SUCCULENT CHEEPERS. 
217 
regions, particularly in the hot valleys of the Andes, to 
conceive how these birds sometimes drown with their voices 
the noise of the torrents, which dash down from rock to 
rock. 
“We left the forests, at the distance of somewhat more 
than a league from the village of San Fernando. A narrow 
E ath led, after many windings, into an open but extremely 
umid country. In such a site in the temperate zone, the 
cyperaceous and gramineous plants would have formed vast 
meadows ; here the soil abounded in aquatic plants, with 
sagittate leaves, and especially in basil plants, among which 
we noticed the fine flowers of the costus, the thalia, and the 
heliconia. These succulent plants are from eight to ten feet 
high, and in Europe one of their groups would be considered 
as a little wood. 
Hear San Fernando the evaporation caused by the action 
of the sim was so great that, being very lightly clothed, we 
felt ourselves as wet as in a vapour bath. The road was 
bordered with a kind of bamboo,* which the Indians call 
iagua, or guadua, and which is more than forty feet in height. 
Nothing can exceed the elegance of this arborescent gramen. 
The form and disposition of its leaves give it a character 
of lightness which contrasts agreeably with its height. The 
smooth and glossy trunk of the iagua generally bends to- 
wards the banks of rivulets, and it waves with the slightest 
breath of air. The highest reedst in the south of Europe, 
can give no idea of the aspect of the arborescent gramina. 
The bamboo and fern-tree are, of all the vegetable forms 
between the tropics, those which make the most powerful 
impression on the imagination of the traveller. Bamboos are 
less common in South America than is usually believed. 
They are almost wanting in the marshes and in the vast 
inundated plains of the Lower Orinoco, the Apure, and the 
Atabapo, while they form thick woods, several leagues in 
length, in the north-west, in New Grenada, and in the king- 
dom of Quito. It might be said that the western declivity 
of the Andes is their true country ; and, what is remarkable 
enough, we found them not only in the low regions at the 
level of the ocean, but also in the lofty valleys of the Cordil- 
leras, at the height of 860 toises. 
* Bambuaa guadua. + Arundo donas. 
