202 



MARKS OF INUNDATIONS. 



Vegetation. 



Harks of 

 inundations. 



CHAP.xvii. stony flats they eagerly observed the rising vegetation 

 — in the different sttiges of its development : Lichens 

 cleaving the rock and collected into crusts ; a few 

 succulent plants growing among little portions of quartz- 

 sand ; and tufts of evergreen shrubs springing up in the 

 black mould deposited in the hollows. At the distance 

 of eight or ten miles from the religious house they found 

 a rich and diversified assemblage of plants, among which 

 M. Bonpland obtahied numerous new species. Here 

 grew the Dipterix odorata, which furnishes excellent 

 timber, and of which the fruit is known in Europe by 

 the name of tonkay or tongo bean. 



In a narrow jiart of the river the marks of the great 

 inundations were 45 feet above the surface ; but at 

 various places black bands and erosions are seen, 106 or 

 even 138 feet above the present highest increase of the 

 waters. " Is this river, then," says Humboldt, " the 

 Orinoco, which appears to us so imposing and majestic, 

 merely the feeble remnant of those immense currents of 

 fresh water which, swelled by Alpine snows or by more 

 abundant rains, every where shaded by dense forests, 

 and destitute of those beaches that favour evaporation, 

 formerly traversed the regions to the east of the Andes, 

 like arms of inland seas 1 What must then have been 

 the state of those low countries of Guiana, which now 

 experience the effects of annual inundations ! What a 

 prodigious number of crocodiles, lamantines, and boas, 

 must have inhabited these vast regions, alternately con- 

 verted into pools of stagnant water and arid plains ! 

 The more peaceful world in which we live has succeeded 

 to a tumultuous world. Bones of mastodons and real 

 American elephants are found dispersed over the plat- 

 Antediluvian forms of the Andes. The megatherium inhabited the 

 plains of Uruguay. By digging the earth more deeply 

 in high valleys, which at the present day are unable to 

 nourish i)alms or tree-ferns, we discover strata of coal 

 containing gigantic remains of monocotyledonous plants. 

 There was therefore a remote period, when the tribes of 

 vegetables were differently distributed ; when the ani- 



Former 

 state of tlie 

 country. 



world 



