Introduction. xvii 



— a very Babel. I counted one hundred and six camels, including their 

 young 3 there were more than two thousand horses, one thousand oxen 

 and cows, and six thousand sheep and goats. Even these, large as the 

 number may appear, were far short of the total number of animals 

 belonging to the patriarch chief : he had two other aouls, at each of 

 which were one thousand horses and other cattle. Women were busy 

 milking the cows, and the men were preparing to drive these vast herds 

 to their pastures. The horses and camels are driven to the greatest 

 distance — as much as ten and fifteen versts — the oxen come next, 

 and the sheep remain nearest the aoulj but these ramble five or six 

 versts away. It was, indeed, a wonderful sight when they were marched 

 off in different directions, spreading themselves out in living streams, 

 as they moved slowly along the Steppe.' ^ 



Such is man in a pastoral condition. But when a suitable and pro- 

 pitious locality has been found for their animals, the wanderers perhaps 

 become a settled people, and till the ground for themselves while still 

 attending to the herds j and this combination of pursuits, which we term 

 Agriculture, generally ensures a progressive and prosperous civilization. 

 Humboldt,'^ speaking of the Steppes or Llanos of the New World, thus 

 philosophically demonstrates the influence of the larger domesticated 

 animals on civilization and social progress: '^The Llanos separate the 

 chain of the coast of Caraccas and the Andes of New Granada from 

 the region of forests; from that woody region of the Orinoco which, 

 from the first discovery of America, has been inhabited by nations more 

 rude, and further removed from civilization, than the inhabitants of the 

 coast, and still more than the mountaineers of the Cordilleras. The 

 Steppes, however, were no more heretofore the rampart of civilization 

 than they are now the ramparts of the liberty of the hordes that live in 

 the forests. They have not hindered the nations of the lower Orinoco 

 from going up the little rivers and making excursions to the north and 

 the west. If, according to the various distribution of animals on the 

 globe, the pastoral life could have existed in the New World, — if, before 

 the arrival of the Spaniards, the Llanos and the Pampas had been filled 

 with those numerous herds of cows and horses that graze there, Colum- 

 bus would have found the human race in a state quite ditFerent. Pas- 

 toral nations living on milk and cheese, real nomad races, would have 

 spread themselves over those vast plains which communicate with each 

 other. They would have been seen at the period of great droughts, 



1 Ibid., p. 289. 

 ■■* Travels in the L'(|uinocUaI Regions of Amcrita, vol. ii. p. 98. 



