BANKS OF TUB LLANOS. 
89 
altogether destitute of palm-trees ; and where the mountains 
of the shore and of the Orinoco are so distant that they 
cannot be seen, as in the Mesa de Pavones. A person would 
be tempted there to take the altitude of the sun with a quad- 
rant, if the horizon of the land were not constantly misty on 
account of the variable effects of refraction. This equality 
of surface is still more perfect in the meridian of Calabozo, 
than towards the east, between Cari, La Villa del Pao, and 
Nueva Barcelona ; but it extends without interruption from 
the mouths of the Orinoco to La Villa de Araure and to 
Ospiiios, on a parallel of a hundred and eighty leagues in 
length; and from San Carles to the savannahs of Caqueat, 
on a meridian of two hundred leagues. It particularly cha- 
racterises the New Continent, as it does the low steppes of 
Asia, between the Borysthenes and the Volga, between the 
Irtish and the Obi. The deserts of central Africa, of Arabia, 
Syria, and Persia, Gobi, and Casna, present, on the contrary, 
many inequalities, ranges of hills, ravines without water, 
and rocks which pierce the sands. 
The Llanos, however, notwithstanding the apparent uni- 
formity of their surface, present two kinds of inequalities, 
which cannot escape the observation of the traveller. The 
first is known by the name of banks (bancos) ; they are in 
reality shoals in the basin of the steppes, fractured strata of 
sandstone, or compact limestone, standing four or five feet 
higher than the rest of the plain. These banks are some- 
times three or four leagues in length; they are entirely 
smooth, with a horizontal surface; their existence is per- 
ceived only by examining their margins. The second species 
of inequality can be recognised only by geodesical or baro- 
metric levellings, or by the course of rivers. It is called a 
mesa or table, and is composed of small flats, or rather 
convex eminences, that rise insensibly to the height of a 
tew toises. Such are, towards the east, in the province of 
Cumana, on the north of the Villa de la Merced and Can- 
delaria, the Mesas of Amana,of Guanipa, and of Jonoro, the 
direction of which is south-west and north-east ; and which, 
in spite of their inconsiderable elevation, divide the water* 
between the Oiinoco and the northern coast of Terra Firma. 
The convexity of the savannah alone occasions this partition • 
we there fin’d the ‘dividing of the waters’ (divortia aqua- 
