12 VIEWS OF NATtTKE. 



warranted by etymological comparisons) would at all events; 

 explain the remarkable absence of the Cereals in America. Per- 

 haps contrary winds may have driven to the shores of New 

 California one of those Asiatic Priest- colonies who were insti- 

 gated by their mystic dreameries to undertake distant voyages, 

 and of which the history of the peopling of Japan, at the time 

 of the Thsinschihuang-' , affords a memorable instance. (29) 



If a pastoral life that beneficent intermediate stage which 

 binds nomadic bands of hunters to fruitful pasture lands, and 

 at the same time promotes agriculture was unknown to the 

 primitive races of America, it is to the very ignorance of 

 such a mode of life that we must attribute the scantiness of 

 population in the South American Steppes. But this circum- 

 stance allowed freer scope for the forces of nature to deve- 

 lop themselves in the most varied forms of animal life; a 

 freedom only circumscribed by themselves, like vegetable life 

 in the forests of the Orinoco, where the Hymensea and the giant 

 laurel, exempt from the ravages of man, are only in danger of 

 a too luxuriant embrace of the plants which surround them. 



Agoutis, small spotted antelopes, the shielded Armadillo, 

 which, rat-like, terrifies the hare in its subterranean retreat ; 

 herds of slothful Chiguires, beautifully striped Viverra?, whose 

 pestilential odour infects the air; the great maneless Lion; 

 the variegated Jaguar (commonly known as the tiger), whose 

 strength enables it to drag to the summit of a hill the body 

 of the young bull it has slain these, and many other forms 

 of animal life (30), roam over the treeless plain. 



This region, which may be regarded as peculiarly the 

 habitation of wild animals, would not have been chosen as a 

 place of settlement by nomadic hordes, who like the Indo- 

 Asiatics generally prefer a vegetable diet, had it not possessed 

 some few fan-palms (Mauritia) scattered here and there. 

 The beneficent qualities of this tree of life have been univer- 

 sally celebrated (31.) Upon this alone subsist the unsubdued 

 tribe of the Guaranes. at the mouth of the Orinoco northward 



