nd surface, climate, flora and fauna, and the same
nomadic populations of pastoral or hunting tribes. In them the movement
of peoples reaches its culminating point, permanent settlement its nil
point. Here the hunting savage makes the widest sweep in pursuit of
buffalo or antelope, and pauses least to till a field; here the pastoral
nomad follows his systematic wandering in search of pasturage and his
hardly less systematic campaigns of conquest. It is the vast area and
wide distribution of these arid plains, combined with the mobility which
they impose on native human life, that has lent them historical
importance, and reproduced in all sections of the world that significant
homologous relation of arid and well-watered districts.

[Sidenote: Pastoral life.]

The grasslands of the old world developed historical importance only
after the domestication of cattle, sheep, goats, asses, horses, camels
and yaks. This step in progress resulted in the evolution of peoples
who renounced the precarious subsistence of the chase and escaped the
drudgery of agriculture, to devote themselves to pastoral life. It was
possible only where domesticable animals were present, and where the
intelligence of the native or the peculiar pressure exerted by
environment suggested the change from a natural to an artificial basis
of subsistence. Australia lacked the type of animal. Though North
America had the reindeer and buffalo, and South America the guanaco,
llama and alpaca, only the last two were domesticated in the Andean
highlands; but as these were restricted to altitudes from 10,000 to
14,000 feet, where pasturage was limited, stock raising in primitive
South America was merely an adjunct to the sedentary agriculture of the
high intermontane valleys, and never became the basis for pastoral
nomadism on the grassy plains. However, when the Spaniards introduced
horses and cattle into South America, the Indians and half-breeds of the
llanos and pampas became regular pastoral nomads, known as llaneros and
gauchos. They are a race of horsemen, wielding javelin and lasso and
bola, living on meat, often on horse-flesh like the ancient Huns,
dwelling in leather tents made on a cane framework, like those of the
modern Kirghis and medieval Tartars, dressed in cloaks of horsehide sewn
together, and raiding the Argentinian frontier of white settlement for
horses, sheep and cattle, with the true marauding instinct of all
nomads.[1051]

[Sidenote: Pa