ad been left far below me. Still the ascent
continued. A wide and beautiful panorama now opened before me. Above,
all was flashing moonlight and starry radiance. The beams of the full
moon grew more brilliant as we cleared the vapory atmosphere contiguous
to the earth, until they shone with half the splendor of morn, and
glanced upon the features of my companion with a mellow sheen, that
heightened a thousandfold her supermundane beauty. Below, the gray old
relics of a once populous capital glimmered spectrally in the distance,
looking like tombs, shrouded by a weeping forest; whilst one by one, the
mourners lost their individuality, and ere long presented but a dark
mass of living green. After having risen several hundred feet
perpendicularly, I was enabled to form an estimate of the extent of the
forest, in the bosom of which sleep and moulder the monuments of the
aboriginal Americans. There is no such forest existing elsewhere on the
surface of this great globe. It has no parallel in nature. The Black
Forest of Germany, the Thuringian Forest of Saxony, the Cross Timbers of
Texas, the dense and inaccessible woods cloaking the headwaters of the
Amazon and the La Plata, are mere parks in comparison. For miles and
miles, leagues and leagues, it stretched out--north, south, east and
west. It covers an area larger than the island of Great Britain; and
throughout this immense extent of country there is but one mountain
chain, and but one river. The summits of this range have been but seldom
seen by white men, and have never been scaled. The river drains the
whole territory, but loses itself in a terrific marsh before its tide
reaches the Mexican gulf, toward which it runs. The current is
exceedingly rapid; and, after passing for hundreds of miles under the
land and under the sea, it unites its submarine torrent near the west
end of Cuba, with that of the Orinoco and the Amazon, and thus forms
that great oceanic river called the Gulf Stream. Professor Maury was
right in his philosophic conjecture as to the origin of that mighty and
resistless tide.

Having attained a great height perpendicularly above the spot of our
departure, we suddenly dashed off with the speed of an express
locomotive, toward the northeast.

Whither we were hastening, I knew not; nor did I trouble my mind with
any useless conjectures. I felt secure in the power of my companion, and
sure of her protection. I knew that by some unaccountable process she