100 
ATTACUilENT ro THE IXA50S. 
beings even to its utmost depths, changing perpetually in 
colour and aspect, moveable at its surface like the element 
that agitates it, all charm the imagination during long 
voyages by sea ; but the dusty and creviced Llano, throughout 
a great part of the year, has a depressing influence on the 
mind, by its unchanging monotony. When, after eight or 
ten days’ journey, the traveller becomes accustomed to tlie 
mirage and the brilliant verdure of a few tufts of mauritia* 
scattered from league to league, he feels the want of more 
laried impressions. He loves again to behold the great 
tropical trees, the wild rush of torrents, or hills and vallei s 
cultivated by the hand of the labourer. If the deserts of 
Africa, and of the Llanos or savannahs of the IN'ew Continent 
jillcd a still greater space than they actually occupy, nature 
would be deprived of many of the beautiful products peculiar 
to the torrid zone.f fl’he* heaths of the north, the steppes of 
the Volga and the Hon, are scareely poorer in species of 
plants and animals than are the twenty-eight thousand 
square leagues of savannahs extending in a semicircle from 
north-cast to south-west, from the mouths of the Orinoco to 
the bank's of the Caqueta and the Putumayo, beneath the 
finest sky in the world, and in the land of plantains and 
bread-fruit trees. The influence of the equinoctial climate, 
everywhere else so vivifying, is not felt in places where the 
great associations of gramina almost e.xclude every other 
plant. Judging from the aspect of the soil, we might 
liavc believed ourselves to be in the temperate zme, and 
even still farther northward, but that a few scattered palms, 
and at nightfall the fine constellations of the southern sky 
(the Centaur, Canojius, and the innninerahle nebnl® with 
whieh the Ship is resplendent), reminded us that we were 
only eight degrees distant from the equator. 
A phenomenon which fixed the attention of He Luc, and 
• The fan palm, or sago-tree of Guiana. 
f In calculating from maps on a very large scale, I found the Llanos 
of Cumana, Barcelona, and Caracas, from the delta of the Orinoco to 
ilie northern bank of the Apure, 7,200 square leagues; the Llanos 
between the Apure and Putumayo, 21,000 leagues; the Pampas on the 
north-west of Buenos Ayres, 40,000 square leagues j the Pampas south 
of the parallel of Buenos Ayres, 37,000 square leagues. The total area 
of the Llanos of South America, covered with gramina, is consequently 
105,200 square leagues, twenty leagues to an equatorial degree. 
