FROM YOKOHAMA TO VALPARAISO. 
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strange convolutions into which this fiery substance settles as it gradually thickens and finally 
turns to stone. It was difficult to believe that the hard ground which I trod had been, but a 
few years ago, the surface of a moving mass of incandescent matter, glowing with the richest 
crimson hues. It was evident that the “solid foundations of the earth” are by no means 
so solid as they appear, and that the rocks which the poet calls “everlasting” have been 
many a time returned into the crucible before they assumed their present shape. I noticed 
that among the plants which first take possession of the newly-formed land ferns are 
conspicuous by their number—a fact which, perhaps, has some connection with the 
preponderance of these plants in former geological epochs, when, probably, the area of 
land covered with fresh lava-streams was greater than it is now. 
A forest three miles deep still separated me from the port. It seemed to surpass in 
splendour all other displays of tropical vegetation that I had met with in my wanderings—the 
very paradise of the botanist, the despair of the artist who would attempt to depict its glories. 
Even he who has been called “the poet of Nature” halts far behind reality when describing 
“ Majestic woods, of every vigorous green, 
Stage above stage, high-waving o’er the hills; 
Or to the far horizon wide-diffused, 
A boundless deep immensity of shade. 
Here lofty trees, to ancient song unknown, 
The noble sons of potent heat and floods 
Prone-rushing from the clouds, rear high to heaven 
Their thorny stems, and broad around them throw 
Meridian gloom.” 
We are accustomed to admire the beauty of our forests in Europe: the wide-branching 
lordly oak, the tall fir festooned with grey moss, the underwood, with its delicate branches 
and leaves, the ground carpeted with flowers and wild berries—the whole scene not less 
beautiful at night when a sheaf of moonbeams lights up the silent glade. But this beauty 
is quite different from that of a tropical forest. The one, quiet and modest, requires to be 
sought; the other, obtrusive, showy, and, as it were, unabashed, proclaims itself at once. Here 
both colour and form are more decided, and displayed on a larger scale: trees taller than 
our oak, with a dense foliage composed of broad leaves mixed with thick bunches of blossoms; 
climbing up their trunks, gigantic creepers, with leaves a foot long, and now and then 
bursting out into bright scarlet flowers. The underwood in the forest of Hilo mainly 
consists of graceful tree-ferns, rising to a height of from fifteen to twenty feet. 
I he forests of Hawaii are infested with wild cattle—the descendants of the animals 
which Vancouver presented to Iving Kamehameha. One of these, a wild bull with a fine pair 
of well-sharpened horns, met the narrator in the forest of Hilo, and as there was only room 
for one in the narrow path bounded on each side by an impenetrable thicket, the situation was 
rather awkward, for the animal seemed inclined to dispute the right of way. I was rescued 
by a party of horsemen. The bull charged the foremost horse, but the rider, a Hawaiian, 
familiar with these encounters, by a well-delivered blow sent the bull crashing through the 
