Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Most Of The Savannahs Of Venezuela
Have Not The Same Advantage As Those Of North America.
The latter are
traversed longitudinally by three great rivers, the Missouri, the
Arkansas, and the Red River of Nachitoches;
The savannahs of Araura,
Calabozo, and Pao are crossed in a transverse direction only by the
tributary streams of the Orinoco, the most westerly of which (the
Cari, the Pao, the Acaru, and the Manapire) have very little water in
the season of drought. These streams scarcely flow at all toward the
north; so that in the centre of the Llanos there remain vast tracts of
land called bancos and mesas* frightfully parched. (* The Spanish
words banco and mesa signify literally bench and table. In the Llanos
of South America little elevations rising slightly above the general
elevation of the plain are called bancos and mesas from their supposed
resemblance to benches and tables.) The eastern parts, fertilized by
the Portuguesa, the Masparro, and the Orivante, and by the tributary
streams of those three rivers, are most susceptible of cultivation.
The soil is sand mixed with clay, covering a bed of quartz pebbles.
The vegetable mould, the principal source of the nutrition of plants,
is everywhere extremely thin. It is scarcely augmented by the fall of
the leaves, which, in the forests of the torrid zone, is less
periodically regular than in temperate climates. During thousands of
years the Llanos have been destitute of trees and brushwood; a few
scattered palms in the savannah add little to that hydruret of carbon,
that extractive matter, which, according to the experiments of
Saussure, Davy, and Braconnot, gives fertility to the soil.
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