24 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



Caucasian features. On the south of the Senegal, towards 

 Soudan, live hordes of negroes in many different stages of 

 civilization. In Central Asia, the Mongolian Steppe divides 

 Siberian barbarism from the ancient civilisation of the 

 peninsula of India. 



The South American Steppes form the boundary of a 

 partial European cultivation. ( 45 ) To the north, between 

 the mountains of Venezuela and the Caribbean sea, we find 

 commercial cities, neat villages, and carefully cultivated 

 fields. Even the love of art and scientific culture, together 

 with the noble desire of civil freedom, have long been 

 awakened there. Towards the south the Steppe terminates 

 in a savage wilderness. Forests, the growth of thousands 

 of years, fill with their impenetrable fastnesses the humid 

 regions between the Orinoco and the Amazons. Massive 

 leaden-coloured granite rocks ( 46 ) narrow the bed of the 

 foaming rivers. Mountains and forests resound with the 

 thunder of the falling waters, with the roar of the tiger-like 

 jaguar, and with the melancholy rain-announcing howlings 

 of the bearded apes. ( 4 ?) 



Where a sand-bank is left dry by the shallow current, the 

 unwieldly crocodiles lie, with open jaws, as motionless as 

 pieces of rock and often covered with birds. ( 48 ) The 

 boa serpent, his body marked like a chess-board, coiled up, 

 his tail wound round the branch of a tree, lies lurking on 

 the bank secure of his prey ; he marks the young bull or 

 some feebler inhabitant of the forest as it fords the stream, 

 and swiftly uncoiling seizes the victim, and covering it with 

 mucus forces it laboriously down his swelling throat, ( 49 ) 



