We must now bring our remarks to an end, as it is impossible in any single review to do justice to the vast mass of matter which is contained in these volumes. We commend the work to the careful study of our readers. It will require the exercise of a careful discrimination with respect to many of its statements; and many of those to which we are prepared to give general concurrence, must be received with qualifications. We are mistaken, however, if they will not arise from it with enlarged views of the results of Christianity in history, with an increased sense of its moral grandeur, and with a more hearty desire to see it freed from its corruptions and the extraneous principles which have been engrafted upon the teaching of Christ and His Apostles.

ART. III.-1. A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro; with an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley. By ALFRED A. WALLACE. Reeve & Co.

1853.

2. The Naturalist on the River Amazon.

A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator during Eleven Years of Travel. By HENRY WALTER BATES. John Murray. 1863.

3. Journey in Brazil. By PROFESSOR and MRS. LOUIS AGASSIZ. New York: Trübner & Co. 1868.

SOUTH AMERICA has long been the El Dorado of young zoologists. When Columbus presented his parrots and feather-clad Indians to Ferdinand and Isabella, he revealed a new world to the naturalist as well as to the politician. The excitement which the great Genoese created by the presentation of his feathered trophies, was renewed when Pizarro laid at the feet of Charles the armadillos, llamas, and opossums of Peru. But the age was unfavourable to the permanent contemplation of such things: bloody conquests and the passion for gold blotted out the remembrance of them for many long

years.

In the seventeenth century the attention of the lovers of nature was recalled to the neglected riches of South America by Madame Merian, whose works on the insects and reptiles of Surinam have for ever identified her name with the natural history of the New World. Still later Spix described the birds, reptiles, and fishes which he and his companion Martius collected during their travels in Brazil in the years 1817-1820. But these richly illustrated publications were inaccessible to the world of students. Their costliness limited their circulation to public libraries and to the drawing-rooms of the rich. Hence though valued by the learned their popular influence was small. The publication of the travels of Humboldt and Bonpland produced a very different result. In them the exciting details of Western travel were combined with the special learning of the naturalist and the philosopher. But the interest aroused by these marvellous volumes was diminished by the incessant recurrence of scientific

South American Travellers.

71

discussions, which, though they made the work encyclopædic in its learning, seriously interrupted the current of the more readable narrative. The case was altered when Charles Waterton returned from his celebrated "Wanderings," and, in 1825, published the results of his studies in Demerara, in one fascinating volume, the forerunner of the similar works of Darwin, Wallace, and Bates, now so deservedly popular. Waterton's "Wanderings" revealed to the mass of readers the natural riches hidden in the forests of Guiana, and more than any other book created in youthful breasts a desire to tread in the steps of its author. But it did more. It aroused the public mind to a knowledge of the absurd custom-house regulations which prevented the natural productions of foreign climes from flowing hitherward. Waterton had to pay heavy import duties upon the birds and animals whose skins he had collected at the risk of his life, and was only allowed to escape the miserable impost in the case of such specimens as he was prepared to present to the public museums of the country. But that exception was fatal to the narrow policy which had hitherto disgraced our rulers. The law was speedily altered, and, relieved from the incubus of prohibitory duties, a stream of natural objects began to flow into this country which has made, and still is making, our museums some of the richest in the world.

Whilst many parts of South America abound in these natural objects, Brazil is the favourite region towards which the eyes of young enthusiasts are turned. The beauty of its tropical forests, the brilliancy of its birds, the wondrous variety of its insects, the strangeness of its reptiles and mammals, combine to give it a charm possessed by no other country. Hence we cannot wonder that such men as Wallace, Bates, and Agassiz still turn to its shores with all the freshness of a young love. The fact is, its natural treasures are almost inexhaustible, and the very circumstances which detract from the value of the country as a refuge for agricultural emigrants, give it additional interest to the zoologist. The ants may destroy flourishing plantations in a night, and rob the agriculturist of the fruit of his labours; but what matter! It is the land of the trogon and the toucan, of the jacana, the flamingo and the rosy-tinted spoonbill-of the palm, the bamboo, and the Victoria lily. Crocodiles, manatees, and porpoises roll in its rivers: humming-birds sport amongst its flowers by day and fireflies illuminate its bushes by night. Swarming turtles repose upon its sandbanks. Azure-coloured macaws and brilliant parroquets scream overhead; gaudy

