Sennaar to the Lake of Zana, situated to
the south-east, for though the rich black soil of the Kulla valley nourishes a
profuse vegetation, it is the vegetation peculiar to the marsh and the swamp;
the wind rushes through thick sedges, and whispering reeds, and waving
grasses. On the northern borders of the lake the pasturages are fresh and
green, and a man might easily lurk unseen among their gigantic Gramineæ,
the Panicas and the Setarias. Still keeping our faces eastward, like the
Ghebirs of ancient Iran, we perceive that Abyssinia is divided into two parts
by the River Tacazze, an affluent of the Nile; the western being called
Amhora, and the eastern Tigré. Owing to its peculiar geographical
configuration and the elevation of its mountains, Abyssinia rejoices in a
wholly special Flora. In the Semen, west of the Tacazze, there is a mountain
lifting its crest above the limit of perpetual snow, or to an altitude of 14,000
feet. Up to a height of 6500 feet its slopes are thickly carpeted with fresh
and fragrant sward, and the air throbs with the music of a hundred streams
which flow from the perennial fountains of ice and snow.
In the Tigré the country is not fertile, nor is it well populated. Its
geological features are interesting, for we meet everywhere with isolated
masses of limestone, arranged generally in horizontal strata of various
extent, and bearing indisputable traces of a vast volcanic labour. On the
coast of the Red Sea, the oriental slopes only present at their base a few
scattered thickets chiefly composed of thorny shrubs and the Leguminosæ.

We meet also with various kinds of Aloes and Euphorbiaceæ (Spurge-
Worts), as the Euphorbia neriifolia, Euphorbia grandidens, and Euphorbia
Abyssinica. It is said that King Juba II., of Mauritania, discovered the plant
growing on Mount Atlas, wrote a short treatise on its virtues, and named it
after his physician Euphorbos (about the end of the first century B.C.) The
root, generally speaking, is aperient, and the milky juice useful in cases of
rheumatism and cramp.
The plains of Tigré present a beautiful appearance with the variety of
flowers that bloom among the grass; including a kind of scarlet aloe, which
is to be met with almost everywhere in Tigré, and appears, like our gorse, to
flower at all seasons, forming a graceful object in the foreground. The many
varieties of mimosas, too, with their different-coloured blossoms—pink,
yellow, and white—appear to be spread over the whole face of the country,
whether rock or plain, hill or valley. “When in blossom,” says an English
traveller,[104] “many of them emit a fragrance so powerful as to render the
whole neighbourhood more odorous than a perfumer’s shop. The jessamine
is seen in profusion in many parts, but principally on the hills; and there is
also a beautiful parasitical creeper (an æschynanthus), which grows, like the
mistletoe, from the bark of other trees. It has a bright dark-green fleshy leaf,
with brilliant scarlet flowers.”
The same traveller describes a tree called the dima,[105] which, though
not very solid as food, adds much to the flavour of the cuisine. It has a large
greenish shell, some nine inches long; inside of it lie a number of seeds, and
attached to them by fibres a quantity of yellowish-white cakey powder,
having a sweetish acid taste, and when mixed with water forming an
agreeable beverage, somewhat resembling lemonade. The Abyssinians mix
with it red pepper and salt, and eat it as a relish with their bread. When the
tree reaches a certain size, its trunk almost always becomes hollow; and
then it frequently contains a store of wild honey, which may easily be
obtained by means of a small axe and fire.
More to the south, in the Shoa, we meet with an almost analogous
vegetation: the Socotrine Aloes (Aloe socotrina), which supplies our
Pharmacopœia with an active cathartic, is particularly abundant. The
Celastrus edulis,[106] a small branching shrub whose leaves possess very
similar properties to those of the Tea-plant, and are employed for the same
purpose by the Abyssinians, is widely cultivated. The Arabs distil from
them a stimulating drink called Kat. Nor should I forget the Cousso, or

Casso, named after its discoverer Brayera anthelmintica,[107] an infusion of
whose bark or leaves forms one of the most powerful vermifuges in the
world; and the Musa ensete, a magnificent banana, with gigantic leaves and
nerves of a vivid red, which now flourishes in our European plantations.
Among the cultivated plants may be included most of those which I have
noticed under the head of Senegambia; while, owing to the considerable
elevation of the mountains, we find many others which belong to cool and
temperate climates—such, for example, as rye and barley. The Sugar Cane,
the Pomegranate, and numerous Aurantiaceæ, as, for example, the Citron
and the Orange, have been likewise introduced into this part of Southern
Africa.

Vegetable Life in South Africa.
1. Mesembryanthemum inflexum. 2. Hottentot’s Fig (Mes. edule). 3. Euphorbia neriifolia.
4. Euphorbia grandidens. 5. Stapelia hirsuta.

From the coast of Aden, where almost complete sterility prevails prior to
the rainy season—from the coast of Aden to Cape Guardafui, situated at the
easternmost point of Africa, the traveller encounters a constant succession
of mountains or elevated table-lands, haunted by the shepherds of the
Somali tribes,—a people notorious for their brigandage. Respecting the
coast of Ajan we know but little, except that its arid and sandy soil supports

a scanty vegetation of stunted plants. The Zanguebar coast is not more
familiar to the botanist, and is mainly covered with marshes.
But the littoral of Western Africa is gifted with a flora as luxuriant as it is
varied. According to Dr. Welwitsch, who has explored this region,
previously almost a terra incognita to Europeans, “the special feature in the
neighbourhood of Benguela is the abundance of parasitical Lorunthaceæ, or
mistletoe, on the thickets of the thorny Mimosa, to which are attached those
Roccellæ (or Archils), the Roccella tinctoria and R. fuciformis, that yield so
brilliant a lilac dye. In the gardens of Benguela the vegetables of Europe are
most successfully cultivated, as well as a great number of fruit trees
belonging both to tropical and temperate climes: citron and orange, the
olive, the cashew-nut, the anana, the fig, the vine, the pomegranate, the
elais-palm, the banana, the anona, and the corrossol. The vine bears grapes
twice every year, and the crop on each occasion is abundant and of fine
flavour. The gardens in the vicinity of Mossamèdes, between the fifteenth
and sixteenth parallels of south latitude, exhibit a curious medley of
vegetables on every side, where you may see flourishing side by side the
banana and the potato, manioc and wheat, sugar-cane and flax, barley, and
every kind of Spanish potato.”
A few miles from Cape Negro the coast rises for from 300 to 350 feet
above the sea-level, forming a continuous plateau, where the flora, though
meagre when compared with that a little further to the north, offers
nevertheless to the traveller some objects of the highest interest. It was here
that Dr. Welwitsch met with the strange plant which, in commemoration of
its intrepid discoverer, Sir William Hooker named Welwitschia,[108] but
which the natives call Tumboa. “In its youth its two original cotyledonary
leaves appear to grow considerably, and extend horizontally in opposite
directions, raised but little above the surface of the sand, whilst the
intervening stock thickens and hardens, assuming an obconical shape, flat at
the top, and rapidly tapering below into the descending root. As years go
on, the original pair of leaves, having attained their full size, and a hard,
tough, fibrous consistence, do not die away, but gradually split up into
shreds; the woody mass which bears them rises very little higher, but
increases horizontally both above and below the insertion of the leaves, so
as to clasp their base in a deep marginal slit or cavity; and from the upper
side, at the base of the leaf, several short flowering stalks are annually
developed. These are erect, dichotomously branched jointed stems, rising

from six inches to a foot in height, and bearing a pair of small opposite
scales at each fork or joint, each branch being terminated by an oblong
cone, under the scales of which are the flowers and seeds. The result is, that
the country is studded with these misshapen table-like or anvil-like masses
of wood, whose flat tops, pitted with the scars of old flowering stems, never
rise above a foot from the ground, but vary, according to age, in a horizontal
diameter of from a few inches to five or six feet—those of about eighteen
inches diameter being supposed to be already above a hundred years
old.”[109]
These fantastic monstrous shapes were found by Dr. Welwitsch, with
their deeply-embedded roots, on the dry plateau of the Benguela coast, in
15° 40´ south latitude. Herr Montein met with it in a perfectly similar
situation on quartzose soil, in the neighbourhood of the Nicolas River, 14°
20´ south latitude; and Mr. Baines and Mr. Anderson, in Dawaraland,
between 22° and 23° south latitude, in the neighbourhood of Whalefish Bay,
and in a district where never a drop of rain falls. We may therefore place the
habitat of this remarkable plant between the 14th and 23rd parallels of
south latitude. The crown, when divested of its leaves, bears a close
resemblance to a fungus.

Vegetable Life of Cape Colony.

1. Aloe verrucosa. 2. Aloe soccotrina. 3. Aloe ciliaris. 4. Aloe arborescens.

5. Aloe plicatilis. 6. Gladiolus blandus.

Vegetable Life of Cape Colony.
1. Helichrysum fruticosum. 2. Erica Cavendishiana. 3. Protea longifolia. 4. Todea
Africana.

Vegetable Life of Cape Colony.
1. Pelargonium hederæfolium (Ivy-leaved Geranium). 2. Oxalis rosacea (Wood-Sorrel).

3. Pelargonium glaucum. 4. Pelargonium zonale (Zone-leaved Geranium).
5. Pelargonium tricuspidatum.

If we now approach the Cape of Good Hope—the Cabo del Tormentoso,
or “Cape of Storms,” of the early navigators—we shall observe a
characteristic vegetation peculiar to a solid or stony soil, sometimes hilly,
but generally dry. It is in the desolate and barren steppes situated within the
confines of Caffraria that those splendid herbaceous bulbous plants display
their beauties, which are now familiar to our English gardens under the
names of Gladiolus, Oxalis, Ixia, and Tulbaya. To those magnificent
ornaments of the floral world we must add some less known plants,
remarkable in other respects; such as the Mollugo cerviana, which, with a
few Ficoideæ, form the almost exclusive nourishment of the herbivorous
animals belonging to these countries. The Gramineæ are rare in the plains
of Cape Colony, but, on the other hand, they contain a number of
oleaginous plants included in divers families. Here, for instance, are those
singular Compositæ, whose stems so closely resemble waxen tapers; several
Ficoideæ, of which some species—as, notably, the Mesembryanthemum
edule, or Hottentot’s Fig, distributed over the interior of Southern Africa,
and the Mesembryanthemum tuberosum—are eagerly sought by the
Hottentots, Caffres, and natives generally, who eat the fruits of the former
and the roots of the latter; the Stapelia hirsuta, or Carrion Plant, and several
others of the same genus, whose carrion-smelling flowers are singularly
handsome, though their odour is most offensive; a great number of aloes,
particularly the Aloe verrucosa, A. ciliaris, A. plicatilis, and A. arborescens,
each distinguished by a strange wayward boldness of form and figure; and,
finally, those larger Euphorbias of which I have already spoken, and which
yield a white milky juice that hardens on exposure to the air. It is mainly on
the slopes or stony hills of the Cape that we meet with numerous and
remarkable species of the Immortelles, with their white, yellow, or lilac, and
satin-smooth flowers. The woody Immortelle (Helichrysum fruticosum) is
one of those peculiar to the Cape districts. It is in analogous but more sandy
localities that those graceful little shrubs, with varied corollas, flourish,
which are so popular in England under the name of Ericas, and which
frequently exhibit the highest beauty of form and colour. In the engraving is
figured the exquisite Erica Cavendishiana, a deservedly great favourite in
our English conservatories. There, too, the traveller delightedly examines

the almost interminable succession of Pelargoniums, or Geraniums, rich in
clusters of delicate bloom, and in exquisitely green foliage. What a blank
would their absence leave in our blossomy parterres! Here and there he
notes dense coppices of the Arduinia spinosa, the Lycium Afrum, the
Euclæa ondulata, whose berries are eaten by the Hottentots; several species
of Rhus,[110] among others the Rhus lucidum; and, finally, a great number of
the strange fantastic Proteaceæ, with their hard dry evergreen leaves and
curiously beautiful flowers. At the foot of the mountains, in the countries
bordering on Caffraria, different Cycadaceæ are found, especially the
Zamia and Encephalartus, an elegant plant with a short spherical trunk,
surmounted by a crown of long rigid palmated leaves. The natives prepare
with their pith a species of cake which they eat instead of bread. Ferns are
not numerous at the Cape; the most remarkable, undoubtedly, is the Todea
Africana. The hills and meadows of this part of South Africa do not always
exhibit so marked an aridity; rivers and streams refresh the soil, and there,
where the current is not too swift nor the depth too great, grows the
beautiful Calla of Ethiopia, a species of Aroidea, whose snow-white
fragrant flowers resemble a large horn in shape; the Aponogeton
distachyum, another aquatic plant, with white flowers and floating leaves, is
not less common in similar positions; then on the banks, in fresh and shady
nooks of greenery, thrives the Strelitzia reginæ, a gorgeous-flowered genus
of Musaceæ, named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen of
George III. The foliage of this magnificent plant consists of long-stalked
leaves sheathing at the base, arising from a contracted stem, the flower stalk
encircled below by the sheath of the leaf-stalk; while from its upper portion
springs a large bract or spathe placed obliquely, within which lie the
flowers, resplendent in orange and purple.
In the Desert of Kalahari exists an abundant and varied vegetation.
According to Dr. Livingstone, it is an immense plain which nourishes a
prodigious quantity of herbaceous plants, generally of very small elevation,
and besprinkled at intervals with thickets of bushy shrubs. The herbs which
are enabled to withstand the prolonged droughts of these arid localities are
species with tuberous roots, creeping or spindle-like, and deeply buried in
the ground. The Citrullus vulgaris and C. amarus are found in enormous
quantities. Dr. Livingstone speaks of another individual of the gourd tribe,
probably a kind of Cucumis, whose fruits colour red when ripe, and which
has sometimes a sweet and sometimes a bitter flavour. In these vast regions,

