spanning a deep chasm or tunnel in the rock, through which a river
boiled and roared in a series of cascades and rapids. Ever and anon we
passed over glades and prairies, carpeted with orchids, and dotted with
clumps of shrubbery, a mass of golden bloom, or tremendous blocks of
basalt hung with crimson creepers. Butterflies with azure wings of a
surprising spread and lustre, alighted on the flowers, and great birds
of resplendent plumage flashed from grove to grove. A sun, twice the
diameter of ours, blazed in the northern sky, but the intensity of his
rays was tempered by a thin veil of cloud. The atmosphere although warm
and moist, was not oppressive like that of a forcing-house, and the
breeze was balmy with delicious perfume.

As each new marvel came in sight, unstaled by familiar and untarnished
by vulgar associations, fresh from the hand of nature, so to speak, we
were filled as we had never been before with an intoxicating sense of
the divine mystery and miracle of life. For myself I was fairly
dumbfounded with amazement, and my companion, the hard-headed sceptical
astronomer, kept on crying and muttering to himself, "My God! my God!"
as if he had become a drivelling fool.

We travelled league after league of this paradise run wild (I cannot
tell how many) without noticing any change in the character of the
scenery. At length, however, it grew less savage by degrees, and we
entered on a park-like country which gained in loveliness what it lost
in grandeur. Low hills, clad from base to summit in masses of gorgeous
bloom, and mirrored in sequestered lakes fringed with pied water-lilies;
groves of majestic cedars inviting to repose; rambling shrubberies and
evergreen trees festooned with flowering vines; brooks as clear as
crystal, murmuring over their pebbly beds, now hiding under drooping
boughs, now lost in brakes of tall reeds and foliage plants; grassy