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I had been to the mission to look after my business, and was riding slowly homeward, through the heavy sultry air, when all at once the storm broke over me. It came tearing down from the blue mountains, raging and driving over the savannas in unchecked fury. I put spurs to my horse, in a fruitless effort to reach home before the worst came, for I knew full well what would follow this outbreak.

In this manner, extending the old forests out into the shallow water of the bays, and forming new colonies wherever the water is not too deep, these plants rapidly occupy all the region which elsewhere would appear in the form of savannas. The tidal marshes of North America, which may be in time converted to the uses of man, probably occupy an area exceeding twenty thousand square miles.

It was as though a man had been pulling through a heavy fog, and suddenly the sun burst forth in all its glory. Nature is grand and restful, and green savannas and tranquil waters leave fair pictures in our memories; but after all, man is eminently a social being, and needs companions of his kind.

Beyond this rock the country has been little explored; but it is very probable that these, and a vast collection of other kinds, and possibly many new species, are scattered up and down, in all directions, through the swamps, and hills, and savannas of ci-devant Dutch Guiana.

We found the same desolate, vine-netted forest; but on this route it was broken at several points by grassy savannas, dotted thinly with calabash-trees, and browsed by a few wild mules and cattle. In one of these openings, several miles from the Transit road, we passed a red-tiled building, the only one of any sort on the trail beyond the ring-fenced cultivation of Rivas.

A Desert may have a sparing vegetation, and so differ from pampas: if it has any plants, they are scrubby and fibrous, with few leaves, and of a grayish color, and so it differs from steppes and savannas.

These Congerees have abundance of Storks and Cranes in their Savannas. They take them before they can fly, and breed 'em as tame and familiar as a Dung-hill Fowl. They had a tame Crane at one of these Cabins, that was scarce less than six Foot in Height, his Head being round, with a shining natural Crimson Hue, which they all have.

At a distance the marshes and savannas appear like level meadows, with branches or creeks of the sea running through them.

He determined to profit by Mme. de Beauseant's counsels, and was asking himself how he could obtain the necessary money. He grew grave. The wide savannas of the world stretched before his eyes; all things lay before him, nothing was his. Dinner came to an end, the others went, and he was left in the dining-room. "So you have seen my daughter?"

But when we add to these the other woes of his catalogue, prickly-heat, ring-worm, putrid-fever, "the growling of Colonel Fougeaud, dry, sandy savannas, unfordable marshes, burning hot days, cold and damp nights, heavy rains, and short allowance," we can hardly wonder that three captains died in a month, and that in two months his detachment of forty-two was reduced to a miserable seven.