106 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



a consumption, and as su.re in its consequences, has long 

 since entered its frame, vitiating and destroying the 

 wholesome juices there. 



Step a few paces aside, and cast thine eye on that rem- 

 nant of a Mora behind it. Best part of its 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-looking 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 distemper has left him ; it is as the mo- 

 mentary 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 



o 



successor. 



Come further on, and examine that apparently luxu- 

 riant Tauronira on thy right hand. It boasts a verdure not 

 its own ; they are false ornaments it wears ; the Bush-reps 

 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 disseminated beautiful, though 

 destructive, plants on its branches, which, like the dis- 

 tempers vice brings into the human frame, rob it of all its 

 health and vigour; they have shortened its days, and 

 probably 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 whirlwind has 



