heir stems are from eight to fifteen feet across at
their base, and sometimes rise a hundred feet without a single
cross branch. When so great an elevation as the plains of Quito,
however, which is 9515 above the sea, is reached, they become less
considerable, and not larger than those usually found in the
forests of Europe. If the traveller ascends two thousand feet
higher, to an elevation of eleven or twelve thousand feet, trees
almost entirely disappear; but the frequent humidity nourishes a
thick covering of arbutus and other evergreens, shrubs three or
four feet high, covered with flowers generally of a bright yellow,
which form a striking contrast to the dark evergreen foliage with
which they are surrounded. Still higher, at the height of thirteen
thousand feet, near the summit of the lower ranges of the
Cordilleras, almost constant rains overspread the earth with a
verdant and slippery coating of moss; amidst which a few stunted
specimens of the melastoma still exhibit their purple blossoms. A
broad zone succeeds, covered entirely with Alpine plants, which,
as in the mountains of Switzerland, nestle in the crevices of
rocks, or push their flowers, generally of yellow or dark blue,
through the now frequent snow. Higher still, grass alone is to be
met with, mixed with the grey moss which conducts the wearied
traveller to the region of perpetual snow, which in those warm
latitudes is general only at an elevation of fifteen thousand
feet. Above that level no animated being is found, except the huge
condor, the largest bird that exists, which there, amidst ice and
clouds, has fixed its gloomy abode."--(_Tableau de la Nature dans
les Regions Equatoriales_, 59, 140-144.)

In the rhythm of prose these are the colours of poetry; but it is of
poetry chastened and directed by the observation of reality, and
possessing the inimitable charm of being drawn from real life, and
sharing the freshness and variety which characterize the works of
nature, and distinguish them from the brightest conceptions of human
fancy. As we have set out in this article with placing Humboldt at the
head of modern travellers, and much above any that Great Britain has
produced, and assigned as the main reason of this superiority the
exclusive and limited range of objects on which the attention of our
youth is fixed at our great universities, we sh