THE LAND OF FEAli. 219 



billows of a wind-swept ocean, and live tongues of flame ever and 

 anon light up the terrible scene with lurid splendour. These 

 " Prairie-fires " are sometimes kindled in revenge by the Indians, 

 and occasionally the settlers resort to this dangerous but summary 

 method of clearing the encumbered ground. However caused, the 

 spectacle is one of infinite grandeur, which might have furnished 

 Dante with a fresh image of horror for his " Inferno." 



From the fortieth to the thirty-fifth parallels of north latitude the 

 Desert appears in North America under a form more like the " seas 

 of sand " of Africa and Arabia ; the vast areas of the Llanos and the 

 Pampas. These two words are nearly synonymous. They are used 

 to designate wide level plains, inundated and fertile in the rainy 

 season, but in the hot season stripped by the sun's rays of every 

 apparent trace of vegetation. Between the Californian Alps and the 

 Rio-Colorado withers a grand, sandy, and utterly barren plain, which 

 touches the northern borders of La Sonora. Somewhat further to the 

 east extends the Llano-Estacado, which eventually merges into the 

 American Desert. But the most considerable Pampas and Llanos 

 belong to South America. Of these, the most arid and the most 

 desolate which most vividly recall the rainless deserts of the Old 

 World are the Pampa of Atacama, between the Andes and the 

 Pacific, with Taracapa on the north, and Copiapo on the south ; that 

 of Sechura, which forms a great portion of the littoral of the Peruvian 

 department of Truxillo ; and that of Pernambuco, which forms the 

 major part of the plateau north-east of Brazil. 



These Deserts, no less than those of Africa and Arabia, merit the 

 name of the "Land of Fear." 



Their surface is as smooth as that of the calm sea, and bounded 

 only by the circular line of the horizon ; the eye frequently ranges 

 over a space of twenty-five square miles without meeting a clump of 

 trees on which to rest ; nor is the monotony relieved by the slightest 

 undulation of the soil. Everywhere is nothingness, silence, desolation, 

 death. More than one wayfarer has never escaped from their mazy 

 solitudes. Fatigue, hunger, thirst, decimate the caravans which under- 