where a desolating aridity prevails, the rivers and streams dry up for a great
portion of the year, and the soil of their bed, generally black and loamy, is
rapidly covered with a profuse vegetation, composed in great part of grasses
and rush-plants.
The banks of the rivers Mokolo and Zouga, and the shores of Lake
Ngami, are covered with herbs and small thorny stunted bushes, including
the Acacia detinens. In the south of Africa the soil is so dry that only plants
of a fleshy consistency can endure the heat; elsewhere, in more temperate
climes, these latter plants are also very abundant, but the surrounding
herbage destroys them. Among those which grow there in great numbers I
may name the Ficoideæ, and particularly the Mesembryanthemum inflexum,
which is very widely spread, and whose stems and leaves are eaten by
herbivorous animals. This plant, says Dr. Livingstone, is so useful that it is
cultivated by the Dutch Boers on an extensive scale. On his northward route
towards Linianty, this illustrious traveller fell in with meadows of such rank
fertility that its herbage frequently rose above his vehicles. The natives,
designated Makalatos, show some agricultural taste and skill, and cultivate
durra, maize, two kinds of beans, arachides, pumpkins, and the like.
Everywhere, along the banks of the Gambye and the Liba, he met with
exceptionally fertile land, where the grasses attained an unusual
development. On the Liba bloomed wide verdurous plains, consisting of
plants with dazzling corollas and gramineæ of tall stature. Owing to the
burning heats which blight these districts, herbaceous plants are developed
with extraordinary rapidity.
In the rainy season the Liba meadows are covered, like our own, with an
immense variety of mushrooms, some nutritious, others poisonous. The
former are much relished by the natives. One of the most common, and one
of the finest flavour, is found, says Dr. Livingstone, on all the ant-hills; it is
completely white, very good even when eaten raw, and about eight inches
in diameter. There is another of a brilliant red or superb blue, but it is
poisonous.
The banks of the Quilo, like those of the Quango, are endowed with a
most luxurious vegetation; the same is the case with the banks of the
Zambesi. Everywhere spreads a gigantic and abundant herbage. In the
environs of the small town of Cassanga, the natives cultivate manioc,
potatoes, haricots, tomatoes, &c. There are found also bananas and guava
plants, and probably all the legumes and fruit trees recognized by Dr.

Welwitsch at Benguela, which lies nearly under the same latitude. From the
table-land of Cassanga you may survey nearly the whole of the valley
watered by the Quango. It is a gently undulating plain, covered with herbs,
and sown with great woods. The coffee-tree was formerly cultivated in the
province of Tété, but has been abandoned; cassias, however, flourish, and
indigo. Among the cultivated plants of Tété Livingstone, moreover,
mentions some species which are not yet botanically distinguished—such as
the Loatsa (Pennisetum typhoideum), and several of the bean tribe, one of
which grows underground like the arachides.

CHAPTER V.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, AND LLANOS
OF THE NEW WORLD.
OF all the provinces, as yet uninhabited or only scantily peopled, which
compose the northern regions of the New World, none offer so vast an
extent of prairies as that which is situated in the vicinity of the Neosho and
the Vert-de-Gris, between the Missouri frontier and the River Arkansas.
Woods of small extent—or, more generally, limited patches of copse and
thicket—are met with at intervals in these plains. The Smilax rotundifolia, a
species of sarsaparilla, with round leaves and sarmentous stems; the Rhus
toxicodendrum, a shrub with a very poisonous juice; and the Asimina
triloba, a plant bearing nutritious fruit, are, with a few other subfrutescent
species, the denizens of these lonely localities. Annual or perennial plants
abound in the prairies, and attain there a considerable development,
especially in the more humid districts. The plains bordering on the Swan’s
Marsh, situated upon the upper course of the River Osage, nourish a great
number of species, as elegant as they are varied. As in our own meadows,
the Gramineæ, the Cyperaceæ (or Sedges), the Leguminosæ, and the
Compositæ—the latter especially—are very extensively diffused. But, in
contrast to the majority of our species, their representatives are in general of
remarkable dimensions, with flowers of extraordinary splendour, and most
of them have been naturalized in our British gardens.

The American prairies, again, like the meadow-lands of Europe, are
alternated with dry, gravelly spaces, marshes, swampy angles, and wooded
tracts. It is curious to trace a certain likeness between the genera which
inhabit these localities in both continents. Thus, M. Trécul, who explored, in
1848 and 1849, nearly the whole of the State of Missouri to the foot of the
Rocky Mountains, Louisiana, Texas, and a part of Northern Mexico,
discovered in the vicinity of the Swan’s Marsh, Water-Plantains (Alisma),
Sagittarias, and Nymphæas, in the inundated districts; Characeæ—their
tubular branches incrusted with carbonate of lime—bladder-plants, and the
beautiful floating Naiadaceæ, in deeper pools and stagnant waters; and the
Lythraceæ (or Loose-Strife tribe) on the banks of the brooklets. But the
commonest aquatic plant in these morasses, and that which conceals, so to
speak, all the other plants proper to such localities, is the Nelumbium
calophyllum, with its rose-coloured blossoms; its seeds and rhizomes are
eaten by the natives.
The vast plains of Missouri are sufficiently fertile. Among the plants
most abundant in somewhat damp places we must notice several
Compositæ; the Liatris, with their violet flowers and long spiky bunches,
the Calliopsis tinctoria of the dyers, the Gaura of Lindheimer, and the
Tripsacum dactyloides. Asters, Erigerons, Gaillardies, Helianthi (sun-
flowers), Solidagos, the Rudbeckia hirta, and the Coreopsis, are found
almost as far south as Texas. By the side of these Compositæ flourish
several Desmodiums and Cassias, some graceful Baptisias—with blue
flowers and light green foliage, the Melanthum Virginicum, the Euphorbia
marginata, the Asclepias Cornuti—now naturalised in the neighbourhood
of Paris—the Hibiscus palustris and H. moscheutos, gigantic Malvaceæ,
whose splendidly-beautiful flowers are often three or four inches in
diameter. As plants widely spread in the stonier Prairies, we may note the
Gauras, different varieties of Œnothera, and especially the Silphium
laciniatum (vulgarly called the Magnetic Plant, or Compass of the Prairies).
Its leaves are said to turn their faces uniformly east and west, so that their
edges are consequently directed due north and south. The plant is also
known as Pilot-weed, Polar-plant, Rosin-weed, and Turpentine-weed; the
latter name derived from the copious resin exuded by its stems, which grow
to a height of three to six feet, as well as by the leaves, which are deeply
pinnatified.

In the small woods which skirt the Prairies is found in abundance,
twining round the bushes, the Apios tuberosa, a leguminous plant formerly
recommended to European cultivation on account of the rounded tubercles
which grow upon its subterranean stems. The Arabians collect them in the
spring, and carefully dry them to eat for food. The Apios belongs to the
family of Umbelliferæ, and is consequently allied to celery, parsnip, and
carrot.
In Missouri, and as far as the confines of Mississippi, we also fall in with
very productive sandy plains alternating with wooded uplands. This country
recalls, on the whole, the aspect of that which we have just described, and
the plants which thrive therein are almost the same.
On the hills and woody slopes in the neighbourhood of the Iron
Mountain, we likewise meet with sufficiently verdurous prairies. M. Trécul
collected there numerous Gramineæ, some species of Carex, Plantains,
Euphorbias, Polygalas, and Vervains; many genera, in fact, which in France,
and similar soils elsewhere, have numerous representatives. It is in the
grassy tracts of the wooded districts that the larger species of Phlox
flourish, while the smaller varieties of the same genus vegetate upon the
hills. The low humid meadows enchant us with their gorgeous scarlet
Actæas,[111] their yellow Balsams their Echinacea purpureas, and their
superb Lilies; those which are dry and rather stony are covered with the
broad golden flowers of the gay Œnothera macrocarpa.[112]

Vegetable Life in the American Prairies.

1. Liatris squarrosa. 3. Asclepias Cornuti.
2. Calliopsis tinctoria. 4. Tripsacum dactyloides.
5. Gaura Lindheimeri.

Among the shrubs which people the marshy tracts of this same region, I
must point out the Sassafras, a kind of laurel with deciduous leaves, yellow
flowers, which precede the foliage, and small dark-blue fruit. It is found
from Canada to Florida; a mere bush in the north, but a tree fifty feet high
in the south. The wood is soft, light, of a coarse fibre, with a pungent
aromatic taste, and a strong agreeable odour. The wood is brought to market
in the shape of chips, but for medicinal purposes the thick spongy bark of
the root is prepared, and it is found extremely valuable as a powerful
stimulant, sodorific, and diuretic. The mucilaginous leaves are employed in
thickening soup. An infusion of the bark or wood makes a pleasant
beverage, formerly known as Saloop; and the wood also yields an oil which
is used medicinally.
But it is in the state of Texas, and especially near San Antonio de Bejar,
that those immense desert spaces commence which occupy all the northern
region of Mexico. The southern districts of Texas offer in their prevailing
landscapes a mixture of beautiful prairies and shady woods. Among the
plants peculiar to humid and turfy localities, I may particularize the
Sarracenias, a group of remarkable exogens, whose leaves are hollowed out
into tubes or pitchers, open at the upper end, and streaked with bands of
different colours; the Eriocaulons, a kind of rush, carrying their small
flowers in spherical capitals on the summits of their tall branching stems;
and the Nelumbios (Nelumbium calophyllum), aquatic plants of unusual
beauty, American congeners of the celebrated Lotus, the “insane root which
takes the reason prisoner.” The nuts are wholesome and edible, and the root-
stocks are also occasionally eaten. These plants are likewise found, in
analogous habitats, in Mississippi and Louisiana, accompanied by the light-
green Magnolia, the Dog-berry tree of Florida, several Wax-berries, and the
Sassafras laurel, now acclimatized in Europe, and whose bark is employed
as I have said, medicinally, while its wood and roots are made use of by
turners and toy-manufacturers.

Vegetable Life in Texas.
1. Nelumbium calophyllum. 3. Eriocaulon flavidulum.
2. Sarracenia purpurea. 4. Laurus sassafras.

Prairies abound in Texas, wide rolling sweeps of grassy sward, with an
apparently interminable horizon, unbroken by rock, or wood, or river—
leagues upon leagues of rank thick grass where countless herds are
depastured, and where the hunter still finds game worthy of his deadly rifle.
Among those which skirt the Bay of Matagorda, and extend in the vicinity
of Victoria, Gonzalès, and Seguin, M. Trécul discovered an ample variety of
Compositæ; of Gramineæ, more especially those belonging to the generæ
Poa, Spartina, Dactyloctenium; Cyperaceæ, Euphorbias, Cucumbers, and
Gourds. From the Texan Prairies our European gardeners have of late years
received a Graminea of the genus Panicum, the Black Mosquito Grass,
which by its long creeping rhizomes may be employed with undoubted
success to arrest the inland movement of the Dunes and shifting sandy
shores. The yellow water-lily (Nuphar lutea) spreads its fine leaves on the
surface of the Texan streams, in beautiful companionship with the Nuphar
advena and the Nymphæa odorata. In the same localities vegetates a weak
variety of our European Sagittaria, and the Pistia spatulata spreads itself
upon the water, like our English Duckweed, both being members of the
family Pistaceæ.

As far as New Braunfels, the Prairies are occasionally relieved by
clumps of fine old trees; but below that point the traveller only encounters,
and that at rare intervals, a few scarce coppices and scanty thickets.
Growing more common at San Antonio de Bejar, they abound in the region
of Castroville, and spread over nearly the entire country to the very borders
of Mexico.
These bushes or coppices mainly consist of the Prosapis glandulosa, the
Guaiacum angustifolium, the Xanthoxylum inerme and a few Acacias.
The Guaiacum[113] is noticeable for its hard and heavy wood, generally
known as Lignum Vitæ, sometimes as Guaiacum wood, and occasionally as
Brazil wood. It also yields a peculiar resinous product, which is medicinally
employed, in powder, pill, and tincture, for the relief of chronic rheumatism
and chronic skin diseases. It is of a greenish-brown colour, and though it
has scarcely any taste, leaves a hot arid sensation in the mouth.
The Xantoxyton type, of the order Xanthoxylaceæ, derives its name from
the yellowness of its timber. Its fruits have a pungent aromatic taste, like
pepper. The popular name of “toothache tree” is applied to some of the
American species, from the relief their bark and fruits are supposed to give
in cases of that distressing affliction.
In the neighbourhood of Castroville, Trécul found, profusely scattered
among the thickets, a species of Ephedra, closely resembling the Ephedra
altissima, whose feeble reed-like branches were literally covered with small
red fruits, producing a novel and attractive effect. As a plant curious from
its mode of vegetation, and which is spread in Texas as well as in Louisiana,
I may mention the Tillandria usneoides, so named after Professor Tillands,
of Abo. This is a genus of Bromeliaceæ, growing on the boughs of trees,
and notably on those of the evergreen oak. It hangs down like a tuft of long
gray hair, in somewhat the same fashion as certain lichens (usnea) in
European pine-forests, communicating to the trees a strange and positively
weird aspect. The plant is collected, and the outer cellular portion being
removed by soaking in water, the fibrous residuum is then employed to stuff
cushions, mattresses, and pillows; whence it is sometimes called “Vegetable
horse-hair.”

