Page:Life in the Open Air.djvu/389

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memory, the last foremost objects that linger with us are two brilliant white blossoms, dashed with the same light which flashes in the cataract, and burns sublimely in the far beacon, the giant dome of snow.

The sun, which loses no opportunity to pierce in unexpectedly anywhere among these scenes, beloved of sunshine, achieves a weird effect in the shadows upon the rock beneath the morning-glories, cast by the sprays and branches of a dead bush. And notice how these shadows have light in them, as shadows should, and are not dark like the unillumined hollows beneath the rocks and shrubbery. An admirably defined rock, part warm color, part purple shadow, part hidden by the caruba vines, leans against the bank, and aids in supporting it.

In the middle of the lower foreground a large-leaved tree, bristling with epiphytes, stands out in vigorous perspective. The water below is half seen through its branches, and gains by an effect of partial concealment and a passing away out of the picture behind a leafy screen.


The tawny slope of road in the left foreground leads us back to another tangle of forest. All the drooping, waving, tossing, prodigal luxuriance of the glade on the right is here repeated in half-distance, — another denser maze, wellnigh impenetrable, in which we may discern the tree fern, now familiar, and may feel that our previous studies