88 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



duced by being crossed with European breeds. The Canis 

 ingcB follows man up the heights of the Cordilleras. In the old 

 Peruvian graves, the skeleton of this dog is sometimes found 

 resting at the feet of the human mummy, presenting an emblem 

 of fidelity frequently employed by the mediaeval sculptors.* 

 European dogs, that had become wild, were found in the 

 island of St. Domingo, and in Cuba, in the early periods of 

 the Spanish conquest.f In the savannahs between the Meta, 

 Arauca, and Apure, dumb dogs (perros mudos] were used as 

 food as late as the sixteenth century. The natives called 

 them Majos or Auries, says Alonzo de Hen-era, who under- 

 took an expedition to the Orinoco, in 1535. The highly intel- 

 ligent traveller Gisecke found this variety of non-barking dogs 

 in Greenland. The dogs of the Esquimaux live entirely in 

 the open air, scraping for themselves at night holes in the 

 snow, and howling like wolves, in concert with one of the 

 troop, who sits in the middle, and takes the lead in the chorus. 

 The Mexican dogs were castrated, in order that their flesh 

 might become more fat and delicate. On the borders of the 

 province of Durango, and further north, near the Slave Lake, 

 the natives load the larger dogs with their buffalo-skin tents, 

 (at all events they did so formerly,) when, on the change of 

 seasons, they seek a different place of abode. These various 

 details may all be regarded as characteristic of the mode of 

 life led by the nations of Eastern Asia.J 



(16) p. 7 " Like the greater part of the Desert of Sahara, the 

 Llanos lie ivithin the Torrid Zone." 



Significant denominations, particularly such as refer to the 

 form of the earth's surface, and which arose at a period when 

 there was only very uncertain information respecting different 

 regions and their hypsometric relations, have led to various and 

 long-continued geographical errors. The ancient Ptolemaic 

 denomination of the " Greater and Lesser Atlas" has exercised 

 the injurious influence here indicated. There is no doubt that 

 the snow-covered western summits of the Atlas of Morocco may 



* J. J. von Tschudi, Untersuchungen uler die Fauna Peruana, s. 

 247251. 



t Garcilaso, P. i. 1723, p. 326. 



t Humboldt, Essai polit., t. ii. p. 448, and Relation hist., t. ii. 

 p. 625. 



Geogr., lib. iii. cap 1. 



