far as the Cordillera of the coast, and which
is fertilised by various rivers? This question is connected with
all that relates to the history of our planet. If, indulging in
geological reveries, we suppose that the Steppes of America and the
desert of Sahara have been stripped of their vegetation by an
irruption of the ocean, or that they formed the bottom of an inland
lake'--(the Sahara, as is now well known, is the quite recently
elevated bed of a great sea continuous with the Atlantic)--'we may
conceive that thousands of years have not sufficed for the trees and
shrubs to advance toward the centre from the borders of the forests,
from the skirts of the plains either naked or covered with turf, and
darken so vast a space with their shade. It is more difficult to
explain the origin of bare savannas enclosed in forests, than to
recognise the causes which maintain forests and savannas within
their ancient limits like continents and seas.'

With these words in my mind, I could not but look on the Savanna of
Aripo as one of the last-made bits of dry land in Trinidad, still
unfurnished with the common vegetation of the island. The two
invading armies of tropical plants--one advancing from the north,
off the now almost destroyed land which connected Trinidad and the
Cordillera with the Antilles; the other from the south-west, off the
utterly destroyed land which connected Trinidad with Guiana--met, as
I fancy, ages since, on the opposite banks of a mighty river, or
estuary, by which the Orinoco entered the ocean along the foot of
the northern mountains. As that river-bed rose and became dry land,
the two Floras crossed and intermingled. Only here and there, as at
Aripo, are left patches, as it were, of a third Flora, which once
spread uninterruptedly along the southern base of the Cordillera and
over the lowland which is now the Gulf of Paria, along the alluvial
flats of the mighty stream; and the Moriche palms of Aripo may be
the lineal descendants of those which now inhabit the Llanos of the
main; as those again may be the lineal descendants of the Moriches
which Schomburgk found forming forests among the mountains of
Guiana, up to four thousand feet above the sea. Age after age the
Moriche apples floated down the stream, settling themselves on every
damp spot not yet occupied by the richer vegetation of the forests,
and ennobled, with their solitary grandeur, what without them wo