[Don Ramon Paez, in his "Wild Scenes in South America; or, Life in the Llanos of Venezuela," has given us some interesting pictures of a region little known to travellers. These vast plains are inhabited by a people many of whom bear a close resemblance in their habits to the Argentine Gauchos. The following selection is devoted to a description of this people and their region of habitation.] We left Ortiz as usual, very early the next morning, stumbling here and there amidst the mass of loose stones which paved the way along the winding bed of the _quebrada_. In proportion as we advanced on our route the hills decreased in size, while the loose stones seemed to increase in quantity. The splendid groves of hardy and balsamiferous trees, which near Ortiz formed an almost impenetrable forest, gradually became less imposing in appearance, until they were replaced by thickets of thorny bushes, chiefly composed of several species of mimosas, with a delicate and feathery foliage. The traveller accustomed to the shade of a luxuriant vegetation, and to the sight of cultivated valleys, is struck by the rapid diminution of the former, and the total disappearance of the latter, as he emerges from the Galeras of Ortiz; yet he is somewhat compensated by the almost overpowering perfume shed by masses of the canary-colored blossoms with which these shrubs are loaded, from the summits down to the bending branches that trail the ground at every passing breeze. Suddenly we entered a widely-extended tract of level land almost destitute of vegetation. With the exception of a few clumps of palm-trees with fan-like leaves, nothing but short grass covered its entire surface, almost realizing the idea of an "ocean covered with sea-weed." A dense mass of vapor pervading the atmosphere obscured the horizon, while the fan-palms, seen from afar, appeared like ships enveloped in a fog. Gradually the circle of the heavens seemed to close around us, until we became, as it were, encompassed by the sky. We were, in fact, treading the shores of the great basin of the Llanos, over one of the ancient shoals or _mesas_, which, like successive terraces, now form the border of those grassy oceans known as the Pampas. This was the Mesa de Paya, the seat of one of the cattle-farms to which we were bound.