NIGHT IN A TROPICAL CLIME. 213

taining writer, I will add two pleasant pictures he
has drawn of the beauties of the night and the
morning dawn in this tropical clime:—“‘I could
not sleep. Over my head I saw glittering those
myriads of stars that I so often gazed upon with
admiration during my peregrinations. Among the
constellations I looked out for the shepherd, which
in my boyhood in France I loved so to gaze upon,
when nature, shrouded in the mysterious veil of
twilight, had only this solitary star twinkling over-
head to hghtits track. The palm branches beneath
which I lay gently vibrated in the air; the tem-
perate breeze, breathing gently as it came, em-
balmed by the sweet odours of the woodland flowers,
carolled in the distance, while it imparted to the
sycamore leaves a voice of song strange and full
of harmony, resembling the melancholy sighs of
many Atolian harps. I breathed these evening
perfumes with the utmost delight, and hstened
attentively to the languishing murmurs of leaf and
breeze, cut short at intervals by the plaintive cry |
of the widow-bird, as she hopped from tree to tree.
At length I fell asleep, wrapt in golden dreams.”
Here is the day-dawn: ‘Its first faint colouring
put to flight my slumbers. A penetrating odour
filled the wood; the vanilla, the pachuli, the jessa-
mine, the ebony-tree, and thousands of wild vines
saturated the morning breeze with delicious per-