WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 51 



branches, once so high and ornamental, now lie 

 on the ground in sad confusion one upon the 

 other, all shattered and fungus-grown, and a prey- 

 to millions of insects, which are busily employed 

 in destroying them. One branch of it still looks 

 healthy! Will it recover? No, it cannot; nature 

 has already run her course, and that healthy-look- 

 ing branch is only as a fallacious good symptom in 

 him who is just about to die of a mortification 

 when he feels no more pain, and fancies his dis- 

 temper has left him ; it is as the momentary gleam 

 of a wintry sun's ray close to the western horizon. 

 — See ! while we are speaking, a gust of wind has 

 brought the tree to the ground, and made room 

 for its successor. 



Come further on, and examine that apparently 

 luxuriant Tauronira on thy right hand. It boasts 

 a verdure not its own ; they are false ornaments 

 it wears; the Bush-rope and Bird- vines have 

 clothed it from the root to its topmost branch. 

 The succession of fruit which it hath borne, like 

 good cheer in the houses of the great, has invited 

 the birds to resort to it, and they have dissemi- 

 nated beautiful, though destructive, plants on its 

 branches, which, like the distempers vice brings 

 into the human frame, rob it of all its health and 

 vigour ; they have shortened its days, and proba- 

 bly in another year they will finally kill it, long 

 before nature intended that it should die. 



Ere thou leavest this interesting scene, look on 

 the ground around thee, and see what everything 

 here below must come to. 



Behold that newly fallen Wallaba! The whirl- 

 wind has uprooted it in its prime, and it has 



