hour's walk of the Essequibo, where you find a red gravel and rocks. In
this retired and solitary tract Nature's garb, to all appearance, has not
been injured by fire nor her productions broken in upon by the
exterminating hand of man.

Here the finest green-heart grows, and wallaba, purple-heart, siloabali,
sawari, buletre, tauronira and mora are met with in vast abundance, far and
near, towering up in majestic grandeur, straight as pillars, sixty or
seventy feet high, without a knot or branch.

Traveller, forget for a little while the idea thou hast of wandering
farther on, and stop and look at this grand picture of vegetable nature: it
is a reflection of the crowd thou hast lately been in, and though a silent
monitor, it is not a less eloquent one on that account. See that noble
purple-heart before thee! Nature has been kind to it. Not a hole, not the
least oozing from its trunk, to show that its best days are past. Vigorous
in youthful blooming beauty, it stands the ornament of these sequestered
wilds and tacitly rebukes those base ones of thine own species who have
been hardy enough to deny the existence of Him who ordered it to flourish
here.

Behold that one next to it! Hark how the hammerings of the red-headed
woodpecker resound through its distempered boughs! See what a quantity of
holes he has made in it, and how its bark is stained with the drops which
trickle down from them. The lightning, too, has blasted one side of it.
Nature looks pale and wan in its leaves, and her resources are nearly dried
up in its extremities: its sap is tainted; a mortal sickness, slow as a
consumption and as sure in its consequences, has long since entered its
frame, vitiating and destroying the wholesome juices there.