uay, as a relief
from the utter blank, and feels oneself no longer a bubble afloat on
an infinity which knows one not, and cares nothing for one's
existence. For in the dead stillness of mid-day, when not only the
deer, and the agoutis, and the armadillos, but the birds and insects
likewise, are all asleep, the crack of a falling branch was all that
struck my ear, as I tried in vain to verify the truth of that
beautiful passage of Humboldt's--true, doubtless, in other forests,
or for ears more acute than mine. 'In the mid-day,' he says, {248a}
'the larger animals seek shelter in the recesses of the forest, and
the birds hide themselves under the thick foliage of the trees, or
in the clefts of the rocks: but if, in this apparent entire
stillness of nature, one listens for the faintest tones which an
attentive ear can seize, there is perceived an all-pervading
rustling sound, a humming and fluttering of insects close to the
ground, and in the lower strata of the atmosphere. Everything
announces a world of organic activity and life. In every bush, in
the cracked bark of the trees, in the earth undermined by
hymenopterous insects, life stirs audibly. It is, as it were, one
of the many voices of Nature, and can only be heard by the sensitive
and reverent ear of her true votaries.'

Be not too severe, great master. A man's ear may be reverent
enough: but you must forgive its not being sensitive while it is
recovering from that most deafening of plagues, a tropic cold in the
head.

Would that I had space to tell at length of our long and delightful
journey back the next day, which lay for several miles along the
path by which we came, and then, after we had looked down once more
on the exquisite bay of Fillette, kept along the northern wall of
the mountains, instead of turning up to the slope which we came over
out of Caura. For miles we paced a mule-path, narrow, but well
kept--as it had need to be; for a fall would have involved a roll
into green abysses, from which we should probably not have
reascended. Again the surf rolled softly far below; and here and
there a vista through the trees showed us some view of the sea and
woodlands almost as beautiful as that at Fillette. Ever and anon
some fresh valuable tree or plant, wasting in the wilderness, was
pointed out. More than once we became aware of a keen and dreadful
scent, as of a concentrated essence of unwashed tropic hum