110 NIGHT IN THE LLANOS. 



rounded by short grass. They could not flatter tliem 

 selves that their guides would come in search of them in 

 the savannah before they had prepared their food and 

 finished their repast. Whilst somewhat perplexed by 

 the uncertainty of their situation, they were pgreeably 

 affected by hearing from afar the sound of a horse ad- 

 vancing towards them. The rider was an Indian, armed 

 with a lance, who had just made the round, in order to 

 collect the cattle. The sight of two white men, who said 

 they had lost their way, led him at first to suspect some 

 trick. They found it difficult to inspire him with con- 

 fidence ; he at last consented to guide them to the farm, 

 but without slackening the gentle trot of his horse. 

 Their guides assured them that they had already 

 begun to be uneasy about them; and, to justify this 

 inquietude, they gave a long enumeration of persons 

 who, having lost themselves in the Llanos, had been 

 found nearly exhausted. 



In order to escape as much as possible from the heat 

 of the day, they set off at two in the morning, with the 

 hope of reaching before noon Calabozo, a small but busy 

 trading-town, situated in the midst of the Llanos. The 

 aspect of the country was still the same. There was no 

 moonlight ; but the great masses of nebulae that spotted 

 the southern sky enlightened, as they set, a part of the 

 terrestrial horizon. The solemn spectacle of the starry 

 vault, seen in its immense expanse ; — the cool breeze 

 which blew over the plain during the night: — the waving 

 motion of the grass, wherever it had attained any height ; 

 everything recalled to their minds the surface of the 

 ocean. The illusion was deepened when the disk of 

 the sun appearing on the horizon, repeated its image by 



