ON STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



At the foot of the lofty granitic range which, in the early 

 age of our planet, resisted the irruption of the waters on the 

 formation of the Caribbean Gulf, extends a vast and boundless 

 plain. When the traveller turns from the Alpine valleys of 

 Caracas, and the island-studded lake of Tacarigua (1), whose 

 waters reflect the forms of the neighbouring bananas, — when 

 he leaves the fields verdant with the light and tender green 

 of the Tahitian sugar-cane, or the sombre shade of the cacoa 

 groves, — his eye rests in the south on Steppes, whose seeming 

 elevations disappear in the distant horizon. 



From the rich luxuriance of organic life the astonished tra- 

 veller suddenly finds himself on the dreary margin of a treeless 

 waste. Nor hill, nor cliff rears its head, like an island in the 

 ocean , above the boundless plain : only here and there broken 

 strata of floetz, extending over a surface of two hundred square 

 miles, (more than three thousand English square miles*,) appear 

 sensibly higher than the surrounding district. The natives 

 term them ba?iJ<s (2), as if the spirit of language would con- 

 vey some record of that ancient condition of the world, when 

 these elevations formed the shoals, and the Steppes themselves 

 the bottom, of some vast inland sea. 



Even now, illusion often recalls, in the obscurity of night, 

 these images of a former age. For when the guiding con- 

 stellations illumine the margin of the plain with their rapidly 

 rising and setting beams, or when their flickering forms are 



* It is not intended in eveiy instance to trouble the reader with 

 duplicate measurements ; but they will be introduced occasionally 

 Wherever only one measurement is given, it must be understood as 

 English.— Ed. 



B 



