In South America, the features of Nature are traced on a gigantic scale. Mountains, forests, rivers, plains, there appear in far more colossal dimensions than in our part of the world. Many a branch of the Marañon surpasses the Danube in size. In the boundless primitive forests of Guiana more than one Great Britain could find room. The Alps would seem but of moderate elevation if placed aside of the towering Andes; and the plains of Northern Germany and Holland are utterly insignificant when compared with the Llanos of Venezuela and New Grenada, which, stretching from the coast-chain of Caraccas to the forests of Guiana, and from the snow-crowned mountains of Merida to the Delta of the Orinoco, cover a surface of more than 250,000 square miles.
Nothing can be more remarkable than the contrast which these immeasurable plains present at various seasons of the year—now parched by a long-continued drought, and now covered with the most luxuriant vegetation. When, day after day, the sun, rising and setting in a cloudless sky, pours his vertical rays upon the thirsty Llanos, the calcined grass-plains present the monotonous aspect of an interminable waste. Like the ocean, their limits melt in the hazy distance with those of the horizon; but here the resemblance ceases, for no refreshing breeze wafts coolness over the desert, and comforts the drooping spirits of the wanderer.
In the wintry solitudes of Siberia the skin of the reindeer affords protection to man against the extreme cold; but in these sultry plains there is no refuge from the burning sun above and the heat reflected from the glowing soil below, save where, at vast intervals, small clumps of the Mauritia palm afford a scanty shade. The water-pools which nourished this beneficent tree have long since disappeared; and the marks of the previous rainy season, still visible on the tall reeds that spring from the marshy ground, serve only to mock the thirst of the exhausted traveller. The long-legged jabiru and the scarlet ibis have forsaken the dried-up swamp which no longer affords them any subsistence, and only here and there a solitary Caracara falcon lingers on the spot, as if meditating on the vicissitudes of the seasons.
NEPENTHES.
Yet even now the parched savannah has some refreshment to bestow, as Nature—which in the East Indian forests fills the pitchers of the Nepenthes with a grateful liquid,—here also displays her bounty; for the globular melon-cactus, which flourishes on the driest soil, and not seldom measures a foot in diameter, conceals a juicy pulp under its tough and brickly skin. Guided by an admirable instinct, the wary mule strikes off with his fore-feet the long, sharp thorns of this remarkable plant, the emblem of good-nature under a rough exterior, and then cautiously approaches his lips to sip the refreshing juice. Yet, drinking from these living sources is not unattended with danger, and mules are often met with that have been lamed by the formidable prickles of the cactus. The wild horse and ox of the savannah, not gifted with the same sagacity, roam about a prey to hunger and burning thirst—the latter hoarsely bellowing, the former snuffing up the air with outstreched neck to discover by its moisture the neighbourhood of some pool that may have resisted the general drought.
Besides their interminable extent, the Llanos have several other points of resemblance to the sea. As here the water-spout, raised by contending air-currents, rises to the clouds and sweeps over the floods, thus also the glowing dust of the savannah, set in motion by conflicting winds, ascends in mighty columns and glides over the desert plain. Then woe to the traveller who cannot escape by a timely flight; for, seizing him with irresistible violence the sand spout carries him along in its embrace, and hurls him senseless to the ground.
As if ‘on a painted ocean,’ the becalmed ship rests on the glassy sea. No breath of air ruffles the surface of the waters.
The pennant hangs lazily from the mast; the water-casks are empty; the torments of thirst, aggravated by the heat of a vertical sun, become intolerable. But, suddenly, as if by magic, a beautiful island rises from the floods; waving palm-trees seem to welcome the mariner: he fancies he hears the purling of the brook and the splashing of the waterfall. Yet still the vessel moves not from the spot, and soon the fading phantom that mocked his misery leaves him the victim of increased despair.
Similar delusions of the mirage, produced by the refraction of the light as it passes through atmospherical strata of unequal warmth, and consequently of unequal density, likewise take place over the surface of the Llanos, which then assume the semblance of a sea, heaving and rocking in wave-like motion. In the Lybian desert, in the dread solitudes of the polar ocean, in every zone, we meet with the same phenomenon, produced by the same cause.