The Savannahs Of America, Especially Those Of The Temperate Zone, Have In Many Works Been Designated By The French Term Prairies; But This Appears To Me Little Applicable To Pastures Which Are Often Very Dry, Though Covered With Grass Of Four Or Five Feet In Height.

The Llanos and the Pampas of South America are really steppes.

They are covered with beautiful verdure in the rainy season, but in the time of great drought they assume the aspect of a desert. The grass is then reduced to powder; the earth cracks; the alligators and the great serpents remain buried in the dried mud, till awakened from their long lethargy by the first showers of spring. These phenomena are observed on barren tracts of fifty or sixty leagues in length, wherever the savannahs are not traversed by rivers; for on the borders of rivulets, and around little pools of stagnant water, the traveller finds at certain distances, even during the period of the great droughts, thickets of mauritia, a palm, the leaves of which spread out like a fan, and preserve a brilliant verdure.

The steppes of Asia are all beyond the tropics, and form very elevated table-lands. America also has savannahs of considerable extent on the backs of the mountains of Mexico, Peru, and Quito; but its most extensive steppes, the Llanos of Cumana, Caracas, and Meta, are little raised above the level of the ocean, and all belong to the equinoctial zone. These circumstances give them a peculiar character.

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