300 THE PYTHON SERPENT. 



prises the traveller born in the north of Europe. The idea 

 of wild scenery, of a torrent rushing from rock to rock, is 

 linked in his imagination with that of a climate where the 

 noise of the tempest is mingled with the sound of the cataract; 

 and where, in a gloomy and misty day, sweeping clouds seem 

 to descend into the valley, and to rest upon the tops of the 

 pines. The landscape of the tropics in the low regions of 

 the continents has a peculiar physiognomy, something of 

 greatness and repose, which it preserves even where one of 

 the elements is struggling with invincible obstacles. Near 

 the equator, hurricanes and tempests belong to islands only, 

 to deserts destitute of plants, and to those spots where parts 

 of the atmosphere repose upon surfaces from which the 

 radiation of heat is very unequal. 



The mountain of Manimi forms the eastern limit of a 

 plain which furnishes for the history of vegetation, that is, 

 for its progressive development in bare and desert places, 

 the same phenomena which we have described above in 

 speaking of the raudal of Atures. During the rainy season, 

 the waters heap vegetable earth upon the granitic rock, the 

 bare shelves of which extend horizontally. These islands of 

 mould, decorated with beautiful and odoriferous plants, 

 resemble the blocks of granite covered with flowers, which 

 the inhabitants of the Alps call gardens or courtils, and 

 which pierce the glaciers of Switzerland. 



In a place where we had bathed the day before, at the 

 foot of the rock of Manimi, the Indians killed a serpent 

 seven feet and a-half long. The Macos called it a camudu. 

 Its back displayed, upon a yellow ground, transverse bands, 

 partly black, and partly inclining to a brown green: under 

 the belly the bands were blue, and united in rhombic spots. 

 This animal, which is not venomous, is said by the natives to 

 attain more than fifteen feet in length. I thought at first, 

 that the camudu was a, boa; but I saw with surprise, that 

 the scales beneath the tail were divided into two rows. It 

 was therefore a viper, (coluber); perhaps a python of the 

 New Continent : I say perhaps, for great naturalists appear 

 to admit that all the pythons belong to the Old, and all 

 the boas to the New "World. As the boa of Pliny was a 

 serpent of Africa and of the south of Europe, it would have 

 been well if the boas of America had been named pythons, 



