VENEZUELA. 643 



The vast Llanos, already mentioned, in the north cover a 

 surface of about 116,600 square miles. Over a large portion 

 of this wide-extending region, even the wild Indian, there 

 unable to find subsistence, but seldom roamed ; and thus for 

 ages it remained a howling wilderness, inhabited, and that 

 only at certain seasons, by the jaguar, the peccary, the agouti, 

 and the timid deer. Here, when the summer sun sends down 

 its burning rays day after day from a cloudless sky, the grass 

 withered and shrivelled by its heat, the plain presents the 

 appearance of a desert waste. No cooling breeze passes across 

 it, no shelter is found from the scorching heat. The pools 

 are dried up, the surface of the swamps becomes cracked and 

 dry the brown stalks of the tall reeds alone marking the 

 nature of the ground. Here, occasionally, when the blast 

 sweeps across the plain, columns of dust are set in motion, 

 like those of the African Sahara, overwhelming and stifling 

 the incautious traveller, who is hurled senseless to the ground. 



Here, too, as in other desert regions, the mirage mocks him 

 as he journeys across it parched with thirst often assuming 

 a semblance of the ocean, slowly moving in wave -like undu- 

 lations. 



The few trees and shrubs which here and there rise from 

 the plain assume a grayish-yellow tint, showing that the sap 

 which has hitherto nourished their leaves has ceased to flow, 

 stopped by the burning heat, which has dried up every 

 particle of moisture from which they are wont to obtain 

 nourishment. At this season even the animals take their 

 departure ; here and there the alligator and anaconda alone 

 remain, in a torpid state, buried in the clay of the dried-up 

 swamps. 



The traveller who ventures across this arid region has not 



