brought the old continent to an end, beds, in which a few trilobites and other and during the Liassic and Oolitic epoch sea forms have been found. Going back (Jurassic) the Highlands of Scotland and in time beyond this, all reasoning or deother mountain regions in the British Is-tailed geological history becomes vague lands formed, with some other European in the extreme. The faunas of the CamPalæozoic rocks, groups of islands, round brian and especially of the Lower Siwhich, in warm seas, the Jurassic strata lurian rocks, from their abundance and were deposited. These relics of an older variety show that they are far removed continent, by deposition of newer strata from the beginning of life. Looking to and subsequent gradual upheaval, began the vanishing point in the past and the to grow in extent, and at length formed nnknown future, well might Hutton dethe great continental area through which clare that in all that the known rocks tell the mighty rivers flowed that deposited us "we find no vestige of a beginning — the strata of the Purbeck and Wealden no trace of an end." series of England and the continent of Europe. A larger submergence at length closed this broad local terrestrial epoch, and in those areas now occupied by Northern Europe (and much more besides), the sea, during the deposition of great part of the Chalk, attained a width and depth so great, that probably only the tops of our British Palæozoic mountains stood above its level. By subsequent elevation of the land, the fluvio-marine Eocene strata of Western Europe were formed, including in the term fluvio-marine the whole English series, embracing the London Clay, which as shown by its plant remains was deposited at, or not far from, the mouth of a great river, which in size, and in the manner of the occurrence of some of these plants, may be compared to the Ganges. With this latter continent there came in from some land, unknown as yet, a great and new terrestrial mammalian fauna wonderfully different from that which preceded it in Mesozoic times, and from that day to this the greater part of Europe has been essentially a continent, and in a large sense all its terrestrial faunas have been of modern type. From Chambers' Journal. THE CONIBOS. IN the course of the exploration of South America from the Pacific to the Atlantic, whose history is being narrated in instalments by Mr. Paul Marcoy,* the expedition fell in with, and made careful studies of a number of Indian tribes whose existence is hardly known to the outer world, but who offer an almost endless variety of tribal customs and individual features to the observation of the traveller. Among these there are some who, having in former times been brought under the now long-dispelled influence of the Spanish Missiones, adopted a kind of Christianity, and for a time, at least, had a glimmering of civilization; while there are others who have never suffered the isolation of their savage life to be interrupted by communications from without, who have adhered steadily to their own ways, and whose aspect of to-day is, in all probability, precisely the same as that of their forefathers, countless genera tions before the armed heel of Pizarro rang upon the soil of Peru. Among the latter are the Conibos, a very singular tribe, whose territory occupies two hundred miles of river-frontage, and may be found upon the map of the Amazons between Paruitcha and Cosiabatay. Their country abounds in wonderful beauty, and is eminently productive. Inland, on either bank of the gigantic river, beyond the long stretches of sand, rise yellowtinted slopes, crowned with primeval for ests, which are tenanted by the beautiful birds and beasts that abound in regions but little disturbed by even savage man. The river in this part of its course is very One shadowy continent still remains unnamed, far older than the oldest of those previously spoken of. What and where was the land from which the thick and wide deposits that form the Silurian strata of Europe were derived? For all sedimentary strata, however thick and extended in area, represent the degradation of an equal amount of older rocks wherewith to form them. Probably, like the American Laurentian rocks, that old land lay in the north, but whether or not, of this at all events I have more than a suspicion, that the red, so-called Cambrian, beds at the base of the Lower Silurian series indicate the last relics of the fresh waters of that lost continent, spar-cific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. By Paul Marcoy. A Journey across South America from the Pa ingly interstratified with grey marine | London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow: Blackie and Son