934. MARKS. OF INUNDATIONS. 
tance of eight or ten miles from the religious house 
they found a rich and diversified assemblage of 
plants, among which M. Bonpland obtained nume- 
rous 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 part 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 des- 
titute of those beaches that favour evaporation, for- 
merly traversed the regions to the east of the Andes, 
like arms of inland seas? What must then have 
been the state of those low countries of Guiana, 
which now experience the effects of annual inunda- 
tions? Whata prodigious number of crocodiles, la- 
mantines, and boas, must have inhabited these vast 
regions, alternately converted into pools of stagnant 
water and arid plains! The more peaceful world 
in’ which we live has succeeded to a tumuituous 
world. Bones of mastodons and real American ele- 
phants are found dispersed over the platforms 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 palms or tree-ferns, we discover strata of 
coal containing gigantic remains of monocotyledo- 
