36 



surround him recall but feebly those pictures, 

 which celebrated writers have traced on the 

 banks of the Missisippi, in Florida, and in other 

 temperate regions of the new world. He feels 

 at every step, that he is not on the confines, 

 but in the centre of the torrid zone : not in one 

 of the West India islands, but on a vast conti- 

 nent, where every thing is gigantic, the moun- 

 tains, the rivers, and the mass of vegetation. 

 If he feel strongly the beauty of picturesque 

 scenery, he can scarcely define the various emo- 

 tions, which crowd upon his mind; he can 

 scarcely distinguish what most excites his ad- 

 miration, the deep silence of those solitudes, 

 the individual beauty and contrast of forms, or 

 that vigour and freshness of vegetable life, which 

 characterize the climate of the tropics. It 

 might be said that the earth, overloaded with 

 plants, does not allow them space enough to 

 unfold themselves. The trunks of the trees are 

 every where concealed under a thick carpet of 

 verdure ; and if we carefully transplanted the 

 orchidese, the pipers, and the pothos, which a 

 single courbaril; or American fig-tree* nourishes, 

 we should cover a vast extent of ground. By 

 this singular assemblage, the forests, as well as 

 the flanks of the rocks and mountains, enlarge 

 the domains of organic nature. The same 



* Ficus gigantea. 



