THE PAMPAS. 87 



but the desiertos of Sechura and Atacamez. This solitary 

 tract is not broad, but it is four hundred and forty leagues 

 long. The rock pierces everywhere though the quicksands. 

 No drop of rain ever falls on it; and, like the desert of 

 Sahara, north of Timbuctoo, the Peruvian desert affords, 

 near Huaura, a rich mine of native salt. Everywhere else, 

 in the New World, there are plains desert because not 

 inhabited, but no real deserts.* 



The same phenomena are repeated in the most distant 

 regions; and, instead of designating those vast treeless 

 plains in accordance with the nature of the plants they 

 produce, it seems natural to class them into deserts, steppes, 

 or savannahs; into bare lands without any appearance of 

 vegetation, and lands covered with gramina or small plants 

 of the dicotyledonous tribe. The savannahs of America, 

 especially those of the temperate zone, have in many works 

 been designated by the French term prairies; but this 

 appears to me little applicable to pastures which are often 

 very dry, though covered with grass of four or five feet in 

 height. The Llanos and the Pampas of South America are 

 really steppes. They are covered with beautiful verdure in 

 the rainy season, but in the cime of great drought they 

 assume the aspect of a desert. The grass is then reduced to 

 powder ; the earth cracks ; the alligators and the great ser- 

 pents 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 savannahs are not traversed 

 by rivers ; for on the borders of rivulets, and around little 

 pools of stagnant water, the traveller finds at certain dis- 

 tances, even during the period of the great droughts, thickets 

 of mauritia, a palm, the leaves of which spread out like a 

 fan, and preserve a brilliant verdure. 



The steppes of Asia are all beyond the tropics, and form 

 very elevated table-lands. America also has savannahs of 



* We are almost tempted, however, to give the name of desert to lhat 

 vast and sandy table-land of Brazil, the Campos dos Parecis, which gives 

 birth to the rivers Tapajos, Paraguay, and Madeira, and which reach'* 

 the summit of the highest mountains. Almost destitute of veg. tutior., it 

 reminds us of Gobi, in Mongolia. 



