Scarcely is the surface of the earth moistened before the teeming Steppe becomes covered with Kyllingiæ, with the many-panicled Paspalum, and a variety of grasses. Excited by the power of light, the herbaceous Mimosa unfolds its dormant, drooping leaves, hailing, as it were, the rising sun in chorus with the matin song of the birds and the opening flowers of aquatics. Horses and oxen, buoyant with life and enjoyment, roam over and crop the plains. The luxuriant grass hides the beautifully spotted Jaguar, who, lurking in safe concealment, and carefully measuring the extent of the leap, darts, like the Asiatic tiger, with a cat-like bound on his passing prey. At times, according to the account of the natives, the humid clay on the banks of the morasses[39], is seen to rise slowly in broad flakes. Accompanied by a violent noise, as on the eruption of a small mud-volcano, the upheaved earth is hurled high into the air. Those who are familiar with the phenomenon fly from it; for a colossal water-snake or a mailed and scaly crocodile, awakened from its trance by the first fall of rain, is about to burst from his tomb. When the rivers bounding the plain to the south, as the Arauca, the Apure, and the Payara, gradually overflow their banks, nature compels those creatures to live as amphibious animals, which, during the first half of the year, were perishing with thirst on the waterless and dusty plain. A part of the steppe now presents the appearance of a vast inland sea[40]. The mares retreat with their foals to the higher banks, which project, like islands, above the spreading waters. Day by day the dry surface diminishes in extent. The cattle, crowded together, and deprived of pasturage, swim for hours about the inundated plain, seeking a scanty nourishment from the flowering panicles of the grasses which rise above the lurid and bubbling waters. Many foals are drowned, many are seized by crocodiles, crushed by their serrated tails, and devoured. Horses and oxen may not unfrequently be seen which have escaped from the fury of this blood-thirsty and gigantic lizard, bearing on their legs the marks of its pointed teeth. This spectacle involuntarily reminds the contemplative observer of the adaptability granted by an all-provident nature to certain animals and plants. Like the farinaceous fruits of Ceres, the ox and horse have followed man over the whole surface of the earth—from the Ganges to the Rio de la Plata, and from the sea-coast of Africa to the mountainous plain of Antisana, which lies higher than the Peak of Teneriffe[41]. In the one region the northern birch, in the other the date-palm, protects the wearied ox from the noonday sun. The same species of animal which contends in eastern Europe with bears and wolves, is exposed, in a different latitude, to the attacks of tigers and crocodiles!