61 



the llanos destitute of trees and covered with 

 grass, in time disappear I but what ages must 

 pass, to render any change sensible in the im- 

 mense steppes of Venezuela, Meta, Caqueta, 

 and Buenos Ayres ! What we have seen of the 

 power of man struggling against the force of 

 nature in Gaul, in Germany, and recently, but 

 still beyond the tropics, in the United States, 

 can scarcely give any just measure of what we 

 must expect from the progress of civilization 

 in the torrid zone. I have mentioned above 

 how slowly forests are made to disappear by 

 fire and the axe, when the trunks of trees 

 are from eight to ten feet in diameter ; and 

 when in falling they rest one upon the other, 

 and their wood, moistened by almost continual 

 rains, is of an excessive hardness. The planters, 

 who inhabit the llanos or pampas, do not ge- 

 nerally recognize the possibility of subjecting 

 the soil to cultivation ; it is a problem which is 

 not yet solved in a general view. The savan- 

 nahs of Venezuela have not for the most part 

 the same advantage as those of North America, 

 which are traversed longitudinally by three great 

 rivers, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Red 

 River of Natchitoches ; the savannahs of A r au- 

 ra, Calabozo, and Pao, are crossed in a trans- 

 verse direction only by the tributary streams of 

 the Oroonoko, the westernmost of which (the 

 Cari, the Pao, the Acaru, and the Manapire) 



