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It lies calmly in the embrace of richly-wooded hills, and is studded with islands, like a silver shield with emerald bosses. Some of these islands are completely overgrown with palms, while others are masses of huge rock, with a carpet of green turf. Their bark was manned by four negroes and a white skipper.

It is a cove just like the foot of a stocking; a tiny, circle-shaped island lies in its mouth, and richly-wooded heights throw their green shimmer on the placid water. Here we lay till morning, as "snug as a bug in a rug."

The stately gum-tree, the shea-oak, with its gracefully drooping foliage, the perfumed yellow blossom of the mimosa, the richly-wooded mountain in the background, united to form a picture too magnificent to describe.

The true locality in which to enjoy the summer time is a richly-wooded country, where you have hedges and hedge-rows, and clumps of trees everywhere: where objects for the most part are near to you; and, above all, are green.

As we sit on this cool terrace, under the shady mulberry trees, and look far beyond the richly-wooded mountain we have scaled on our way, we gradually make out some details of the fast panorama, one feature after another becoming visible as stars shining faintly in a misty heaven. Villages and little towns past counting, each with its conspicuous spire, break the monotony of the enormous plain.

On the east were mountains of considerable height, and of unlimited range; to the north, the level land extended miles, though on a platform many feet higher than the level of the cleared meadows; while, to the west, along the route the adventurers were marching, broad slopes of rolling forest spread their richly-wooded surfaces, filled with fair promise for the future.

Nothing, indeed, could surpass it in my eyes, which had then only been accustomed to the highly-cultivated and richly-wooded tracts in Suffolk and Norfolk, and therefore dwelt with wonder and delight upon the picturesque shores and lofty heights that crowned the noble St. Lawrence.

"Do you know any of the Indians who are so anxious to vent their spleen on our worthy bourgeois?" asked Harry, as he seated himself on a rocky eminence commanding a view of the richly-wooded slopes, dotted with huge masses of rock that had fallen from the beetling cliffs behind the creek.

The fancy conjures up a Brobdingnagian wheat-field partially cut in the green stage. Sad havoc is thus made of once beautiful scenes, richly-wooded slopes having lost half their foliage. A hundred years ago Lourdes was a mere mountain fortress, a State prison to which unhappy persons were consigned by lettres de cachet.

But, although Jarwin made light of his sufferings, his gaunt, wasted frame would have been a sad sight to any pitiful spectator, as with weary aspect and unsteady gait he moved about on the sandy ridge in search of more food, or gazed with longing eyes on the richly-wooded island.