Vegetable Life in the Texan Prairies.
1. Yucca Tréculeana. 4. Echinocactus robustus.
2. Silphium terebinthinaceum. 5. Cereus Peruvianus.
3. Mamillaria rodantha. 6. Opuntia microdasys.

In the thickets that dot the central Prairies commonly flourish the
Lantana Camara, and the curious Ungnandia speciosa, a species of
chestnut tree on a very reduced scale.
It was in Texas, and in the rocky, arid, and hilly plains, that the French
botanist Trécul discovered several notable varieties of Yuccas, to one of
which, a new, and certainly the most beautiful species, his name has very
justly been affixed: the Yucca Tréculeana. It raises its tall panicle of
gorgeous flowers from the centre of a crown of glossy, rigid, spear-like
leaves, like a victorious trophy. In Eastern Texas we note the first
appearance, in the drier and stonier portions of the Prairies, of a
representation of the family Cactaceæ, the Opuntia frutescens, frequently
growing side by side with the Silphium terebinthinaceum. The Opuntia is
more generally known as the “Indian Fig” or “Prickly Pear,” from the large
purple juicy fruits which it yields. The Silphium belongs to the family of
Compositæ. But Western Texas is the true birth-place of these oleaginous
plants, some of which, such as the Echinocactus robusta, the Mamillaria
rodantha, and the Opuntia microdasys (“small-thorny Opuntia”), are

cultivated in our apartments, where they require but very little attention. M.
Trécul has discovered in this region a new and rare variety of Echinocactus
(E. Tréculeanus), some kinds of Cereus, and, especially, the Cereus
Peruvianus, a beautiful plant with large showy flowers.
Such are the principal plants which, in North America, characterize the
vegetation of the Prairies and the Savannahs. This rapid and condensed
description will show the reader that the species most extensively spread
belong to the genera in which are grouped the more common inhabitants of
our own Old World meadows and grassy plains.

If we now transport ourselves, on the poet’s winged Pegasus, that takes
no account of distance or of natural obstacles, to the Equatorial zone of the
New World—into Guatemala, for example—we shall find the undulating
and verdurous prairies giving place to high table-lands furrowed by deep
and romantic ravines. Their botanical interest, however, is trivial, and their
vegetation of a meagre and stunted kind. But between Guatemala,
Nicaragua, and Honduras, lies an extensive valley, locally named Llanora,
sown with numerous beautiful varieties of plants. Among them the
Gramineæ family predominates, and, without attaining the proportions and
the quality of the herbs which we shall meet with in the interior, form
breadths of meadow very charming in their rare fresh greenness.
From the summit of the Cordilleras, in the neighbourhood of Bogota, at
an altitude of about 3200 feet, the eye surveys almost the entire extent of
those vast level plains which stretch from the base of the mountain-chain to
remote Brazil, Guiana, and Venezuela.
The Steppes comprised between Bogota and the river Meta are formed,
in general, of Gramineæ with crawling stems, and with nearly always very
tall culms, especially in the cooler localities. Herbage is so abundant that
the traveller who penetrates into these immense pastures experiences almost
insurmountable difficulties. He himself and his horse are nearly hidden by
the tall grasses, which frequently attain a stature of five to seven feet. And
such is their vigour, that after having been burnt to the ground by one of the
terrible conflagrations so frequent in these countries, they spring up again
with wondrous swiftness; if the plants had not flowered prior to the passage
of the destructive flames, they do so afterwards, and even when their leaves
have been wholly destroyed. The lofty table-lands of Bogota and Tukerres,

in New Grenada, present a succession of rich pasturages, perfumed by some
species of Labiatæ, and notably by the Micromeria Browniana, which
thrives among the Gramineæ, their fodder is highly esteemed.
The barren and sandy plains of Peru, fertilized by the numerous water-
courses which furrow them, are covered with thick bloom and verdure in
the rainy season. With the Gramineæ and Juncaceæ—the grasses and rushes
common in these Steppes—mingle different members of the Liliaceæ
family, and especially several kinds of Lily. The higher region of the eastern
face of the Peruvian Cordillera, situated between 10,000 and 13,000 feet of
elevation, forms an immense undulating plateau watered by the upper
course of the Maranon. Everywhere, over a considerable area, the plains are
clothed with a meagre vegetation, or alternate with wide morasses, lakes,
and brooks. Among the plants which people them is a species of the
Gramineæ, Stipa itchu; and there are also several Alpine varieties,
Compositæ, Leguminosæ, and one of the Cyperaceæ family, the Cyperus
articulatus.
The Llanos of Caraccas, and of the Rio Apure and the Meta, over which
roam immense herds of cattle, are, in the strictest sense of the term, says
Humboldt,[114] “grassy plains.” Their prevalent vegetation, belonging to the
two families of Cyperaceæ and Gramineæ, consists of various species of
Paspalum, P. leptostachyum and P. linticulare; of Kyllingia, of Panicum,
Anthephora, Aristida, Vilfa, and Anthistiria. Only here and there are found,
interspersed among the Gramineæ, a few herbaceous dicotyledonous plants,
consisting of two very low-growing species of Mimosa (Sensitive Plant)—
Mimosa intermedia and Mimosa dormiens—which are great favourites with
the wild horses and cattle. The natives give to this group of plants, which
close their delicate feathery leaves on being touched, the expressive name
of Dormideras—“sleepy plants.” Nota tree is visible for miles; but where
solitary individuals occur, they are, in moist places, the Mauritia Palm; in
arid districts, a Protacea—namely, the Rhopula complicata; also the highly
useful Palma da Corija, or de Sombrero; and our Corypha inermis, an
umbrella palm, whose leaves are used to thatch the roofs of huts.
The Mauritia palm, Palm Moriche, Mauritia flexuosa, Quiteve, or Ita
palm—for by any or all of these names it is known—belongs to the family
of Lepidocaryeæ. The trunk grows as high as 26 feet, but it probably
requires from 120 to 150 years to reach this height. It extends high up on
the declivity of the Duida Mountains, and forms in moist places beautiful

groups of a shining emerald verdure, like that of our European alder groves.
The trees preserve the humidity of the ground by their shade, and hence the
Indians say that the Mauritia draws the water round its roots by a
mysterious attraction. From its tops the Indians frequently suspend their
hammocks to escape the attacks of the mosquitoes.
Sir Walter Raleigh was the first who brought to England this fruit of the
Mauritia palm, which he very justly likened, on account of its scales, to a fir
cone.

Vegetable Life in the Plains of the Meta.
1. Anthephora elegans. 3. Anthistiria ciliata.
2. Panicum Cajennense. 4. Aristida capillacea.
5. Cyperus articulatus.

The plains of the Rio Negro and the Amazons are the home and habitat
of the most remarkable of all aquatic plants, the Victoria regia,[115] truly
deserving its royal rank on account of its curious conformation and splendid
beauty. It is said to have been first observed by Häuke, about 1801, and
afterwards to have been noticed by Bonpland, D’Orbigny, and others; but
the first person who accurately described it was Pöppig, in 1832, who saw it
in the river Amazons. Sir Richard Schomburgk, who discovered it in the
rivers of Guiana, was, I believe, the first to introduce it in England, where a

splendid specimen may be seen at Kew, another at Chatsworth, and a third
in the Botanic Garden of Glasgow. Its thick fleshy root-stocks send up a
number of long cylindrical leaf-stalks, traversed by air canals, and armed
with stout conical prickles. The blade of the leaf is circular, and floats on
the surface of the water; when fully developed, it measures from six to
twelve feet in diameter, and its margin being uniformly turned upwards to
the depth of two or three inches, it assumes the appearance of a large
shallow tray. The lower surface is traversed by a number of very prominent
veins, radiating from the centre to the margin, and connected with one
another by smaller transverse nerves; so that the whole under-side, which is
of a purplish colour, is divided into a network of irregular quadrangular
compartments or open cells, admirably fitting the leaf for floating on the
water. The flowers rise upon prickly stalks. They are more than a foot in
diameter, with the white outer petals inclined downwards; while the central
rose-coloured ones, with the stamens, remain erect: the whole presenting
the fanciful appearance of a central rose-coloured crown resting on a
circular range of snowy and most gracefully curved petals. The fruit is a
sort of globular capsule, about the size of a child’s head, and formidably
beset with prickles. The interior is fleshy, and divided into numerous cells,
full of round farinaceous seeds, which are eaten roasted by the Spaniards.
Hence, in some parts of South America, it is called Maïs del Agua, or Water
Maize.
The pools and lagoons of this region nourish numerous other aquatic
plants, among which it will suffice to particularize the Scyndapsus fragrans
and the Raphia tædigera.
Turning now to the vast area of the Brazilian empire, we find it divided
into matos (or woods) and campos (or open plains). When the inhabitants
would convert into cultivable land a district occupied by forest, they set fire
to it during the dry season, and soon a vegetation of frutescent but dwarf
species succeeds the primitive vegetation. By renewing this purifying
process a second and a third time, the soil finally becomes covered with a
species of fern closely resembling our large Pteris, Pteris caudata; and if
the spot be once more abandoned, it is speedily taken possession of by a
viscous, grayish, and fœtid species of Gramineæ, well known locally by the
name of Capim gordura, to botanists by that of Tristegis glutinosa. So
boundless a voracity has this plant, that it wholly expels from certain
regions another and less tenacious variety of the Gramineæ, the Saccharum,

or Sapa. The Capim gordura constitutes in itself almost the entire flora of
the artificial campos. It is but an indifferent fodder, and cattle derive from it
little vigour.

Aquatic Plants of Guiana.
1. Victoria regia. 2. Raphia tædigera. 3. Scyndapsus fragrans.

In general, the natural campos bear a certain resemblance to our
meadows; grass, however, is less abundant; they consist, especially in the
colder localities, of Gramineæ which do not, perhaps, exceed our British
species in dimensions, but differ greatly in the size of their leaves, and often
also in their spreading inflorescence. By their side, as is the case with us,
grow other plants of a more graceful floral character. Among these are
Myrtaceæ, Melastomaceæ, with their capsular fruits, and a species of
Compositæ, called Veronia.

Vegetable Life in the Pampas.
Pampas Grass (Gynerium argenteum).

The wayfarer who traverses the sterile campos is astonished to discover,
on the tortuous and stunted trees that grow there at rare intervals, some
flowers of a singular loveliness. Yet who can refuse his admiration from the
gorgeous Vochyaceæ; the Malpighiaceæ, richly and handsomely flowered;
the Leguminosæ, with their long hanging clusters of sparkling blossoms;
the trumpet-shaped flowers of the Bignonias, and the superb Oochnus? Nor
will he forget a rare Salvertia, fragrant as the lily of the valley, and with its
blossoms disposed in thyrses which outvie in beauty those of the chestnut.
In the genial smiling country which extends from Monte Video to the
mouth of the Rio Negro, the vegetation is almost wholly confined to
Gramineæ. It is in this region that the feathery Pampas Grass (Gynerium
argenteum) flourishes luxuriantly, covering leagues upon leagues with its
silvery panicles and drooping leaves, which, when stirred by a gentle wind,
ripple like the slow-moving, spray-gleaming waters of a sunny sea. It has
become of late years a favourite ornament of our British gardens, and may
justly be taken as a type of tender loveliness.[116] Beyond the Rio Negro the
country puts on a wilder aspect, and it is with difficulty the most
adventurous botanist can penetrate into its recesses.

