nges, seeing trees, fruits,
and flowers innumerable, of glorious hues and countless kinds, most
never seen by you before, or at least only as exotics, the ear also
takes in varied sounds. Birds are singing, insects humming; every tree
seems a choir, and the immeasurable forest a wide congregation of joyful
voices.

You are now on the lowest stage of that sublime gradation of climates
and scenery displayed by the Andes. You cross it in two or three days'
journey (for, as in the East, so, in the mountainous regions of South
America, travelling is measured less by miles than by days' journeys).
You then arrive at the foot of one of the mountains. Stop and look up! A
ridge covered with forests to its very top stands steep before you. The
wind makes tremulous the masses of evergreen foliage, which are now
shaded by the reluctant mists of the morning, slowly ascending, and now
are bright with the full splendor of noon. Above that ridge rises
another, and another yet, unseen at the foot. Begin the ascent. The
mules tremble as they strive to keep their hold on the steep, slippery
soil. Press upward in zigzag paths for hours. Reach the top of the
ridge, and descend into the valley between it and another higher
opposite; then, ascend again. As you thus slowly, patiently, yet surely
reach the heart of the mountainous region, wild diversity of views holds
you bound in wonder and strange delight. Here are level places--here
pure, bright brooks glide on as smoothly as in meadows. There, a torrent
rushes over crags, foaming and roaring in an everlasting cascade. Before
you may be a hillside, green with luxuriant pasturage, where flocks and
herds graze quietly through the day, while the shepherd, with his crook
and harmonic pipe, reminds you of classic scenes. Turn aside--and you
may look down into cavernous recesses, whose gloomy, depths you cannot
measure. Scenes fair and fearful meet in the same horizon. So, in life,
the gentle charities, that, like the face of Una, make sunshine in the
shady place, are often found not far from rugged rage and black despair.
Press on through glad and sombre scenery. Press upward in steep ways,
miry and craggy, narrow and broad, by turns.

Now, so deep are the paths cut in the mountain, so high are the banks,
so contracted is the way, that, the higher you rise, the less you appear
to see; and you feel disappointed at missing the grand horizon of
smaller mountains, on which, coming nearer the summit,