CHAP. III.] EXTENT AND CHARACTERS. 6$ 



and Peru ; the whole of the rest of the area, with the exception of 

 the higher regions of the Andes, being thus admirably adapted for 

 the support of animal life. At least one half of the whole area is 

 occupied by a dense tropical forest, attaining its richest develop- 

 ment in the hot steamy tracts of Brazil and Paraguay, and being 

 unequalled in extent in any other part of the globe. With a width 

 of some three thousand miles from the Atlantic seaboard at Per- 

 nambuco to the foot of the Andes, this forest extends north and 

 south for nearly thirty degrees of latitude ; while not only does it 

 clothe the lowlands and valleys, but extends high up the mountain- 

 sides, as may be seen in the exquisitely lovely harbour of Rio de 

 Janeiro, where the forest-vegetation commences immediately above 

 the wash of the waves, and thence extends in one continuous leafy 

 mass to the summits of mountain-ranges at an elevation of eight 

 or nine thousand feet. In the northern part of the area open 

 grass-lands, like the "campos" of Brazil and the savannas of 

 Venezuela, alternate with the forest ; while in the neighbourhood 

 of Buenos Aires the open pampas 1 forms one extensive sea of grass. 

 The Andes, constituting the backbone of the country, run in one 

 continuous chain from north to south on the Pacific seaboard, and 

 present the usual varieties of climate and physical conditions 

 common to other elevated mountain-ranges. Such climatic 

 variations are, however, only an epitome of those met with in 

 travelling from the northern to the southern extremity of the area ; 

 the steamy valley of the Amazons having a tropical climate, whereas 

 when we reach the southern point of Patagonia and Tierra del 

 Fuego we are in the midst of snows and glaciers. To the hot 

 forest-regions are restricted the monkeys, marmosets, sloths, ant- 

 eaters, and tree-porcupines ; while the open plains of the south are 

 tenanted by guanaco, deer, viscachas, and rheas. Moreover, in 

 the forests, the variety of mammalian life, especially as regards the 

 larger forms, is in marked contrast to its comparative paucity in 

 the open plains ; not but that, till civilised man made his appear- 

 ance on the scene, the number of individuals may have been 

 nearly, if not quite as large in the latter area as in an equal extent 

 of the former. 



1 Although in Spanish the term 'pampas' is plural, in English it seems 

 preferable to use it as singular. 



L. 5 



