The Mauritia not only affords a secure habitation, but likewise yields numerous articles of food. Before the tender spathe unfolds its blossoms on the male palm, and only at that peculiar period of vegetable metamorphosis, the medullary portion of the trunk is found to contain a sago-like meal, which like that of the Jatropha root, is dried in thin breadlike slices. The sap of the tree when fermented constitutes the sweet inebriating palm-wine of the Guaranes. The narrow-scaled fruit, which resembles reddish pine-cones, yields, like the banana and almost all tropical fruits, different articles of food, according to the periods at which it is gathered, whether its saccharine properties are fully matured, or whether it is still in a farinaceous condition. Thus in the lowest grades of man’s development, we find the existence of an entire race dependent upon almost a single tree; like certain insects which are confined to particular portions of a flower. Since the discovery of the new continent, its plains (Llanos) have become habitable to man. Here and there towns[33] have sprung up on the shores of the Steppe-rivers, built to facilitate the intercourse between the coasts and Guiana (the Orinoco district). Everywhere throughout these vast districts the inhabitants have begun to rear cattle. At distances of a day’s journey from each other, we see detached huts, woven together with reeds and thongs, and covered with ox-hides. Innumerable herds of oxen, horses, and mules (estimated at the peaceful period of my travels at a million and a half) roam over the Steppe in a state of wildness. The prodigious increase of these animals of the old world is the more remarkable, from the numerous perils with which, in these regions, they have to contend. When, beneath the vertical rays of the bright and cloudless sun of the tropics, the parched sward crumbles into dust, then the indurated soil cracks and bursts as if rent asunder by some mighty earthquake. And if, at such a time, two opposite currents of air, by conflict moving in rapid gyrations, come in contact with the earth, a singular spectacle presents itself. Like funnel-shaped clouds,[34] their apexes touching the earth, the sands rise in vapoury form through the rarefied air in the electrically-charged centre of the whirling current, sweeping on like the rushing water-spout, which strikes such terror into the heart of the mariner. A dim and sallow light gleams from the lowering sky over the dreary plain. The horizon suddenly contracts, and the heart of the traveller sinks with dismay as the wide Steppe seems to close upon him on all sides. The hot and dusty earth forms a cloudy veil which shrouds the heavens from view, and increases the stifling oppression of the atmosphere[35]; while the east wind, when it blows over the long-heated soil, instead of cooling, adds to the burning glow.