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Show 34 STEPPES AND DESERTS. long-horned Rocky Mountain Sheep abounds on the arid limestone rocks of California. The Vicunas, Huanacos, Alpacas, and Lamas belong to South America; but the two first named of all these useful animals, i. e., the Buffalo and the Musk Ox, have retained their natural freedom for two thousand years, and the use of milk and cheese, like the possePsion and cultivation of farinaceous grasses, (27) has remained a distinguishing characteristic of the nations of the Old World. If some of the latter have crossed from Northern Asia to the west coast of America, and if, keeping by preference to the cooler mountain regions, (25) they have followed the lofty ridge of the Andes towards the south, their migration must have taken place by ways in which they could not be accompanied by their flocks and herds, or bring with them the cultivation of corn. When the long-shaken empire of the Hiongnu fell, may we conjecture that the movement of this powerful tribe may also have occasioned in the north-east of China and in Corea a shock and an impulse which may have caused civilized Asiatics to pass over into the New Continent? If such a migration had consisted of inhabitants of the Steppes in which agriculture was not pursued, this hazardous hypothesis (which has hitherto been but little favored by the comparison of languages) would at least explain the striking absence of the Cereals in America. Possibly one of those Asiatic priestly colonies whom mystic dreams sometimes impelled to embark in long voyages, (of which the history of the peopling of Japan (2°) in the time of Thsinchihuang- ti offers a memorable example,) may have been driven by storms to the coasts of New California. If, then, pastoral life, that beneficent middle stage which attaches _ nomadic hunting hordes to desirable pastures, and prepares them, as it were, for agriculture, has remained unknown to the aboriginal nations of America, this circumstance sufficiently explains the absence of human inhabitants in the South American Steppes. This absence has allowed the freest scope for the abundant development of the most varied forms of animal life ; a development limited only by their mutual pressure, and similar to that of vegetable life in the forests of the Orinoco, where the Hymenooa and the gigantic laurel are never exposed to the destructive hand of man, but only to the pres- |
