PARLEY DESCRIBES THE NATURAL BEAUTIES OF AMERICA.
Let us now leave for a while the cruel Spaniards, and talk about the
beauties of nature, in these new discovered countries.
In these extensive regions, every thing appeared new and wonderful; not
only the inhabitants, but the whole face of nature was totally different
from anything that had been seen in Europe.
Grand ridges of mountains, numerous volcanoes, some of them, though
under the Equator, covered with perpetual snows. Noble rivers, whose
course, in several instances, exceeds three thousand miles.
Here are found the palm-tree, the cedar, the tamarind, the guaiacum,
the sassafras, the hickory, the chestnut, the walnut of many different
kinds, the wild cherry (sometimes a hundred feet high), and more than
fifty different sorts of oak.
The plane, of which there are two kinds, one found in Asia, which is
called the oriental plane: that found in America is called the
occidental plane; but the Americans call it button-wood, or sycamore.
Its foliage is richer, and its leaves of a more beautiful green than the
oriental. It grows to a great size.
The cypress is perhaps the largest of the American trees; it is a more
than a hundred and twenty feet high; and the diameter of the trunk at
forty or fifty feet from the ground is sometimes eight or ten feet.
Another tree of gigantic magnitude is the wild cotton or Cuba tree. A
canoe made from the single trunk of this tree has been know to contain a
hundred persons.
Above all these in beauty is the majestic magnolia which shoots up to
the height of more than a hundred feet; its trunk perfectly straight,
surmounted by a thick expanded head of pale green foliage, in the form
of a cone.
From the centre of the flowery crown which terminates each of its
branches, a flower of the purest white arises, having the form of a
rose, from six to nine inches in diameter.
To the flower succeeds a crimson cone; this, in opening, exhibits round
seeds of the finest coral red, surrounded by delicate threads, six
inches long.
Here, every plant and tree displays its most majestic form.
Upon the shady banks of the Madelina there grows a climbing plant which
the botanists call Aristolochia, the flowers of which are four feet in
circumference, and children amuse themselves with covering their heads
with them as hats.
The Banana which grows in all the hot parts of America, and furnishes
the Indians with the chief part of their daily food, producing more
nutritious substance, in less space, and with less trouble than any
other known plant.
[Illustration]
It is here that the ground produces the sugar-cane, the coffee, and the
cocoa-nut from which is produced the chocolate. The vanilla, the anana
or pine apple, and many other delicious fruits.
The cacao, though generally pronounced cocoa, must not be confounded
with the Cocoa Palm which produces that largest of all nuts, the
Cocoa-nut.
These trees and plants which I have mentioned, and many more equally
beautiful, are all natives of the American woods.
But the European settlers, when they came, brought over to Europe many
valuable kinds of fruit and plants, which they did not find here; and I
never was more delighted than once on passing through Virginia, to
observe the dwellings of the settlers shaded by orange, lemon, and
pomegranate trees, that fill the air with the perfume of their flowers,
while their branches are loaded with fruit.
Strawberries of native growth, of the richest flavour, spring up beneath
your feet; and when these are passed away, every grove and field looks
like a cherry orchard. Then follow the peaches, every hedge-row is
planted with them. But it is the flowers and the flowering shrubs, that,
beyond all else, render these regions so beautiful. No description can
give an idea of the variety, the profusion, and the luxuriance of them.
The Dog-wood, whose lateral fan-like branches are dotted all over with
star-like blossoms of splendid white, as large as those of the
gumcistus.
The straight silvery column of the Papan fig, crowned with a canopy of
large indented leaves; and the wild orange tree, mixed with the
odoriferous and common laurel, form striking ornaments of this
enchanting scene, with many other lovely flowers too numerous to
describe.
There is another charm that enchants the wanderer in the American woods.
In a bright day in the summer months you walk through an atmosphere of
butterflies, so gaudy in hue, and so varied in form, that I often
thought they looked like flowers on the wing.
Some of them are large, measuring three or four inches across the wing,
but many, and those of the most beautiful, are small. Some have wings
the most dainty lavender, and bodies of black; others are fawn and rose
colour, and others are orange and bright blue: but pretty as they are,
it is their numbers more than their beauty; and their gay, and
noiseless movement through the air, crossing each other in chequered
maze, that so delights the eye.
[Illustration]
That beautiful production, the humming bird, is also the sportive
inhabitant of these warm climates, and I think they surpass all the
works of nature in singularity of form, splendour of colour, and variety
of species.
They are found in all the West India islands and in most parts of the
American continent: the smallest species does not exceed the size of
some of the bees.
[Illustration]
There are so many different kinds, and each so beautiful, that it is
impossible to describe them. They are constantly on the wing, collecting
insects from the blossoms of the tamarind, the orange, or any other tree
that happens to be in flower: and the humming noise proceeds from the
surprising velocity with which they move their wings.