Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 12, 2025
To the llanos!" cried Carmen; "they are close behind us. A fellow tried to stop me, but I rode him down." And then followed a neck-or-nothing race through the pass, which was more like a furrow than a road, steep, stony, and full of holes, and being overshadowed by trees, as dark as chaos.
Even in his parents' dwelling, he dreaded, every moment, the arrival of an order for his arrest, and to appease his groundless anxiety his father shortly suggested that he should take refuge upon the Llanos, the Sherwood of Venezuelan Robin Hoods.
Till the second half of the eighteenth century the names of the great rivers Apure, Arauca, and Meta were scarcely known in Europe: certainly less than they had been in the two preceding centuries, when the valiant Felipe de Urre and the conquerors of Tocuyo traversed the Llanos, to seek, beyond the Apure, the great legendary city of El Dorado, and the rich country of the Omeguas, the Timbuctoo of the New Continent.
So complete is the illusion that did I not know we were on the verge of the llanos I should be tempted to believe that supernatural agency had transported us while we slept to the coasts of the Caribbean Sea or the yet more distant shores of the Pacific Ocean.
On the road from Guigue to the Llanos, by the table-land of La Villa de Cura, I found, to the south of the dividing ridge, and on its southern declivity, no point of level corresponding to the 182 toises, except near San Juan. The absolute height of this village is 194 toises.
Since the Llanos have been inhabited and peopled with cattle become wild, the savannah is often set on fire, in order to ameliorate the pasturage. Groups of scattered trees are accidentally destroyed with the grasses.
The South American continent, it will thus be seen, consists of several distinctly different descriptions of country: the long line of the Cordilleras, with their snow-capped peaks and their lofty punas or high table-lands, and the narrow strip of arid soil at their western base; the three separate mountain-systems of Venezuela, Guiana, and the Brazils; the mighty forests bordering the great rivers and their tributaries, to which must be added the wooded heights of the inter-tropical regions, where tall trees, including several palms, flourish at an elevation of many thousand feet above the level of the ocean; and lastly, the wide-extending regions of the Llanos and the Pampas.
No barometer has yet been carried into the Sahara. With respect to the Llanos of America, I found by barometric heights observed at Calabozo, at the Villa del Pao, and at the mouth of the Meta, that their height is only forty or fifty toises above the level of the sea.
The steppes of Asia are all beyond the tropics, and form very elevated table-lands. America also has savannahs of considerable extent on the backs of the mountains of Mexico, Peru, and Quito; but its most extensive steppes, the Llanos of Cumana, Caracas, and Meta, are little raised above the level of the ocean, and all belong to the equinoctial zone.
Even I, myself, as soon as this little business is settled, shall open a fundacion on some land I have on the llanos and try to make a little money in peace and quietness. Senora, you know, all Costaguana knows what do I say? this whole South American continent knows, that Pablo Barrios has had his fill of military glory." Charles Gould was not present at the anxious and patriotic send-off.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking