or entire tree falls to the ground.
Sometimes a sound is heard like the clang of an iron bar against a hard
hollow tree, or a piercing cry rends the air. These are not repeated,
and the succeeding silence tends to heighten the unpleasant impression
which they make on the mind. The natives believe it is the curupira--
the wild man of the forest--who produces all the noises they are unable
to explain. He is a mysterious being,--sometimes described as a kind of
orang-outang, covered with long shaggy hair, and living in trees; at
others, he is said to have cloven feet and a bright red face. He has a
wife and children, who, as well as himself, come down to the plantations
to steal the mandioca."

Such is a faint outline of some of the more prominent features of the
great Amazonian Valley--the most interesting portion of the southern
half of the New World. No verbal descriptions can do justice to the
reality--although drawn, as some of the above are, by master hands. We
will next range along the mighty Cordilleras to the ancient kingdom of
the Incas, looking down on the Pacific shores; and then, again
descending from the mountain heights, take a brief glance at the debased
human beings who people the valley, and pass in review the more
interesting of the countless wild creatures which inhabit its forests
and waters. Afterwards we will traverse Venezuela, Guiana, the rest of
the Brazils, and the wide-spreading level regions to the south of that
vast country, the river-bound province of Paraguay, the territories of
the Argentine Republic, the wild district of the Gran Chaco, the
far-famed Pampas, and the plains of Patagonia.

PART THREE, CHAPTER FIVE.

THE CORDILLERAS.

The voyager sailing from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean passes a
dark granite headland rising nearly three thousand feet out of the
water, and which may be distinctly seen at a distance of sixty miles.
It is Cape Horn--the southern end, broken off by the Strait of Magellan,
of that range of mighty mountains which runs in a northerly course along
the western coast of South America, rising into lofty pinnacles--the
summits of many covered with perpetual snow--sinking at length only at
the northern extremity, where the narrow Isthmus of Panama unites the
two continents. Again it gradually rises in Mexico, and runs on under
the name of the Rocky Mountains, at a less elevation and a greater
distance from the sea, till it sinks once more into the