25S 
RAPTDS OP ATTIRES. 
moral dispositions of nations. Every type comprehends 
species, which, while exhibiting the same general appear- 
ance, differ in the varied development of the similar organs. 
The palm-trees, the scitamineie, the malvacese, the trees with 
pinnate leaves, do not all display the same picturesque 
beauties ; and generally the most beautiful species of each 
type, in plants as in animals, belong to the equinoctial zone. 
‘ The proteaceas* crotons, agaves, and the great tribe ot 
the cactuses, which inhabit exclusively the New World, dis- 
appear gradually, as we ascend the Orinoco above the 
Apure and the Meta. It is, however, the shade and humi- 
dity, rather than the distance from the coast, which oppose 
the migration of the cactuses southward. We found forests 
of them mingled with crotons, covering a great space of arid 
land to the east of the Andes, in the province of Bracamoros, 
towards the Upper Maraiion. The arborescent ferns seem 
to fail entirely near the cataracts of the Orinoco ; we found 
no species as far as San Fernando de Atabapo, that is, to 
the confluence of the Orinoco and the Gkiaviare. 
Having now examined the vicinity of the Atures, it re- 
mains for mo to speak of the rapids themselves, which occur 
in a part of the valley where the bed of the river, deeply 
ingulfed, has almost inaccessible banks. It was only in a 
very few spots that we could enter the Orinoco to bathe, 
between the two cataracts, in coves where the waters have 
eddies of little velocity. Persons who have dwelt in the 
Alps, the Pyrenees, or even the Cordilleras, so celebrated 
for the fractures and the vestiges of destruction which 
they display at every step, can scarcely picture to them- 
selves, from a mere narration, the state of the bed ot tm 
river. It is traversed, in an extent of more than five mile®’ 
by innumerable dikes of rock, forming so many natura 
dams, so many barriers resembling those of the Dnieper* 
which the ancients designated by the name _ of phragmO*- 
The space between the rocky dikes of the Orinoco is filled 
with islands of different dimensions ; some hilly, divided im° 
several peaks, and two or three hundred toises in length’ 
others small, low, and like mere shoals. These island 
divide the river into a number of torrents, which boil up 9 
* R/npalas, which characterise the vegetation of the Llanos. 