beautiful, winding about, studded with | are singularly short of stature, never exislands; and when, in narrow channels, ceeding, rarely ever reaching five feet it rolls its yellow waters between the sol- three, lumpish of figure, with high cheekemn walls of verdure, which sometimes bones, small yellow eyes (the pupils toreplace the sands, there is perfect silence bacco-colour), oblique in shape, and set on its bosom, while the air beyond is filled wide apart. Their thick lips disclose with the fluttering of leaves, and the stir yellow teeth, well set, and gums dyed of birds and beasts. As the canoes of black by the use of an Indian plant called the explorers glide along, a succession yanammen. Their faces are almost of exquisite landscapes, and strange sights spherical, and Mr. Marcoy says this shape by the river-side, glorious daybreaks,"gives them a look of bonhomie and simtwilights, and moonlights, lend the scene an inconceivable beauty. Legions of living creatures are there; caymans plough the sand in furrows; seals come up to breathe, lurk under the reeds; in the solitary little bays, dolphins, sometimes four abreast, gambol and flash. All along the shore, on trunks of fallen trees, are wild creatures, jaguars, otters, herons, storks, flamingoes, fishing; and trotting about fearless, unmolested, is the bird of poetic name, the cultirostre or "peacock of the roses." There, too, are couroucous, clothed in green, red, and gold; manakins, with changing streaks of colour; orioles and toucans, parrots and paroquets, and the great kingfisher, with his azure back and white wings fringed with black. Then comes a strip of reeds, broadleaved, curling, thick, and strong, of great height, close covert for countless water and mud creatures; and again the broad shelving sands. A poetic voyage, truly, but sometimes interrupted by a strange sound, not to be heard without terror even when it has been often heard. It is the noise of the frequent landslips, when huge masses of the river-banks, composed of sand and vegetable detritus, have been undermined by the waves, and suddenly detaching themselves from the firm ground for perhaps a mile in length, slip down into the great river, dragging with them the trees they have nourished, and the linking lianas which bind them together, as though with mighty cables. Down they rush, with all their beautiful living load, and are lost in the waters, while the thunder of their ruin, often heard at ten miles' distance, is like heavy discharges of ordnance. Beyond the shelving sands, by the creeks and streams which branch off from the great Ucayali-Amazon, the Conibos dwell; a race utterly isolated, but a branch of the once great Pano nation. But for the habitual expression of strangeness and sadness which characterizes their countenances, in common with those of all the Peruvian Indians, the Conibos differ from the other native tribes. They plicity which corrects the disagreeable impression they make at first sight." Their skin is very dark, and has a peculiarity which reveals at once the chief drawback to the otherwise exquisite pleasure of travelling in their beautiful country; "it is rough to the touch, like shagreen," says Mr. Marcoy, "from being incessantly punctured by mosquitoes." These dreadful insects are the plague of the whole country; the foreigner suffers unbearably from them, and they never leave off biting the Conibos, who do not seem to mind them. Both men and women cut their hair like a brush to the level of the eyebrows, and leave the rest to flow over their shoulders. It is a peculiarity of this tribe that ornament, indeed almost clothing, is reserved for the men only. In the typical portraits furnished by Mr. Marcoy, the women wear only a strip of brown cloth, though the mosquitoes are quite impartial in their attacks, while the men wear a loose garment, like a wagoner's smock without sleeves, of brown cotton, ornamented with a border of Greek pattern, lozenges, and zigzags, traced in black with a pencil to imitate embroidery. Whence came this vague sense of art? They all paint their faces, but the men use more colouring than the women, laying on the red very freely, in thick, broad stripes. Black paint is used for (literally) body-colour. A Conibo in full dress will have sandals painted on his feet as far as the ankles, or buskins as high as the knees, like riding-boots; a jacket or coat painted on his body, open at the breast, and festooned round the hips; on his hands gloves or mittens. But besides these ordinary designs, they have arabesques of the most complicated kind for gala-days, which they apply to their faces by a process of stencilling, just as the Etruscans applied their patterns to