71 



the Wolga and the Don, are scarcely poorer hi 

 species of plants and animals, than are twenty- 

 eight thousand square leagues of savannahs, 

 that extend in a semicircle from north-east to 

 south-west, from the mouths of the Oroonoko to 

 the banks of the Caqueta and the Putumayo, 

 beneath the finest sky of the globe, and in the 

 climate of plantains and breadfruit trees. The 

 influence of the equinoctial climate, every where 

 else so vivifying, is not felt in places, where the 

 great associations of graminea have almost ex- 

 cluded every other plant. From the view of the 

 ground we might have believed we were in the 

 temperate zone, and even still farther toward 

 the north : but a few scattered palms, and, at 

 the entrance of the night, the fine constellations 



scale, I found the llanos of Cumana, Barcelona, and Carac- 

 cas, from the delta of the Oroonoko to the northern bank of 

 the Apure, seven thousand two hundred square leagues ; the 

 llanos between the Apure and Putumayo, twenty-one thou- 

 sand leagues; the pampas on the north-west of Buenos- 

 Ayres, forty thousand square leagues ; the pampas south 

 of the parallel of Buenos- Ay res, thirty-seven thousand square 

 leagues. The total area of the llanos of South America, 

 covered with gramina, is consequently one hundred and live 

 thousand two hundred square leagues, twenty leagues to an 

 equatorial degree. (Spain has fifteen thousand of the same 

 leagues.) The great plain of Africa, known by the name of 

 Sahara, contains ten thousand square leagues, including the 

 scattered oases, but not Bornou or Darfour. (The Medi- 

 terranean has only about eighty-nine thousand square leagues 

 of surface.) See above, v ol. iv, p. 314. 