Nearly all the southern districts of Patagonia form, as we have already
seen, an immense and almost level plain, whose soil is generally dry, arid,
and impeded with large pebbles; the northern districts, on the other hand,
offer a less monotonous landscape, are broken up with rocks and ravines,
interspersed among tolerably fertile pastures, whose flora has not yet been
fully investigated.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FLORA OF THE AUSTRALIAN PLAINS.
THE Deserts of the Australian interior have been laboriously traversed, not,
as we have seen, without much suffering, and even sacrifice, by a handful
of intrepid travellers, who have proposed to themselves simply the solution
of certain geographical problems. It will therefore be understood that we
owe to them only a few incidental notices of their botanical features. For an
accurate examination of these the pioneers of commerce have neither the
means, the opportunities, nor the requisite scientific knowledge. As far as
its flora is concerned, the Australian interior is wholly “virgin soil,” a new
botanical world, perhaps, awaiting the advent of a Columbus. Only the
littoral districts have been satisfactorily explored; and here, in the south, we
meet with the names of Labillardière, Robert Brown, Gaudichaud,
D’Urville, Sieber, Lesson, Cunningham, and other eminent botanists. To
these celebrated names we must also add those of Dr. Mueller, Director of
the Botanical Gardens at Melbourne, Sir William Hooker, and Mr.
Bentham. Their united labours have provided the public with a vast amount
of curious and authentic information, and have established the fact that the
botany of New Holland, like its zoology, has a physiognomy peculiarly its
own, and that many, nay, most of its vegetable species, are not less
characteristic than its strange and astonishing animal types. One is almost
tempted to adopt in sober earnest what Sydney Smith said in humorous
exaggeration, that, “in this remote part of the earth, Nature (having made
horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular and useful
productions for the rest of the world) seems determined to have a bit of
play, and to amuse herself as she pleases.”[117] Undoubtedly she has

indulged in the most wayward and eccentric forms. If there exist any
relations between the vegetation of Australia and that of any other part of
the globe, it is certainly with the districts of Southern Africa which lie near
the Cape of Good Hope that Australia exhibits the greatest affinity. It would
seem as if these two continents in some remote age had not been separated,
as they now are, by “leagues of salt water,” but that their vegetable species
had been able to propagate themselves freely from the one to the other.
According to Richard, the approximative number of species
distinguished by botanists amounts to about five thousand; but so many
discoveries have been made of later years, that we may raise the estimate to
seven thousand. While the Australian plants are distributed among
numerous families, each of the latter comprises but a very limited number
of individuals. The predominant plants belong, in the main, to these families
or orders:—Leguminosæ, Compositæ, Myrtaceæ, Gramineæ, Cyperaceæ,
Filices, Proteaceæ, Epacridæ, Orchidaceæ, in a proportion which varies,
moreover, according to the various districts explored.
The fertility of the soil, and the climatic conditions of the southern
shores of the Australian continent, are highly favourable to the introduction
of new species. Our English settlers have availed themselves to the utmost
of this circumstance, and have cultivated on a large scale all the most useful
fruit trees and vegetables of Europe, and others imported from tropical
climes; so that mingled in the same prolific gardens may be seen the fig-tree
and the banana, the guava, the orange-tree, the olive, and the apple—
cabbages, potatoes, turnips, peas. Even the vine has been successfully
naturalized, and its manufactured products are not inferior in excellence to
the famous Rhenish wines.

Vegetable Life in Victoria.
1. Rosea gracilis (Arundo conspicua). 3. Hectia Pitcairniæfolia.
2. Astelia Banksii. 4. Xanthorrhœa arborea.

In indicating the most curious indigenous plants of New Holland, we
shall more particularly confine ourselves to those of Victoria, one of the
best known districts, and perhaps also one of the most extensive, most
diversified, and most picturesque. The plains are, in general, sufficiently
grassy and fertile, especially in those parts which border on the brooks and
rivers. The plants most extensively distributed belong to the Gramineæ and
Cyperaceæ; we find, among the former, the Pennisetum fasciculare, a great
number of Poaceæ, and the Arundo conspicua; in foliage and general
appearance the latter presents some striking analogies with the Pampas
Grass; among the Poaceæ predominates the Cyperus vaginatus, a common
object on the banks of the river Murray in those parts which are subject to
frequent inundations. A strong tenacious netting is made from the fibres of
its leaves. To these herbs we have to add some flowering plants, such as the
star-like Lobelias; numerous species of mint (as Mentha Australis, M.
satureioides, M. grandiflora, and M. gracilis), from which an essential oil is
extracted for use in the manufacture of perfumes; the Sida pulchella and
Lavatera plebeia, of which stout fibre or solid thread is made, the fibres of
Australian flax (Linum marginale) being adapted to the same purpose. The

Restias, a curious rush-like order of endogens, also inhabit these moist
places: as do the Kingias, very common grasses; the Astelia Banksii, a
species of Liliaceæ, with grass-formed leaves and a strong tenacious stem;
and the Xerotes longifolia. The Nardoo (Narsilia macropus, or, as it is
sometimes called, N. salvatrix), whose spores and spore-cases are pounded
by the native Australians and made into bread or porridge, is a kind of
cryptogamous plant, with leaves formed of four folioles, like those of a
truffle. It abounds in the low grounds and inundated districts, especially on
the banks of the Murray. Finally, the Stag-horn (Acrostichon grande), a
gigantic mushroom, clings to the branches of the great trees.
Small bushy clumps are scattered over the plains, and flourish with
peculiar vigour along the water-courses. They consist of various shrubs.
The traveller will not fail to notice a whole series of Leguminosæ—
Chlorozoma, Pultenæa, Viminaria, Mirbelia, Podolobium (all are shrubs of
exceeding elegance, and now form the rare ornaments of our English
gardens); of Epacridæ—Epacris stiphelia, E. leucophogon, and others,
which have also been imported into our home-parterres; a great number of
Euribias, a genus of subfrutescent Compositæ, of which a few are rendered
interesting by their heathlike foliage; the Pimelea axiflora, whose supple
and tenacious bark is fashioned into bands and straps; the Myrsine
variabilis, with its woody stems and drupaceous fruit; the Aralia
crassifolia, a singular shrub, with long, narrow, and very rigid leaves; the
Callistemon salignum (vulgarly called “stonewood”), employed for
xylographic purposes; the Casuarina equisetifolia,[118] or “Swamp Oak”—
also called “Cassowary Tree”—a lofty tree, with very durable wood, long,
slender, drooping, emerald-green branches, and conical fruit, inclosing
small winged nuts; various species of Melaleuca, yielding the green
aromatic oil called cajaputi or cajeput oil, valuable as a stimulant or
antispasmodic; finally, some Cordylines, or ’Tis, plants of the natural order
Liliaceæ, and nearly allied to the Dragon’s Blood Tree, attaining a height of
ten to fifteen feet, with a berry-like fruit, and lanceolate leaves of a reddish
hue, which afford a nutriment for cattle, thatch for houses, and whose fibres
are frequently made into cloth. The root, when baked, is much used as an
article of food, and the fermented juice yields an intoxicating beverage.

Vegetable Life on the Australian Plains.
1. Doryanthes excelsa. 3. Dryandra repens.
2. Aralia crassifolia. 4. Cordyline congesta.

The dry, rocky, arid, and sandy districts, which may be compared to the
Landes of Brittany, are clothed with a peculiar vegetation. The strangest
plant, which is also the most widely distributed, is undoubtedly the
Xanthorrhœa arborea,[119] forming a conspicuous feature in the dreary
landscape, and when stripped of its leaves resembling a black man holding
a spear. The leaves afford good fodder for cattle, while the natives eat the
soft white centre of the top of the stem. They yield two kinds of fragrant
resin—one of a yellow colour, balsamic and inodorous, called Botany Bay;
and the other red, called Black Boy Gum. The tree—which the settlers have
christened “Black Boy” and “Grass Gum”—has a thick trunk, encrusted in
a thick coating of the persistent basis of old leaves, glued together by the
yellow or red resin with which the plant abounds, and usually burned and
blackened outside by bush-fires. The leaves are long, wiry, and grass-like,
and are borne in a dense tuft at the top of the stem, hanging gracefully all
around it. Their long flower-stalks aspire from its centre, sometimes
growing as high as fifteen or twenty feet, and carrying aloft a thick
cylindrical flower spike.

Among the lowlier plants are found a few Hectias, such as the Hectia
Pitcairniæfolia, one of the Bromelias, very curious from its mode of
vegetation; and the Stipa crinita, a very common grass. The leaves of the
latter have been manufactured into paper of tolerable consistency.
The sandy and colder tracts are the habitat of the annual or perennial
Compositæ, distinguished by their smooth and shining flowers. On the
other hand, the dry rocky surfaces are besprinkled with inconsiderable
woods, or rather thickets, formed in part of the Santalum acuminatum,
whose nutritious fruit are called “peaches” by the colonists; the Santalum
persicarium, or sandal wood; several Nitrarias,[120] with edible fruits; a
great number of Acacias, notably the Acacia verticillata, A. sophora, and A.
doratoxylon, whose very hard wood is employed in the fabrication of
javelins; a considerable series of Proteaceæ, particularly the Banksia
Australis, B. serrata, and B. integrifolia, so characteristic in aspect and
foliage; and a few Eucalypti,[121] or “Gum Trees,” of small stature—among
others, the “Traveller’s Tree,” or Eucalyptus oleosa.[122] Its roots extend
horizontally, and retain a quantity of water sufficient to quench the
wayfarer’s thirst in the hour of need. All the Eucalypti are curious trees,
with entire and leathery leaves, affording an unusual amount of aromatic
oil. Many of the species abound in resinous secretions; some attain a great
size, with trunks of from 8 to 16 feet in diameter, and 150 or 160 in length.
The Eucalyptus resinifera—“Red Gum” or “Iron Bark Tree”—reaches to an
elevation of 150 to 200 feet. When wounded, a red juice flows from it very
freely, hardening into irregular, inodorous, and transparent masses in the air,
and furnishing as much as sixty gallons from a single tree.

Vegetable Life on the Australian Plains.
1. Acacia verticillata. 2. Casuarina equisetifolia, or “Black Boy Tree.”
3. Corypha Australis, or “Australian Palm.”

Finally, I may refer to the Dryandra, whose foliage is very graceful, and
its conformation very varied. Sometimes it is found as a bush, three to
seven feet high; and sometimes, as in the Dryandra repens, creeping along
the ground.
On the more temperate heights the traveller encounters some plants of a
fantastic character: as, for instance, the Doryanthes excelsa, with its upright
gigantic leaves, more than 6 feet long, and from 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 inches broad;
from their centre rises a strong stalk, 15 or 18 feet high, terminated by a
compact and voluminous cluster of great deep-red flowers. There, too, are
found the magnificent arborescent ferns, Alsophila Australis and Dicksonia
Antarctica. The trunk of the former aspires to a stature of 25 to 90 feet; that
of the second, to 12 to 28 feet; and in both the stems are terminated by a
cluster of immense flowers, which give to these plants a quite distinctive
character.
Nor must we quit the Australian Flora and its marvels without alluding
to the Corypha Australis, which begins to make its appearance at the mouth
of the Snowy River. It is a gigantic palm, growing solitarily, or in thin

groups, in low, cool, and even moist places. Its trunk probably attains to 140
feet in height; and the top of its stem is crowned by a gorgeous crest of fan-
shaped leaves, which are employed in the manufacture of straw hats.

CHAPTER VII.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD:—
HERBIVOROUS ANIMALS.
TO the prodigal Flora of the Tropics, which we shall soon see displaying in
the virgin forests its exuberant fecundity, corresponds a Fauna no less rich,
and marked by a singular variety.
This Fauna offers, especially in the Old World, an impressive character
of power, strength, superior force—I had almost said, majesty. In truth, if
we do calmly compare the mammals and the birds of tropical America with
those which roam the wild plains of Africa, Hindostan, the Indo-Chinese
peninsula, and the great islands of the Indian Ocean, we cannot but
recognize the evident superiority of the latter. The anthropoid Ape, the
enormous Pachyderms, Elephant, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Giraffe, and,
among animals of the same order, the Antelopes, many of which attain the
dimensions of the Horse, belong exclusively to the Eastern Hemisphere.
The genus Camel, represented in Asia by the Bactrian Camel, in Africa by
the Dromedary, is but weakly typified in South America by the Lama, the
Vicuña, and the Alpaca, not inelegant in form, but of a markedly inferior
stature. And what equality is there between the lordly Tiger of the rank
Indian jungles, and the sleek, stealthy Jaguar of the American wilderness?
Or who will venture to compare the so-called “Lion of America,” the Puma
or Cougouar, with the regal quadruped which makes the hot Libyan wastes
re-echo with his terrible roar?
Among the Birds, the Phenicoptera, with its disproportionate legs and
neck, distributed over all the ancient continent below 40° of latitude, and
the Ostrich, properly so called, are much superior in dimensions to their
analogues on the other side of the Atlantic, the American Flamingo and the
Nandou. So do the Eagles and Vultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa prevail

in numbers and force over those of the New World. And the ancient
continent can likewise claim as its own the gigantic Epiornis, the wonderful
“Roc Bird” of the well-known Oriental legend, whose petrified eggs and
some of whose fossil bones have been discovered in Madagascar. It is true,
however, that the greatest of living Raptores, the Condor, inhabits
exclusively the Cordillera of the Andes:—
“Stands solitary, stands immovable
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabashed,
In the cold light, above the dews of morn.”—(W. S. Landor.)

