.1 FAUNAL NATURALIST IN SOUTH AM ERICA 



665 



commonest dictates of hygiene; in \\\v 

 past, great strange civilizations \\w\o 

 sprung up, in tlie forest or on the higli 

 phiteau, and then those wlio built them 

 have perished utterly; and within his- 

 toric times populous cities have risen, 

 thriven, and then been wiped out of 

 existence by mysterious and deadly 

 sickness. Of the native races some per- 

 sist in the presence of the 

 invading white man, both 

 perpetuating themselves 

 and mingling with his 

 blood, others are untam- 

 able and die rather than 

 leave the savagery in whicli 

 they have lived for untold 

 generations. The whole 

 chapter in which our 

 author describes his visit 

 to the rather despotic 

 minion among the Yura- 

 care Indians is of especial 

 interest. It was not until 

 the south temperate zone 

 was near that our traveler 

 came out among conditions 

 not substantially unlike 

 those of our northern 

 hemisphere. 



]\Ir. Miller has written 

 an admirable book; and 

 the get-up, as usual with 

 Charles Scribners Sons, 

 is as good as the book — 

 which is more than can 

 be said for certain good 

 books recently written by 

 other naturalists of repute 

 and published by other 

 firms. But I wish to make 

 one protest, which is 

 against the spirit of the 

 times, which I know will 

 go unheeded, but which 

 ought to be made. A very 

 few photographs like the 

 Indian portraits by Curtis, 



are as good as [)iclu res — they are pic- 

 tures; good ordinary photographs serve 

 a good ordimii'v |)urpose; but in a first- 

 rate l)ook ilici-i' should be first-rate 

 ]ii(liii-i's, liy lirst-rate men. They will 

 be far hcllci' tliiiii the photographs upon 

 which they ai'c !iasc(l and which gave 

 them the needed foundation of ac- 

 ciiracv in i'act. 



Mr. Miller with four of the negroes oi .Jvimas de Tamana on 

 the west coast of Colombia. — He speaks of these as a miser- 

 able, sickly lot. too indolent to grow the plantains, yuccas, and 

 other plants that thrive with a minimum of attention. This 

 part of the San Juan River watershed, into which the natural- 

 ist's search for out-of-the-way places carried him, has rarely 

 been visited because of its adverse climatic conditions, notwith- 

 standing that it is noted for fabulous wealth of gold and plati- 

 num. Epidemics of malarial and yellow fever scourge the coun- 

 try. Rain pours daily, averaging four hundred inches a year, 

 and when the sun does shine, the forests are turned into a 

 steaming inferno under the tropical heat. After the return of the 

 exploring party to the highlands, the members paid the inevitable 

 cost of penetrating tropical wilds by spending several weeks on 

 their backs recovering from the fevers with which they had be- 

 come inoculated 



