. STEPPES AND DESERTS. 41 



have long been awakened there. Towards the south, the Steppe \ 

 terminates in a savage wilderness. Forests, the growth of thousands 

 of years, fill with their impenetrable fastnesses the humid regions 

 between the Orinoco and the Amazons. Massive, leaden-colored 

 granite rocks ( 4 ) narrow the bed of the foaming rivers. Mountains 

 and forests resound with the thunder of the falling waters, with the 

 roar of the tiger-like jaguar, and with the melancholy, rain-announc- 

 ing bowlings of the bearded apes. ( 47 ) 



Where a sand-bank is left dry by the shallow current, the un- 

 wieldy crocodiles lie, with open jaws, as motionless as pieces of rock, 

 and often covered with birds. ( 48 ) The boa serpent, his body marked 

 like a chess-board, coiled up, his tail wound round the branch of 

 a tree, lies lurking on the bank, secure of his prey; he marks the 

 young bull, or some feebler inhabitant of the forest, as it fords the 

 stream, and swiftly uncoiling seizes the victim, and covering it with 

 mucus forces it laboriously down his swelling throat. ( 49 ) 



In the midst of this grand and savage nature, live many tribes of 

 men, isolated from each other by the extraordinary diversity of their \ 

 languages : some are nomadic, wholly unacquainted with agriculture, J 

 and using ants, gums, and earth as food; p) these, as the Otomacs 

 and Jarures, seem a kind of outcasts from humanity : others, like j 

 the Maquiritares and Macos, are settled, more intelligent, and of > 

 milder manners, and live on fruits which they have themselves 

 reared. 



Large spaces between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo are only 

 inhabited by the tapir and the social apes, and are wholly destitute 

 of human beings. Figures graven on the rocks ( 51 ) show that even I 

 these deserts were once the seat of some degree of intellectual culti- 

 vation. They bear witness to the changeful destinies of man, as do 

 the unequally developed flexible languages ; which latter belong to 

 the oldest and most imperishable class of historic memorials. 



But as in the Steppe tigers and crocodiles fight with horses and IJ 

 cattle, so in the forests on its borders, in the wildernesses of Gruiana, j N 

 man is ever armed against man. Some tribes drink with unnatural 

 thirst the blood of their enemies; others apparently weaponless, and ; 

 yet prepared for murder, ( 52 ) kill with a poisoned thumb-nail. The 

 weaker hordes, when they have to pass along the sandy margin of 



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