I could not myself judge of the accuracy of this statement, but I believe it to be not entirely destitute of foundation. I have observed that, when some extraordinary incident, for instance, the moans of a wounded araguato, fixed the attention of the band, the howlings were suspended for some minutes. In damp and stormy weather more especially, their howling is heard to a considerable distance. A great number will seat themselves on a single tree in the forests of Cumana and Guiana; and the force and volume of their blended voices are then astonishing.

The Travellers passed the night at the village of Guigue, 1,000 toises distant from the Lake of Valencia,-lat 10° 4′ 11′′. The road then begins to ascend the mountains, and from a table-land of nearly 2,000 feet elevation, the last view is obtained of the valleys of Aragua. At the end of five leagues is the village of Maria Magdalena, and two leagues further, San Luis de Cura. This town, commonly called Villa de Cura, stands in a very dry and barren valley,* at an elevation of nearly 1,600 feet above the sea-level, in lat 10° 2′ 47′′. The surrounding country, with the exception of some fruit-trees, is almost destitute of vegetation. The population, in 1800, was only 4,000 souls, but among them were found many persons of cultivated minds. The town is celebrated for the possession of a wonder-working idol, called Nuestra Senhora de los Valencianos, which was the subject of a long and scandalous contest between Cura and the neighbouring town of San Sebastian de los Reyes. Some grains of gold are occasionally found in the beds of the torrents which traverse the neighbouring mountains.

From the extensive table-land of the Villa de Cura, there are eight leagues of rather steep declivity to the

*So says Humboldt. Lavaysse represents it as situated in a fertile, though uncultivated valley, with a clayey soil.

The

beginning of the llanos, which are a thousand feet lower than the valley of Aragua. The geological features of the country now undergo a striking variation,* the gneiss of the coast being succeeded by metalliferous, serpentine, and trappean rocks. road descends toward the bed of the Rio Tucutunemo, the longitudinal valley of which lies east and west, and then turns into a transverse valley, very narrow in several parts, passing the villages of Parapara and Ortiz. After skirting the Cerro de Flores, it enters the valleys of Malpasso (so called from the badness of the road,) and Piedras Azules (blue stones, from the colour of the slate which predominates). At the Mesa de Paja, in lat 9°, the traveller enters the basin of the llanos,

THE LLANOS OR PLAINS.

"There is something awful, but sad and gloomy," remarks the learned Traveller, " in the uniform aspect of these steppes. Every thing seems motionless. Scarcely does a small cloud, as it passes across the zenith, and announces the approach of the rainy season, sometimes casts its shadow on the savanna. I know not whether the first aspect of the llanos excites less astonishment than that of the Andes. Mountainous countries, whatever may be the absolute elevation of the highest summits, have an analogous physiognomy; but we accustom ourselves with difficulty to the view of the Llanos of Venezuela and Casanare, the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and Chaco, which recall to mind continually, during journeys of

*The Sierra de Mariara, in the cordillera of the coast is a coarse-grained granite. To this, in the basin of Aragua, succeeds gneiss and mica-slate, which, near Guigue and Cura, are auriferous. South of Cura, are found, in succession, transition green slate, black limestone, serpentine and gruenstein, amygdaloid, and phonolite.

twenty or thirty days, the smooth surface of the ocean. I had seen the plains of La Mancha in Spain, and the real steppes that extend from Jutland, through Luneberg and Westphalia, to Belgium; but the plains of the West and North of Europe present but a feeble image of the immense llanos of South America. All around us, the plains seemed to ascend toward the sky; and that vast and profound solitude appeared like an ocean covered with sea-weeds. According to the unequal mass of vapours diffused through the atmosphere, and the various temperature of the different strata of air, the horizon was, in some parts, clear and distinct, in other parts, undulating, sinuous, and as if striped. The earth was there confounded with the sky. Through the dry fog and strata of vapour, the trunks of palm-trees were discerned at a great distance. Stripped of their foliage and their verdant tops, these trunks appeared like the masts of a ship discovered at the horizon.

