TORPOR OF ANIMAL LIFE. 13 



raised by contending air-currents, rises to the clouds and sweeps 

 over the floods, thus also the glowing dust of the savannah, set 

 in motion by conflicting winds, ascends in mighty columns and 

 glides over the desert plain. Then woe to the traveller who 

 cannot escape by a timely flight ; for, seizing him with irre- 

 sistible violence the sand spout carries him along in its em- 

 brace, and hurls him senseless to the ground. 



As if ' on a painted ocean,' the becalmed ship rests on the 

 glassy sea. No breath of air ruffles the surface of the waters. 



The pennant hangs lazily from the mast ; the water-casks 

 are empty ; the torments of thirst, aggravated by the heat of a 

 vertical sun, become intolerable. But, suddenly, as if by magic, 

 a beautiful island rises from the floods ; waving palm-trees seem 

 to welcome the mariner : he fancies he hears the purling of the 

 brook and the splashing of the waterfall. Yet still the vessel 

 moves not from the spot, and soon the fading phantom that 

 mocked his misery leaves him the victim of increased despair. 



Similar delusions of the mirage, produced by the refraction 

 of the light as it passes through atmospherical strata of unequal 

 warmth, and consequently of unequal density, likewise take 

 place over the surface of the Llanos, which then assume the 

 semblance of a sea, heaving and rocking in wave-like motion. 

 In the Lybian desert, in the dread solitudes of the polar ocean, 

 in every zone, we meet with the same phenomenon, produced by 

 the same cause. 



As in the arctic regions the intense cold during winter re- 

 tards the pulsations, or even suspends the operations of life, so 

 in the Llanos the long continuance of drought causes a similar 

 stagnation in animated nature. The thinly-scattered trees and 

 shrubs do not indeed cast their foliage, but the greyish -yellow 

 of their leaves announces that vegetation is suspended. Buried 

 in the clay of the dried-up pools, the alligator and the water- 

 boa lie plunged in a deep summer-sleep, like the bear of the 

 north in his long winter slumber ; and many animals which, at 

 other times, are found roaming over the Llanos, — such as 

 the graceful aguti, the hoggish peccary, and the timid deer of 

 the savannah, — have left the parched plains and migTated to 

 the forest or the river. The large maneless puma and the 

 spotted jaguar, following their prey to less arid regions, are now 

 no longer seen in their former hunting-grounds, and the Indian 



