556 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



some which I measured were two feet in circumference. Many of the older trees pre- 

 sented a very curious appearance from the tresses of a liana hanging from their boughs, 

 and resembling bundles of hay. If the eye was turned from the world of foliage above, 

 to the ground beneath, it was attracted by the extreme elegance of the leaves of the ferns 

 and mimosse. It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand 

 scenes ; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, 

 astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind. Among the scenes which 

 are deeply impressed upon my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests unde- 

 faced by the hand of man ; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are pre- 

 dominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are 

 temples filled with the varied productions of the God of nature; no one can stand in 

 these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of 

 his body." 



Palm Forests. 



For utility and majestic port, the order Palmce, the princes of the vegetable world, to 

 use the appropriate phrase of Linnaeus, constitute the chief vegetable glory of intertropical 

 localities, though found in reduced dimensions in Spain, the neighbourhood of Genoa, 

 around Naples, and in Sicily. The date-palm, with its cylindrical columnar stem, and 

 crown of leaves, is a singularly graceful object in the deserts of the Old World : 



" Those groups of lovely date trees bending 

 Languidly their leaf-crown'd heads, 

 Like youthful maids, when sleep descending 

 Warns them to their silken beds." 



But in equinoctial South America the palm tribes appear in their greatest magnificence, 

 fascinating and imposing to the eye of the traveller, as he beholds them on the granite 

 rocks at the cataracts of Atures and Maypures, on the Orinoco, the light green of the 

 leaves, waving in the breeze, strikingly contrasting with the darker surrounding vegeta- 

 tion. On the plains, which are subject to floods, the European is sometimes startled by 

 seeing the tops of these trees lighted with fires. They are kindled by the Guanacas, a 

 people who have remained for ages in these marshy districts, secured from the floods by 



