315 



Pampas on the North and North- West of Bue- 

 nos Ayres, between this city and Cordova, 

 Jujuy, and the Tucuman, are of nearly the same 

 extent as the Llanos ; but the Pampas stretch 

 still farther on for the length of 18° toward the 

 South ; and the land they occupy is so vast, that 

 they produce palm-trees at one of their extremi- 

 ties, while the other, equally low and level, is 

 covered with eternal frost. 



The Llanos of America, where they extend in 

 the direction of a parallel to the equator, are 

 four times narrower than the great desert of 

 Africa. This circumstance is very important in 

 a region, where the winds constantly blow from 

 East to West. The farther the plains stretch in 

 this direction, the more ardent is their climate. 

 The great ocean of sand in Africa communicates 

 by Yemen * with Gedrosia and Beelochistan, as 



* We cannot be surprised, that the Arabic should be 

 richer than any other language of the East in words expres- 

 sing the ideas of desert, uninhabited plains, and plains 

 covered with gramina. I could give a list of thirty-five of 

 these words, which the Arabian authors employ, without 

 always distinguishing them by the gradations, that each 

 separate word expresses. Makadd and kadh indicate in pre- 

 ference, plains ; hakaah, a table-land ; kafr, mikfar, smlis, 

 mahk, and habaucer, a naked desert, covered with sand and 

 gravel ; tanufah, a steppe. Zahra means at once a naked 

 desert and a savannah. The word steppe, or step, is Russian, 

 and not Tatarian. In the Turco-tatar dialect* a heath is 

 called tola or tschoL The word gobi, of which Europeans 



