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Show TEPPE ND DE ERT • 41 b3se long been awakened there. Towards the south, the Steppe termimtte in a :wage wildcrnc . Forests, the growth of thousands of year , fill with their impenetrable fa tnesses the humid regions between the Orinoco and the Amazons. Massive, leaden-colored granite rocks (-16) narrow the bed of the foaming rivers. Mountains and fore t re ound with the thunder of the falling waters, with the roar of the tiger-like jaguar, and with the melancholy, rain-announcing howlings of the bearded apes. (47) Where a sand-bank is left dry by the shallow current, the unwieldy crocodiles lie, with open jaws, a motionless as pieces of rock, and often covered with birds. (45) The boa serpent, his body marked like a ches -board, coiled up, his tail wound round the bra.nch of a tree, lies lurking on the bank, secure of his prey; he marks the young bull, or some feebler inhabitant of the forest, as it fords the stream, and swiftly uncoiling seizes the victim, and covering it with mucus forces it laboriously down his swelling throat. (49) In the midst of this grand and savage nature, live many tribes of men, isolated from each other by the extraordinary diversity of their langu:1ges: some are nomadic, wholly unacquainted with agriculture, and using ants, gums, and earth as food; (50) these, as the Otomacs and Jarures, seem a kind of outcasts from humanity: others, like the Maquiritares and Macos, are settled, more intelligent, and of milder manners, and live on fruits which they have themselves reared. Large spaces between the Oassiquiare and the Atabapo are only inhabited by the tapir and the social apes, and are wholly destitute of human beings. Figures graven on the rocks (51) show that even these deserts were once the seat of some degree of intellectual cultivation. They bear witness to the changeful destinies of man, as do the unequally developed flexible languages; which latter belong to the oldest and most imperishable class of historic memorials. But as in the Steppe tigers and crocodiles fight with horses and cattle, so in the forests on its borders, in the wildernesses of Guiana, man is ever armed against man. Some tribes drink with unnatural thirst the blood of their enemies; others apparently weaponless, and yet prepared for murder, (52) kill with a poisoned thumb-nail. The weaker hordes, when they have to pass along the sandy margin of 4* |
