the earth groan and
shake as it forces its way through the crevices, feeling for an outlet,
or thrown back upon its own increasing current. These mysterious noises
filled with awe the native priests who managed the superstition of the
island before the Spaniards introduced another kind: no doubt they
served for omens, to incite or to deter, voices of Chthonian deities,
which needed interpreting in the interest of some great cacique who
would not budge upon his business without the sanction of religion. Many
a buccaneer, in after-times, who quailed before no mortal thunders made
by French or Spanish navies, was soundly frightened by the gigantic
snoring beneath his feet into reviewing his career, and calculating the
thickness of the crust between himself and his impatient retribution.

[Footnote A: Savanna was a Haytian word spelt and pronounced by
Spaniards. It is a plain of grass, affording pasturage in the rainy
season; but a few shrubs also grow upon it. _Pampas_ are vast plains
without vegetation except during three months of the rainy season, when
they yield fine grass. The word is Peruvian; was originally applied to
the plains at the mouth of the La Plata. But the plains of Guiana and
tropical America, which the Spaniards called _Llanos_, are also pampas.
The Hungarian pasture-lands, called _Puszta_, are savannas. A _Steppe_
is properly a vast extent of country, slightly rolling, without woods,
but not without large plants and herbs. In Russia there are sometimes
thickets eight or ten feet high. The salt deserts in Russia are not
called steppes, but _Solniye_. Pampas and deserts are found alternating
with steppes. A _Desert_ may have a sparing vegetation, and so differ
from pampas: if it has any plants, they are scrubby and fibrous, with
few leaves, and of a grayish color, and so it differs from steppes and
savannas. But there are rocky and gravelly, sandy and salt deserts:
gravelly, for instance, in Asia Minor, principally in the district known
to the ancients as the [Greek: katakekaumegae]. A _Heath_ is a level
covered with the plants to which that name has been applied. Finally, a
_Prairie_ differs from a savanna only in being under a zone where the
seasons are not marked as wet and dry, but where the herbage corresponds
to a variable moisture.]

The words _crete_, _pic_, and _montagne_ are sometimes applied to the
peaks and ridges of the island, but the word _morne_, which is a Creole
corruption of _montagne_