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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I Use The Term
Plains, Because The Lower Orinoco And The Amazon, Far From Flowing In
A Valley, Form But A Little Furrow In The Midst Of A Vast Level.
The
two basins, placed at the extremities of South America, are savannahs
or steppes, pasturage without trees; the intermediate basin, which
receives the equatorial rains during the whole year, is almost
entirely one vast forest, through which no other roads are known save
the rivers.
The strong vegetation which conceals the soil, renders
also the uniformity of its level less perceptible; and the plains of
Caracas and La Plata bear no other name. The three basins we have just
described are called, in the language of the colonists, the Llanos of
Varinas and of Caracas, the bosques or selvas (forests) of the Amazon,
and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The trees not only for the most part
cover the plains of the Amazon, from the Cordillera de Chiquitos, as
far as that of Parime; they also crown these two chains of mountains,
which rarely attain the height of the Pyrenees.* (* We must except the
most western part of the Cordillera of Chiquitos, between Cochabamba
and Santa Cruz de la Sierra where the summits are covered with snow;
but this colossal group almost belongs to the Andes de la Paz, of
which it forms a promontory or spur, directed toward the east.) On
this account, the vast plains of the Amazon, the Madeira, and the Rio
Negro, are not so distinctly bounded as the Llanos of Caracas, and the
Pampas of Buenos Ayres.
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