But the balance is re-established by the Erpetological and Entomological
Fauna of the New World, which can oppose its huge Boas, its Caïmans and
Pythons, to the Crocodiles and Gavials of Africa and Asia; its Crotali and
Trigonocephali to the Najas of India, the Echidnas of the Cape, and the
Cerastes of Egypt and the Sahara; while the Bull Frog of the United States
and the Pipa of Guiana are only found on the banks of the vast lonesome
swamps of the new continent. As far as the Desert World is concerned, in
both hemispheres the legions are innumerable, and their energies
commensurate to the greatness of the continual work of destruction and
purification which they seem destined to accomplish in all tropical
countries.
It is unnecessary to carry any further the parallel between the two
hemispheres. We shall more clearly detect their analogies and differences
by pursuing the study, already opened up in the Steppes and Seas of Sand,
of the principal species proper to the various forms of the Desert, the
different regions and divisions of the Savage World.
Yet I must confess that the difficulties of the study increase with the
extent of the field we are called upon to explore. The Steppes and
Wildernesses of Sand constitute, both in Africa and Asia, regions which are
clearly defined, and the poverty both of their fauna and their flora fixes a
definite limit to the researches of the naturalist. Such is not the case in the
immense countries which now lie before us. Instead of sighing, like
Alexander, for more worlds to conquer, the student of science is ever
deploring the impossibility of exhausting even a single division of the grand
work before him. “Art is long; life is short.” The most industrious among us
can never rise to the full height of his glorious task; must always remain

like a child on the shore of the ocean of truth, and be content with the few
shells his nerveless hand contrives to gather. In the wide regions we are
about to traverse we feel at every step the colossal character of the
enterprise. Every instant their aspect changes; Nature never repeats herself;
their products vary with the latitude, the climate, and the soil. To pass in
review all the trees and plants and flowers which flourish there, all the
animals and peoples which dwell among them, would be nothing less than
to embrace in a vast encyclopædia the description and history of two
organic kingdoms. But such is not the design of the present volume. I have
not undertaken to give an exact picture of nature, which would task to the
uttermost the powers of men of such diverse genius as Humboldt, Owen,
Lyell, Darwin, Tyndall, Hooker, and Ruskin, but to sketch the bold outlines
and more prominent features of the physiognomy of the Desert World, and
not to reproduce its more minute details.
My embarrassment, then, arises less from the multitude and infinite
variety of the objects we have to examine, than from the difficulty of
harmonizing the study with the divisions of this work. How, in fact, can I
establish a positive distinction between the animals of the Prairies or the
Savannahs and those of the Forests, between those of the latter and the
animals proper to the Mountains? For such a purpose it is needful that each
of these forms of the Desert World should possess its peculiar fauna; which
is true only within very narrow limits. In reality, most animals inhabit or
frequent, according to circumstances, sometimes one district, sometimes
another, without its being possible to assign with any amount of precision
their habitual, or simply their occasional, abode.
I shall avail myself, therefore, of the liberty allowed to every writer who
does not design a purely didactical work, by not unnecessarily troubling
myself whether the animals whose organization or characteristics attract our
notice, particularly affect a low or elevated locality, the shady wood or open
plain, the pestilential swamp or the river-watered valley, and by permitting
myself, except in the case of some evident and constant partiality, to place
them where the most eminent observers assure us they are really, if not
exclusively, met with.
On this account, the plains, more or less densely wooded and broken up,
which occupy the greater portion of the African Continent, will readily
furnish us with the opportunity of studying the majority of animals
indigenous to that continent, and, in general, to the entire Tropical zone of

the Old World. In fact, nearly all the genera of Mammals, Birds, and
Reptiles, are there represented by their most characteristic types. Clothed
with a luxuriant vegetation; watered by periodical rains and numerous
streams; intersected by thick masses of forests, groves, and thickets;
relieved from monotonous uniformity by mountain and ravine, by marshes
and lakes of vast extent,—these fields ever exhibit that aspect of busy life
under which we love to represent to ourselves the earth when she first
emerged from the boiling seas of Chaos, when the forces which had seethed
within her bowels for so many thousands of centuries had been tranquillized
by the Divine will, and she was despatched on her mysterious course to be
the theatre of man’s glorious destiny.

During the daytime silence and solitude prevail over the open plains. It is
the hour when most animals seek, under the foliage of the trees, among the
tall rank grasses, in the bosom of the waters or under the surface of the
earth, a shelter against the swift burning arrows of the sun, and repose
immovable in their different lairs. But when the great orb of day sinks
towards the horizon, all Nature seems to awake. More imperious needs
succeed to those of rest and slumber; hunger and thirst stimulate the most
sluggish into exertion. Then the reptile begins to stir in the mud where he
lay embedded; the herbivora return to their fresh pastures, and move
towards the rivers and ponds in whose waters they may slake their thirst;
the carnaria take the same road; they know that in the open plain they will
find victims for their murderous jaws. The Desert is astir with strange
sounds and mysterious voices; the air re-echoes the thousand discordant
cries which ring from the mountains and the rocks; black shadows pass, re-
pass, and flit to and fro, in every direction; terror, rage, agony, voracity, all
these instincts obtain expression in the dreadful concert; it is the orgie of the
appetites, the grand “Witches’ Sabbath” of Nature, whose furious animation
slackens towards the middle of the night, until, at sunrise, the lively accents
and joyous melodies of the birds, and the peaceful pastimes of the other
animals of the day, succeed to the lamentations and sinister invocations of
the prowlers of the darkness.

Hippopotamus and Crocodile of the River Nile.

In the foremost rank of the great animals to which the fauna of Asia and
Africa owes its superiority, I have named the huge Pachyderms,[123] those
mighty colossi which may be regarded as the analogues, in the terrestrial
creation, of the Cetacean giants of the marine creation. The Pachyderms
formed in Cuvier’s system a sufficiently natural order, which modern
systematists have dismembered, and, as I believe, a little arbitrarily. This
order comprised, besides the elephants, the hippopotami, the rhinoceroses,
and the tapirs, all the Porcidæ family, and even the Solidungulates, such as
the horse and ass. In the present work I shall adopt Cuvier’s division. The
elephant is the denizen of the forests where, in a succeeding chapter, we
shall encounter both him and the rhinoceros. But the hippopotamus belongs
incontestably to the fauna of the plain. His name (from the Greek) signifies
“River Horse.” And, indeed, he lives in the rivers, the pools, the deep
marshes; his manners are essentially amphibious. He dives and swims with
a surprising ease and agility, considering the enormous bulk of his body,
and the shortness of his heavy, unwieldy legs. He is able to remain a long
time under water. His colour is a brownish-black, and his proportions, ten to
twelve feet in length, and eight to ten in height. His head is immensely
large; the mouth cavernous in its prodigious width; the teeth immensely
strong, the incisors and canines of the lower jaw being long, and curved
forwards; these canines or tusks sometimes measure more than two feet in
length, and weigh upwards of six pounds each. Those in the upper jaw are
much smaller, and the front teeth are of a moderate size. The broad thick

lips are beset with scattered tufts of short bristles; the small quick eyes are
placed very near the top of the head; the small ears are slightly pointed, and
lined with short thick hair. His food mainly consists of the coarse herbage
that flourishes on the banks of lakes and rivers; but Milne Edwards speaks
of three or four of them standing knee-deep in the water, forming an
irregular line, and pouncing upon the fish brought within their reach by the
rapid currents. At night time they abandon their watery haunts to prowl
among the sugar-cane plantations, the fields of millet and rice, which they
devour with eagerness. Their march is so impetuous, that they break down
every barrier; nothing can resist them.
The hippopotamus is spread over all eastern and southern Africa; is
found in Nubia, Ethiopia, Abyssinia; at the Cape, the Senegal and the
Congo. Both the settlers and the natives of these countries hunt them with
ardour for the sake of the ivory they yield, nor is their flesh despised by a
keen appetite and vigorous stomach. Sometimes they excavate, in the
animal’s ordinary route, a tolerably deep pit, beset with sharp pointed poles,
and concealed by a covering of leafy branches: sometimes, in the shade of
the evening, they lie in ambuscade among the bushes, and aim at his huge
bulk the deadly bullet, as he comes up from the water, labouring and
bellowing. It is necessary to aim well at his head; for the rest of his body is
almost as invulnerable as that of Achilles.
Here is a lively picture from Sir Samuel Baker’s valuable volumes, in
which the hippopotamus is a foremost figure.
“We were towing through high reeds,” he says,[124] “the men invisible,
and the rope mowing over the high tops of the grass, when the noise
disturbed a hippopotamus from his slumber, and he was immediately
perceived close to the boat. He was about half-grown, and in an instant
about twenty men jumped into the water in search of him, thinking him a
mere baby; but as he suddenly appeared, and was about three times as large
as they had expected, they were not very eager to close. However the reis
pluckily led the way, and seized him by the hind leg, when the crowd of
men rushed in, and we had a grand tussle. Ropes were thrown from the
vessel, and nooses were quickly slipped over his head; but he had the best
of the struggle, and was dragging the people into the open river; I was
therefore obliged to end the sport by putting a ball through his head. He was
scored all over by the tusks of some other hippopotamus that had been
bullying him.”

After conquering your enemy, kill him and eat him: such is the maxim of
savage life. It was carried out by Sir Samuel Baker and his men, much to
the satisfaction of the conquerors. “A new dish!” exclaims our traveller;
“there is no longer mock-turtle soup; real turtle is mock hippopotamus. I
tried boiling the fat, flesh, and skin together, the result being that the skin
assumes the appearance of the green fat of the turtle, but is far superior. A
piece of the head thus boiled, and then soused in vinegar, with chopped
onions, cayenne pepper, and salt, throws brawn completely in the shade.”
The same traveller relates that the natives on the shores of the Albert
N’yanza, previous to embarking on a voyage, cast a handful of beads into
the lake, to propitiate the hippopotamus, that their canoe may not be upset.
The genus Tapir is wanting in Africa; but we find a species, Tapirus
Indicus, in India and the Indian Archipelago, where it was first noticed by
Diard and Duvaucel. These naturalists saw an individual of this species at
Barrackpore, near Calcutta, whither he had been imported from the island
of Sumatra. “I was much surprised,” says Diard, “that so large an animal
had not hitherto been discovered; but I was much more so, on seeing in the
Asiatic Society’s Museum the head of a similar animal, a native of Malacca,
which had been sent to the Society, on the 29th of April 1806, by M.
Faghuarie, governor of that province.” This tapir is as common at Malacca
as the rhinoceros and elephant. In size he closely approaches the common
ass. He is black all over, except the ears, which are fringed with white, and
on the back, which is of a pale gray. His habits are identical with those of
the American tapirs, to be described hereafter.

Rhinoceros.
African Phacocœrus (Chœripotamus Africanus).

In the African plains, from Nubia and Senegal to the Cape, we meet with
a Pachyderm intermediate between the hippopotamus and the wild boar:
this is the Phacocœrus, which was known to the ancients, and designated by
credulous Ælian the Sus tetrakeros, or “Boar with Four Horns.” He has no
horns, however, but only, beneath each ear, a horny protuberance, which
greatly disfigures his head, and procures him the popular appellation of the
“Warty Hog”—the “Bush Vark,” or “Bush Hog” of South Africa
(Chœripotamus Africanus). He has four projecting tusks, and long sharp
tufted ears. His stature, his feet, his tail, the mane of stiff bristles which
garnishes his neck, identify him with the wild boar; but his body, almost
naked on the flanks and hinder part, likens him to an hippopotamus. He is
gregarious, of fierce and brutal habits, and lives chiefly in the bushes or tall
herbage.

The Daw and the Quagga.

The Solidungulæ (or Solid-hoofed), which roam among the wide
pasturages of the Tropical regions of the Ancient World, contrast, by the
elegance of their forms and the beauty of their clothing, with the unwieldy
Pachyderms, of rugged and swarthy hide, placed by Cuvier under the same
classification. The Wild Horse does not exist in these latitudes, though we
may find there the most beautiful species of the genus: the Hémione, the
Onagra, the Zebra, the Daw, and the Quagga. The Hemionus (“half-ass”),
which we are endeavouring to acclimatize in Europe, and numerous
specimens of which may be seen in the Zoological Gardens of London and
Paris, is of a clear brown colour all over the body, except the belly and legs,
which are white. His mane is short, and his tail garnished only with a tuft of
hairs at the extremity. The species is Asiatic, and appears to have originated
in India, whence it spread westward into Asia Minor, and northward into the
Steppes which stretch to the base of the Himalayas. The modern names are
Koulem, Kiang, and Dziggethai (or “Mountain Ass”). He roams in great
troops across the dreary Asiatic deserts, and is fond of bitter and saline
herbage, and brackish water. Now, as of old, he has “the range of the
mountains for his pasture,” and the “salt places” for his dwelling. His
swiftness and wariness render his chase an exciting pastime, and in Persia
he is considered the noblest of game.
The Hemippus (“half horse”), a species closely allied to the Hemionus, is
a native of the fertile districts of Syria and Arabia. Another species, the
Tarpan, roams the Steppes of Tartary, and is with great difficulty tamed to

the use of man. He is of a reddish colour, but the mane and tail are black,
and along the back runs a black stripe. The Onagra, Onager, or Wild Ass of
Tartary, is represented in Abyssinia by a smaller variety, of very graceful
form, whose hide exhibits already, upon the legs, some of those well-
defined stripes which so magnificently adorn the “outer vestment” of the
Quagga, the Daw, and, especially, the Zebra.
All these Solidungulæ are identical in habits and character: social among
themselves, they are fierce and mistrustful towards other animals. When in
peril, they seek safety at first by rapid flight; but if driven to bay, they
assume a courageous bearing, assail their enemies intrepidly, and frequently
compel them to retreat. It is even asserted that the Quagga (Asinus Quagga)
will mingle with herds of domestic animals, and defend them against the
attacks of beasts of prey. According to Dr. Gray, this animal derives his
name from his voice, which resembles the barking of a dog, or a sound like
Couagg, or Quag. Pennant calls him the Quacha. He resembles the horse in
his haughty bearing and rapid movements. His head, neck, mane, and
shoulders are blackish-brown, banded with white; the stomach, hind parts,
and legs are whitish; the dorsal line is black; the ears have two irregular
black bands and a white tip. In the Daw, the blackish-brown tint extends
over all the upper parts of the body, as well as the stripes, which are
alternately black and light brown. The Quagga and the Daw belong to
Southern Africa, and especially to Caffraria. The habitat of the Zebra
appears to be more extended in range. He is found even as far north as
Abyssinia. He was known to the Romans under the name of the
Hippotigres, and figured in the sanguinary sports of the Amphitheatre.
Assuredly he is the handsomest species of the genus Equus (Horse). He is
as tall as the Hemionus; his legs are shapely, his mien and bearing full of
spirit; he has a well-proportioned head, and a coat of incomparable richness
of design, with the skin lustrous, and large black stripes symmetrically
arranged over the whole body, on a ground of pure white.

