54 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



the latter is fairly crowded with strange fishes, alligators, great 

 turtles, porpoises, manitees sea cow and enormous anacondas. 

 Through the forest are scattered mammals, birds and reptiles, 

 the more common being the ferocious puma and jaguar, tapir, 

 copyboras, piccaries, sloths, deer, armadillos, monkeys, parrots, 

 to weans and macaws. The shores of the Amazon are but thinly 

 inhabited, the most important tribes being Mundurucus, Tucunas 

 and Yagnos, who are an idle, vagabondish people, regardless of 

 the past and heedless of the future. 



AFRICA. 



CHAPTER III. 



ANCIENT DISCOVERIES. 



FROM the foregoing outline of the interesting phases of nature 

 in South America, we now turn to that most interesting of all 

 countries, Africa, which, though lying within the same zone belts 

 as South America, and having a somewhat similar physical 

 aspect, is yet possessed of very many peculiar features not found 

 elsewhere in the world. Here the most ancient records place the 

 beginning of creation, which, though in allegory, give evidence 

 of the birth of civilization in the neighborhood of that mighty 

 and wonderful river, the Nile. It was in Africa that the father 

 of history was born, and on its north-eastern coast or interior 

 were builded the great cities of Carthage, Memphis and Alexan- 

 dria, which, for a time, in succession, ruled the world. Here also 

 the Saracens, in their practice of alchemy, found greater than 

 philosophers' stones, in discovering, by accident, so many useful 

 facts in chemistry. 



The history of Ancient Africa is unwritten, nor has it ever 



