THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



thing but repose, has caused almost profound 

 silence to reign among these wilds, where once the 

 cautious tread of the bear rustled nightly among 

 the dry needles of the pine forest, and the howl of 

 the wolf re-echoed from the waste. As I stood 

 upon an elevated knoll wide of the chalet, through 

 whose interstices gleamed the fire over which my 

 companions were amusing themselves, my ear 

 was struck from time to time by an abrupt and 

 indistinct sound from the upper parts ofthe moun- 

 tain; probably caused by the crumbling rock, or 

 the fall of rubbish brought down by the cascades. 

 An equally dubious and sudden sound would oc- 

 casionally rise from the deep valley beneath ; but 

 else nothing fell upon the ear, but the monoto- 

 nous murmur of the mountain torrent working 

 its way over stock and rock in the depth of the 

 ravine. The moon barely lighted up the wide 

 pastures sufficiently to distinguish their extent or 

 the objects sprinkled upon them. Here and there 

 a tall barkless pine stood conspicuously forward 

 on the verge of the dark belt of forest, with its 

 bleached trunk and fantastic branches glistening 

 in the moonshine."* 



I have noticed the peculiar silence of a moun- 

 tain summit by night in the tropics, and this far 

 more absolute and striking than that alluded to 

 by Latrobe. I was spending a night in a lonely 

 house on one of the Liguanea mountains in Ja- 

 maica, and was impressed with the very peculiar 

 stillness ; such a total absence of sounds as I had 

 never experienced before: no running water was 

 near ; there was not a breath of wind ; no bird or 

 reptile moved ; no insect hummed ; it was an op- 

 pressive stillness, as if the silence could be felt. 



But at lower levels in tropical countries night is 



* Latrobe's "Alpenstock," p. 135. 

 34 



