There are certain regions on the surface of the earth that are actually rainless; and it is these which present us with the true and real contrast to the luxuriant vegetation and teeming life of the country of the Amazon.

In these rainless regions all is necessarily silence, desolation, and death.

No plant can grow; no animal can live.

Man, too, is forever and hopelessly excluded.

If the exuberant abundance of animal and vegetable life shut him out, in some measure, from regions which an excess of heat and moisture render too prolific, the total absence of them still more effectually forbids him a home in these.