192 THE MEMOEABLE. 



this beautiful and novel sight, whicli few Englishmen can 

 have witnessed. Fain would I have plunged into the 

 lake to obtain specimens of the splendid flowers and 

 foHage ; but the knowledge that these waters abounded 

 with alligators, and the advice of my guide, deterred me."* 

 In the travels of Mungo Park in the interior of Africa, 

 he is said to have been at one time so exhausted by- 

 fever, and so depressed with his forlorn and apparently 

 hopeless condition, that he had lain down to die. His 

 eye, however, chanced to light on a minute moss,-|- with 

 which he had been familiar in his native Scotland. The 

 effect on him was magical ; the reflection instantly occur- 

 red, that the same Divine hand which made that little 

 plant to grow beneath that burning clime was stretched 

 out in loving care and protection over him ; and, smiling 

 amidst his tears, he cast himself on the love of his hea- 

 venly Father, and was comforted. AYe may well believe 

 that the sight of the fork-moss would ever afterwards 

 call up a vivid recollection of that desolate scene, and 

 that he could never look on it without strong emotion. 



If it should be thouo-ht that some of the incidents and 

 objects which I have adduced as examples of the memor- 

 able, are mean and slight, and far less worthy of notice 

 than multitudes of other things that might have been 

 selected, I would suggest that what makes them worthy 

 of remembrance is not their intrinsic value, but their con- 

 nexion with the thoughts of the observer ; a connexion 

 * Loud. Journ. of Botany, iv., p. 571. f Dicranum hryoldes. 



