But as in the Steppe tigers and crocodiles fight with horses and cattle, so in the forests on its borders, in the wildernesses of Guiana, man is ever armed against man. Some tribes drink with unnatural thirst the blood of their enemies; others apparently weaponless and yet prepared for murder[52] kill with a poisoned thumb-nail. The weaker hordes, when they have to pass along the sandy margin of the rivers, carefully efface with their hands the traces of their timid footsteps. Thus man in the lowest stage of almost animal rudeness, as well as amidst the apparent brilliancy of our higher cultivation, prepares for himself and his fellow men increased toil and danger. The traveller wandering over the wide globe by sea and land, as well as the historic inquirer searching the records of past ages, finds every where the uniform and saddening spectacle of man at variance with man. He, therefore, who, amidst the unreconciled discord of nations, seeks for intellectual calm, gladly turns to contemplate the silent life of vegetation, and the hidden activities of forces and powers operating in the sanctuaries of nature; or, obedient to the inborn impulse which for thousands of years has glowed in the human breast, gazes upwards in meditative contemplation on those celestial orbs, which are ever pursuing in undisturbed harmony their ancient and unchanging course. ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. [1] p. 1.--“_The Lake of Tacarigua._” In proceeding through the interior of South America from the Caraccas or Venezuela shore towards the boundary of Brazil, from the 10th degree of North latitude to the Equator, the traveller crosses first an elevated mountain-chain running in an east and west direction, next vast treeless Steppes or Plains (los Llanos), which stretch from the foot of the above-named mountains (the coast chain of Caraccas) to the left bank of the Orinoco, and lastly the range which occasions the Cataracts of Atures and Maypure. This latter range of mountains, to which I have given the name of the Sierra Parime, runs in an easterly direction from the Cataracts to Dutch and French Guiana. It is a mass of mountains divided into many parallel ridges, and is the site of the fabled Dorado. It is bordered on the south by the forest plain, through which the river of the Amazons and the Rio Negro have formed the channels in which their waters flow. Those who desire a fuller acquaintance with the geography of these regions will do well to consult and compare the great map of La Cruz-Olmedilla, bearing date 1775, (from which almost all the more recent maps of South America have been formed,) and the map of Columbia constructed by me from my own astronomical determinations of geographical positions, and published in 1825.