36 • SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES REGIONS. 



the inland streams and surrounding marine waters are even still more numerous. 

 The manatee, one of the marine mammals frequenting the coast, penetrates far up 

 the Amazons and its great affluents, and although actively pursued by the fisher- 

 men, it here maintains itself in scattered groups. 



As has been shrewdly remarked by the learned zoologist, Jimenez de la Espada, 

 the vast forests of the Amazons basin must have tended to modify in a uniform 

 manner the habits, and consequently the organic structure itself, of all the animal 

 species. The inextricable thickets of underwood, often flooded, and always per- 

 vaded by a heavy, stifling atmosphere, impede the free movement of mammals and 

 even the flight of birds. Many forms which elsewhere live on the ground or fly 

 low are here of arboreal habits, hopping or flitting from branch to branch amid 

 the dense foliage of loft}^ trees. While all is still and silent in the low under- 

 growths, the leafy boughs struggling upwards to the light are alive with the songs 

 and cries of their denizens. Here is the true life of the forest. The more majestic 

 trees, such as the ceiba, are nearly always of solitary growth. 



Despite the short period that has elapsed since their introduction, the domestic 

 animals imported from Europe have already been modified by the changed environ- 

 ment. New breeds of horses have been developed, especially in the Argentine 

 pampas and Yenezuelan llanos. Here this animal had till lately increased prodi- 

 giously, as if striving to equal the multitudes of equidos which roamed these 

 plains in a former geological epoch. Throughout nearly half of the continent the 

 horse had returned to the wild state, as had also the pig and horned cattle. Of 

 dogs there still survive one or more of the old native breeds, one of which had 

 been tamed by the Incas. The wild Indians of the Antis family also possess a 

 species of black-and-white colour, long body and low intelligence, which hunts like 

 our greyhounds. There is also the Fuegian dog, which resembles both the jackal 

 and the fox. The American breeds have almost everywhere been crossed, and the 

 more or less mixed European varieties are now everywhere dominant. 



lY. 



Inhabitants of South America. 



The South American Indians — Peruvians or Caribs, Botocudos, Araucanians or 

 Patao-onians — are less famed in historv than some of the North American nations, 

 such as the Hurons and Iroquois. Thanks to the fascinating novels of Fenimore 

 Cooper, the single Algonquian tribe of the Mohicans is more frequently mentioned 

 than the most renowned aboriginal people of the southern continent. The expres- 

 sion " redskins," applied to the natives by the New England and Canadian settlers, 

 has been too frequently used to designate all the indigenous populations of the 

 New World, although scarcely applicable at all to those of the south. 



But a sort of pre-eminence was conceded to the northern aborigines, as if they 

 were in a superlative sense the typical branch of the American ethnical family. 

 Yet the South American natives, whether of light or dark complexion, far outnum- 

 ber those of the north. Some of their cultured nations, also, were at least fully as 



