36 Martius on the Physiognomy of the 



of the happy isle gave way, and it was swallowed up in the 

 awful depths of the ocean by which it was surrounded. 



The auspicious genius and undaunted resolution of Colum- 

 bus have, in modern times, restored the long lost region ; but 

 the history of the long period which America passed in seclusion 

 from the old continent is involved in obscurity. The accounts 

 of its ancient and mighty kingdoms, of its religion, philosophy, 

 and poetry, cannot be connected with our history by any certain 

 documents. The scanty monuments of these early epochs stand 

 like enigmas before the contemplative eye of the inquirer, of 

 wliich, in the present state of this quarter of the world, he la- 

 bours in vain to find the solution. America, such as it has been 

 opened up to us by the experience of three centuries, represents, 

 in its state of savage wildness, the complete victory of the ele- 

 ments over the race of men who inhabit it, and the suppression 

 of history by the rude productive powers of a luxuriant nature. 

 Thus here, as every where else, man and his domestic history 

 is less intelligible to man than the other parts of nature, which, 

 always remaining the same, readily present themselves for exa- 

 mination ; and the inquirer dwells with double satisfaction upon 

 the investigation of the many great natural phenomena which 

 fairly entitle America t© pass under the designation of the New 

 World. There the history of the formation of mountains is de- 

 lineated in huge cha?acters. The summit of the chain of the 

 Andes, towering above the clouds, and undermined by subter- 

 raneous fires — the wide extended ramifications of the Brazilian 

 mountain range, in whose bosom the sparkling diamond and 

 immensely rich veins of gold are concealed — and the wonderful 

 coal-strata of Nortli America — open to the naturalist an exten- 

 sive prospect into the early history of our globe. The animals, 

 too, at present existing, present us with a very peculiar and 

 strange assemblage of extraordinary forms of living beings ; 

 while the remains which attest the early formative powers of the 

 new world are beheld with astonishment, of which we have spe- 

 cunens in the colossal elephant-like sloth of the La Plata, or in 

 another found by us in the caves on the Rio de St Francisco, 

 and in the innumerable mammoths on the Ohio, or in the moun- 

 tains of the district of Bahia, which the Rio de Contas rolls to 

 the sea. But the peculiar character of this continent seems to 



