STEPPES AND DESERTS. 35 



sure of the luxuriant climbers which twine around their massive 

 trunks. Agoutis, small spotted antelopes, cuirassed armadilloes, 

 which, like rats, startle the hare in its subterranean holes, herds of 

 lazy chiguires, beautifully striped viverrse which poison the air with 

 their odor, the large maneless lion, spotted jaguars, (often called 

 tigers,) strong enough to drag away a young bull after killing him 

 these, and many other forms of animal life, ( 30 ) wander through the 

 treeless plain. 



Thus, almost exclusively inhabited by these wild animals, the 

 Steppe would offer little attraction or means of subsistence to those 

 nomadic native hordes, who, like the Asiatics of Hindostan, prefer 

 vegetable nutriment, if it were not for the occasional presence of ^) 

 single individuals of the fan palm, the Mauritia. The benefits of this 

 life-supporting tree are widely celebrated ; it alone, from the mouth 

 of the Orinoco to north of the Sierra de Imataca, feeds the unsubdued 

 nation of the Guaranis. ( 31 ) When this people were more nume- 

 rous, and lived in closer contiguity, not only did they support their 

 huts on the cut trunks of palm trees as pillars on which rested a 

 scaffolding forming the floor, but they also, it is said, twined from 

 the leaf-stalks of the Mauritia cords and mats, which, skilfully in- 

 terwoven and suspended from stem to stem, enabled them in the 

 rainy season, when the Delta is overflowed, to live in the trees like 

 the apes. The floor of these raised cottages is partly covered with 

 a coating of damp clay, on which the women make fires for house- 

 hold purposes the flames appearing at night from the river to be 

 suspended high in air. The Gruaranis still owe the preservation of 

 their physical, and perhaps also their moral, independence, to the 

 half-submerged, marshy soil over which they move with a light and 

 rapid step, and to their elevated dwellings in the trees a habita- 

 tion never likely to be chosen from motives of religious enthusiasm 

 by an American Stylites. ( 32 ) But the Mauritia affords to the Gna- 

 ranis not merely a secure dwelling-place, but also various kinds of 

 food. Before the flower of the male palm tree breaks through its 

 tender sheath, and only at that period of vegetable metamorphosis, 

 the pith of the stem of the tree contains a meal resembling sago, 

 which, like the farina of the jatropha root, is dried in thin bread- 

 like slices. The fermented juice of the tree forms the sweet, intoxi- 



