44 



in the country which surrounds the cataract, 

 the aspect of the landscape varies at every step. 

 We find united in a small space all that is most 

 rude and gloomy in nature, with an open 

 country, and lovely pastoral scenery. In the 

 physical, as in the moral world, the contrast of 

 effects, the comparison of what is powerful and 

 menacing with what is soft and peaceful, becomes 

 a faithful source of our pleasures and our emo- 

 tions. 



I shall here repeat some scattered features of 

 a picture, which I traced in another work, a 

 short time after my return to Europe *. The 

 savannahs of Atures, covered with slender plants 

 and grasses -f-, are real meadows resembling 

 those of Europe ; they are never inundated by 

 the rivers, and seem to wait to be ploughed by 

 the hand of man. Notwithstanding their extent, 

 they do not display the monotony of our plains ; 

 they surround groups of rocks, and blocks of 

 granite piled on one another. On the very 

 borders of these plains and this open country 

 you find glens scarcely lighted by the rays of 

 the setting sun, and gullies where the humid 



* Ansichten der Natur., P. I, p. 170. 



t Panicum rotthoelloides, p, monostachyum, p. glutinosum, 

 p. aturense, oplismenus Burmanni (common to America and 

 the East Indies), thrasia paspaloides, chcetospora pterocarpa % 

 juncus platycaulos, aristida spadicea, polypogon interruptus, 

 cyperus cuspidatus, c. sesleroides, isolepis lanata^ i. dichotoma. 



