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Updated: May 14, 2025
The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.
The most temperate valleys are not sufficiently wide; they are not real table-lands; and their mean elevation above the level of the sea is not so considerable but that the inhabitants cannot fail to perceive that it is more their interest to establish plantations of coffee, than to cultivate corn. Flour now comes to Caracas either from Spain or from the United States.
As they descended, however, the intense cold abated; and when they came out upon occasional table-lands, they found that the snow-fall there had been much less than in the higher regions, also that it had drifted off the road so much that travelling became more easy.
The numerous cataracts of the rivers of Surinam, Maroni and Oyapoc, prove the extent and the prolongation of rocky ridges; but in those regions nothing indicates the existence of continued plains or table-lands some hundred toises high, fitted for the cultivation of the plants of the temperate zone.
Many persons, however, contrive to prosper by hunting for truffles in the exhilarating company of pigs. It is not in this fertile valley that they find them, but on the hillsides and stony table-lands, where the oak flourishes, but never grows tall.
Those banks of solitary rock in the desert are called tsy. I think they would be real table-lands, if the surrounding plains were stripped of the sand and mould that cover them, and which the waters have accumulated in the lowest places. On these stony flats of Carichana we observed with interest the rising vegetation in the different degrees of its development.
Behind him, on the west, tower the lofty peaks of the Cordilleras; on his left, in a northerly direction, appear the mountains and highlands of Venezuela and Guiana; while to the south rise the serras and table-lands of the Brazils. It is the Valley of the Amazon, in which more than half of Europe might be contained.
Without even awaiting a reply, the guide walked smartly into the bushes in rear of his lonely dwelling, followed by our hero. In a few minutes they reached a mound or hillock, which had been cleared of trees and underwood, and from the summit of which one could see over the tree-tops and the cottage roof away down the valley to the horizon of the table-lands beyond.
The last-named plant, which we had previously found in the valley of Caracas and on the temperate table-lands of Mexico, between 470 and 900 toises high, covers the fields of the island of Cuba. It is used by the inhabitants for aromatic baths, and to drive away the fleas which are so numerous in tropical climates. This name is given, in Spanish America, to the brown swan-tailed pelican of Buffon.
These Campos, which take their name from that of a tribe of wild Indians, are vast, barren table-lands, entirely destitute of vegetation; and in them the sources of the tributary streams of three great rivers, the Topayos, the Madeira and the Paraguay, take their rise.
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