When the overpowering heat of the day is followed by the cooler temperature of the night, which is always of the same length in these latitudes, even then the cattle can obtain no repose. Enormous bats suck their blood like the fabled vampires during their sleep, or attach themselves to their backs, causing festering wounds in which mosquitoes, horse-flies, and a host of stinging insects, niche themselves. Thus the animals lead a weary life during the hot season. But at length, after the long drought and the parching glow, comes the welcome rain! Then takes place a transformation such as the fancy of the poet never surpassed or equalled. The deep blue of the hitherto unclouded sky grows lighter; the dark space in the constellation of the Southern Cross is hardly distinguishable at night; the soft phosphorescent lustre of the so-called Magellanic clouds "fades, fades, and falls away;" even the stars in Aquila and Ophiucus in the zenith beam with a tremulous and less planetary radiance. And lo, yonder in the south, a single cloud, like the peak of some remote mountain, soars perpendicularly from the horizon. Gradually the gathering vapours fold over the sky. Hark! The thunder is pealing in the distance, and louder and nearer come its awful reverberation. It heralds the life-restoring rain! Scarcely has the genial moisture refreshened earth, before a blessed fragrance breathes from the previously barren Steppe, and its nakedness is clothed upon with the bloom and beauty of a thousand grasses. The herbaceous mimosas, with renewed sensibility to the influence of light, open their drooping leaves to greet the rising sun; and the rosy-fingered morn is saluted with a glad chorus of birds, and by the opening blossoms of the water-plants. Now the horse bounds over the plain in keen ecstasy of spirit, and the cattle grazes plentifully on the fresh green herbage. Yet the new life is not without its peril. _Anguis latet in herbâ._ Among the tall thick grass lurks the spotted jaguar, the tiger of the New World, and measures carefully the distance that separates him from his unsuspecting victim. Sometimes (so say the natives) the moistened clay on the margin of the swamps will blister and swell slowly into a kind of mound until, with a violent noise, like the outbreak of a small mud volcano, the accumulated earth is cast high into the air. The spectator who comprehends the purport of this strange scene immediately retreats, for he knows that the birth of the portentous travail will be a gigantic water-snake or huge crocodile roused from its torpidity.