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ds fades away. Even the vertical stars of the constellations Aquila and Ophiuchus, shine with a flickering and less planetary light. Like some distant mountain, a single cloud is seen rising perpendicularly on the southern horizon. Misty vapors collect and gradually overspread the heavens, while distant thunder proclaims the approach of the vivifying rain. Scarcely is the surface of the earth moistened, before the teeming steppe becomes covered with Killingiae, with the many-panicled Paspalum, and a variety of grasses. Excited by the power of light, the herbaceous Mimosa unfolds its dormant, drooping leaves, hailing, as it were, the rising sun in chorus with the matin song of the birds, and the opening flowers of aquatics. Horses and oxen, buoyant with life and enjoyment, roam over and crop the plains. The luxuriant grass hides the beautiful and spotted jaguar, who, lurking in safe concealment, and carefully measuring the extent of the leap, darts, like the Asiatic tiger, with a cat-like bound on his passing prey." Such is Humboldt's description of the dry season on the Orinoco, and the return of the belt of rains from the south. Again, within this trade-wind region are the _rainless countries_. These are portions of the earth which the equatorial rainy belt does not ascend far enough north in summer to cover, nor does the southern edge of the extra-tropical regular rains descend, in winter, far enough south to cover them, and where, of course, rain seldom, if ever, falls. Such are the central parts of the Desert of Sahara, Egypt, Arabia, portions of Affghanistan, Beloochistan, and the western parts of Hindoostan, to the north of the inter-tropical belt, and a similar state of things exists south of the equator in parts of South America, Africa, and New Holland, although upon a comparatively small surface. Again, another anomaly is the gathering of the trade winds into greater volumes, on the westerly side of the great oceans, and the consequent carrying of the equatorial rainy belt up to the region of extra-tropical rains, on the eastern side of the great continents of Asia and North America, and the peculiar liability of these aerial gulfs to hurricanes and typhoons. Such an aerial gulf gathers over the Caribbean Sea, and the West Indies. Passing across the Gulf of Mexico, it enters over Texas, and Louisiana, and the other southern states; its western edge passing north in autumn and winter, on the eastern side of
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