It extended—oh, such a distance far away to the horizon! The sea itself seemed less extensive than these
"High plains......
And vast savannahs, where the wandering eye,
Unfixed, is in a verdant ocean lost".
CHAPTER XXIV.
ON THE LONESOME LLANOS.
The vast and lonesome uplands, called Llanos, on which our heroes now found themselves, are the pampas of the far southern districts of South America.
There is a weirdness about them, especially in the silence of the night, that strikes one with awe. But sometimes, indeed, day is more silent than night, for then the stillness is unbroken by howl of wild beasts or scream of birds of prey. So quiet is it then on some portions of the Llanos, that you can hear the sound of the human voice in ordinary conversation full two hundred yards away, while if you wander long here, so great is the strain on one's nerves that the slightest sound will make one start—a tiny snake rustling among the grass, a breaking reed, or lizard nibbling at a stalk of couch.
Humboldt, the great traveller, is not, I fear, much read nowadays, but he speaks about these solitary regions as follows:—
"Here in the Llanos, all around us, the plains seemed to rise to heaven; and this vast and silent desert appeared to our eyes like a sea that is covered with sea-weed, or the algae of the deep ocean. According to the inequality of the vapour floating on the atmosphere, and the alternate temperature of the breezes contending against each other, was the appearance of the horizon; in some places clearly and sharply defined, in others wavy, crooked, and, as it were, striped.
"The earth there seemed to mingle with heaven. Through the dry mist we sometimes perceived palm-trees in the distance. Stripped of their leaves and green feathery summits, these stems, rising out of the low-lying fog, resembled the masts of ships, which one descries on the horizon at sea."
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