a single grand division, termed “Holarctic,” or “Triarctic.”
South America, considered with reference to its fauna, includes Central America, the lowlands of Mexico, and the West Indies, and forms one of the grand zoögeographical divisions, named “Neotropical” by Sclater. It is characterized by richness and isolation, leading to the belief that its union with North America has been accomplished at a comparatively recent date, and that the origin of its animal population is exceedingly remote and was followed by long isolation. It has eight families of mammals absolutely confined to it, including two families of monkeys, markedly different from those of the Old World (but no lemurs), the blood-sucking bats, and the greater part of the order of Edentates, and many peculiar rodents. The continent has no Mustelidæ nor Viverridæ; only one kind of bear; almost no insectivora; no horses or related animals, except one species of tapir; no ruminants, except the cameloid llamas (not known elsewhere), and only a few small ungulates of any sort. Birds display still greater isolation and singularity when compared with the avifauna of the Old World or of North America. Wallace gives 23 families and 600 genera as exclusively Neotropical, while that continent or its northerly extensions possess the greater part of many other important families, such as the humming-birds (some 400 species), tanagers, and macaws, to which must be added a long list of peculiar sea-fowl. Among reptiles there are less peculiar forms, the boas and scytales being most conspicuous among snakes; but there are several local families of lizards and many genera, the iguanids being widely developed, while the Varanidæ, Lacertidæ, and Agamidæ, so characteristic of the Old World, are entirely absent from America. The Amphibia present a similar case. Fishes of fresh waters are enormously abundant, and their resemblance, as a whole, is to the African piscifauna, while many are survivors of very ancient types, such as lepidosiren. Similar facts might be adduced to show the regional exclusiveness of the insects and other invertebrates. On the whole, South America is characterized by the possession of a very uniformly distributed fauna, far more local and distinct from any other region than that of any other continent, unless it be Australia, probably more than four-fifths of its species being restricted to its zoögeographical boundaries. See Distribution of Animals.
HISTORY.
Discovery. Christopher Columbus, in 1492, added a new world to European commerce and civilization; but there can be little doubt that the Western Hemisphere to which Columbus opened the way had previously been visited by voyagers from the older world. There is nothing inherently impossible in the stories that Japanese or Chinese vessels, blown by storms or carried by the Pacific currents, reached the western coast of North America. The most circumstantial of these tales relates that some Chinese Buddhist priests in the fifth Christian century reached a land of Fu-sang, and successfully returned with the account of their adventures in what some critics have thought was the country now known as Mexico. From Europe the earliest visitors to America came by way of Iceland, and the story of their experiences, though it does not satisfy all the demands of modern historical criticism, may safely be deemed true in its principal details. In 876, Gunnbjörn, a sea rover, while on his way from Norway to the new Norse settlement in Iceland, was blown westward until he sighted an unknown land. A century later, about 985, a restless young Norwegian named Eric the Red succeeded in verifying the stories which had been handed down from Gunnbjörn's time, and in establishing a settlement on the shores of the land to which, with the idea of attracting colonists, he gave the name of Greenland. Two years or so after this, Bjarni Herjulfson, while in command of a ship in which he had set out to visit the Red Eric's settlement, encountered storms that drove him, as he reported, southward until he came in sight of land.
In the year 1000, Leif, Eric's son, started to explore Bjarni's land. He came first to a barren shore backed by ice-covered mountains, a description which suggests Labrador. Sailing south, he met with more pleasant regions, to which he gave the names of Markland and Vinland. Many attempts have been made to identify these localities, and Newfoundland and Nova Scotia perhaps best answer the essential conditions. At Vinland a flourishing settlement was established and maintained for several years, and there Gudrid, the wife of Thorfinn Karlsefne, gave birth, in 1007, to a son, Snorre, from whom the sculptor Thorwaldsen claimed descent. Many localities—Newport and Dighton, on Narragansett Bay; Cambridge and Waltham, on the Charles; Salem, indeed, well-nigh every town situated beside a pleasant river northward from Long Island—have laid claim to this Norse settlement, regarding the actual situation of which, however, nothing certain is known. During the succeeding five hundred years, many voyagers may have crossed the Atlantic, but none of them left any proof of their work, Madoc, son of Owen Gwynnedd, a prince of Wales, is said by Humfrey Lloyd, in a book printed in 1559, to have sailed westward and to have established a transatlantic Welsh colony in 1170. The Venetian brothers Zeno, between 1380 and 1390, probably made a voyage from the Shetland Islands to Iceland and Greenland, and in their letters home to their Italian brethren they seem to have given a picturesque account of what they had learned about the country lying still farther to the southwest. French, Breton, and Basque fishing vessels very likely visited the cod banks in the western Atlantic during the fifteenth century; but if they did, they were careful not to let the information of their valuable discovery reach their rivals.
Consecutive discovery and exploration began with the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. (For a full account of his expeditions, see Columbus, Christopher.) In 1493 and 1494 Columbus established the main features of the islands in the West Indies. In his third voyage, 1498, he touched at Trinidad, and followed the mainland for some distance; and in 1502-04 he coasted from Yucatan to Venezuela. Meanwhile, in 1497, John Cabot sailed from England, and reached the neighborhood of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; but many years passed before the identity of the land which served as headquarters for the hosts of fishing boats which frequented the Banks with that of the New World of the Spaniards was definitely determined. It appears probable that almost simultaneously with Cabot's landing on the American continent, Pinzon
