72 NATURAL TERRACES. 



such table lands, whose boundaries are usually denned 

 by ranges of hills, whose slopes gradually lead up to 

 the next superior plateau. This alteration in the general 

 level of a country is however apt to escape the observ- 

 ation of an unpractised eye, until it is demonstrated 

 on the applotment of a survey; it is only when precisely 

 the same thing occurs by a substitution of a range 

 of gigantic bluffs for slopes, that the fact becomes 

 evident to all, and excites astonishment. 



Nevertheless, similar results effected by slopes instead 

 of bluffs may occasionally be seen executed by natural 

 agency, with splendid effect, in South America and 

 elsewhere. The traveller, in this latter case, sees before 

 him what appears to be a range of hills, and after 

 toiling up them until he reaches the top, instead of 

 the crest of a " divide" from which he can look over 

 and down into a valley beyond, he finds that he is 

 on the edge of a wide-spreading level table land, often 

 called " El Tablazo" by the Spaniards, which stretches 

 forth, it may be to the distant horizon or, possibly, 

 in some cases, he may find that it is bounded on the 

 sky-line by the blue silhouettes of mountains, which 

 may mark merely the edge of another, and somewhat 

 similar, though more elevated plateau beyond. 



Turning and looking back from a position such as 

 we have here attempted to portray, the traveller will 

 in many cases be rewarded by a magnificent panorama, 

 whose spacious grandeur and sublime combinations of 

 colour and distance convey to the senses, far more 

 even than the ocean, an idea of the infinite, in which 

 the human atom is dwarfed almost to nothing, and 

 becomes of small account indeed. 



And now, if we consider for a moment as to how 



