166 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



( 26 ) p. 13. "The care of animals yielding milk, 



The ruins of the Aztec fortress" 



The two kinds of cattle alluded to, and subsequently spoken 

 of, the Bos americanus and Bos moschatus, are peculiar 

 to the American continent. But the natives 



Queis neque mos, neque cultus erat, nee jungere tauros. 



Virgil, JEn. i. 316. 



drink the fresh blood, not the milk, of these animals. 

 Single exceptions have indeed been found, but only among 

 tribes who at the same time cultivated maize. I have 

 before remarked, (p. 54), that Gomara speaks of a people in 

 the north-west of Mexico who possessed herds of tame 

 bisons, and derived from these animals clothing, meat, and 

 drink. The drink may have been the blood, (Prescott, 

 Conquest of Mexico, vol. iii. p. 416) for, as I have more 

 than once remarked, the dislike to milk, or at least the 

 absence of its use, appears, before the arrival of Europeans, 

 to have been, generally speaking, a feature common to all 

 the natives of the New Continent, and one which they 

 possess in common with the inhabitants of China and 

 Cochin China, who yet were near neighbours to true pastoral 

 nations. The herds of tame lamas, found in the highlands 

 of Quito, Peru, and Chili, belonged to a settled population, 

 who cultivated the ground and did not follow a nomadic 

 life. Pedro de Ciega de Leon, (Chronica del Peru, Sevilla, 

 1553, cap. 110, p. 264) seems to imply, though certainly 

 as a rare and exceptional case,- that in the Peruvian moun- 

 tain plateau of Collao lamas were used for drawing the 



