these discomforts, how often are my dreams haunted by
charming pictures of natural scenery that have fastened themselves for
ever in my memory!

As the traveller along the coast turns the prow of his canoe through
the surf, and crosses the angry bar that guards the mouth of an
African river, he suddenly finds himself moving calmly onward between
sedgy shores, buried in mangroves. Presently, the scene expands in the
unruffled mirror of a deep, majestic stream. Its lofty banks are
covered by innumerable varieties of the tallest forest trees, from
whoso summits a trailing network of vines and flowers floats down and
sweeps the passing current. A stranger who beholds this scenery for
the first time is struck by the immense size, the prolific abundance,
and gorgeous verdure of every thing. Leaves, large enough for
garments, lie piled and motionless in the lazy air: The bamboo and
cane shake their slender spears and pennant leaves as the stream
ripples among their roots. Beneath the massive trunks of forest trees,
the country opens; and, in vistas through the wood, the traveller sees
innumerable fields lying fallow in grass, or waving with harvests of
rice and _cassava_, broken by golden clusters of Indian corn. Anon,
groups of oranges, lemons, coffee-trees, plantains and bananas, are
crossed by the tall stems of cocoas, and arched by the broad and
drooping coronals of royal palm. Beyond this, capping the summit of a
hill, may be seen the conical huts of natives, bordered by fresh
pastures dotted with flocks of sheep and goats, or covered by numbers
of the sleekest cattle. As you leave the coast, and shoot round the
river-curves of this fragrant wilderness teeming with flowers, vocal
with birds, and gay with their radiant plumage, you plunge into the
interior, where the rising country slowly expands into hills and
mountains.

The forest is varied. Sometimes it is a matted pile of tree vine, and
bramble, obscuring every thing, and impervious save with knife and
hatchet. At others, it is a Gothic temple. The sward spreads openly
for miles on every side, while, from its even surface, the trunks of
straight and massive trees rise to a prodigious height, clear from
every obstruction, till their gigantic limbs, like the capitals of
columns, mingle their foliage in a roof of perpetual verdure.

At length the hills are reached, and the lowland heat is tempered by
mountain freshness. The scene that may be beheld from almost any
e