Travels in the United States, etc.,: during 1849 and 1850./ By the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley.

BEAUTY OF THE FORESTS.
occasionally like the domes of Oriental mosques. At other times,
there was a lovely vision of vast avenues of flower-garlanded
bowers, vista beyond vista. In several places the sparkling river
was almost bridged across by radiant blossomy boughs, a magic
bridge of flowers, and rainbows, and meteors. It hardly seemed
as if this abounding wealth and deluge of blooms could have
sprung from earth's bosom, but as if the very firmaments, "fretted
with golden fire," must have rained down these superb and dazzling splendors from their own treasure-houses of starry glory, or
poured part of themselves away, molten, over this over-illumined
planet.
Through these gorgffeous piles and masses of luxuriance flit not
only the many-colored birds I have mentioned, but colossal, dazzling, sumptuous butterflies, belonging only to the tropics, and
nearly as large as birds-go fluttering and glittering like showers
of precious stones, tossed about by invisible genii.
These glorious forests are so thickly matted together, that not
even the lightnifng can pierce them. I have just been looking at
my little companion's description of the exquisite creepers, and all
the wondrous effects their elaborate loveliness produces, and I see
she likens them to quite different objects to what I have done:
but such is their apparently inexhaustible profusion and pomp,
and prodigality of growth, and variety of form that a hundred
people might very probably describe them all differently. I think
I was most struck with the extraordinary triumphal arches and
columns and castellated towers that they formed so exquisitely in
their spontaneous, enchanted, flowery architecture, and she with
the way in which they almost smothered the loftiest palms with
their brilliant shrouds of colored light, and streaming festoons and
coronals, and then continually passed on to others, linking them
together in beauty and enchantment.
We saw a good many Americans camping at a place, whose
name I do not remember. The current began to run very strong,
but our light boat still got on pretty fast. At last the rowers
seemed to become exhausted, and it was late in the evening when
we arrived at a settlement called Las dos Hermnanas.
It consists of a small number of straggling scattered huts, built
on a brow of a headland that overhangs the stream just where the
river takes a considerable sweep. Seiaor RE's lieutenant went
on shore immediately to get us as good accommodations as the
place afforded, and we were soon ushered into an Indian hut, of
which the proprietress was one of the most obliging and kind
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