170 Guyot on the Contrast in the Physical Features 
The warm and the moist—these are the most favorable condi- 
tions for the production of an exuberant vegetation. Now, the 
vegetable covering is nowhere so general, the vegetation so pre- 
dominant, as in the two Americas. Behold, under the same par- 
allel where Africa presents only parched table lands, those bound- 
less virgin forests of the basin of the Amazon, those selvas, al- 
most unbroken over a length of more than 1,500 miles, forming 
the most gigantic wilderness of this kind that exists in any con- 
tinent. And what vigor, what luxuriance of vegetation! The 
_ palm trees, with their slender forms, calling to mind that of Amer- 
“s ica itself, boldly uplift their heads 150 or 200 feet above the 
* - ground, and domineer over all the other trees of these wilds, by 
se their height, by their number, and by the majesty of their foliage. 
Innumerable shrubs and trees of smaller height fill up the space 
that separates their trunks; climbing plants, woody-stemmed 
climbing lianos, infinitely varied, surround them both with their 
flexible branches, display their own flowers upon the foliage, and 
* + combine them in a solid mass of vegetation, impenetrable to man, 
*. -- which the axe alone can break through with success. On the 
ges ., bgsom of their peaceful waters swims “the Victoria a, the elegant 
‘i +: rival of the Rafilesia, that odorous and gigantic water lily, whose 
:*"- white and rosy corolla, fifteen inches in diameter, rises with daz- 
‘ “~ gling brillianey from the mi st of a train of immense leaves, 
be softly spread upon” “the waves, a. single one covering a space of 
* 
urous,d domes, in’ ‘the bosom of these vast wilds, are the only 
hs that r nature has opened to the scattered inhabi jitants of these 
xico.and Yucatan, an invading 
t; and the 
) beige into their chi pushing: 
1 ifresistible force, all the chal 
: Ponti, and particularly the,B 
ek of. the palm trees ; - 
~ fo wr teguatios "show itself 1 whder® 
ee te is a sige bff Pre ponies 
e 
ieee eeede “UE aa 
S six feet-in width... “The rivers rolling. their tranquil waters under | 
