THE CANADA. 



53 



League after league we moved forward in ecstasy. 

 Every turn disclosed another matchless picture. It was 

 here a grove of old and shattered trees of enormous 

 growth bent over the surface of the river under the load 

 of moss and flowering parasites which drew nourishment 

 and life from their fibres ; their outstretched arms, strug- 

 gling, as it were, in the interminable folds of the vines 

 and creepers, whose festoons and garlands of flowers, 

 fruit, or pods, entwined every bough to the highest 

 twig. There again rose a thicket of flowering shrubs 

 of all hues, glistening in morning dew, over which the 

 insects and butterflies were gloating in the bright sun ; 

 and such butterflies — the rainbow is dull and colourless 

 in comparison ! 



Farther, the high gray precipice swept down perpen- 

 dicularly, with its red, purple, and gray hues, innumer- 

 able weather stains, and lichens, reflected in the still sur- 

 face of the stream ; while its sheets of bare rock unveiled 

 to the gaze of the passer-by, in the hundreds of thin 

 strata, twisted, broken, entwined, and distorted into a 

 thousand shapes, a page of nature's secret doings, which 

 could not be contemplated without a feeling of awe. 

 The upper portions of the precipices, where they broke 

 down from the forested slope of the mountains above, 

 were frequently overgrown with long strings of strong 

 wiry grass, or by a peculiar species of cactus which rose 

 like a whitish green column perpendicularly from the 

 ledges. 



Then came the little opening at the entrance of some 

 lateral valley, with its Indian hamlet, strips of cultiva- 

 tion fully exposed to the broad sun, and groups of rich 

 and sunny bananas, half shrouding the simple cabins of 

 the poor natives: or, as a contrast, one of those dens 

 of rubbish, situated under the shade of a beetling crag, 

 in which everything seemed devoted to putrid destruc- 

 tion ; where you moved in twilight through a mass of 

 decaying vegetation ; where no living thing sported, and 

 the passenger breathed the chill and humid damp of 

 death, rottenness, and decay. 



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