STEPPES AND DESERTS. 11 



almost wholly unacquainted with the management of animals 

 yielding milk (26). Scarcely one of the American tribes 

 knew how to avail themselves of the advantages which nature, 

 in this respect, had placed before them. The American 

 aborigines, who, from 65 north lat. to 55 south lat., con- 

 stitute (with the exception, perhaps, of the Esquimaux,) but 

 one sole race, passed directly from a hunting to an agri- 

 cultural life without going through the intermediate stage of 

 a pastoral life. Two species of indigenous horned cattle (the 

 Buffalo and the Musk Ox) graze on the pasture lands of 

 Western Canada and Quivira, as well as in the neighbourhood 

 of the colossal ruins of the Aztek fortress, which rises like 

 some American Palmyra on the desert solitudes of the river 

 Gila. A long-horned Mouflon, resembling the so-called pro- 

 genitor of the sheep, roams over the parched and barren lime- 

 stone rocks of California; while the camel-like Vicunas, 

 Huanacos, Alpacas, and Llamas, are natives of the southern 

 peninsula. But of these useful animals the two first only 

 (viz. the Buffalo and the Musk Ox) have preserved their 

 natural freedom for thousands of years. The use of milk and 

 cheese, like the possession and culture of farinaceous grasses, is 

 a distinctive characteristic of the nations of the old world (27). 

 If some few tribes have passed through Northern Asia to 

 the western coast of America, and preferring to keep within 

 a temperate climate, have followed the course of the ridges of 

 the Andes southward (28), such migrations must have been 

 made by routes on which the settlers were unable to transport 

 either flocks or grain. The question here arises, whether on 

 the downfall of the long-declining empire of the Hiongnu, the 

 consequent migration of this powerful race may not have 

 been the means of drawing from the north-east of China and 

 Korea, bands of settlers, by whom Asiatic civilisation was 

 transported to the new continent ? If the primitive colonists 

 had been natives of those Steppes in which agriculture was 

 unknown, this bold hypothesis (which as yet is but little 



