Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Since We Have Become Better Acquainted With The Deserts In
The Interior Of Africa, So Long And So Vaguely Confounded
Together
under the name of desert of Sahara (Zahra); it has been observed, that
in this continent, towards the east,
Savannahs and pastures are found,
as in Arabia, situated in the midst of naked and barren tracts. It is
these deserts, covered with gravel and destitute of plants, which are
almost entirely wanting in the New World. I saw them only in that part
of Peru, between Amotape and Coquimbo, on the shores of the Pacific.
These are called by the Spaniards, not llanos, but the desiertos of
Sechura and Atacamez. This solitary tract is not broad, but it is four
hundred and forty leagues long. The rock pierces everywhere through
the quicksands. No drop of rain ever falls on it; and, like the desert
of Sahara, north of Timbuctoo, the Peruvian desert affords, near
Huaura, a rich mine of native salt. Everywhere else, in the New World,
there are plains desert because not inhabited, but no real deserts.*
(* We are almost tempted, however, to give the name of desert to that
vast and sandy table-land of Brazil, the Campos dos Parecis, which
gives birth to the rivers Tapajos, Paraguay, and Madeira, and which
reaches the summit of the highest mountains. Almost destitute of
vegetation, it reminds us of Gobi, in Mongolia.)
The same phenomena are repeated in the most distant regions; and,
instead of designating those vast treeless plains in accordance with
the nature of the plants they produce, it seems natural to class them
into deserts, steppes, or savannahs; into bare lands without any
appearance of vegetation, and lands covered with gramina or small
plants of the dicotyledonous tribe.
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