68 



iter, would lead to a sensible melioration in the 

 moral state of the inhabitants of the steppe? 

 Softer manners, a taste for a sedentary way 

 of life, and domestic virtues, would penetrate 

 into them with agricultural labours. 



After three days' journey, we began to per- 

 ceive the chain of the mountains of Cumana, 

 which separates the llanos, or, as they are often 

 called here *, " the great sea of verdure," from 

 the coast of the Caribbean sea. If the Bergan- 

 tin be more than eight hundred toises high, it 

 may be seen supposing only an ordinary refrac- 

 tion of one fourteenth of the arch, at twentv- 

 seven nautical leagues distance ~f~; but the state 

 of the atmosphere long concealed from us the 

 majestic view of this curtain of mountains. It 

 appeared at first like a fog bank, which hid the 

 stars near the pole at their rising and setting ; 

 by degrees this body of vapours seemed to aug- 

 ment, condense, take a bluish tint, and become 

 bounded by sinuous and fixed outlines. All 

 that the mariner observes on approaching anew 

 land presents itself to the traveller on the bor- 

 ders of the steppe. The horizon begins to en- 

 large in some part, and the vault of the sky 

 seems no longer to rest at an equal distance on 

 the soil covered with grass. An inhabitant 

 of the llanos is happy only when, according 



* " Los lanos son como un mar de yerbtis." 

 + Vol. ii, p. 206; and iii, p. 91. 