their vases, and they adorn themselves with necklaces and earrings of black and white beads which they buy at Tierra Blanca. A few of the men who occasionally visit the Missions to exchange turtles, or the prepared fat of those creatures, or wax, for axes, knives, and beads, have learned the use of straw hats, which they make for themselves from the young palm reeds. The toilet of the men is a serious operation, in which a Conibo usually spends half his time; the women never think of any personal adornment, and are mere slaves, toilers, and beasts of burden. Their intelligence is, however, very remarkable, and it is with no small surprise we learn that they possess an extraordinary talent for the manufacture of pottery, and for painting and varnishing it afterwards. This is so entirely unlike anything which has been observed respecting the other Peruvian Indian tribes, that it induces a belief in the superior antiquity of the descent of the Conibos, of their kinship to the original race. These women have no tools but their fingers, and one of the shells of those great mussels which are found in the lakes of the interior. With these they fashion water-jars, jugs, cups, and basins, whose forms might belong to the best period of the Ando-Peruvian ceramic manufacture. 66 They roll the clay into thin cakes," says Mr. Marcoy, "which they lay one upon another, and unite with such exactness that it would be impossible to discover in their work an equivocal line or a doubtful curve. The potter's wheel is not more mathematically true." It is in a clearing of the forest, always situated a few steps from their dwelling, and which the men use as a timber-yard for the construction of their canoes, that the women establish their earthenware manufacture. To bake and varnish their work, a clear fire is lighted on the shore. Whilst they overlook the progress of the operation, an old woman sings and dances round the pile, to prevent the evil spirit from touching the vessels. When the vessels are baked, the women varnish the interior with gum-copal, and then proceed to their exterior decoration. Five simple colours are all that these native artists make use of; the art of mixing, and the transition shades, are either unknown to them, or not available. Lampblack, yellow extracted from one of the Guttifera, a violet-tinted blue yielded by the American indigo, a dirty green obtained by macerating the leaves of a capsicum, and a dull red procured from the arnotto, form their entire array of tints. Their pencils are made of three or four blades of dried grass fastened in the middle, or even of a cotton wick, rolled up like those paper "stumps" which artists make for themselves as they want them. Besides Greek borders, lozenges, intersecting lines, and other ornamental fancies, which they employ in the decoration of their pottery, their painted designs include some charming hieroglyphics, suggested by the plumage of the beautiful heron of the country (Ardea helias). "The fantastic markings of this bird, extremely rare, and nearly always solitary, have given the Conibo women the idea of a special kind of arabesques for their vases and woven stuffs, as the spatula-shaped tail of the seal has furnished the men with the model for their paddles." In addition to this combination of industry and art, which is a most surprising spectacle to the traveller in that wonderful wild land, these people, far more destitute than most of the African tribes of the merest rudiments of property or mechanism, have two funny possessions, never wanting in the cotton-cloth wallet of a Conibo: one is a pair of tweezers, formed of the two shells of a mutilus, united by a hinge made of thread; the other is a "snuff-taking apparatus," consisting of a snuff-box made of the shell of a bulimus, which its possessor fills to the orifice with tobacco which has been cut in the green state, dried in the shade, and ground to the finest powder. The Conibos do not take snuff merely for their pleasure, it has a medicinal value among them. When a Conibo feels his head heavy, or has caught cold, he begs a comrade to blow down the empty tube of his snuff-taking apparatus-known by, the suggestive name chica-chaouh, and thus gets the powdered nicotine with which the other tube is filled forced up his nose. That done, the Conibo, blowing, snuffling, and sneezing, exhibits his perfect satisfaction by a singular smacking of the lips and tongue, which is habitual among these people, and is significant of a variety of meanings. When a Conibo agrees to a plan or project, when he wishes to express his pleasure or pride in having overcome a difficulty, when he has the food he prefers, when he is satisfied with the elasticity