Note 3 — ON STEPPES AND DESERTS.

p. 2—“A shoreless ocean seems spread before us.”

The distant aspect of the Steppe is the more striking when the traveller emerges from dense forests, where his eye has been familiarised to a limited prospect and luxuriant natural scenery. I shall ever retain an indelible impression of the effect produced on my mind by the Llanos, when, on our return from the Upper Orinoco, they first broke on our view from a distant mountain, opposite the mouth of the Rio Apure, near the Hato del Capuchino. The last rays of the setting sun illumined the Steppe, which seemed to swell before us like some vast hemisphere, while the rising stars were refracted by the lower stratum of the atmosphere. When the plain has been excessively heated by the vertical rays of the sun, the evolution of the radiating heat, the ascent of currents of air, and the contact of atmospheric strata of unequal density, continue throughout the night.