557 



and boas must have inhabited these vast spaces 

 of land, converted alternately into marshes of 

 stagnant water, and into barren and fissured 

 plains ! The more peaceful world which we in- 

 habit has then succeeded to a world of tumult. 

 The bones of mastodontes and real American 

 elephants are found dispersed on the table-lands 

 of the Andes. The megatherium inhabited the 

 plains of Uruguay. On digging deep into the 

 ground in high vallies, where neither palm-trees 

 nor arborescent ferns can grow, strata of coal 

 are discovered, that imbed gigantic vestiges of 

 monocotyledonous plants. 



There was a remote period then, in which the 

 classes of plants were otherwise distributed, 

 when the animals were larger and the rivers 

 broader and of greater depth. There end those 

 records of Nature, that it is in our power to con- 

 sult. We are ignorant whether the human race, 

 which at the time of the discovery of America 

 scarcely formed a few feeble tribes on the East 

 of the Cordilleras, had already descended into the 

 plains ; or whether the ancient tradition of the 

 great waters, which is found among the nations 

 of the Oroonoko, the Erevato, and the Caura, 

 belong to other climates, whence it has been 

 propagated to this part of the New Continent. 



April the 11th. We left Carichana at two 

 in the afternoon, and found the course of the 

 river more and more encumbered by blocks of 



