The whole coast of the Mexican Gulf, from the Pearl River eastward, through Alabama and a great part of Florida, is occupied by the so-called “pine barrens,” which extend far into the interior. These “vast monotonous tracts of sand, covered with forests of gigantic pine trees,” are not less a characteristic feature of North America than the “rolling prairies.” They are not limited to this part of the United States, but occur to a great extent in Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere. Tennessee and Kentucky, though the plough has passed over extensive areas, still possess large forests, and the Ohio flows for hundreds of miles among patriarchal trees, with a rich undergrowth of azaleas, rhododendrons, and other beautiful shrubs, bound together in chains of flowers by creeping plants. When America was discovered, one mass of unbroken forest spread over the mainland, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Canadian Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic Ocean it crossed the Alleghany Mountains, and spread in gloom and grandeur over the valley of the Mississippi—an ocean of vegetation swelling and sinking for upwards of one million of square miles.
“Then all the broad and boundless mainland lay,
Cooled by the interminable wood, that frowned
O’er mound and vale, where never summer ray
Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his way
Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild;
Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms gay,
Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild,
Within the shaggy arms of that dark forest smiled.”[91]
Prairies which, in their general aspect, resemble those of the Missouri and the Mississippi, are found to the east and west of the American Desert, in Arrisona, in Texas, in California, and various provinces of Mexico. Vegetation, however, nevertheless differs according to the conditions of each region, and the alternatives of deluging rains and extreme dryness become more and more conspicuous as we approach the Equator. Nevertheless—and this, perhaps, is the feature most distinctive of the Prairies, or Savannahs, from the Pampas and Llanos—the dryness is never sufficiently severe in the former to destroy vegetation, as is the case in the latter. But the herbs and grasses often grow so dry in summer that the most trivial accident—such as a lighted match flung carelessly away, or the ashes dropped from a hunter’s pipe—will kindle the most awful conflagrations, and the flames will spread devouringly over leagues of open ground, consuming trees and shrubs, and burning to death the cattle or wild animals which haply fall within their range. With the crackling, hissing, seething noises of the fire mingle the groans of the perishing beasts, while huge clouds of smoke roll before the wind, like the billows of a wind-swept ocean, and live tongues of flame ever and anon light up the terrible scene with lurid splendour. These “Prairie-fires” are sometimes kindled in revenge by the Indians, and occasionally the settlers resort to this dangerous but summary method of clearing the encumbered ground. However caused, the spectacle is one of infinite grandeur, which might have furnished Dante with a fresh image of horror for his “Inferno.”
From the fortieth to the thirty-fifth parallels of north latitude the Desert appears in North America under a form more like the “seas of sand” of Africa and Arabia; the vast areas of the Llanos and the Pampas. These two words are nearly synonymous. They are used to designate wide level plains, inundated and fertile in the rainy season, but in the hot season stripped by the sun’s rays of every apparent trace of vegetation. Between the Californian Alps and the Rio-Colorado withers a grand, sandy, and utterly barren plain, which touches the northern borders of La Sonora. Somewhat further to the east extends the Llano-Estacado, which eventually merges into the American Desert. But the most considerable Pampas and Llanos belong to South America. Of these, the most arid and the most desolate—which most vividly recall the rainless deserts of the Old World—are the Pampa of Atacama, between the Andes and the Pacific, with Taracapa on the north, and Copiapo on the south; that of Sechura, which forms a great portion of the littoral of the Peruvian department of Truxillo; and that of Pernambuco, which forms the major part of the plateau north-east of Brazil.
These Deserts, no less than those of Africa and Arabia, merit the name of the “Land of Fear.”
Their surface is as smooth as that of the calm sea, and bounded only by the circular line of the horizon; the eye frequently ranges over a space of twenty-five square miles without meeting a clump of trees on which to rest; nor is the monotony relieved by the slightest undulation of the soil. Everywhere is nothingness, silence, desolation, death. More than one wayfarer has never escaped from their mazy solitudes. Fatigue, hunger, thirst, decimate the caravans which undertake to traverse them, and the track is marked by whitened skeletons, whose flesh has been devoured by vultures, and which unknown hands have piled up and arranged with a ghastly symmetry of order.
However, since the discovery of America, certain portions of the Llanos have become habitable. Towns have risen at intervals on the banks of the rivers which water them. These centres of population are connected with each other by huts of reeds, covered with ox-hides, and separated by about a day’s march. Here reside the Llaneros, to whose charge are intrusted the innumerable herds of cattle, horses, and mules, which subsist on the pasturage of the Steppes.
The inhabitants of the Llanos possess characteristics as marked as those of their plains. The hatos wherein they assemble are situated at long distances apart; but the true home of the llanero, a bold and skilful horseman, is his saddle. Firmly seated on his rapid steed, he gallops at will across the trackless plain, and combining the two extremes of solitude and activity, confines his half-savage existence to the custody or the ownership of his herds of horses and cattle. Thus, born in the Llanos like his father, a descendant of the first Spanish settlers, he has no idea of any other country than his southern pastures, of any other career than his dreamy pastoral life. Clothed in a picturesque costume, half Spanish, half Indian; his machete (or cutlass) thrust through a belt of leather, his poncho (a chequered mantle) over his shoulder, and the redoubtable lasso suspended in a coil to his saddle-bow; armed with the clumsy lance, which serves to drive his herd before him, and, at need, to vindicate its owner’s courage in some partisan affray; the llanero, never thinking of the past, never dreaming of the future, on the alert in every danger, and accustomed to the severest privations, enjoys with intoxication the rude happiness of his wild freedom.