Zebras (Equus Zebra).

Africa, as I have said above, is the native country of the large
Ruminants. Not less remarkable than the Camel in the fantastic originality
of his form, which matches the exquisite richness of his skin, the gigantic
Giraffe (Camelopardalis Giraffa) is distributed over nearly the whole
continent south of the Sahara. Sometimes he even ventures into the Desert;
but most frequently his long neck and tall legs are seen in the fertile plains
of Negroland, the Soudan, the Senegal, and Nubia. “His head,” says a
popular zoologist, “resembles that of the camel in the absence of a naked
muzzle, and in the shape and organization of the nostrils, which are oblique
and narrow apertures, defended by the hair which grows from their margins,
and surrounded by cutaneous muscular fibres, by which the animal can
close them at will. This is a beautiful provision for the defence of the air
passages, and the irritable membrane lining the olfactory cavities, against
the fine particles of sand which the storms of the Desert raise in almost
suffocating clouds. The large, dark, and lustrous eyes of the giraffe, which
beam with a peculiarly mild but fearless expression, are so placed as to take
in a wider range of the horizon than is subject to the vision of any other
quadruped. While browsing on his favourite acacia, the giraffe, by means of
his laterally-projecting orbits, can direct his sight so as to anticipate a
threatened attack in the rear from the stealthy lion, or any other foe of the
Desert. To an open attack he sometimes makes a successful defence by
striking out his powerful and well-armed feet; and the king of beasts is said

to be frequently repelled and disabled by the wounds which the giraffe has
thus inflicted with his hoofs.” The lion, however, seldom attacks him unless
he can surprise him in a state of repose, when he will leap upon his victim’s
back and tear him to pieces.
Le Vaillant has justly observed that if precedency among animals were
determined by their height, the giraffe would hold the first rank. The most
careless observer must be impressed by the enormous length of his fore-
legs, and his long tapering neck, which enables him to browse upon the
fresh foliage and green young shoots of the loftiest trees; nor can he fail to
admire his small and elevated head, his brilliant beaming eyes, and his
mildness of aspect. Unusual as are the animal’s proportions, they are not
inharmonious, and his appearance is eminently picturesque. When full
grown, he measures seventeen feet from the top of the head to the fore-feet.
This, however, is a maximum. It should be added that his fore-legs are not
so much longer than the hind, but the shoulders are extraordinarily high.
The animal’s colour is a light fawn, marked with numerous darker spots.
His horns consist of two porous bony substances, about three inches long,
which form, as it were, a part of the skull.

A Lion rending a Giraffe.

Several species of antelopes and wild oxen traverse in numerous herds
the wide prairies of Africa and Asia. Among the African species, I may

name the Bubalus, which lives principally in the north-west, and whose
keen stout horns, disposed like the prongs of a pitchfork, render him
exceedingly formidable; the Gnu, or Connochetæ (Catoblepus Gnu), which
inhabits the wild karoos and hilly districts of South Africa, in migratory
herds, and is distinguished by the weird ugliness of his head, with its curved
horns, and its beautiful flowing mane, white at the base, and black at the
tips; the Oreas Lanna, improperly called the “Cape Eland” (Antilope
Oreas), a graceful animal, as large as the horse, and five feet high at the
shoulder, with straight pointed horns, whose great strength is augmented by
a spiral wreath; and the Oryx (Oryx gazella), Egyptian Antelope, or Pasom,
somewhat superior in size to a deer, with horns three feet long, black hoofs
and horns, a white head, and neck and upper part of the body of a pale
bluish-gray.
Tropical Asia presents but a very small number of Antelopes, properly so
called, of which the Nylghau, or White-footed Antelope (Partux picta) is
the largest. Its face is long and narrow; its black, round, and pointed horns,
though only about seven inches long, are slightly curved forwards; the
broad ears are fringed with white hairs; along the top of the deep narrow
neck runs a slight mane of black hair, which is continued to some distance
down the back; a long hanging tuft of a similar colour adorns the breast.
This animal is said to have abounded in the forests between Delhi and
Lahore in the days of Aurungzebe, and formed one of the objects of the
chase with that “king of kings” during his expedition to Cashmere. The
Hindoo name, “Nyl-ghau,” signifies “blue ox,” which is true of the male,
but the female is a pale brown. He is a courageous animal, very difficult to
tame; travellers affirm that when attacked he throws himself on his knees,
and in this position moves forward, until, suddenly leaping to his feet, he
rushes impetuously upon his enemy, and smites him vigorously with his
sharp horns.
I must not omit to particularize, among the great Ruminants of the
Tropical regions of the Old World, the Buffaloes, or Wild Oxen, which feed
in immense troops in the fertile and well-watered prairies. The two African
species or varieties which are best known are, the Buffalo of Caffraria, and
the Short-horned Buffalo. The former is not confined to the Caffre country,
as his name would lead one to suppose; but ranges as far as Abyssinia. His
horns, very wide, and close together at the base, form, above the eyes, a
kind of helmet very useful to the animal in pushing aside the bushes that

impede his progress. His hair is rough and black over the whole body. The
short-horned buffalo has a smooth brown skin, muzzle nearly black, ears
large, horns arched and of moderate dimensions.

1. Antelope Gnu. 2. Oreas Lanna (or Eland). 3. Striped or Banded Gnu.

These buffaloes, despite of their ferocious aspect and savage habits, are
wholly inoffensive, and in all cases of danger are tempted at first to take to
flight; but should they be pressed too closely, or wounded, their irascible
and vindictive disposition speedily displays itself. When the negroes hunt
the buffalo, says Paul Gervais, they are very careful to attack isolated
individuals only, because, in the herds of these animals some will always be
found disposed to avenge the death of their companions, and pursue the
hunters to the uttermost. In their excesses of fury they strike the ground
with their horns; dash their bodies against the trees in which their enemies
have taken refuge; sometimes they will spend their rage upon one another,
or upon the bodies of those of their kind which have been brought low.
Asia is the home of the Common Buffalo (Bos bubalus), and from
thence he has migrated into several islands of the Indian Archipelago,
Eastern Europe, and even into Italy. In France and Great Britain he has long
been domesticated. But there also exist in several Indian provinces some
savage species of the Arnee Buffalo (Bos Arni of Dr. Shaw), easily

recognized by his horns of prodigious size and length, which frequently
measure six feet in length, and eighteen inches in circumference at the base.
Travellers have asserted that nearly all the herbivora, and in particular
the more feeble and timorous, evince a marked preference for open and
level places; to such an extent, that the herds of antelopes, gazelles, and
zebras may be seen abandoning their pastures when the herbage is
unusually luxuriant. It is in the thickets, the matted and almost impenetrable
jungles, and among the tall rank grasses, that the beast of prey glides
stealthily and unseen upon his intended victim. Where the surface of the
ground is smooth and bare, the herbivora can descry an approaching enemy,
and take to flight or make ready for defence. It is not, however, the carnaria
that they have most cause to dread, but man; not less cruel he than the
stealthy lion or the prowling tiger, and far more formidable since European
commerce has furnished the savage with firearms. He quickly learns to
make use of these; but prior to their introduction into wilderness, prairie,
and forest, he had devised against his prey various more or less successful
means of destruction.
In Central Africa, for instance, the Bakouain Negroes, to capture en
masse buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, antelopes, and even rhinoceroses, which
gather in crowds around the grateful waters, construct a colossal and all-
devouring snare, which they call a Hopo.

An African Hopo, or Snare for Herbivorous Animals.

“This snare,” says Dr. Livingstone,[125] “consists of two very stout and
very high fences, approaching each other so as to assume the shape of a V;
at the apex of the angle, instead of completely joining them, they are
prolonged in a straight line, forming an alley about fifty paces in length,
abutting on a ditch which may measure from four to five yards square, and
be from six to eight feet deep. Trunks of trees are arranged cross-wise on
the borders of this trench, chiefly on the side from which the animals will
arrive, and upon the opposite one, by which they will endeavour to escape.
These trees form an advanced border above the ditch, rendering flight
impossible, and the whole is carefully covered over with reeds, which hide
the snare, and make it resemble a trap placed among the herbage. As the
two fences are often a mile in length, while the base of the triangle which
they define is nearly of the same dimensions, a company who form around
the hopo a circle of three to four miles in circumference, by gradually
drawing it closer, are certain to collect a great quantity of game. The hunters
direct by their cries the animals which they surround, and cause them to
reach the summit of the hopo. Men concealed at this point then fling their
javelins into the midst of the affrighted herd, which, dashing headlong
through the solitary opening it can find, involves itself in the narrow alley

leading to the ditch. The animals fall in pell-mell, until the snare is filled
with a living mass, which enables the others to escape by passing over the
bodies of the victims. The spectacle is horrifying; the hunters, intoxicated
by the pursuit, and no longer controlling themselves, strike these graceful
animals with a delirious joy, while the poor creatures, crushed to the bottom
of the abyss beneath the weight of the dead and dying, raise from time to
time the pile of carcasses, by struggling, in the midst of their agony, against
the burden which suffocates them.”
Of the corral in which the Cingalese entraps the elephant, and of the
ingenious snares laid by the Malay or the Indian for the murderous tiger, I
shall speak hereafter. Between man and the carnivora it was natural that a
deadly war should be incessantly waged; but humanity would seem to
dictate towards the inoffensive herbivora a less sanguinary hostility.

CHAPTER VIII.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD,
CONTINUED:—THE CARNIVORA.
NEXT to man, the most dangerous enemies of the peaceful herbivora are the
great Carnivora of the Felidæ genus, in whose first rank zoologists and
poets were formerly wont to place the lion.
The so-called “king of animals,” however, has of late years lost much of
his prestige. Observant travellers have watched him with a jealous and
suspicious eye; intrepid hunters have dared to measure themselves against
him, and to beard him in his retreats. Our popular heroes suffer greatly by
this close examination. Achilles to his Myrmidons, I suspect, was less
godlike than he appeared to the warriors of Troy, who saw him only in the
rush and tumult of the battle. Certain it is that the researches of modern
science have stripped the lion of most of the splendid attributes with which
romance had invested him. Here is a glowing picture:—
“The lion,
Who long has reign’d the terror of the woods,
And dared the boldest huntsman to the combat,
When caught at length within some hidden snare,

With foaming jaws he bites the toils that hold him,
And roars, and rolls his fiery eyes in vain,
While the surrounding swains wound him at pleasure.”—(Nathaniel Rowe.)
But the fact is, that with all his prodigious strength, his terrible teeth and
claws, his imposing physiognomy and attitudes, he is an animal more
prudent than courageous, and very unlike the highly-coloured portrait
which Buffon painted. There have not been wanting well-accredited
authorities to accuse him of cowardice; as our own countryman
Livingstone, and the Frenchman Delegorgue. According to the latter, he is
but a nocturnal robber, whom a ray of light disconcerts, or the barking of
dogs, and the shouts of men, women, and children, or a blow from a well-
applied whip, will frequently put to flight. Even if provoked, or wounded by
man, he will often refuse to fight to the last extremity; or if he accept the
challenge, and succeed in harassing his antagonist, he contents himself by
breaking a limb or two, by marking his chest with his teeth and nails, after
which he leaves him and goes his way. “I have known,” says Delegorgue,
“an intrepid hunter who, twice in seven years, had been treated in this
fashion by a wounded lion; the first encounter cost him two broken limbs;
the second, six fractures, without counting the deep scars left by his claws
on several parts of the body. Another, named Vermaës, in his daring, was
held for more than a minute by a lion, and got quit with four deep marks of
his canine teeth; glorious scars, which he showed to me with an air of lively
satisfaction.” Livingstone records a similar adventure which befell himself
with a lion at which he had aimed a couple of shots. The wounded animal
turned upon his aggressor, harried him, severely injured an arm, and then
directed his wrath against one of the doctor’s companions, whom he seized
by the shoulder. He intended, in all probability, to administer a similar
correction to this individual, when suddenly the two bullets he had received
produced their effect, and he fell dead.
These facts prove, at least, that if the lion is not brave he is not
malicious, and that the reputation for generosity which he has borne from
remote times was not undeserved. It is only in his old age that the lion
willingly enters upon a regimen of human flesh, from sheer want of power
to obtain any other easily. When a lion is too old, says Livingstone, to
provide himself with game by hunting, he frequently enters into the very
villages and kills the goats; if, then, a woman or a child go out at night, he
makes them equally his prey; and as thenceforth he has no other means of
subsistence, he continues to feed himself in this manner. Hence has arisen

the saying, that if a lion once tastes human flesh he prefers it to all other
kinds. The beasts which attack man are invariably aged lions. When one of
them conquers the fear inspired by man so far as to approach a village and
seize the goats, the inhabitants invariably say, “His teeth are worn out, and
he will soon kill somebody;” and feeling the necessity of defending
themselves, they hunt him immediately.
It is generally believed, on the authority of Buffon, that the lion lives in
retirement with his mate, that he hunts in solitary dignity, and will suffer no
other carnaria, not even one of his own race, to hunt in his own domain.
This is an error. Lions, on the contrary, often assemble in a “hunting-party,”
four or five in number, when they fly at “high game,” such as a buffalo or a
giraffe. M. Vardon saw three lions throw themselves at once on a buffalo
which he had just wounded with a musket-shot. “During the day-time, in
winter,” says Delegorgue, “you may frequently see troops of lions, which
assemble together for the purpose of marking off and driving the game
towards the ravines, or wooded glens difficult of access, where some of
their companions are posted; these are strict battues, conducted without any
noise, the odours of the lions being sufficient to enforce the retreat of the
herbivora which they pursue.” The lion himself may, in his turn, be chased
and tracked with dogs, like a wild boar, a wolf, or a stag; but most
frequently the hunters pursue and shoot him on foot, and this is but a
pleasure-jaunt for a man of sang-froid, if a good shot, and well acquainted
with the animal’s habits.
We know that the roar of the lion—that is, of the hungry lion—is
considered the most terrible of cries, which inspires all the animals, and
even man, with unconquerable dread. It appears, however, that man—to say
nothing of his dogs—speedily grows accustomed to it, and that the lion, in
his turn, cannot be frightened by the barking of the latter. A very curious
fact, remarked by Livingstone, is the singular resemblance of the lion’s roar
to the cry of the ostrich. “I have carefully inquired,” says the great African
traveller, “the opinion of Europeans who have heard both. I have asked
them if they could discover the least difference between the roar of the one
and the cry of the other. They have all informed me that they could not
perceive any, at whatever distance the animal might be placed. The voice of
the lion, generally, is deeper than the ostrich’s; but up to the present time I
have only been able to distinguish it with certainty because it is heard
during the day, and the ostrich’s during the night.”

