being then bound with stronger vines, and several sticks being fixed
between the borders to prevent the bark from collapsing. The resin of
this tree, an opaque lemon-coloured substance, resembles wax; and when
mixed with algoroba, it forms a torch which burns with great brilliancy,
and emits a delicious odour.

The vast Llanos, already mentioned, in the north cover a surface of
about 110,600 square miles. Over a large portion of this wide-extending
region, even the wild Indian, there unable to find subsistence, but
seldom roamed; and thus for ages it remained a howling wilderness,
inhabited, and that only at certain seasons, by the jaguar, the peccary,
the agouti, and the timid deer. Here, when the summer sun sends down
its burning rays day after day from a cloudless sky, the grass withered
and shrivelled by its heat, the plain presents the appearance of a
desert waste. No cooling breeze passes across it, no shelter is found
from the scorching heat. The pools are dried-up, the surface of the
swamps becomes cracked and dry--the brown stalks of the tall reeds alone
marking the nature of the ground. Here, occasionally, when the blast
sweeps across the plain, columns of dust are set in motion, like those
of the African Sahara, overwhelming and stifling the incautious
traveller, who is hurled senseless to the ground.

Here, too, as in other desert regions, the mirage mocks him as he
journeys across it parched with thirst--often assuming a semblance of
the ocean, slowly moving in wave-like undulations.

The few trees and shrubs which here and there rise from the plain assume
a greyish-yellow tint, showing that the sap which has hitherto nourished
their leaves has ceased to flow,--stopped by the burning heat, which has
dried-up every particle of moisture from which they are wont to obtain
nourishment. At this season even the animals take their departure; here
and there the alligator and anaconda alone remain, in a torpid state,
buried in the clay of the dried-up swamps.

The traveller who ventures across this arid region has not only to
encounter the breath of the simoom, the sufferings of burning thirst,
the attacks of wild beasts, the bite of the matacabello--which may kill
his steed and leave him helpless--and many other dangers, but, more
fearful than all, flames caused by some camp-fire incautiously left
burning, seizing the parched vegetation, traverse the plain with
inconceivable rapidity. He and his Indian