The Aboeigines Doomed. 463 



Until the close of the tertiary age, the waters prevailed 

 over this heart of the continent ; and since then vegeta- 

 tion has had the mastery, leaving little chance for animal 

 life. And until there is a decided change in the physical 

 geography of the valley, a large part of it must remain 

 unfit for permanent settlement, on account of the annual 

 floods ; for a rise of forty feet in the river drives the in- 

 habitants from their summer resorts on the margin of the 

 streams to the higher terra firma within the forest. In 

 this way nomadic habits are engendered or perpetuated 

 and poverty is almost inevitable, for half the year (flood- 

 time) it is hard work to get a living. Furthermore, this 

 regular inundation of the country and the lack of grassy 

 campos (except on the Lower Amazons and the Beni re- 

 gion) prevent the raising of domesticated animals, which, 

 if it does not lie at the foundation of agriculture, certain- 

 ly does aid in the transition from the savage to a semi-civ- 

 ilized state. In this respect, the natives of Central Asia 

 and Africa, as well as the maize-eating tribes of the An- 

 des, have an advantage over the mandioca-eating Indians 

 on the Amazons. 



Northern genius may triumph over these physical obsta- 

 cles, but the aborigines have a short future in the Amazons 

 valley. Von Martins may believe that they are the de- 

 graded relics of a more perfect past ; in other words, not a 

 wild, but a degenerate race. But there is not a vestige 

 of aboriginal splendor east of the Andes, not a proof that 



America (Memoirs of Anthro. Soc. of London, vol. ii.), the characters on the 

 '•ocks at the Falls of the Madeira (Keller's A7tiazon and Madeira Rivers, p. 

 56), and the Erere figures published by Professor Hartt (Am. Naturalist, vol. 

 v.). But they indicate no more affinity to each other than to the "Ancient 

 British Inscriptions " desciibed by Tate, which they resemble. The wild, 

 unlettered men of every age and nation have similar pictographic methods. 

 To speculate on their " deep significance " is labor thrown away — at pres- 

 ent. The Peruvian Hydrographical Commission discovered on the Ucayali 

 numerous hieroglyphics in a large sandstone rock, lat. 9° 9' i" S. 



