258 BAPIDS OF ATUEES. 



moral dispositions of nations. Every type comprehends 

 species, which, while exhibiting the same general appear- 

 ance, differ in the varied development of the similar organs. 

 The palm-trees, the scitaminese, the malvacese, the trees with 

 pinnate leaves, do not all display the same picturesque 

 beauties ; and generally the most beautiful species of each 

 type, in plants as in animals, belong to the equinoctial zone. 



The proteacese,* crotons, agaves, and the great tribe of 

 the cactuses, which inhabit exclusively the New World, dis- 

 appear gradually, as we ascend the Orinoco above the 

 Apure and the Meta. It is, however, the shade and humi- 

 dity, rather than the distance from the coast, which oppose 

 the migration of the cactuses southward. We found forests 

 of them mingled with crotons, covering a great space of arid 

 land to the east of the Andes, in the province of Bracamoros, 

 towards the Upper Marafion. The arborescent ferns seem 

 to fail entirely near the cataracts of the Orinoco ; we found 

 no species as far as San Eernando de Atabapo, that is, to 

 the confluence of the Orinoco and the Guaviare. 



Having now examined the vicinity of the Atures, it re- 

 mains for me to speak of the rapids themselves, which occur 

 in a part of the valley where the bed of the river, deeply 

 ingulfed, has almost inaccessible banks. It was only in a 

 very few spots that we could enter the Orinoco to bathe, 

 between the two cataracts, in coves where the waters have 

 eddies of little velocity. Persons who have dwelt in the 

 Alps, the Pyrenees, or even the Cordilleras, so celebrated 

 for the fractures and the vestiges of destruction which 

 they display at every step, can scarcely picture to them- 

 selves, from a mere narration, the state of the bed of the 

 river. It is traversed, in an extent of more than live miles, 

 by innumerable dikes of rock, forming so many natural 

 dams, so many barriers resembling those of the Dnieper, 

 which the ancients designated by the name of phragmoi. 

 The space between the rocky dikes of the Orinoco is filled 

 with islands of different dimensions ; some hilly, divided into 

 several peaks, and two or three hundred toises in length, 

 others small, low, and like mere shoals. These islands 

 divide the river into a number of torrents, which boil up as 



* Rh ipalas, which cnaracterise the vegetation of the Llanos. 



