102 DANGEBOUS SITUATION. 



and we again walked three quarters of an hour without 

 finding the pool. We sometimes thought we saw fire on 

 the horizon; but it was the light of the rising stars enlarged 

 by the vapours. After having wandered a long time in the 

 savannah, we resolved to seat ourselves beneath the trunk 

 of a palm-tree, in a spot perfectly dry, surrounded by short 

 grass ; for the fear of water-snakes is always greater than 

 that of jaguars among Europeans recently disembarked. 

 We could not natter ourselves that our guides, of whom we 

 knew the insuperable indolence, would come in search of us 

 in the savannah before they had prepared their food and 

 finished their repast. Whust somewhat perplexed by the 

 uncertainty of our situation, we were agreeably affected by 

 hearing from afar the sound of a horse advancing towards us. 

 The rider was an Indian, armed with a lance, who had just 

 made the rodeo, or round, in order to collect the cattle 

 within a determinate space of ground. The sight of two 

 white men, who said they had lost their way, led him at 

 first to suspect some trick. We found it difficult to inspire 

 him with confidence ; he at last consented to guide us to 

 the farm of the Cayman, but without slackening the gentle 

 trot of his horse. Our guides assured us that " they had 

 already begun to be uneasy about us;" and, to justify this 

 inquietude, they gave a long enumeration of persons who, 

 having lost themselves in the Llanos, had been found nearly 

 exhausted. It may be supposed that the danger is immi- 

 nent only to those who lose themselves far from any habi- 

 tation, or who, having been stripped by robbers, as has 

 happened of late years, have been fastened by the body and 

 hands to the trunk of a palm-tree. 



In order to escape as much as possible from the heat of 

 the day, we set off at two in the morning, with the hope of 

 reaching Calabozo before noon, a small but busy trading- 

 town, situated in the midst of the Llanos. The aspect of the 

 country was still the same. There was no moonlight ; but 

 the great masses of nebulae that spot the southern sky en- 

 lighten, as they set, a part of the terrestrial horizon. The 

 solemn spectacle of the starry vault, seen in its immense 

 expanse; the cool breeze which blows over the plain during 

 the night : the waving motion of the grass, wherever it has 

 attained any height ; everything recalled to our minds the 