"The llanos and the pampas of South America are real steppes. They display a beautiful verdure in the rainy season, but, in the time of great drought, assume the aspect of a desert. The grass is then reduced to powder, the earth cracks, the alligator and the great serpents remain buried in the dried mud, till awakened from their long lethargy by the first showers of spring. These phenomena are observed on barren tracts of fifty or sixty leagues in length, wherever the savannas are not traversed by rivers; for, on the borders of rivulets, and around little pools of stagnant water, the traveller finds at certain distances, even during the period of the great droughts, thickets of mauritia, —a palm the leaves of which, spread out like a fan, preserve a brilliant verdure.

or

"The chief characteristic of the savannas steppes of South America is, the absolute want of hills and inequalities, the perfect level of every part of the soil. Accordingly, the Spanish conquerors, who first

A

penetrated from Coro to the banks of the Apure, did not call them deserts, or savannas, or meadows, but plains, llanos. Often, in a space of thirty square leagues, there is not an eminence of a foot high. This resemblance to the surface of the sea strikes the imagination most powerfully, where the plains are altogether destitute of palm-tress, and where the mountains of the shore and of the Orinoco are so distant. that they cannot be seen, as in the Mesa de Pavones. person would be tempted there, to take the altitude of the sun with a quadrant, if the horizon of the land were not constantly misty, on account of the variable display of refraction. This equality of surface is still more perfect in the meridian of Calabozo, than toward the east, between the Cari, La Villa del Pao, and Nueva Barcelona; but it reigns without interruption from the mouths of the Orinoco to La Villa de Araure and Ospinos, under a parallel of 180 leagues in length; and from San Carlos to the savannas of Caqueta, on a meridian of 200 leagues.* It particularly characterises the New Continent, as it does the low steppes of Asia, between the Borysthenes and the Wolga, between the Irtisch and the Obi. The deserts

of central Africa, of Arabia, Syria, and Persia, Cobi, and Casna,† present, on the contrary, many inequalities, ranges of hills, ravines without water, and rocks that pierce the sands.

"The llanos, however, notwithstanding the apparent uniformity of their surface, furnish two kinds of inequalities, that do not escape the observation of an attentive traveller. The first is known by the name of Bancos: they are real shoals in the basin of the steppes, fractured strata of sandstone or compact limestone, standing four or five feet higher than the rest of the plain. These banks are sometimes three

"In strictness from N.N.E. to S.S.W."

"Or Karak, between the laxartes and the Oxus."

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or four leagues in length; they are entirely smooth, with a horizontal surface; their existence is perceived only by examining their borders. The second species. of inequality can be recognised only by geodesical or barometric levellings, or by the course of rivers. is called mesa, and is composed of small flats, or rather convex eminences that rise insensibly to the height of a few toises. Such are toward the east, in the province of Cumana, on the north of the Villa de la Merced and Candelaria, the Mesas of Amana, of Guanipa, and of Jonoro, the direction of which is south-west and north-east; and which, in spite of their inconsiderable elevation, divide the waters between the Orinoco and the northern coast of Terra Firma. The convexity of the savanna alone occasions this partition: we there find the divortia aquarum as in Poland, where, far from the Carpathian mountains, the plain itself divides the waters between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Geographers, who suppose that there exists a chain of mountains whereever there is a line of division, have not failed to mark one in the maps, at the sources of the Rio Neveri, the Unare, the Guarapiche, and the Pao. Thus, the priests of Mongul race, according to ancient and superstitious custom, erect oboes, or little mounds of stone, on every point where the rivers flow in an opposite direction.

"The uniform landscape of the llanos, the extreme paucity of inhabitants, the fatigue of travelling beneath a burning sky and an atmosphere darkened by dust, the view of that horizon which seems for ever to flee before us, those lonely trunks of palm-trees which have all the same aspect, and which we despair of reaching because they are confounded with other trunks that rise by degrees on the visual horizon; all these causes combined, make the steppes appear far greater than they are in reality. The planters who inhabit the southern declivity of the chain of the