456 SCENERY. 



and hovering gaily about the bare, sunny sides of the 

 big stones, with the greatest vivacity, imparting much 

 liveliness to the entire scene. In another part of this 

 pretty islet, however, the appearance of affairs became 

 slightly changed, and this occurred in a dull swampy 

 morass where huge reeds grew, and where, as you stooped 

 down and looked curiously, as I did, among their tall, 

 slender culms, dozens of lurid-looking vipers might 

 be seen trailing their slow length along the surface 

 of the ground, and winding their sinuous way quietly 

 into the dull distance of the pigmy forest. It was in truth 

 a noisome place, "redolent," as Dickens would say, " of 

 all sorts of slabby, clammy, creeping and uncomfortable 

 life." Frogs, however, towards the evening were numerous 

 and cheerful, and the glow-worms lighted up their tiny 

 lamps, but still the gloom of that dark spot where the 

 vipers so abounded continued for some time to haunt 

 my mind. It seemed to be a scene such as Spencer must 

 have presented to himself, when he described in his 

 "Faerie Queen e " the subsidence of the waters of the 

 Nile after the fertile slime, according to his ideas of the 

 spontaneous generation of animals, had covered the plains: 



" wherein there breed 



Ten thousand kinds of creatures, partly male, 

 And partly female, of his fruitful seed; 

 Such ugly monstrous shapes elsewhere may no man reed." 



In some parts of Korea the land exhibits the appearance 

 of parks and meadows, with clumps of firs and other trees, 

 among which may be noticed the oak. The Vitis Indica 

 is seen trailing among heaps of stones ; the Composite 

 begin to appear, among which may be noticed a Coreopsis 



