92 THREE DESCRIPTIONS Of PLAINS. 



Campos dos Parcels) the Andes of Peru, to the mountains 

 of Brazil. It is the Cordillera of Chiquitos which widens in 

 the Capitaiiia de Minas Geraes, and divides the rivers flowing 

 into the Amazon from those of the Bio de la Plata,* not only 

 in the interior of the country, in the meridian of A T illa Boa, 

 but also at a few leagues from the coast, between Rio 

 Janeiro and Bahia.t 



These three transverse chains, or rather these three groups 

 of mountains stretching from west to east, within the 

 limits of the torrid zone, are separated by tracts entirely 

 level, the plains of Caracas, or of the Lower Orinoco ; the 

 plains of 1iie Amazon and the Rio Negro ; and the plains of 

 Buenos Ayres, or of La Plata. I use the term plains, 

 because the Lower Orinoco and the Amazon, far from 

 flowing in a valley, form but a little furrow in the midst 

 of a vast level. The two basins, placed at the extremi- 

 ties of South America, are savannahs or steppes, pasturage 

 without trees; the intermediate basin, which receives the 

 equatorial rains during the whole year, is almost entirely 

 one vast forest, through which no other roads are known 

 save the rivers. The strong vegetation which conceals the 

 soil, renders also the uniformity of its level less perceptible ; 

 and the plains of Caracas and La Plata bear no other name. 

 The three basins we have just described are called, in the 

 language of the colonists, the Llanos of Varinas and of 

 Caracas, the bosques or selvas (forests) of the Amazon, and 

 the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The trees not only for the 

 most part cover the plains of the Amazon, from the Cor- 

 dillera de Chiquitos, as far as that of Parime; they also 

 crown these two chains of mountains, which rarely attain 

 the height of the Pyrenees. % On this account, the vast 

 plains of the Amazon, the Madeira, and the Bio Negro, are 

 not so distinctly bounded as the Llanos of Caracas, and the 



* There is only a portage or carrying-place of 5,322 bracas between 

 the Guapore (a branch of the Marmore and of the Madeira), and the Rio 

 Aguapehy (a branch of the Jaura and of the Paraguay). 



t The Cordillera of Chiquitos and of Brazil stretches toward the south- 

 east, in the government of the Rio Grande, beyond the latitude of 30* 

 south. 



J We must except the most western part of the Cordillera of Chiquitos, 

 between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra where the summit! 