tanagers fly in flocks from tree to tree; and if the traveller is somewhat annoyed at mosquitoes, finds huge centipedes under his pillow, or sees giant serpents glaring down upon him from some overhanging branch, these are but incidents reminding him that he has attained the object of his youthful dreams and is revelling amid the marvels of a tropical forest. The physical geography of South America is unlike that of every other country. It constitutes one vast plain, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Straits of Magellan, and from the shores of the Pacific to the eastern foot of the Andes. But three elevated groups of mountains, crossing the country from east to west, subdivide this area into three distinct regions, viz.: that of the Lower Oroonoko and Caraccas, that of the Amazon, and that of Buenos Ayres and La Plata. The first and last of these areas are vast savannahs or pasturage-grounds, generally devoid of trees. But the central one, owing to the circumstance that it receives more or less of the equatorial rains throughout a great part of the year, is, especially in its western portion, one vast forest. The luxuriant vegetation not only extends from the Cordillera of Chiquitos, separating the Amazonian regions from those of La Plata, to the granitic Cordillera of Parime, forming its northern boundary, but crowns the heights of these mountain ranges-the whole constituting a forest region of 120,000 square leagues in extentor sixteen times larger than France.

Situated under a tropical sun, and presenting innumerable local peculiarities of climate and soil, it may well be imagined that such a vast forest is rich in natural objects. The neighbourhood of Rio Janeiro has been lauded in almost transcendental language as possessing every attraction that can adorn the tropics, and there is no doubt that it merits much of the praise that it has received. The region of the Organ mountains, as seen from Boa Vista, has probably few rivals on this earth. But notwithstanding the physical beauty and natural riches of Southern Brazil, the Amazon has for some years past chiefly attracted the attention of such men as Wallace, Bates, and Agassiz to its banks, because of the still greater variety of the objects of their studies which that region supplies.

Writers constantly speak of the valley of the Amazon; but there is no such thing. Indeed, as we have already indicated, the whole of Eastern America is an oblong plain, divided by a few elevated transverse ridges. Humboldt long ago pointed out that a rise of the sea or a depression of the land to the extent of 1,200 feet would carry the waters of the Atlantic to the foot of the Andes, and cause the entire region to be again,

what it was in times geologically recent, the bed of a shallow sea. Humboldt, Darwin, and Agassiz have each directed attention to the curious horizontal deposits of very similar materials which cover the entire area. The first of these observers believed them to be of Devonian age-Martius regarded them as Triassic-Darwin and more recent travellers have referred them to the Tertiary period-whilst Agassiz, whose predilections for glacial agencies are well known, boldly covers the entire continent, during the glacial period, with a mass of snow and ice from ten to fifteen thousand feet in thickness, and believes that the strata in question are merely a vast moraine, formed by the melting of the snows of ages! With this sweeping generalisation we cannot agree, but are much more disposed to acquiesce in the conclusions of Darwin and most British geologists, who regard the deposits in question as Tertiary ones.

How flat an area the great plain drained by the Amazon is, may be judged from the fact that whilst it is so large that the whole of Western Europe might be placed in it without touching its boundaries, steamers of considerable tonnage can sail up its rivers almost to its western extremities. Humboldt long ago pointed out that the mean height of the river above the sea was not more than 1,164 feet (194 toises). The stream, according to Agassiz, only falls one foot in ten miles. The first interruption to the navigation of the Upper Maranon, long regarded as the main river, is caused by the falls, which are 980 nautical leagues from the sea, or at the upper sixth of its course, differing in this respect from its neighbour, the Oroonoko, on which falls occur little beyond half its length from the coast. Mr. Nesbet took a steamer 110 feet in length (the Tirado) up the tributary Rio Huallaga, nearly to Chasuta, a point little less than 3,200 miles from the sea. The Peruvian Commissioners engaged in surveying the head waters of the Amazon, have more recently taken a small steamer 772 miles up the Ucayali, which is yet more remote than the Upper Maranon, and which the Commission regards as the true source of the great river. All the other large tributaries exhibit corresponding facilities for navigation, facilities which would soon be made use of were the country in the hands of an Anglo-Saxon instead of an Iberian race. But rightly to appreciate the grandeur of this river, we must remember that the tributaries above the various falls which arrest continuous navigation are themselves vast rivers, compared with which the boasted ones of Western Europe sink into insignificance. Draining so wide an area, and extending