100 ATTACHMENT TO THE J.LANOS. 





beings even to its utmost depths, changing perpetually in 

 colour and aspect, moveable at its surface like the element 

 that agitates it, all charm the imagination during long 

 voyages by sea ; but the dusty and creviced Llano, throughout 

 a great part of the year, has a depressing influence on the 

 mind, by its unchanging monotony. When, after eight or 

 ten days' journey, the traveller becomes accustomed to the 

 mirage and the brilliant verdure of a few tufts of mauritia* 

 scattered from league to league, he feels the want of more 

 varied impressions. He loves again to behold the great 

 tropical trees, the wild rush of torrents, or hills and valleys 

 cultivated by the hand of the labourer. If the deserts of 

 A frica, and of the Llanos or savannahs of the New Continent 

 filled a still greater space than they actually occupy, nature 

 would be deprived of many of the beautiful products peculiar 

 to the torrid zone.f The heaths of the north, the steppes of 

 the Volga and the Don, are scarcely poorer in species of 

 plants and animals than are the twenty-eight thousand 

 square leagues of savannahs extending in a semicircle from 

 north-east to south-west, from the mouths of the Orinoco to 

 the banks of the Caqueta and the Putumayo, beneath the 

 finest sky in the world, and in the land of plantains and 

 bread-fruit trees- The influence of the equinoctial climate, 

 everywhere else so vivifying, is not felt in places where the 

 great associations of gramma almost exclude every other 

 plant. Judging from the aspect of the soil, we might 

 have believed ourselves to be in the temperate zone, and 

 even still farther northward, but that a few scattered palms, 

 and at nightfall the fine constellations of the southern sky 

 (the Centaur, Canopus, and the innumerable nebulae with 

 which the Ship is resplendent), reminded us that we were 

 only eight degrees distant from the equator. 



A phenomenon which fixed the attention of De Luc, and 



* The fan-palm, or sago-tree of Guiana. 



^ In calculating from maps on a very large scale, I found the Llanos 

 of Cumana, Barcelona, and Caracas, from the delta of the Orinoco to 

 the northern bank of the Apure, 7,200 square leagues; the Llanos 

 between the Apure and Putumayo, 21,000 leagues; the Pampas on the 

 north-west of Buenos Ayres, 40,000 square leagues ; the Pampas south 

 of the parallel of Buenos Ayres, 37,000 square leagues. The total area 

 of the Llanos of South America, covered with gramina, is consequently 

 105,200 square leagues, twenty leagues to an equatorial degree. 





