of the Llanos acquires that
feeling of security and enduring disposition for which he is famous.
Unfortunately, it is often turned to account in disturbing the balance
of power among his more enlightened countrymen; for he is always ready
to join the first revolutionary movement offering him the best chance
for equipping himself with arms of all descriptions. Next to the horse,
the Llanero esteems those weapons which give him a superiority over his
fellow-creatures,--viz., a lance, a blunderbuss, and a fine sword. If he
is unprovided with either of these, he considers himself a miserable and
degraded being, and all his efforts will tend to gratify this favorite
vanity even at the risk of his own life. Therefore he goes to war,
because he is sure, if victorious, of finding the battle-field covered
with these tempting trophies of his ambition. In this, unfortunately, he
is too often encouraged by a host of unprincipled politicians, who, not
wishing to earn a livelihood by fair means, are eternally plotting
against the powers that be.

THE FORESTS OF THE AMAZON AND MADEIRA RIVERS.

FRANZ KELLER.

[The author of the following selection, with his father, was
sent in 1867, by the Minister of Public Works at Rio Janeiro,
to explore the Madeira, and to project a railroad along its
banks where the rapids rendered navigation impossible. His
observations during this journey are given in "The Amazon and
Madeira Rivers," from which we extract his remarks concerning
the Brazilian forests.]

Everywhere the decomposing organisms serve as bases for new formations.
No particle, however small, is ever lost in the great household of
Nature; but nowhere is her restless activity so conspicuous as in the
tropics, where the succession of vegetable decay and life is so much
more rapid than it is in colder climes; and which will strike the
reflecting student more especially in the wide, forest-clad valleys of
tropical America, and on the Amazon and its affluents.

On the heights of the Cordillera the process is already at work. The
waste of the mountain-slopes, broken off by rills and torrents, and
carried by them into the main river, slowly drifts down-stream in the
form of gravel-banks, until, scattered and rent asunder in a thousand
ways, it finally takes permanent form as light-green islands, which are
soon covered and protected with a dense coat of vegetation.

As every zone of geologic for