TROPICAL SCENERY. 256 



and ilicir bare trunks, like columns of a hundred or a 

 hundred and twenty feet high, shoot up into the air, and 

 when seen in distinct relief against the azure vault of the 

 sky, they resemble a forest planted upon another forest. 

 When, as the moon was going down behind the mountains 

 of Uniana, her reddish disc was hidden behind the pinnated 

 foliage of the palm-trees, and again appeared in the aerial 

 zone that separates the two forests, I thought myself trans- 

 ported for a few moments to the hermitage which Bernardin 

 de Saint-Pierre has described as one of the most delicious 

 scenes of the Isle of Bourbon, and I felt how much the 

 aspect of the plants and their groupings resembled each 

 other in the two worlds. In describing a small spot of land 

 in an island of the Indian Ocean, the inimitable author of 

 Paul and Virginia has sketched the vast picture of the land- 

 scape of the tropics. He knew how to paint nature, not 

 because he had studied it scientifically, but because he felt 

 it in all its harmonious analogies of forms, colours, and 

 interior powers. 



East of the Atures, near these rounded mountains crowned, 

 as it were, by two superimposed forests of laurels and 

 palms, other mountains of a very different aspect arise. 

 Their ridge is bristled with pointed rocks, towering like 

 pillars above the summits of the trees and shrubs. These 

 effects are common to all granitic table-lands, at the Harz, 

 in the metalliferous mountains of Bohemia, in Galicia, on 

 the limit of the two Castiles, or wherever a granite of new 

 formation appears above the ground. The rocks, which are 

 at distances from each other, are composed of blocks piled 

 together, or divided into regular and horizontal beds. On 

 the summits of those situated near the Orinoco, flamingos, 

 soldados* and other fishing-birds perch, and look like men 

 posted as sentinels. This resemblance is so striking, that 

 the inhabitants of Angostura, soon after the foundation of 

 their city, were one day alarmed by the sudden appearance 

 of soldados and garzas, on a mountain towards the south. 

 They believed they were menaced with an attack of Indios 

 monteros (wild Indians called mountaineers) ; and the people 

 Were not perfectly tranquillized, till they saw the birds soar- 



* The ioldado (soldier) U a *arge species of heron. 



