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Show 38 STEPPES AND DESERTS. from the horizon. Gradually the increasing vapors spread like mist over the sky, and now the distant thunder ushers in the life-restoring rain. Hardly bas the surface of the earth received the refreshing moisture, before the previously barren Steppe begins to exhale sweet odors, and to clothe itself with Kyllingias, the many panicules of the Paspalum, and a variety of grasses. The herbaceous mimosas, with renewed sensibility to the influence of light, unfold their drooping, slumbering leaves to greet the rising sun; and the early song of birds, and the opening blossoms of the water plants, join to salute the morning. The horses and cattle now graze in full enjoyment of life. The tall springing grass hides the beautifully spotted jaguar, who, lurking in safe concealment, and measuring carefully the distance of a single bound, springs, cat-like, as the Asiatic tiger, on his passing prey. Sometimes, (so the Aborigines relate,) on the margin of the swamps the moistened clay is seen to blister and rise slowly in a kind of mound; then with a violent noise, like the outbreak of a small mud volcano, the heaped-up earth is cast high into the air. The beholder, acquainted with the meaning of this spectacle, flies, for be knows there will issue forth a gigantic water-snake or a scaly crocodile, awakened from a torpid state (39) by the first fall of rain. The rivers which bound the plain to the south, the Arauca, Apure, and Payara, become gradually swollen; and now nature constrains the same animals, who in the first half of the year panted with thirst on the dry and dusty soil, to adopt an amphibious life. A portion of the Steppe now presents the aspect of a vast inland sea. (40) The brood mares retire with their foals to the higher banks, which stand like islands above the surface of the lake. Every day the space remaining dry becomes smaller. The animals, crowded together, swim about for hours in search of other pasture, and feed sparingly on the tops of the flowering grasses rising above the seething surface of the dark-colored water. Many foals are drowned, and many are surprised by the crocodiles, killed by a stroke of their powerful notched tails, and devoured. It is not a rare thing to see the marks of the pointed teeth of these monsters on the legs of the horses and cattle who have narrowly escaped from their blood-thirsty jaws. Such a sight reminds the thoughtful observer |