THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 143 
even at half-tide level, deep rock-basins, shaded from 
the sun and always full of water, keep up in a higher 
zone the vegetation of a lower one, and afford in 
miniature an analogy to those deep “ barrancos” 
which split the high table-land of Mexico, down 
whose awful cliffs, swept by cool sea-breezes, the 
traveller looks from among the plants and animals 
of the temperate zone, and sees far below, dim 
through their everlasting vapour-bath of rank hot 
steam, the mighty forms and gorgeous colours of a 
tropic forest. 
“T do not wonder,’ says Mr. Gosse, in his charm- 
ing “ Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast ” 
(p. 187), “that when Southey had an opportunity of 
seeing some of those beautiful quiet basins hollowed 
in the living rock, and stocked with elegant plants 
and animals, having all the charm of novelty to his 
eye, they should have moved his poetic fancy, and 
found more than one place in the gorgeous imagery 
of his Oriental romances. Just listen to him 
‘« “Tt was a garden still beyond all price, 
Even yet it was a place of paradise ; 
