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Show 150 STEPPES AND DESERTS. Ouaran is the tree of life, arbol de la vida. It grows in the mountains of llonaima, cast of the sources of tl1e Orinoco, as high as 4000 (4263 Eng.) feet;. On the unvisited banks of the Rio Atabapo, in the interior of Guiana, we discovered a new species of 1\Iauritia with prickly stems, our Mauritia aculcata (Humboldt, Bonpland, and Kunth, Nova Genera ot Species Plantarum, t. i. p. 310). (B2) p. 35.-11 An American Stylites." The found er of the sect of the Stylites, the fanatical pillar-saint Simeon Sisanites, the son of a Syrian herdsman, is said to have passed thirty-seven years in religious contemplation on the summits of .five successive pillars, each higher than the preceding. The last pillar was 40 ells high. He died in the year 461. For seven hundred years there continued to be men who imitated this manner of life, and were called u sancti column ares" (pillar saints). Even in Germany, in the diocese of Treves, it was proposed to erect such aerial cloisters, but the bishops opposed the underta.king (Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. 1755, p. 215). (33) p. 36.-u Towns on the banks of the streams wMch flow th1·ough the Steppe." Families who live not by agriculture, but by the care of cattle, have congregated in the middle of the Steppe in small towns, which, in the cultivated parts of Europe, would hardly be regarded as villages. Such are Calabozo, in go 56' 14" N. lat. and 67° 42' long. according to my observations, Villa del Pao, lat. go 3g' 1", lpng. 66° 57', S. Sebastian, and others. (34) p. 36.-" Conical-shaped clouds." The singular phenomenon of these "sand spouts"-something analogous to which may occasionally be seen on a small scale in Europe where four roads meet-is pn.rticularly characteristic of the P eruvian Sand Desert between Amotape and Coquimbo: Such a dense cloud of sand or dust may prove dangerous to the traveller who does not cautiously avoid its approach. It is also worthy of notice that these partial conflicting currents of air only arise when the air generally is perfectly calm. · The aerial ocean resembles the sea in this r espect, for in the latter also the small currents which |
