STUDY V. 283 



rifes, as it were, a fécond foreft of palmettos, which 

 balance, above the folitary valleys, their long co- 

 lumns, crowned with parti-coloured plumes of 

 palms, and furmounted with a fpiral peak. The 

 mountains of the interior prefent, at a diftance, 

 oval-fhaped rocks, clothed with great trees, and 

 pendent liannes, floating, like drapery, by every 

 breath of the wind. Above thefe rife lofty pin- 

 nacles, round wdiich are continually collefted the 

 rainy clouds ; and when thefe are illuminated by 

 the rays of the Sun, you fee the colours of the 

 rainbow painted on their peaks, and the rain- 

 water flowing over their duiky fides in brilliant 

 Iheets of cryftal, or in long fillets of filver. No 

 obftacle prevents your perambulating the borders 

 which embellifli their fides and their bafes, for the 

 rivulets which defcend from the mountains, pre- 

 fent, along their banks, flips of fand, or broad 

 plates of rock, from which they have waflied the 

 earth clean away. Befides, they clear away a free 

 paflage from their fource, to the place of their dif- 

 charge, by undermining the trees which would 

 grow in their channel, and by fertilizing thofe 

 which do grow on their margin ; and they expand 

 over thefe, through their whole courfe, great arches 

 of verdure which fly off" in perfpedive, and which 

 are vifible from the fliore of the Sea. The liannes 

 interweave themfelves along the circumference of 



thefe 



