files of graceful cocoa-palms stand above the leggy mangroves, — luxuriant copses where the crimson orchis glows among inland palms, — pulpy-leaved trees all abloom with purple flowers, — delicate mimosas, — ceibas like mounds of verdure, — bowers of morning-glories, so dense that hummingbirds cannot enter, and glades where lianas hang their cables and cords, bearing festoons of large leaves and blossoms with tropic blood shining through their veins. He has happily avoided any feeling of the rank and poisonous. No one calls for quinine after seeing his pictures, or has nightmares filled with caymans and vampires.
So much for the tropical lowlands. “The Heart of the Andes” takes us to the tropical highlands. It claims to convey the sentiment of the grandest scenery on the globe. Through a mighty rift of the South American continent parallel with the Pacific, the Andes have boiled up and crystallized. Under the equator, this Titanic upheaval was mightiest. According to some cosmical law, power worked most vigorously where beauty could afterward decorate most lovingly. Here narrow upright belts of climate are substituted for the breadths of zone after zone from torrid to frozen regions. All the garden wealth of the tropics, all the domestic charm of Northern plain and field and grove, dashed with a richer splendor than their own, are here combined and grouped at the base and along the flanks of bulky ranges topped with snow and fire. Polar scenes are here colonized
