Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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If, Even In The Peaceful Times When M. Bonpland And Myself Had The
Good Fortune To Travel Through North And
South America, the Llanos
were the refuge of malefactors who had committed crimes in the
missions of the Orinoco, or
Who had escaped from the prisons on the
coast, how much worse must that state of things have been rendered by
discord during the continuance of that sanguinary struggle which has
terminated in conferring freedom and independence on those vast
regions! Our European wastes and heaths are but a feeble image of the
savannahs of the New Continent which for the space of eight or ten
thousand square leagues are smooth as the surface of the sea. The
immensity of their extent insures impunity to robbers, who conceal
themselves more effectually in the savannahs than in our mountains and
forests; and it is easy to conceive that even a European police would
not be very effective in regions where there are travellers and no
roads, herds and no herdsmen, and farms so solitary that
notwithstanding the powerful action of the mirage, a journey of
several days may be made without seeing one appear within the horizon.
Whilst traversing the Llanos of Caracas, New Barcelona, and Cumana,
which succeed each other from west to east, from the snowy mountains
of Merida to the Delta of the Orinoco, we feel anxious to know whether
these vast tracts of land are destined by nature to serve eternally
for pasture or whether they will at some future time be subject to the
plough and the spade. This question is the more important as the
Llanos, situated at the two extremities of South America, are
obstacles to the political union of the provinces they separate. They
prevent the agriculture of the coast of Venezuela from extending
towards Guiana and they impede that of Potosi from advancing in the
direction of the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. The intermediate Llanos
preserve, together with pastoral life, somewhat of a rude and wild
character which separates and keeps them remote from the civilization
of countries anciently cultivated. Thus it has happened that in the
war of independence they have been the scene of struggle between the
hostile parties; and that the inhabitants of Calabozo have almost seen
the fate of the confederate provinces of Venezuela and Cundinamarca
decided before their walls. In assigning limits to the new states and
to their subdivisions, it is to be hoped there may not be cause
hereafter to repent having lost sight of the importance of the Llanos,
and the influence they may have on the disunion of communities which
important common interests should bring together. These plains would
serve as natural boundaries like the seas or the virgin forests of the
tropics, were it not that armies can cross them with greater facility,
as their innumerable troops of horses and mules and herds of oxen
furnish every means of conveyance and subsistence.
What we have seen of the power of man struggling against the force of
nature in Gaul, in Germany and recently (but still beyond the tropics)
in the United States, scarcely affords any just measure of what we may
expect from the progress of civilization in the torrid zone. Forests
disappear but very slowly by fire and the axe when the trunks of trees
are from eight to ten feet in diameter; when in falling they rest one
upon another, and the wood, moistened by almost continual rains, is
excessively hard. The planters who inhabit the Llanos or Pampas do not
generally admit the possibility of subjecting the soil to cultivation;
it is a problem not yet solved. Most of the savannahs of Venezuela
have not the same advantage as those of North America. The latter are
traversed longitudinally by three great rivers, the Missouri, the
Arkansas, and the Red River of Nachitoches; the savannahs of Araura,
Calabozo, and Pao are crossed in a transverse direction only by the
tributary streams of the Orinoco, the most westerly of which (the
Cari, the Pao, the Acaru, and the Manapire) have very little water in
the season of drought. These streams scarcely flow at all toward the
north; so that in the centre of the Llanos there remain vast tracts of
land called bancos and mesas* frightfully parched. (* The Spanish
words banco and mesa signify literally bench and table. In the Llanos
of South America little elevations rising slightly above the general
elevation of the plain are called bancos and mesas from their supposed
resemblance to benches and tables.) The eastern parts, fertilized by
the Portuguesa, the Masparro, and the Orivante, and by the tributary
streams of those three rivers, are most susceptible of cultivation.
The soil is sand mixed with clay, covering a bed of quartz pebbles.
The vegetable mould, the principal source of the nutrition of plants,
is everywhere extremely thin. It is scarcely augmented by the fall of
the leaves, which, in the forests of the torrid zone, is less
periodically regular than in temperate climates. During thousands of
years the Llanos have been destitute of trees and brushwood; a few
scattered palms in the savannah add little to that hydruret of carbon,
that extractive matter, which, according to the experiments of
Saussure, Davy, and Braconnot, gives fertility to the soil. The social
plants which almost exclusively predominate in the steppes, are
monocotyledons; and it is known how much grasses impoverish the soil
into which their fibrous roots penetrate. This action of the
killingias, paspalums and cenchri, which form the turf, is everywhere
the same; but where the rock is ready to pierce the earth this varies
according as it rests on red sandstone, or on compact limestone and
gypsum; it varies according as periodical inundations accumulate mud
on the lower grounds or as the shock of the waters carries away from
the small elevations the little soil that has covered them. Many
solitary cultivated spots already exist in the midst of the pastures
where running water and tufts of the mauritia palm have been found.
These farms, sown with maize, and planted with cassava, will multiply
considerably if trees and shrubs be augmented.
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