forest overhead flings itself down to mingle with the floral coppices, and lianas bind the bright shower to ther bright spray below. Just where the bosk thickens, a tree fern stands like a plume, waving us inward. Lesser ferns carpet the vista, making a deeper, richer greensward than Northern climates know; but this one is the pride of its race. Its prim gracefulness gains the charm of “sweet neglect” by the droop of its ripened and withered fronds, and by the delicate creepers which climb upon the scales of its past leafage. No plant in the upland tropical woods is more elegant than the tree fern. It surpasses even the palm in refinement of foliage, and its plumes become the substitute for palms in the elevated zones where the latter would chill and wither. Behind this fair, bending Oread, under overarching darkness, extends the gloaming mystery of the Montaña.
This vista of forest conducts us inward to a region as doubtful and dim as the height of the Cordillera above, and contrasts with the open road on the left, guiding us up to the Dome. And when we have had enough of dreamy wandering deep in these bowers of Elysium, we may come forth, and pluck flowers in the wondrous garden at the margin of the picture, — a maze of leaves and blossoms as intricate as the maze of vine-drapery above, or the maze of shower and rainbow at the mountain-top. The Artist has come with his hands full of tribute to Flora, and flung exuberant beauty
