The Aridity And Excessive Heat Of The Mesas Do Not Depend Solely On The Nature Of Their Surface And The Local Reverberation Of The Soil; Their Climate Is Modified By The Adjacent Regions; By The Whole Of The Llano Of Which They Form A Part.

In the deserts of Africa or Arabia, in the Llanos of South America, in the vast heaths extending from

The extremity of Jutland to the mouth of the Scheldt, the stability of the limits of the desert, the savannahs, and the downs, depends chiefly on their immense extent and the nakedness these plains have acquired from some revolution destructive of the ancient vegetation of our planet. By their extent, their continuity, and their mass they oppose the inroads of cultivation and preserve, like inland gulfs, the stability of their boundaries. I will not enter upon the great question, whether in the Sahara, that Mediterranean of moving sands, the germs of organic life are increased in our days. In proportion as our geographical knowledge has extended we have discovered in the eastern part of the desert islets of verdure; oases covered with date-trees crowd together in more numerous archipelagos, and open their ports to the caravans; but we are ignorant whether the form of the oases have not remained constantly the same since the time of Herodotus. Our annals are too incomplete to enable us to follow Nature in her slow and gradual progress. From these spaces entirely bare whence some violent catastrophe has swept away the vegetable covering and the mould; from those deserts of Syria and Africa which, by their petrified wood, attest the changes they have undergone; let us turn to the grass-covered Llanos and to the consideration of phenomena that come nearer the circle of our daily observations. Respecting the possibility of a more general cultivation of the steppes of America, the colonists settled there, concur in the opinions I have deduced from the climatic action of these steppes considered as surfaces, or continuous masses. They have observed that downs enclosed within cultivated and wooded land sooner yield to the labours of the husbandman than soils alike circumscribed, but forming part of a vast surface of the same nature. This observation is extremely just whether in reference to soil covered with heath, as in the north of Europe; with cistuses, mastic-trees, or palmettos, as in Spain; or with cactuses, argemones, or brathys, as in equinoctial America. The more space the association occupies the more resistance do the social plants oppose to the labourer. With this general cause others are combined in the Llanos of Venezuela; namely the action of the small grasses which impoverish the soil; the total absence of trees and brushwood; the sandy winds, the heat of which is increased by contact with a surface absorbing the rays of the sun during twelve hours, and unshaded except by the stalks of the aristides, chanchuses, and paspalums. The progress observable on the vegetation of large trees and the cultivation of dicotyledonous plants in the vicinity of towns, (for instance around Calabozo and Pao) prove what may be gained upon the Llano by attacking it in small portions, enclosing it by degrees, and dividing it by coppices and canals of irrigation. Possibly the influence of the winds which render the soil sterile might be diminished by sowing on a large scale, for example, over fifteen or twenty acres, the seeds of the psidium, the croton, the cassia, or the tamarind, which prefer dry, open spots. I am far from believing that the savannahs will ever disappear entirely; or that the Llanos, so useful for pasturage and the trade in cattle, will ever be cultivated like the valleys of Aragua or other parts near the coast of Caracas and Cumana: but I am persuaded that in the lapse of ages a considerable portion of these plains, under a government favourable to industry, will lose the wild aspect which has characterized them since the first conquest by Europeans.

After three days' journey we began to perceive the chain of the mountains of Cumana, which separates the Llanos, or, as they are often called here, the great sea of verdure,* from the coast of the Caribbean Sea. (* Los Llanos son como un mar de yerbas - The Llanos are like a vast sea of grass - is an observation often repeated in these regions.) If the Bergantin be more than eight hundred toises high, it may be seen supposing only an ordinary refraction of one fourteenth of the arch, at the distance of twenty-seven nautical leagues; but the state of the atmosphere long concealed from us the majestic view of this curtain of mountains. It appeared at first like a fog-bank which hid the stars near the pole at their rising and setting; gradually this body of vapour seemed to augment and condense, to assume a bluish tint, and become bounded by sinuous and fixed outlines. The same effects which the mariner observes on approaching a new land present themselves to the traveller on the borders of the Llano. The horizon began to enlarge in some part and the vault of heaven seemed no longer to rest at an equal distance on the grass-covered soil. A llanero, or inhabitant of the Llanos, is happy only when, as expressed in the simple phraseology of the country, he can see everywhere well around him. What appears to European eyes a covered country, slightly undulated by a few scattered hills, is to him a rugged region bristled with mountains. After having passed several months in the thick forests of the Orinoco, in places where one is accustomed, when at any distance from the river, to see the stars only in the zenith, as through the mouth of a well, a journey in the Llanos is peculiarly agreeable and attractive. The traveller experiences new sensations; and, like the Llanero, he enjoys the happiness of seeing well around him. But this enjoyment, as we ourselves experienced, is not of long duration.

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