192 THE MEMOKABLE. 



this beautiful and novel sight, which few Englishmen can 

 have witnessed. Fain would I have plunged into the 

 lake to obtain specimens of the splendid flowers and 

 foliage ; but the knowledge that these waters abounded 

 with alligators, and the advice of my guide, deterred me."* 

 In the travels of Mungo Park in the interior of Africa, 

 he is said to have been at one time so exhausted by 

 fever, and so depressed with his forlorn and apparently 

 hopeless condition, that he had lain down to die. His 

 eye, however, chanced to light on a minute moss,-)- with 

 which he had been familiar in his native Scotland. The 

 effect on him was magical ; the reflection instantly occur- 

 red, that the same Divine hand which made that little 

 plant to grow beneath that burning clime was stretched 

 out in loving care and protection over him ; and, smiling 

 amidst his tears, he cast himself on the love of his hea- 

 venly Father, and was comforted. We may well believe 

 that the sight of the fork-moss would ever afterwards 

 call up a vivid recollection of that desolate scene, and 

 that he could never look on it without strong emotion. 



If it should be thought that some of the incidents and 

 objects which I have adduced as examples of the memor- 

 able, are mean and slight, and far less worthy of notice 

 than multitudes of other things that might have been 

 selected, I would suggest that what makes them worthy 

 of remembrance is not their intrinsic value, but their con- 

 nexion with the thoughts of the observer ; a connexion 



* Lond. Journ. of Potany, iv., p. 571. f Dicranum bry aides. 



