INTRODUCTION 35 



^ asses, one vast savannah extending over the immense mount- 

 ain plateaux, and reflecting a yellow, almost golden tinge, tc 

 the slopes of the Cordilleras, on which graze the lama and the 

 cattle domesticated by the European colonist. Where the 

 naked trachyte rock pierces the grassy turf, and penetrates into 

 those higher strata of air which are supposed to be less charged 

 with carbonic acid, we meet only with plants of an inferior or- 

 ganization, as lichens, lecideas, and the brightly-colored, dust- 

 like lepraria, scattered around in circular patches. Islets of 

 fresh-fallen snow, varying in form and extent, arrest the last 

 feeble traces of vegetable development, and to these succeeds 

 the region of perpetual snow, whose elevation undergoes but 

 little change, and may be easily determined. It is but rarely 

 that the elastic forces at work within the interior of our globe 

 have succeeded in breaking through the spiral domes, which, 

 resplendent in the brightness of eternal snow, crown the sum- 

 mits of the Cordilleras ; and even where these subterranean 

 forces have opened a permanent communication with the at- 

 mosphere, through circular craters or long fissures, they rarely 

 send forth currents of lava, but merely eject ignited scoriae, 

 steam, sulphureted hydrogen gas, and jets of carbonic acid. 



In the earliest stages of civilization, the grand and imposing 

 spectacle presented to the minds of the inhabitants of the trop- 

 ics could only awaken feelings of astonishment and awe. It 

 might, perhaps, be supposed, as we have already said, that the 

 periodical return of the same phenomena, and the uniform man- 

 ner in which they arrange themselves in successive groups, 

 would have enabled man more readily to attain to a knowl- 

 edge of the laws of nature ; but, as far as tradition and history 

 guide us, we do not find that any application was made of the 

 advantages presented by these favored regions. Recent re- 

 searches have rendered it very doubtful whether the primitive 

 seat of Hindoo civilization — one of the most remarkable phases 

 m the progress of mankind — was actually within the tropics 

 Airyana Vaedjo, the ancient cradle of the Zend, was situateci 

 to the northwest of the upper Indus, and after the great re 

 ligious schism, that is to say, after the separation of the Ira 

 uians from the Brahminical institution, the language that ha< ! 

 previously been common to them and to the Hindoos assumei 1 

 among the latter people (together with the literature, habitj^, 

 and condition of society) an individual form in the Magodha c-i 

 Madhya Desa,* a district that is bounded by the great chaiu 



* See, oa the M;idhiade9a, properly so called, Lassen'a exceilei i 

 work, tuitilled Indische Alter thunukunde, bd. i., 8. 92. The Chinese 



