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The savannas and open plains are of a deep fat and greasy mould, which when drained and freshened, become also fruitful and excellent parts of a plantation. The marshy grounds, some of which are fresh and others salt, are much neglected, yet they yield a kind of grass grateful to some animals, and are used as yet only for pasturage.
These Savannas of Trinidad stand, it must be remembered, in the very line where, on such a theory, they might be expected to stand, along the newest deposit; the great band of sand, gravel, and clay rubbish which stretches across the island at the mountain-foot, its highest point in thirty-six miles being only two hundred and twenty feet an elevation far less than the corresponding depression of the Bocas, which has parted Trinidad from the main Cordillera.
It leads due north from Santo Domingo City and after four miles the Isabela River is crossed by ferry near its confluence with the Ozama. A steep ascent follows and the road runs through wooded land until the town of Mella is reached. Small forests and wide savannas follow each other in rapid succession; the Ozama River is forded and a stretch of swampy soil with bad bogs is encountered.
They are all handsome, the smallest not so large as the English water-hen. In the savannas, too, you will sometimes surprise the snow-white egret, whose back is adorned with the plumes from which it takes its name. Here, too, the spur-winged water-hen, the blue and green water-hen and two other species of ordinary plumage are found.
Birds in general, with few exceptions, are not common in the very remote parts of the forest. The sides of rivers, lakes, and creeks, the borders of savannas, the old abandoned habitations of Indians and woodcutters, seem to be their favourite haunts. Though least in size, the glittering mantle of the humming-bird entitles it to the first place in the list of the birds of the New World.
In the savannas, too, you will sometimes surprise the snow-white egrette, whose back is adorned with the plumes from which it takes its name. Here, too, the spur-winged water-hen, the blue and green water-hen, and two other species of ordinary plumage are found.
With this aspect, though with a considerable change in the plants which they bear, the fringe of savannas continues southward along the coast to northern Florida. In the region about the mouth of the Savannah River, so named from the vast extent of the tidal marshes, these fields attain their greatest development.
Now he swings up again; now he leaps over that little green hill; now he Hold! hold, little boy! that will do: enough for a time of a Child's Toy. .... Whose trained eye was keen, As eagle of the wilderness, to scan His path by mountain, lake, or deep ravine, Or ken far friendly huts on good savannas green. CAMPBELL: Gertrude of Wyoming.
The eye with pleasure beholds those extensive savannas which afford nourishment to numerous herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. Fields of rice and potatoes present also a new and highly interesting spectacle. One sees agriculture flourishing, while nature alone defrays almost all the expense.
The whole of the prairie of Illinois, filled with an abundant growth of the richest grasses, and all the savannas north of the Wabash in Indiana, that really constituted an extension of the Grand Prairie, were particularly suited to the range of the wild herds, and were the last grounds deserted by them previous to their withdrawal west, and across the Mississippi.
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