1O4 HEEDS OF WILD A1TLMAL8 



ordinary visual horizon. I need not mention those tracts 

 destitute of vegetation, which appear like large lakes with 

 an undulating surface. This phenomenon, observed in very 

 remote times, has occasioned the mirage to receive in 

 Sanscrit the expressive name of desire of the antelope. We 

 admire the frequent allusions in the Indian, Persian, and 

 Arabic poets, to the magical effects of terrestrial refraction. 

 It was scarcely known to the Greeks and Romans. Proud 

 of the riches of their soil, and the mild temperature of the 

 air, they would have felt no envy of this poetry of the 

 desert. It had its birth in Asia; and the oriental poets 

 found its source in the nature of the country they in- 

 habited. They were inspired with the aspect of those vast 

 solitudes, interposed like arms of the sea or gulfs, between 

 lands which nature had adorned with her most luxuriant 

 fertility. 



The plain assumes at sunrise a more animated aspect. 

 The cattle, which had reposed during the night along 

 the pools, or beneath clumps of mauritias and rhopalas, 

 were now collected in herds; and these solitudes became 

 peopled with horses, mules, and oxen, that live here free, 

 rather than wild, without settled habitations, and disdaining 

 the care and protection of man. In these hot climates, 

 the oxen, though of Spanish breed, like those of the cold 

 table-lands of Quito, are of a gentle disposition. A 

 traveller runs no risk of being attacked or pursued, as we 

 often were in our excursions on the back of the Cordilleras, 

 where the climate is rude, the aspect of the country more 

 wild, and food less abundant. As we approached Calabozo, 

 we saw herds of roebucks browsing peacefully in the midst 

 of horses and oxen. They are called matacani; their flesh 

 is good ; they are a little larger than our roes, and resemble 

 deer with a very sleek skin, of a fawn-colour, spotted with 

 white. Their horns appear to me to have single points. 

 They had little fear of the presence of man : and in herds 

 of thirty or forty we observed several that were entirely 

 white. This variety, common enough among the large stags 

 of the cold climates of the Andes, swprised us in these low 

 and burning plains. I have since learned, that even the 

 jaguar, in the hot regions of Paraguay, sometimes affords 

 albino varieties, the skin of which is of such uniform white- 



