Though the tropical storms are thus frequently a scourge, they are often productive of no less signal benefits. Many a murderous epidemic has suddenly ceased after one of these natural convulsions, and myriads of insects, the destroyers of the planter’s hopes, are swept away by the fierce tornado. Besides, if the equatorial hurricanes are far more furious than our storms, a more luxurious vegetation effaces their vestiges in a shorter time. Thus Nature teaches us that a preponderance of good is frequently concealed behind the paroxysms of her apparently unbridled rage. [Illustration: SAVANNAH ON FIRE.] CHAPTER II. THE LLANOS. Their Aspect in the Dry Season--Vegetable Sources--Land Spouts-- Effects of the Mirage--A Savannah on Fire--Opening of the Rainy Season--Miraculous Changes--Exuberance of Animal and Vegetable Life--Conflict between Horses and Electrical Eels--Beauty of the Llanos at the Termination of the Rainy Season--The Mauritia Palm. In South America, the features of Nature are traced on a gigantic scale. Mountains, forests, rivers, plains, there appear in far more colossal dimensions than in our part of the world. Many a branch of the Marañon surpasses the Danube in size. In the boundless primitive forests of Guiana more than one Great Britain could find room. The Alps would seem but of moderate elevation if placed aside of the towering Andes; and the plains of Northern Germany and Holland are utterly insignificant when compared with the Llanos of Venezuela and New Grenada, which, stretching from the coast-chain of Caraccas to the forests of Guiana, and from the snow-crowned mountains of Merida to the Delta of the Orinoco, cover a surface of more than 250,000 square miles. Nothing can be more remarkable than the contrast which these immeasurable plains present at various seasons of the year--now parched by a long-continued drought, and now covered with the most luxuriant vegetation. When, day after day, the sun, rising and setting in a cloudless sky, pours his vertical rays upon the thirsty Llanos, the calcined grass-plains present the monotonous aspect of an interminable waste. Like the ocean, their limits melt in the hazy distance with those of the horizon; but here the resemblance ceases, for no refreshing breeze wafts coolness over the desert, and comforts the drooping spirits of the wanderer.