Here the guayacan, or guayacum of the arts, is found in great abundance. The alcornoque, a beautiful tree, scarcely inferior to it, here raises its graceful head above the rest, affording the cattle a permanent shade during the dry season; while in the Llanos it is used in the construction of houses and fences. The Brazileto-wood tree grows in abundance, producing a beautiful dye. Among others is the tree which yields the precious balsam of copaiba,-- extracted by making incisions in the trunk, when the resinous fluid pours forth. The natives form their piroques or canoes from the last which we will mention, the tacamahaca (the Elaphrium tornentosium), which here attains great dimensions. The bark is of the nature of the birch-bark of North America, and is stripped off the trees in a similar manner, the huge sheets being joined at the extremities by means of slender vines, while the interstices are filled with resin to keep out the water--the whole being then bound with stronger vines, and several sticks being fixed between the borders to prevent the bark from collapsing. The resin of this tree, an opaque lemon-coloured substance, resembles wax; and when mixed with algoroba, it forms a torch which burns with great brilliancy, and emits a delicious odour. The vast Llanos, already mentioned, in the north cover a surface of about 110,600 square miles. Over a large portion of this wide-extending region, even the wild Indian, there unable to find subsistence, but seldom roamed; and thus for ages it remained a howling wilderness, inhabited, and that only at certain seasons, by the jaguar, the peccary, the agouti, and the timid deer. Here, when the summer sun sends down its burning rays day after day from a cloudless sky, the grass withered and shrivelled by its heat, the plain presents the appearance of a desert waste. No cooling breeze passes across it, no shelter is found from the scorching heat. The pools are dried-up, the surface of the swamps becomes cracked and dry--the brown stalks of the tall reeds alone marking the nature of the ground. Here, occasionally, when the blast sweeps across the plain, columns of dust are set in motion, like those of the African Sahara, overwhelming and stifling the incautious traveller, who is hurled senseless to the ground. Here, too, as in other desert regions, the mirage mocks him as he journeys across it parched with thirst--often assuming a semblance of the ocean, slowly moving in wave-like undulations. The few trees and shrubs which here and there rise from the plain assume a greyish-yellow tint, showing that the sap which has hitherto nourished their leaves has ceased to flow,--stopped by the burning heat, which has dried-up every particle of moisture from which they are wont to obtain nourishment. At this season even the animals take their departure; here and there the alligator and anaconda alone remain, in a torpid state, buried in the clay of the dried-up swamps.