l°24f BEAUTIFUL SCENERY. 



and crested slopes, so many are the precipices, and 

 ravines, and glens, each vocal with its brawling 

 brook or flashing waterfall. All these features are 

 imposing for their size and loftiness, and yet so 

 delicately executed, so sharply chiselled or modelled 

 as it were out of the earth, as at the same time to 

 affect the mind with the solemnity of grandeur and 

 the delight of beauty. But when these mountain 

 steeps are clothed with endless woods of magnifi- 

 cent forest-trees having lofty stems and widely- 

 branching heads, and every glen is crowded with 

 stately palms, drooping and elegant tree-ferns, 

 arching clusters of feathery bamboos, delicately- 

 stemmed acacias, and broad-leaved plantains and 

 bananas, all rising from piles and heaps of plants 

 of lesser growth, ferns and creepers and succulent 

 plants with huge round-lobed or variously-shaped 

 leaves ; and when among these luxuriant woods, by 

 the side of these falling waters, wind paths and 

 alleys carpeted with short green turf, turning from 

 dell to dell as if searching for the loveliest spots, 

 with a fresh cool breeze rustling the leaves above, 

 and a deep blue sky shining over all, against which, 

 here and there, some tall grassy peak starts up 

 above the loftiest heights of wood, I do not believe 

 that more exquisite scenery ever rose before 

 the imagination, even of a poet in his youthful 

 dreams. The eye of the gazer becomes satiated 

 with every form of earthly loveliness, and to me at 

 least the valleys among these mountains of Java 



