404 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



" The ticks inhabiting regions rich in bird and insect life, but with few 

 mammals, are in the same condition as mosquitoes, as far as the supply of blood 

 goes ; and, like the mosquitoes, they are compelled and able to exist without the 

 nourishment best suited to them. They are nature's miserable castaways, para- 

 sitical tribes lost in a great dry wilderness where no blood is ; and every marsh- 

 born mosquito, piping of the hunger gnawing its vitals, and every forest tick, 

 blindly feeling with its grappling-irons for the beast that never brushes by, seems 

 to tell us of a world peopled with gigantic forms, mammalian and reptilian, which 

 once afForded abundant pasture to the parasite, and which the parasite perhaps 

 assisted to overthrow." * 



Nearly all the Argentine waters, marine, fluvial, and lacustrine, teem with 

 fish, one of which, a large trout of excellent flavour, lives both in fresh and salt 

 water. Cetaceans of all kinds were formerly very numerous everywhere, and 

 sea- lions and other seals are still pursued in the Patagonian waters. But the 

 whale is now scarcely met farther north than Fuegia. 



Inhabitants of Argentina. 



It is difficult to unravel the complicated prehistoric relations in Argentina, 

 owing to the great variety of human types and remains of all kinds brought to 

 light in recent times. Thus earthenware has been found in the pampas of Buenos 

 Ay res, which even experts cannot distinguish from vases collected in the Aztec 

 burial-grounds. In the Rio Dulce valley, near Santiago del Estero, sepulchral 

 urns have been unearthed containing human remains mingled wdth shells of the 

 same species as those now living in the Pacific waters. Certain blocks of stone or 

 of wood are absolutely identical with those w^orked by the Maori of New Zealand 

 and the Melanesians of the New Hebrides. But whether all these resemblances 

 point at racial affinities, independent parallel developments, migrations, or com- 

 mercial intercourse, are questions which cannot yet be solved. 



Throughout the north-western Argentine uplands from the province of Jujuy 

 to that of Mendoza, numerous ruins, earthworks, towns, and strongholds, are found 

 on the heights and in the surrounding valleys. Some stand at an elevation of 

 over 13,000 feet, at times on steep escarpments, and even in the clefts of vertical 

 walls, like the Arizona and New Mexico clifi" dwellings. Most of them had to 

 be approached by ladders giving access to thick walls or terraces, whence a descent 

 could be made to the quadrangular courts lined by habitations in the form of 

 caves. 



The industrial arts of these unknown builders were also considerably developed, 

 as shown by the great highway known as the " Incas' Poad," but by Moreno 

 believed to be anterior to the Inca period. It may still be followed for hundreds 

 of leagues east of the Andes in a straight line across the plains, with branches 

 on both sides running to former populous districts, when this region was traversed 



* Hudson, The Naturalist in La Plata, p. 142. 



