icebergs, and the Polar seas, alternately lashed into terrific fury or
hemmed in by accumulating precipices of ice; but--monkeys of almost
every size, form, and family, which gambol in the woods of Numidia or
Gundwana; in the loftiest trees of Sumatra; on the mountains of Java; by
the rivers of Paraguay and Hindustan; of South America and South Asia;
among the jungly banks of the Godavery and the woody shores of the
Pamoni, of the Oroonoko, and the Bramahputra--in short, in every sunny
clime and region where the rigours of his own winter are not only
unknown, but inconceivable. There is something sublime in the mere
consideration of the prodigious remoteness from one another of the
various points from which these animals have thus been collected;
something gratifying to human pride, in the thought that neither the
freezing atmosphere of the countries which surround the Pole, nor the
fierce heats of those which lie beneath the Line, or are enclosed
between the Tropics--neither destructive climates, nor trackless
deserts, nor stormy oceans, can interpose obstacles powerful enough to
quell the enterprise of man!--that the rocky caverns of the loneliest
sea-coasts, and the deepest recesses of inland forests, are insufficient
to protect from him the most terrible beasts of prey which inhabit
them;--and that, in short, all the kingdoms of nature pay tribute to his
sagacity or his power, his courage or his curiosity. This feeling is
heightened, amidst the scene we have attempted to describe, by still
more numerous representatives of the feathered race. Birds of the
boldest wing and brightest hues--the denizens of the woods and the
waters--of every variety of plumage, habit, song, and size--from the
splendid macaw and toucan to the uncouth pelican and the shapeless
puffin--from the gigantic ostrich to the beautiful but diminutive golden
wren; in short, all the birds which are congregated in this spot come,
literally, from every corner of our globe. The great alpine vulture may
have sailed above the heights of Hohenlinden; the Egyptian vulture have