of his bow, under all pleasant circumstances, indeed, the Conibo smacks his lips and his tongue. The arms of the Conibos are the bow and arrow, the club, and the shootingtube. Through the last they send sharp poisoned darts, but, unlike the other tribes of the Amazon, whose war-lances are almost always poisoned, they use them solely for the destruction of animals. The tribe live almost entirely on the tur tle. In vain do the forests and the waters offer them a luxurious variety of food; quake rouses them to fear and piety." nothing but the turtle, its flesh, its The Conibos believe that earthquakes grease, its eggs, its oil, has any charm for are caused by the movements of the them. They eat certain kinds of worms Great Spirit, who, anxious to satisfy himas hors-d'œuvre, and delight in fat, blood-self that the work of his hands still exists, gorged mosquitoes, which they permit to comes down from the stars to look after attain full condition upon their own skin, it. Then the Conibos run out of their undisturbed, as a bonne bouche. They dwellings, leaping and making wild gesmassacre the unlucky amphibia at all tures, and each exclaiming, as if in reply stages of their existence; but the sup- to the call of an invisible person: "Ipima, ply seems as yet to be inexhaustible. Any ipima, evira igni, papa, evira igni !" (A idea of a provision for the future appears moment, a moment, behold me, father, to be utterly unconceived by the Conibos. behold me!) Opposed to this good spirThey live from day to day, and only hunt it, there is an evil spirit, called Yunima, or fish when hunger spurs them. Their dwelling in the earth's centre. Whateagerness in turtle-fishing is rather for ever evils affect the nation are attributed the sake of selling the grease and oil at to him, and the Conibos fear him so the Missions for axes, knives, and beads, much, that they avoid, as far as possible, than for that of laying up any store for uttering his name. their own wants. They are, though Surrounded by turbulent and treacheralways poor, very hospitable. A Conibo ous tribes outside the broad extent of will offer to the friend or traveller who their beautiful territory, these quiet, unvisits his mud and leaf hut, the last ba- warlike, idle people dwell, with their utter nana, the last morsel of turtle, the last leg savagery on so many sides, their strange of monkey, with the utmost cheerfulness. unaccountable art, and marked by one They have acquired some notion of clear-characteristic which is totally unlike any ing and culture. Their plantations, in other Indian tribe it is, a wonderful the middle of an island, or in the corner aptitude for training birds and quadruof a forest, consist of perhaps a dozen peds without depriving them of their sugar-canes, two or three cotton shrubs, from which they weave a kind of cloth, some tobacco, and earth-nuts; and these little spaces are cut out in the forest, the fallen trees are left to dry, then they are burned, and the sowing or planting done on their smouldering ashes. A Conibo spade is the shoulder-bone of a seal, with a stick for a handle. Bigamy is tolerated among these peaceful savages, and indeed they would not object to polygamy, only that they have made a law among themselves that a man shall not have more wives than he can support, and, as they are extraordinarily idle, even for savages, this enactment practically limits the number to two. Their funeral ceremonies are very curious, resembling the ancient Scandinavian death-rites. They have an idea of an Omnipotent Being, the creator of heaven and earth, whom they address indifferently, as Papa, father, A FORTNIGHT has elapsed since the and Huchi, grandfather. Their notion Reichstag was closed and Prince Bisof this Being is not without a touch of marck retired to his usual resting-place poetry. They represent him to them- of Varzin. Yet our newspapers have selves," says Mr. Marcoy, "under the only just commenced to discuss the last human form, filling space, but concealed debates in the German Parliament and from their eyes, and say, that after hav- the possible motives of the Chancellor's ing created this globe, he fled away to temporary retreat. If we are to believe the sidereal regions, from whence he con- certain writers, Prince Bismarck has of tinues to watch over his work. They late fallen into disgrace both with the neither render him any homage, nor re- German people and the German Sovcall him to mind, except when an earth-ereign, and has sullenly withdrawn from liberty. Peccaries and tapirs may be From The Pall Mall Gazette. PRINCE BISMARCK'S POSITION IN GER MANY. the arena of public life. To any one fa- ground daily and hourly against those miliar