62 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



were made that they gave very little milk. The favorite food of 

 the bison or buffalo is Tripsacum dactyloides (called buffalo grass in 

 North Carolina), and an undescribed species of clover nearly allied 

 to Trifolium repens, and designated by Barton as Trifolium bisoni- 

 cum. 



I have already called attention elsewhere (Cosmos, vol. ii. note 

 455, English ed.) to the circumstance that, according to a statement 

 of the trustworthy Gromara (Historia General de las Indias, cap. 214), 

 there was still living in the sixteenth century, in the north-west of 

 Mexico, in 40 latitude, an Indian tribe, whose principal riches 

 consisted in herds of tame bisons (bueyes con una giba). But not- 

 withstanding the possibility of taming the bison, notwithstanding 

 the quantity of milk it yields, and notwithstanding the herds of 

 lamas in the Cordilleras of Peru, no pastoral life or pastoral people 

 were found when America was discovered, and there is no historical 

 evidence of this intermediate stage in the life of nations ever having 

 existed there* It is worthy of remark that the American buffalo or 

 bison has exerted an influence on the progress of geography in track- 

 less mountainous regions. These animals wander, in the winter, in 

 search of a milder climate, in herds of several thousands to the south 

 of the Arkansas River. In these migrations their size and unwieldi- 

 ness make it difficult for them to pass over high mountains. When, 

 therefore, a well-trodden buffalo path is met with, it is advisable to 

 follow it, as being sure to conduct to the most convenient pass across 

 the mountains. The best routes through the Cumberland Mount- 

 ains, in the south-west parts of Virginia and Kentucky, in the 

 Rocky Mountains between the sources of the Yellow Stone and the 

 Platte, and between the southern branch of the Columbia and the 

 Rio Colorado of California, were thus marked out beforehand by 

 buffalo paths. The advance of settlement and cultivation has gra- 

 dually driven the buffalo from all the Eastern States : they formerly 

 roamed on the banks of the Mississippi and of the Ohio far beyond 

 Pittsburg. (Archaeologia Americana, vol. ii. 1836, p. 139.) 



From the granitic cliffs of Diego Ramirez in the deeply indented 

 and intersected Tierra del Fuego, which: contains on the east silurian 

 schists, and on the west the same schists altered by the rnetamorphic 

 action of subterranean fire, (Darwin's Journal of Researches into the 



