90 MOUNTAIN CHAINS. 



rum*), as in Poland, where, far from the Car r athian moun- 

 tains, the plain itself divides the waters between the Baltic 

 and the Black Sea. Geograj hers, who suppose the existence 

 of a chain of mountains wl erever there is a line of divi- 

 sion, have not failed to mart one in the maps, at the sources 

 of the Rio Neveri, the Utiare, the Gruarapiche, and the 

 Pao. Thus the priests of Mongol race, according to ancient 

 and superstitious custom, erect oboes, or little mounds of 

 stone, on every point where the rivers flow in an opposite 

 direction. 



The uniform landscape of the Llanos; the extremely 

 small number of their inhabitants ; the fatigue of travelling 

 beneath a burning sky, and an atmosphere darkened by 

 dust ; the view of that horizon, which seems for ever to fly 

 before us ; those lonely trunks of palm-trees, which have all 

 the same aspect, and which we despair of reaching, because 

 they are confounded with other trunks that rise by degrees 

 on the visual horizon ; all these causes combine to make the 

 steppes appear far more extensive than they are in reality. 

 The planters who inhabit the southern declivity of the chain 

 of the coast see the steppes extend towards the south, as far 

 as the eye can reach, like an ocean of verdure. They know 

 that from the Delta of the Orinoco to the province of 

 Varinas, and thence, by traversing the banks of the Meta, 

 the Gruaviare, and the Caguan, they can advance three 

 hundred and eighty leagues t into the plains, first from east 

 to west, and then from north-east to south-east beyond the 

 Equator, to the foot of the Andes of Pasto. They know by 

 the accounts of travellers the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, 

 which are also Llanos covered with fine grass, destitute 

 of trees, and filled with oxen and horses become wild. 

 They suppose that, according to the greater part of our 

 maps of A merica, this continent has only one chain of moun- 

 tains, that of the Andes, which stretches from south to 

 north ; and they form a vague idea of the contiguity of all 

 the plains from the Orinoco and the Apure to the llio de la 

 Plata and the Straits of Magellan. 



Without stopping here to give a mineralogical description 



* " C. Manlium prope jugis [Tauri] ad divortia aquarum castrj 

 j-5SHise." Livy, lib. 38, c. 75. 



f This is the diitauce from Timbuctoo to the northern coast of Africa. 



