Note 26 — STEPPES AND DESERTS.

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—

—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 Cieça 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 mountain plateau of Collao lamas were used for drawing the plough. (Compare Gay, Zoologia de Chile, Mamiferos, 1847, p. 154.) The usual custom in Peru was to plough with men only. (See the Inca Garcilaso’s Commentarios reales, P. i. lib. v. cap. 2, p. 133; and Prescott, Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, 1847, vol. i. p. 136.) Mr. Barton has made it appear probable that, among some of the tribes of Western Canada, the buffalo was from early times made an object of care for the sake of its flesh and skin. (Fragments of the Nat. Hist. of Pennsylvania, P. i. p. 4.) In Peru and Quito the lama is now nowhere found in a state of original wildness. I was told by the natives that the lamas on the western declivity of the Chimborazo had become wild when the ancient residence of the rulers of Quito “Lican” was laid in ashes. In the same manner the oxen in the Ceja de la Montaña, in Middle Peru, have become perfectly wild: they are a small and daring race, and often attack the Indians. The natives call them Vacas del Monte, or Vacas cimarronas. (Tschudi, Fauna Peruana, S. 256.) Cuvier’s opinion, that the lama had descended from the still wild Guanaco, has been unfortunately still further disseminated by the meritorious traveller Meyen, (Reise um die Erde, Th. iii. S. 64), but has been completely refuted by von Tschudi.

The Lama, the Paco or Alpaca, and the Guanaco, are three originally distinct species of animals. (Tschudi, S. 228 and 237.) The Guanaco (Huanacu in the Quichua language) is the largest of the three; and the Alpaca, measured from the ground to the crown of the head, the smallest. The lama is next to the guanaco in stature. Herds of lamas, when they are as numerous as I have seen them in the high plateau between Quito and Riobamba, are a great ornament to the landscape. The Moromoro of Chili appears to be a mere variety of the lama. Vicuñas, Guanacoes, and Alpacas, still live wild at elevations of from 13000 to 16000 feet above the level of the sea. The two latter species are sometimes met with tamed, but the guanaco only rarely. The alpaca does not bear the warmer climate of the lower elevations so well as the lama. Since the introduction of the more useful horses, mules, and asses, (the latter acquire great spirit and beauty within the tropics), the custom of rearing and using the lama and the alpaca as beasts of burden, in the mountains and among the mines, has much decreased. But the wool, of such different qualities in respect to fineness, is still an important article in the industry of the inhabitants of the mountains. In Chili the wild and the tamed guanaco are distinguished by separate names; the wild being called Luan, and the tame Chilihueque. The wide dissemination of the wild guanaco, from the Peruvian Cordilleras to Tierra del Fuego, sometimes in herds of 500, has been favoured by the circumstance that these animals can swim with great ease from island to island, so that the Patagonian fiords offer no obstacle to their wanderings. (See the pleasing descriptions by Darwin in his Journal, 1845, p. 66.)

South of the Gila River, which, together with the Rio Colorado, enters the Californian Gulf or Mar de Cortes, stand, in the solitude of the Steppe, the enigmatical ruins of the Aztec Palace, called by the Spaniards las Casas grandes. When the Aztecs, about the year 1160, came from the unknown land of Aztlan to Anahuac, they settled themselves for a time on the banks of the Gila. The Franciscan monks, Garces and Font, are the latest travellers who have visited the Casas grandes, and they did so in 1773. They stated the ruins to extend over above a square German mile (16 English square miles). The whole plain is strewed with fragments of painted pottery. The principal palace, (if a house built of unburnt clay can be so designated), is 447 English feet long and 277 English feet broad. (See a rare work printed in Mexico, and entitled Cronica seráfica y apostólica del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro por Fr. Juan Domingo Arricivita).

The Tayé of California, as drawn by Father Venegas, appears to differ little from the Ovis musimon of the Old Continent. The same animal is also seen on the “Stony Mountains,” near the sources of the Peace River. Very different from it, on the other hand, is the small white and black spotted goat-like creature which feeds near the Missouri and Arkansas rivers. The synonymy of Antilope furcifer, A. tememazama of Smith, and Ovis montana, is still very undetermined.