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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The Chief Characteristic Of The Savannahs Or Steppes Of South America
Is The Absolute Want Of Hills And Inequalities - The Perfect Level Of
Every Part Of The Soil.
Accordingly the Spanish conquerors, who first
penetrated from Coro to the banks of the Apure, did not call them
deserts or savannahs, or meadows, but plains (llanos).
Often within a
distance of thirty square leagues there is not an eminence of a foot
high. This resemblance to the surface of the sea strikes the
imagination most powerfully where the plains are altogether destitute
of palm-trees; and where the mountains of the shore and of the Orinoco
are so distant that they cannot be seen, as in the Mesa de Pavones. A
person would be tempted there to take the altitude of the sun with a
quadrant, if the horizon of the land were not constantly misty on
account of the variable effects of refraction. This equality of
surface is still more perfect in the meridian of Calabozo, than
towards the east, between Cari, La Villa del Pao, and Nueva Barcelona;
but it extends without interruption from the mouths of the Orinoco to
La Villa de Araure and to Ospinos, on a parallel of a hundred and
eighty leagues in length; and from San Carlos to the savannahs of
Caqueat, on a meridian of two hundred leagues. It particularly
characterises the New Continent, as it does the low steppes of Asia,
between the Borysthenes and the Volga, between the Irtish and the Obi.
The deserts of central Africa, of Arabia, Syria, and Persia, Gobi, and
Casna, present, on the contrary, many inequalities, ranges of hills,
ravines without water, and rocks which pierce the sands.
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