We Often Visited This Mountain, For We Were Never Weary Of Gazing On This Astonishing Spectacle.

From the summit of the rock is descried a sheet of foam, extending the length of a whole mile.

Enormous masses of stone, black as iron, issue from its bosom. Some are paps grouped in pairs, like basaltic hills; others resemble towers, fortified castles, and ruined buildings. Their gloomy tint contrasts with the silvery splendour of the foam. Every rock, every islet is covered with vigorous trees, collected in clusters. At the foot of those paps, far as the eye can reach, a thick vapour is suspended over the river, and through this whitish fog the tops of the lofty palm-trees shoot up. What name shall we give to these majestic plants? I suppose them to be the vadgiai, a new species of the genus Oreodoxa, the trunk of which is more than eighty feet high. The feathery leaves of this palm-tree have a brilliant lustre, and rise almost straight toward the sky. At every hour of the day the sheet of foam displays different aspects. Sometimes the hilly islands and the palm-trees project their broad shadows; sometimes the rays of the setting sun are refracted in the cloud that hangs over the cataract, and coloured arcs are formed which vanish and appear alternately.

Such is the character of the landscape discovered from the top of the mountain of Manimi, which no traveller has yet described. I do not hesitate to repeat, that neither time, nor the view of the Cordilleras, nor any abode in the temperate valleys of Mexico, has effaced from my mind the powerful impression of the aspect of the cataracts. When I read a description of those places in India that are embellished by running waters and a vigorous vegetation, my imagination retraces a sea of foam and palm-trees, the tops of which rise above a stratum of vapour. The majestic scenes of nature, like the sublime works of poetry and the arts, leave remembrances that are incessantly awakening, and which, through the whole of life, mingle with all our feelings of what is grand and beautiful.

The calm of the atmosphere, and the tumultuous movement of the waters, produce a contrast peculiar to this zone. Here no breath of wind ever agitates the foliage, no cloud veils the splendour of the azure vault of heaven; a great mass of light is diffused in the air, on the earth strewn with plants with glossy leaves, and on the bed of the river, which extends as far as the eye can reach. This appearance surprises the traveller born in the north of Europe. The idea of wild scenery, of a torrent rushing from rock to rock, is linked in his imagination with that of a climate where the noise of the tempest is mingled with the sound of the cataract; and where, in a gloomy and misty day, sweeping clouds seem to descend into the valley, and to rest upon the tops of the pines.

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