here the solemn shades of forests, the majestic course of rivers, the
mountains wrapped in eternal snow, that excite our emotion. A few drops
of vegetable juice recall to our minds all the powerfulness and the
fecundity of nature. On the barren flank of a rock grows a tree with
coriaceous and dry leaves. Its large woody roots can scarcely penetrate
into the stone. For several months of the year not a single shower
moistens its foliage. Its branches appear dead and dried; but when the
trunk is pierced there flows from it a sweet and nourishing milk. It is
at the rising of the sun that this vegetable fountain is most abundant.
The negroes and natives are then seen hastening from all quarters,
furnished with large bowls to receive the milk, which grows yellow
and thickens at its surface. Some empty their bowls under the tree
itself, others carry the juice home to their children.

[The great plains of Venezuela are thus described:]

The sun was almost at its zenith; the earth, wherever it appeared
sterile and destitute of vegetation, was at the temperature of 120 deg.. Not
a breath of air was felt at the height at which we were on our mules;
yet, in the midst of this apparent calm, whirls of dust incessantly
arose, driven on by those small currents of air which glide only over
the surface of the ground, and are occasioned by the difference of
temperature between the naked sand and the spots covered with grass.
All around us the plains seemed to ascend to the sky, and the vast and
profound solitude appeared like an ocean covered with sea-weed. On the
horizon the earth was confounded with the sky. Through the dry mist and
strata of vapor the trunks of palm-trees were seen from afar, stripped
of their foliage and their verdant summits, and looking like the masts
of a ship descried upon the horizon. There is something awful, as well
as sad and gloomy, in the uniform aspect of these steppes. Everything
seems motionless; scarcely does a small cloud, passing across the
zenith, and denoting the approach of the rainy season, cast its shadow
on the earth. I know not whether the first aspect of the llanos excites
less astonishment than that of the chain of the Andes.

When, beneath the vertical rays of the bright and cloudless sun of the
tropics, the parched sward crumbles into dust, then the indurated soil
cracks and bursts as if rent asunder by some mighty earthquake. And if,
at such a time, two opposite currents of air, by co