with Prussian politics, such a view hostile elements combined. Thus he of the Chancellor's position can only ap- was obliged to fall back for support on pear as the result of an arbitrary combi- the Liberal party in Parliament, which. nation of circumstances coustrued after instead of easing his difficult task the analogy of affairs in Paris or London. seemed bent on irritating his most nerIt has never been a secret amongst the vous temper on every possible occasion. well-informed that Prince Bismarck's The King, divided by the old anti-Ausinfluence upon his Sovereign has always trian traditions of the Hohenzollern polbeen as difficult to maintain as it was icy and the more recent examples of his hard to win. Its beginnings date from father and brother-wavering between that early period when the Prussian Am- the admiration and confidence with which bassador at Frankfort, so coldly sup- his great Minister inspired him, and the ported by his Government, used to go to gratitude he felt for the men who had Coblentz weekly in order to pay his re- stood by him in the days of dangerspects to the then not over-popular was no easy subject to deal with. On Prince of Prussia. No sooner had the the other hand, Prince Bismarck, whose Prince been appointed Regent than he one rule of conduct is to serve his coungave to the discontented diplomatist a try and his master under all circumstansignificant token of his favour by ap- ces, and who had taken the Liberal side pointing him to the St. Petersburg em- as he had formerly taken and was ready bassy. To him again he resorted when to take again the Conservative side, had the "Old Liberals," by a want of courage | no difficulty in getting rid of his ancient and frankness still more than by want of allies. King William, who is not easily skill, had entangled themselves and the brought to dismiss even the least able of King in the question of army reorganiza- his old servants, provided they have faithtion. Prince Bismarck could undertake fully served him and the State, defended the task of cutting the Gordian knot his Ministers obstinately against their there was no longer any hope of untying chief. Years passed before the Premier obit-on two conditions only: it was tained the successive resignation of Count necessary to keep complete hold over his Lippe, Von der Heidt, Von Muhler, and master's mind and to be stanchly sup- finally Counts Selchow and Itzenplitz, ported by the upper branch of the Parlia-replacing them by Liberal commoners ment and by his colleagues. As he had like Dr. Leonhardt, Camphausen, Dr. chosen the latter among Conservatives Falck, and Dr. Achenbach. It took yet of the purest water he could fully rely longer, not to reform the House of Lords upon them as long as he opposed Parlia- as he wished, but to subdue it by the ment, press, and public opinion. The creation of a batch of peers. To secure Lords' support was yet more certain, for each of these small victories he with them interest came to the help of obliged to exert his whole influence, to conviction. It was less easy to over-threaten resignation, and often to withcome the King's constitutional scruples, carefully kept alive, so it was said at the time, by the Liberal element of the Court which gathered round the Queen and the Crown Prince. - was draw to Varzin, leaving his master to cope alone with the difficulties of a given situation. Thus, and thus only, was it possible to gain acceptance for the numerous liberal measures which have been The situation changed altogether in voted during the last seven years both 1866. The leading statesman was aban- in the Prussian and German Parliament. doned by his fellow-Ministers, who could Much remained still to be done, hownot forgive his making peace with the re-ever, to make the Prussian Cabinet combellious Parliament. Everybody remem- pletely homogeneous. Field-Marshal bers how the Herrenhaus became more Von Roon's great merits, as well as his and more estranged from him, who had honest but stubborn character, seem to been their ideal of a statesman; and it is have hindered this as much as Count not unknown how a numerous and influ- Eulenburg's excessive suppleness and ential section of the Court, partly moved versatility. Two survivors of the Bisby Legitimist conditions, partly by marck Cabinet of 1862 hold on, and it family considerations centered about the was they who prevented the reform of dethroned or mediatized dynasties, the House of Peers so much desired by opened a regular campaign against the fortunate Minister. From 1866 to 1870 Prince Bismarck had to fight his the Chancellor, who, like all powerful natures, does not like to be hampered by troublesome instruments. In the German |