Lions were formerly common enough in all Southern Asia, Persia, Asia
Minor, and even Greece. They long ago disappeared from these countries,
and are rarely met with now-a-days in Hindostan. The Indian lion is smaller
than his African congener; his mane is shorter and less abundant, and
several naturalists signalize him as a distinct species, intermediary between
the true African lion and the American puma. There are three varieties of
Asiatic lions: the Bengal, the Persian or Arabian, and the maneless lion of
Goojerat—the latter confined to a very narrow district. The African “king of
beasts” is spread over the entire continent from the Mediterranean to the
Cape of Good Hope; but the species includes three kinds: the Barbary lion,
with a deep yellowish-brown fur and a full flowing mane; the Senegal,
whose fur is of a brighter yellow, and whose mane thinner; and the Cape, of
which there are two varieties, one brown, the other yellowish; the former
being the fiercer and more powerful animal.
A lion of the largest size measures about eight feet from the nose to the
tail, and the tail itself about four feet. The male has usually a thick shaggy
mane; the head is large, with rounded ears, and the face covered with short
close hair; great strength and muscular force distinguish his conformation;
and the tail terminates in a tuft of hair, which is not fully developed until he
is six or seven years old.
In Africa the lion has for his fellows the Leopard and the Panther. Many
writers at one time confounded these two Felidæ, and even classified them
with the Indian tiger. For the vulgar, every great cat with a spotted skin is a
tiger. But scientific naturalists neither apply this name to the American
jaguar nor to other spotted Felidæ of the Old or New World; and it is with
difficulty they now agree to recognize in the Leopard and the Panther two
ill-defined varieties of the same species. Assuredly they exhibit very
marked differences. The Leopard is nearly as large as the lion; his limbs are
robust, his head is strong. From nose to tail he measures four feet, his tail is
two feet and a half long, and his body so flexible that he accomplishes the
most surprising leaps, and swims, and climbs trees, or crawls along the
ground, serpent-like, with admirable ease. Compared with the jaguar and
panther of naturalists, he is uniformly of a paler and more yellowish colour,
and rather smaller, while the spots on his skin are rose-formed, or consist of
several dots partially united into a circular figure in some instances, and in
others into a quadrangular, triangular, or other less determinate forms. The

lower part of the neck and inner parts of the limbs are white; the spots are
continued upon the tail, which is long, and black at the extremity.

The African Leopard.

The Panther is larger than the leopard, measuring about six feet and a
half from nose to tail, which is itself about three feet long. On his sleek hide
the spots are disposed in circles of four or five, with, usually, a central spot
in each circle, in which, as well as in his deeper colour, he differs from the
leopard. Both are handsome, stealthy, and ferocious animals; supple, agile,
and muscular. The leopard (Felis leopardus) is a native of Africa,
principally ranging along its western coast and on the confines of the
Sahara. The panther (Felis pardus) is also an African denizen, though
likewise found in Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan. During the day he lurks in
the thickets and among the tall grasses, but when the shades of night
descend he issues from his lair, and haunts the brooks and pools whither the
herbivora resort to quench their thirst. There, upon some rock, he lies in
ambuscade, commanding the track pursued by innocent victims, and darting
with unerring precision upon the first which presents itself.
Neither leopard nor panther often ventures to assail man. When attacked
by him, they seek at first to make their escape, and only turn at bay when
escape is impossible. In Java, and some other of the great Indian islands,
there exists a black panther, which has gained, it is difficult to say how, the
reputation of extraordinary ferocity and daring. Sometimes, in the world of
man, great reputations are built upon equally slight foundations. He owes

his fame to the imagination of the natives, and differs from his congeners in
no single respect but the blackish colour of his skin. A skilful naturalist,
who was for some years a resident in Java, relates that, while botanizing in
the fields and jungles early in the day, he frequently roused the black
panthers in their lairs. At first he was somewhat startled by the apparition of
an animal of such terrible renown, but seeing him turn tail very quickly on
his approach, he soon grew re-assured, and troubled himself no more at
these rencontres than if he had met a dog or a cat.

We now come to the most formidable of all the Carnaria: the Tiger,
properly so called, or Royal Tiger, whose portrait Buffon has been pleased
to paint with his boldest brush and most glowing colours, without any other
motive apparently than a love of antithesis, or the artist’s desire to give
force and effect to a striking picture. He had endowed the king of animals
with all the regal qualities his imagination could suggest, and by way of
contrast he ascribed to the tiger the lowest and cruellest instincts. He
painted him as the Moloch of the brute creation; the Domitian, Caligula, or
Nero of the jungles. He was blood-thirsty, treacherous, cowardly, and
hideous. His limbs were too short, his head was too large, he was ill-
proportioned; in a word, on the unfortunate beast he poured out all the vials
of his satiric wrath.
With this pièce de fantaisie it would be curious to contrast the graver and
more authentic description of the impartial Daubenton. He asserted that the
tiger was very little known to Europeans, and that in France there existed
but a single specimen, and that a very badly prepared one, in the “Cabinet
du Roi.” But we are now better informed, and the tiger, perhaps, up to a
certain point, is rehabilitated. Let us take him first in his physical aspect. All
travellers agree in describing him as the handsomest of animals. He has not
the grave countenance, the majestic attitudes of the lion; but he has all the
grace, all the suppleness, all the lively and undulatory movements of the
domestic cat. He does not stand so high upon his legs as the lion, and he
lacks that full flowing mane which invests the physiognomy of the latter
with a human and truly noble air; but all the parts of his head and body,
despite of Buffon, are admirably proportioned. Not quite so tall as the lion,
and less robust in appearance, he is endowed with a surprising vigour. He
can carry off, while in full career, and making the most rapid leaps, the
heaviest prey—a kid, for instance, an antelope of full size, even a bull, it is

said, and, necessarily, a man. Finally, his skin, symmetrically striped, like a
zebra’s, with wavy bands of brown and black, on a reddish ground, with the
contour of the face, the chin and belly of the purest white, defies all
comparison. The stripes of his head, legs, and tail are disposed with
irreproachable symmetry in curves of the most graceful character. So much
for his physical character; let us pass to his moral.
His appetites, and consequently his manners and instincts, differ but little
from those of the other Felidæ, and, in particular, of the lion. While he has a
keen love of living flesh and warm blood, he does not scorn to return, under
the pressure of hunger, to a dead prey already partially devoured. Like all
the carnaria, a sagacious instinct prompts him to kill in provision for
coming as well as for present hunger. This is the reason that Buffon has
stigmatized him as “unnecessarily cruel.”
“The bound with which he throws himself upon his prey,” says an
English naturalist, “is as wonderful in its extent as it is terrible in its
effects.” Pennant justly observes that the distance which it clears in this
deadly leap is scarcely credible. Man is a mere puppet in his gripe; and the
Indian buffalo is not only borne down by the ferocious beast, but carried off
by his enormous strength. If he fails in his spring, it has been said that he
will take to flight. This may be true in certain instances; but, in general, far
from slinking away, he pursues the affrighted prey with a speedy activity
which is seldom exerted in vain. Hence we are led to the observation of
Pliny celebrating his swiftness, for which the Roman zoologist has been
censured, and apparently most unjustly; nor is he the only author among the
ancients who notices his speed. Appian speaks of the swift tiger as the
offspring of the zephyr. Pliny, says Pennant, has been frequently taken to
task by the moderns for calling the tiger “animal tremendæ velocitatis;”
they allow it great agility in its bounds, but deny it swiftness in pursuit. Two
travellers of authority, both eye-witnesses, confirm what Pliny says: the
one, indeed, only mentions in general his vast fleetness; the other saw a trial
between one and a swift horse, whose rider escaped merely by getting in
time amidst a circle of armed men. The chase of this animal was a favourite
diversion with the great Cam-Hi, the Chinese monarch, in whose company
our countryman, Mr. Bell, that faithful traveller, and the Perè Gerbillon, saw
these proofs of the tiger’s speed.
The Latin “tigris” is from a Persian word signifying “swift as an arrow,”
which we find incorporated in the name of the river Tigris.

The tiger’s habits are essentially nocturnal, and almost aquatic. His
favourite haunts are the banks of rivers and lakes, not only because he may
there pounce upon the herbivora which come to drink, but because he can
there satisfy himself with a banquet of fish. To this he is as partial as any
European epicure, and in angling his skill and dexterity are not unworthy of
an Izaak Walton. He is the “complete angler” of the carnivorous world! He
swims admirably, and in pursuit of his prey never hesitates at the most
tremendous “header,” so that the Arnee Buffaloes, which traverse immense
distances by yielding themselves to the swift river-currents, have more
cause to dread his attacks than those of the crocodiles.
Buffon has calumniated the tiger by accusing him of cowardice, while,
as we have seen, he has not less grossly flattered the lion by representing
him as the perfect type of intrepidity. During the day the tiger, after having
supped freely, sleeps in his den; he avoids man, and when aroused by the
hunters, his first movement is one of flight. But by night or day, if he be an
hungered, no obstacle arrests, no peril daunts him; and he pounces upon
man as he would upon any other prey. He penetrates into isolated
habitations; breaks into the villages, and sometimes even into the towns;
seizes the domestic animals in their very stables; men even within the
shelter of their own houses; and sometimes devours his spoil upon the spot;
sometimes, if he fears pursuit, drags it off to his secret lair.
At Goa, in a butcher’s stall, was slain a tiger which had fallen asleep
there after gorging himself with food; and in the vicinity of that once
famous, but now degraded city, a cross marks the spot where a Portuguese
officer, marching at the head of his men, was seized before their eyes by a
tiger, and carried off before they could make the slightest effort to save him.
Tigers are found in India, in the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, at Borneo, at
Java, and at Sumatra. Civilization has hunted them out of the Celestial
Empire, but they are met with in Tartary, even in extremely cold latitudes.
The tigers of the North a beneficent Nature has furnished with much longer
hair than their congeners of the Tropical zone, and they seem to form a
distinct variety of the species. Wherever the tiger exists, war à l’outrance is
declared between man and him! It is a vendetta which has been handed
down from the remotest antiquity, and is as bitter now as in any past
generation. Every year hundreds of persons fall victims to his appetite and
his prowess; every year hundreds of his race are shot down by the relentless

sportsman, or ensnared and killed by the peasants, whose cattle and whose
lives he threatens.
By the Malays and the half-savage Indians who dwell among the Indo-
Chinese jungles, he is hunted in the same way that the African negroes hunt
the lion and the leopard. When the presence of one of these scourges
becomes known in a district, they place some dainty bait on the bank of the
river where he drinks and plants himself every night, and they form an
ambush among the thickets, taking care to mark the direction of the wind. It
is not long before the tiger directs his steps towards the enticing booty, and
the hunters’ arrows or musket-balls stretch him dead, in most cases, before
he can seize it.
A vast amount of pompous preparation attaches to the tiger-hunt of
India. It is a sumptuous expedition, commanded by some distinguished
chief—an European officer, a native prince, or a stranger of rank—in which
each person has his allotted station and particular duties. Usually the
hunters are mounted on elephants, so that the tiger cannot reach them on the
back of the colossus, without being arrested by the trunk of the latter or his
formidable tusks. Each sportsman provides himself with three or four rifles,
besides revolvers and cutlasses. Formerly the Hindu rajahs made use in this
chase of arrows and lances, but now they greatly prefer the European
weapons. The expedition is never an impromptu affair. It is always
organized against an enemy whose presence has been discovered in the
district, and whose den is pretty well known. The march commences at
sunrise, that the beast may be surprised while enjoying his siesta, after the
fatigues and the plunder of the night. Suddenly awaking, says Mr.
Stocqueler,[126] he bounds out of the jungle, and is saluted by a discharge
which often proves sufficient; but sometimes the animal is safe and sound,
or only wounded; then he furiously springs upon the first elephant within
his reach. If the hunter has not time to plant a ball in his chest or head, the
position of the mahout, or driver, is very critical; for, placed on the
elephant’s neck, he has no other defence than the sharp iron-pointed stick
which he uses to guide his colossal steed. Fortunately the hunters are
arrayed in a compact mass, and a few well-directed shots terminate the
struggle.
The most favourable districts for tiger-hunting, continues Mr. Stocqueler,
are those of Goruckpore, on the frontiers of Nepaul. Sir Roger Martin
relates that in this quarter once reigned a tiger of such ferocity, and so

greedy of human blood, that he was the terror of all the “country-side.”
Once he broke open, in full day-light, the cabin-door of a Taroo; but the
native dealt him such a lusty blow on the head with his hatchet that he took
to flight, and ever afterwards preserved the mark of the wound, which
caused him to be easily recognized, and dreaded all the more. Sir Roger
resolved to free the country from this plague; he took the field like a gallant
soldier, but slew eight-and-forty tigers before he fell in with the Balafré of
ill renown, who defended himself gallantly, and proved no easy victim.
Abbye-Singh, rajah of Omorah, one of the oldest hunters of the country,
slew, it is said, to his own hand more than five hundred tigers; a fact which
illustrates their numerousness in the Terac, Nepaul, and Goruckpore.
Despite the activity and address of the hunters, they would never succeed in
purging the country; but civilization and clearances of the ground are
driving the wild beasts inch by inch towards the north, where the hardy
amateurs of “sport” must now go in quest of them.

