STEPPES AND DESERTS. 15 



the history of the peopling of Japan ( 29 ) in the time of 

 Thsinchi-huang-ti offers a memorable example), may have 

 been driven by storms to the coasts of New California. 



If, then, pastoral life, that beneficent middle stage which 

 attaches nomadic hunting hordes to desirable pastures and 

 prepares them, as it were, for agriculture, has remained un- 

 known to the aboriginal nations of America, this circum- 

 stance sufficiently explains the absence of human inhabitants 

 in the South American Steppes. This absence has allowed 

 the freest scope for the abundant development of the most 

 varied forms of animal life ; a development limited only by 

 their mutual pressure, and similar to that of vegetable life in 

 the forests of the Orinoco, where the Hymena3a and the 

 gigantic laurel are never exposed to the destructive hand of 

 man, but only to the pressure of the luxuriant climbers 

 which twine around their massive trnnks. 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 odour, 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 sub- 

 sistence 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 



