102 
DANGEROUS SITUATION. 
and we again walked three quarters of an hour without 
finding the pool. We sometimes thought we saw fire on 
the horizon; but it was the light of the rising stars enlarged 
by the vapours. After having wandered a long time in the 
savannah, we resolved to seat ourselves beneath the trunk 
of a palm-tree, in a spot perfectly dry, surrounded by short 
grass ; for the fear of water-snakes is always greater than 
that of jaguars among Europeans recently disembarked. 
We could not flatter ourselves that our guides, of whom we 
knew the insuperable indolence, would come in search of us 
in the savannah before they had prepared their food and 
finished their repast. Whilst somewhat perplexed by the 
uncertainty of our situation, we were agreeably affected by 
hearing from afar the sound of a horse advancing towards us. 
The rider was an Indian, armed with a lance, who had just 
made the rodeo, or round, in order to collect the cattle 
within a determinate space of ground. The sight of two 
white men, who said they had lost their way, led him at 
first to suspect some trick. We found it difficult to inspire 
him with confidence ; he at last consented to guide us to 
the farm of the Cayman, but without slackening the gentle 
trot of his horse. Our guides assured us that “ they had 
already begun to be uneasy about us and, to justify this 
inquietude, they gave a long enumeration of persons who, 
having lost themselves in the Llanos, had been found nearly 
exhausted. It may be supposed that the danger is immi- 
nent only to those who lose themselves far from any habi- 
tation, or who, having been stripped by robbers, as has 
happened of late years, have been fastened by the body and 
hands to the trunk of a palm-tree. 
In order to escape as much as possible from the heat of 
the day, we set off at two in the morning, with the hope of 
reaching Calabozo before noon, a small but busy trading- 
town, situated in the midst of the Llanos. The aspect of the 
country was still the same. There was no moonlight ; but 
the great masses of nebula that spot the southern sky en- 
lighten, as they set, a part of the terrestrial horizon. The 
solemn spectacle of the starry vault, seen in its immense 
expanse; — the cool breeze which blows over the plain dining 
ihe night : — the waving motion of the grass, wherever it has 
attained any height ; everything recalled to our minds the 
