Trumantia Resource Directory 08
Page 05

From what we have just learned of the animals and plants living in Europe during this age, we can frame some conception of the different climatic conditions of Europe. On the one hand, we have a country with a mild and genial climate. Trees of a warm latitude were then growing as far north as Paris, and we may well suppose Europe to have abounded in shady forests and grassy plains, through which flowed large rivers. It was just such a country as that in which elephants and southern animals would flourish, while vast herds of deer and bovine animals wandered over the entire length and breadth of the land. Where animal life was so abundant there were sure to be carnivorous animals also, and lions, hyenas, tigers, and other animals added to the variety of animal life.

Dr. Salomon Mueller, an accomplished Dutch naturalist, who lived for many years in the Eastern Archipelago, and to the result of whose personal experience I shall frequently have occasion to refer, states that the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees, and though toward evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a man than they dart up the hillsides and disappear in the darker valleys.

We left at 7.30 a.m. under a limpid sky of gorgeous cobalt blue. We passed two islands--one 700 m. long (Leda Island), the other 2,000 m. (Leander Island). When we had gone but 11,500 m. we arrived at one of the most beautiful bits of river scenery I have ever gazed upon--the spot where the immense S. Manoel River or Tres Barras or Paranatinga met the Arinos-Juruena. The latter river at that spot described a sharp turn from 20 deg. b.m. to 320 deg. b.m. We perceived a range of hills before us to the north. Close to the bank gradually appeared a large shed with a clearing near it on a high headland some 200 ft. above the level of the river where the stream turned. On the left bank, before we arrived at the meeting-place of those two giant streams, we found a tributary, the Bararati, 30 m. broad.

This page is Copyright © Trumantia Resource and all rights are reserved. Please don't copy without proper authorization. References to other Web sites are not endorsements. Trumantia Resource offers no promises or guarantees concerning the quality or content of other sites that Trumantia links to. Trumantia links are provided as a courtesy to our visitors but do not constitute endorsements or recommendations.