GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1872. 



339 



submitted to them, be submitted to tbe Presi- 

 dent, during the pendency of their appoint- 

 ment, or which may be referred to them by 

 the President, and to report, in writing, their 

 conclusions, and the result of such examina- 

 tion to the President, with their opinions as 

 to the probable cost and practicability of such 

 route or plan, and such other matters, in con- 

 nection therewith, as they may think proper 

 and pertinent." These commissioners have 

 not yet reported. 



In the West Indies the war between the 

 Spanish Government and the insurgents has 

 gone on languidly ; emancipation has been de- 

 creed in March, 1873, in Porto Rico ; Santa 

 Cruz (St. Croix) is becoming a desert in con- 

 sequence of the cutting off of the forests, the 

 process of desiccation and drought having 

 reached seven miles from the shores, and 

 creeping upward rapidly every year. The 

 proposed treaty of cession, by which Santo 

 Domingo was to become a territory of the 

 United States by purchase, having failed in the 

 United States Senate, notwithstanding the 

 urgency of the President and the favorable 

 report of the commissioners, a private com- 

 pany has been formed, which has purchased 

 the Bay^ of Samana and the lands adjacent, 

 with a view to their settlement and the event- 

 ual control of the entire territory of Santo 

 Domingo. Two or three works have been 

 published, giving very full accounts of the isl- 

 and, its soil, climate, productions, inhabitants, 

 and history ; of these, by far the most com- 

 plete is Mr. Samuel Hazard's " Santo Domingo, 

 Past and Present, with a Glance at Ilayti," a 

 very exhaustive work on the whole subject, 

 and most admirably illustrated, with excellent 

 maps. The mineral and vegetable kingdoms 

 are both exceedingly rich in their productions, 

 the climate is not objectionable, and the terms 

 of purchase not exorbitant ; but the present 

 population is about as worthless as it well can 

 be, and yet shows no symptoms of dying out. 



III. ^ SOUTH AMERICA. In the bulletin of the 

 Societe de Geographic for October, 1872, there 

 is a very full geographical description of New 

 Andalusia, one of the states or provinces of 

 Venezuela, by M. P. Saillard. The country is 

 fertile, well watered, and produces large crops 

 of coffee, cacao, sugar-cane, cocoa-nuts, bana- 

 nas, etc., for which there is a ready market. It 

 has extensive salt-works, yielding salt of the 

 very best quality, coal-mines, and mines of sil- 

 ver and antimony; the rivers and sea-coast 

 swarm with excellent fish, which form a con- 

 siderable portion of the diet of the people. 

 They have large flocks of sheep and goats, and 

 scjie horses and cattle. But, with all these 

 advantages, they have extensive marshes, pro- 

 ducing malignant fevers ; small-pox and yellow 

 fever rage fearfully every year ; and frequent 

 hurricanes destroy their crops and dwellings. 

 The country is in a state of anarchy, and there 

 is no prospect of improvement. 



In Guiana, Mr. 0. B. Brown, whose descrip- 



tion of the Great Kaieteur Water-fall was given 

 in the ANNUAL CYCLOPAEDIA for 1870, traversed, 

 between September, 1871, and March, 1872, 

 the greater part of British Guiana, ascending 

 and descending the Corentyn, Essequibo, Ber- 

 bice, and Demerara Rivers. The result of these 

 explorations will be to banish from the maps 

 of that country henceforth the chains of moun- 

 tains which have been found there. The 

 water-shed has,not a height of more than 600 

 or 700 feet above the sea-level, and the highest 

 hill is only 1,240 feet above the sea. Guiana, 

 or, at least, the British and Dutch territories 

 by that name, have been partially explored 

 from the south, by a party from Para, Brazil, 

 in search of gold-mines long ago opened by 

 Portuguese miners, and also in part for natu- 

 ral history and artistic purposes. The party 

 ascended the Amazons to Obydos, and then en- 

 tered the Trombetas, which has its sources in 

 the Tucumuraqua Sierras, which separate Bra- 

 zil from the Guianas ; they ascended that 

 stream and one of its affluents to the mountains, 

 and then cut their way through the jungle, 

 climbed to the broad savannas, and, finally, to 

 the summit of the highest peak of the Sierras, 

 and surveyed the whole region of Southern 

 Guiana. Ttie mountains were not lofty, but on 

 their southern side presented, except where 

 some stream had forced a passage through 

 them, an almost perpendicular wall of basalt. 

 There were abundant evidences of the presence 

 of gold, but the country seemed absolutely 

 without human inhabitants, and, while animal 

 life abounded, the solitude of that vast region 

 was so terrible that they could not endure it. 



The great empire of Brazil comprises a 

 considerably larger territory than the whole 

 of Europe; but much of its interior is yet 

 unexplored, and inhabited only by scattered 

 Indian tribes. M. Emmanuel Liais, a French 

 geographer, resident for thirteen years in the 

 empire, published, near the close of 1872, an 

 elaborate work on the " Climate, Geology, 

 Fauna, and Botanic Geography, of Brazil," 

 accompanied by a carefully-constructed physi- 

 cal map of the eastern half of the empire. On 

 this map are laid down, with great minute- 

 ness of detail, the various spurs, ranges, and 

 chains of mountains, which traverse the south- 

 eastern portion of the empire, as well as the 

 scores of navigable and non-navigable streams, 

 affluents, and tributaries of the Amazons, the 

 Parana, the San Francisco, and the half-dozen 

 smaller but considerable rivers which dis- 

 charge their waters into the Atlantic below 

 12 south latitude. In connection with these 

 researches into the physical geography of the 

 empire, we may notice that Sefior Glaziou, 

 the director of the imperial parks at Rio de 

 Janeiro, has been making observations on 

 the height of the Brazilian mountains, and 

 has ascertained that Mount Itatiaiossu,_ or, 

 as he prefers to call it, Mount Itatiaia, 

 8,899 feet above the sea-level, is the loftiest 

 summit in the empire. It is situated in latitude 



