STEPPES AND DESERTS. 25 



In the midst of this grand and savage nature live many 

 tribes of men, isolated from each other by the extraordi- 

 nary diversity of their languages : some are nomadic, wholly 

 unacquainted with agriculture, and using ants, gums, and 

 earth as food ( 50 ) ; these, as the Otomacs and Jarures, seem 

 a kind of outcasts from humanity : others, like the Maqui- 

 ritares and Macos, are settled, more intelligent and of 

 milder manners, and live on fruits which they have them- 

 selves reared. 



Large spaces between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo 

 are only inhabited by the tapir and the social apes, and are 

 wholly destitute of human beings. Figures graven on the 

 rocks ( 51 ) shew that even these deserts were once the seat 

 of some degree of intellectual cultivation. They bear 

 witness to the changeful destinies of man, as do the un- 

 equally developed flexible languages ; which latter belong to 

 the oldest and most imperishable class of historic me- 

 morials. 



But as in the Steppe tigers and crocodiles fight with horses 

 and cattle, so in the forests on its borders, in the wilder- 

 nesses of Guiana, man is ever armed against man. Some 

 tribes drink with unnatural thirst the blood of their enemies 

 others apparently weaponless and yet prepared for murder ( 52 ) 

 kill with a poisoned thumb-nail. The weaker hordes, when 

 they have to pass along the sandy margin of the rivers, 

 carefully efface with their hands the traces of their timid 

 footsteps. Thus man in the lowest stage of almost animal 

 rudeness, as well as amidst the apparent brilliancy of our 

 higher cultivation, prepares for himself and his fellow 