TIGER-HUNTING IN THE INDO-CHINESE PENINSULA.

Among the Felidæ of the Old World peculiar to Tropical Asia, I must cite
the Reinaoudahan, distinguished by his woolly and tufted tail, from whence
he has received the name of the “Fox-tailed Tiger,” and the Guépard, or

“Maned Leopard,” “Hunting Leopard,” and “Cheetah.” I am inclined to
believe that these two varieties really signify one animal; the Gueparda
jubata of naturalists. “Intermediate in size and shape between the leopard
and the hound,” says Burnett, “he is slenderer in his body, more elevated on
his legs, and less flattened on the fore part of his head than the former,
while he is deficient in the peculiarly graceful form, both of head and body,
which characterizes the latter. His tail is entirely that of a rat; and his limbs,
although more elongated than in any other species of that group, seem to be
better fitted for strong muscular exertion than for active and long-continued
speed.” His anatomical structure and general habits are those of the Felidæ,
but the fur is crisper. The general ground-colour is a bright yellowish-brown
above, lighter on the sides, and nearly white beneath. On the back, sides,
and limbs he is marked with numerous black spots, which on the tail are so
closely set together that they appear like rings. The cheetah is easily tamed,
and trained to the chase; for which purpose, like our staghounds, he is bred
and employed in Persia and India.

The other families of digitigrade Carnivora, Dogs, Hyænas, Viverras
(Viverra, Civet), Mustelidæ (Mustela, Weasel), are largely represented in
the prairies and jungles of the tropical regions of the Old World. Wild dogs,
with straight ears, a pendant tail, scanty bristling hair, thin flanks, wander in
numerous troops over the plains of Southern Africa, living, like the wolf or
the hyæna, by hunting the small quadrupeds and devouring the remains of
carcasses abandoned by the greater Carnivora. The jackals, and even the
hyænas, range far beyond the limits of the Desert. At the Cape exists a
larger and more ferocious species of hyæna than that of the Sahara, from
which it differs externally, its skin being marked with spots instead of
stripes. Moreover, the disproportion in the height of the fore and hind legs
is more marked in this animal than in his North African congener.
At the Cape, also, and in a great part of South Africa, we find another
species, the Hyæna villosa, or “Sea-Shore Wolf;” distinguished from the
preceding by having stripes on the legs, while the rest of the body is of a
dark grayish-brown. Allied to the Hyænas is the Proteles, or “Aard-Wolf “
(Proteles Lalandii), an animal nearly as large as a jackal, inhabiting the
southern parts of the African Continent. He has the teeth and pointed head
of the civits; the striped fur and stiff bristly hair of the hyænas. The general
colour is a yellowish-gray, radiated with transverse stripes of dusky black;

the tail is short and bushy. The fore-feet are provided with five toes; the
hinder ones with four; all the claws being strong and large. He burrows like
a fox, and prowls abroad at night in search of food, which consists chiefly
of carrion and small vermin. But it is said that he particularly affects the
enormous fatty tail of the African sheep, devouring with avidity the semi-
fluid mass, which requires no mastication.

Spotted Hyænas (Hyæna crocuta).

One of the most curious and most graceful of the South African carnaria
is the Fennec, or Zorda (Megatolis), a genus of Canidæ, resembling the
European fox in form and stature, but his hair of a light brown colour; his
muzzle is of extreme fineness, and his eye lively and intelligent; his
enormous ears gift him with an extraordinary delicacy of hearing. Every
animal has its particular taste, and that of the Fennec is for ostrich eggs,
which, as he cannot open them with his teeth on account of their size, he
breaks by dashing them against hard angular stones. He is not only met with
at the Cape, but in Dongola, Nubia, and the Sahara south of Tunis and
Constantina.

Zibeth, and Indian Genet.

I cannot conclude this chapter without alluding to a few of the Carnivora
with elongated snout and non-retractile claws, which inhabit the plains of
Southern Asia and the great adjacent islands. The first place I give to the
Cuon Bansu, or Pariah Dog of India, which seems allied to both the Wild
Dog, the Wolf, and the Jackal. His eyes are prominent, his skin is of a
reddish-yellow, brightest about the head, spotted with black upon the tail.
He is a gregarious animal, hunting in large troops, and waging war against
hares, gazelles, antelopes. He will even venture to attack the buffaloes.
Some varieties of this species range high up on the mountains.

Striped Parodoxure of Java devouring a Crested Goura.

From the order of Carnivora I might also select, in the wild plains in the
Old World, more than one curious species for our investigation, if my space
permitted me to pass in review the two families of the Viverridæ and the
Mustelidæ. To the former belong the famous Ichneumon, that assiduous
reptile-destroyer which the ancient Egyptians included in their religious
cultus; the Genets (Viverra genetta) with their sleek, soft fur, natives of the
western parts of Asia, India, and Java; the Civets (Viverra civetta), which
furnish the commerce of Europe and the East with a once popular scent, to
which important medical virtues were attributed; the Zibeth (Viverra
zibetha), a maneless civet, peculiar to Asia as the latter is to Africa, and met
with in Sumatra, Borneo, Amboyna, the Celebes, and Hindostan; and,
finally, the Paradoxures (animals with a fantastic or paradoxical tail), so
named by Cuvier because the individual studied by that great naturalist kept
his tail constantly coiled up and inclined on the same side. All these
Carnivora are of small stature; their short paws are furnished with demi-
retractile claws; their body is excessively elongated, and of a worm-like
shape; their tail is long and flexible, the muzzle tapering, the fur soft, and of
a tawny or reddish colour, with spots or bands of black or brown.
The Mustelidæ are allied to the Viverridæ in their general conformation.
Their skin is equally soft, and capable of furnishing a beautiful fur; but its
colour is generally uniform. The head is more rounded, the muzzle more
obtuse, the tail shorter, than in members of the preceding family. Finally, a
great number are plantigrades. These animals are more commonly
distributed over the cold regions of the Northern hemisphere than in
countries bordering on the Tropics. The genus Ratel (Ratellus mellivorus),
however, is represented both in India and South Africa. The Cape species is
celebrated for the havoc it makes among the nests of the wild bees, of
whose honey it is singularly fond, and to whose discovery it is assisted by
the voice and movements of a bird called the Honey-Guide. It has a rough
tongue, short legs, with very long claws, a blunt, black nose, no external
ears, a remarkably tough and loose skin, with thick hair. Its colours are
ashen gray on the upper parts, and black on the inferior, and its length from
the nose to the tip of the tail is forty inches, the tail measuring twelve. The
Indian species, differing but little from the African, inhabits Bengal.

CHAPTER IX.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE OLD WORLD:—BIRDS
AND REPTILES.
THE savannahs and marshes of the ancient continent are frequented by birds
of great stature: Cursores, Raptores, and Palmipeds. The colossus of the
feathered world, the Ostrich, which has been aptly surnamed the Camel-
Bird (Struthio camelus), inhabits the arid plains of the African interior, and
frequently penetrates into the Sahara. The male is of a glossy black, with
white on the wings and tail; the female wears an uniformly dusky livery. It
is the loose flexible plumes of the male which are so prized for a lady’s
toilette, and which figure in the crest of the prince of Wales. The female’s
feathers are of inferior value, and improperly designated in commerce,
“vulture-feathers.”
The Ostrich lives with his fellows in flocks of some number. He feeds
voraciously on grass, grain, young twigs, and will swallow pieces of wood,
leather, metal, or any hard substance. In his apparent want of taste he is
probably guided by instinct, for these objects are probably useful in
promoting the work of digestion. Some travellers have represented him as a
stupid animal; but this is an error, for he displays both vigilance and
shrewdness in avoiding the attacks of his enemies. The chase of this bird is
exceedingly laborious, for though he does not fly he skims the ground, and
his wings impel him forward with a velocity which distances the swiftest
horse. But neither his speed nor his strength avails against the stratagems of
man. The Arab horsemen surround the flock in a circle, which they
gradually contract as they advance, until the poor birds are confined in a
very narrow area, and dashing madly against one another, fall exhausted
with fatigue. They are then slain by a few blows from a stick.
The female lays from ten to twelve eggs in a hole in the sand; she broods
over them during the night, occasionally leaving them in the hottest part of
the day. In procuring the eggs, which weigh about three pounds each, and
are reputed a great delicacy, the natives are very careful not to touch any
with their hands, as the parent birds would be sure to discover it on their

return, and not only discontinue laying any more in the same place, but
trample to pieces all those which have not been removed. A long stick is
accordingly made use of to push them from the nest.
Another gigantic bird, whose wings are but partially developed, and
whose legs are long and robust, the galeated or helmeted Cassowary
(Casuarius), is a native of Java and the adjacent islands of the Indian
Archipelago. His head is surmounted by a sort of osseous crest or horny
helmet. In size he is much inferior to the ostrich, not exceeding five feet
when erect; but he is robustly built, and of exceeding strength. His plumage
is very poorly supplied with feathers, so as to resemble at a little distance, it
is said, a coat of coarse or hanging hair. He is a swift runner, like the
ostrich; is equally voracious, and not more dainty in his food.

Ostriches (Struthio camelus).

At that season of the year when the coming winter in our Northern
hemisphere already “casts its shadows before,” legions of migratory birds
swarm towards the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. Storks and cranes,
and aquatic birds, descend upon those vast and genial southern prairies,
where they obtain in abundance the precious food denied them in less
favoured climes.
A beautiful crane, of ashen plumage, with a shapely ebon-black neck,
and her head adorned with two white tufts of plumes, the “Lady of
Numidia,” selects for her dwelling-place the eastern and western shores of
the African Continent.

The Stork (Ciconia) is a cosmopolitan bird which alternately favours
with his presence the North of Europe and the Torrid Zone, everywhere
discharging with fidelity his useful sanitary mission by destroying myriads
of noxious vermin. To kill them was considered by the ancients a foul
crime, which could only be fitly punished by death, and the Egyptians
included the Stork with the Ibis in their allegorical and mysterious worship.
In his migrations he avoids the two extremes of heat and cold, never going
farther north than Russia, nor, in winter, further south than the land of the
Nile. The White Stork (Ciconia alba) is upwards of three feet six inches
long. One species, popularly known as the Marabout, never quits Africa
and the Indies. The name is also applied to the light silken feathers which
embellish the wings of the species—one of the ugliest, let me add, created
by Nature, with his bald head and neck, his huge beak, and absurdly
meditative postures.

The chief of the birds of the shore and river-bank, the Flamingo
(Phœnicopterus), may merit admiration on account of his dazzling scarlet
plumage and handsome bearing. Owing to the great length of his legs and
neck he stands nearly five feet high, and measures six feet from the point of
the beak to the tip of the claws. The small round head is furnished with a
bill nearly seven inches long, which is higher than it is wide, light and
hollow, having a membrane at the base, and suddenly curving downwards
from the middle. The legs and thighs are singularly delicate and slender.
The Flamingoes are timid and suspicious birds; they keep together when
feeding, drawn up in artificial array like the lines of a battalion of British
infantry, with some of their number planted as sentinels to give notice of the
approach of danger. Their voice has a peculiarly deep trumpet-like sound.
At the note of alarm they all take to flight, swooping through the air in the
form of a triangle.
They are skilful fishers. They wade deep into the water, where their long
necks enable them to seize their prey with ease. Their food consists of
spawn, insects, and molluscous animals. Owing to their peculiar structure
they are both waders and swimmers.