MOUNTAIN SCENERY. 
17 
stumps of trees were everywhere visible as we as- 
cended, presenting an aspect at once of ruin and deso- 
lation by no means cheering ; higher up, however, the 
jungle remained entire. After slowly winding for 
some distance between two hills, we entered a dense 
thicket which day appeared never to have visited, for 
it was involved in a perpetual twilight : the sun seemed 
never to have penetrated its deep and gloomy re- 
cesses. Though we could distinguish no distant ob- 
jects we could still hear the roar of the cataract ; it 
brawled hoarsely through the blast, which interrupted 
only to bring it to the ear with more fearful in- 
distinctness. 
We now commenced a rapid and difficult descent ; 
it led us into a valley overhung by the peaks of 
mountains which seemed to plunge their tall spires 
into the skies and absolutely to prop the firmament. 
Here, on the bare and scarped sides of the precipice 
above, pine-trees blasted or riven by the lightning 
rattled their seared trunks in the wind, which, moan- 
ing through them in low hollow gusts, seemed to a 
saddened spirit like the wailing of the dead. Looking 
at the sky from this dismal valley, as if from the 
interior of a huge funnel, the stars were visible as 
shining through a pall. The heavens appeared to be 
one uniform tint of the deepest purple, whilst the bril- 
liancy with which the stars emitted their vivid fires 
altogether baffles description ; they shone intensely 
bright, and, although it at least wanted two hours of 
sunset, night seemed already to have established its 
supremacy. Nothing could exceed the splendour of 
the scene. 
c 3 
