CHAPTER IX

Summary

Jan. 13. 1842. — From Savannah we returned to Charleston in a steam-ship, on board of which we found an agreeable party, consisting chiefly of officers of the U. S. army returning from Florida, where they had nearly brought to a close a war of extermination carried on for many years against the Seminole Indians. They gave a lively picture of the hardships they underwent in the swamps and morasses during this inglorious campaign, in the course of which the lives of perhaps as many whites as Seminoles were sacrificed. The war is said to have been provoked by the attacks of the Indians on new settlers.

In the Museum at Charleston, I was shown a fossil human skull from Guadaloupe, imbedded in solid limestone, which they say belongs to the same skeleton of a female as that now preserved in the British Museum, where the skull is wanting.

Dr. Bachman whom I saw here is engaged in a great work on the quadrupeds of North America. He pointed out to me the boundary of several distinct zones of indigenous mammalia, extending east and west on this continent, where there are no great natural barriers running in the same direction, such as mountain ridges, deserts, or wide arms of the sea to check the migrations of species. The climate alone has been sufficient to limit their range. The mammiferous fauna of the State of New York, comprising about forty species, is distinct from that of the arctic region 600 miles north of it, and described by Dr. Richardson.