and feet above the
level of the sea. The lowest of these plateaux is higher than the
summit of the Pass of the Great St Bernard, the highest inhabited
ground in Europe, which is 7545 feet above the level of the sea.
But such is the benignity of the climate, that at these prodigious
elevations, which even in the south of Europe are above the line
of perpetual snow, are to be found cities and towns, corn-fields
and orchards, and all the symptoms of rural felicity. The town of
Quito itself, the capital of a province of the same name, is
situated on a plateau, or elevated valley, in the centre of the
Andes, nearly 9000 feet above the level of the sea. Yet there are
found concentrated a numerous population, and it contains cities
with thirty, forty, and even fifty thousand inhabitants. After
living some months on this elevated ground, you experience an
extraordinary illusion. Finding yourself surrounded with pasture
and corn-fields, flocks and herds, smiling orchards and golden
harvests, the sheep and the lama, the fruits of Europe and those
of America, you forget that you are as it were suspended between
heaven and earth, and elevated to a height exceeding that by which
the European traveller makes his way from France into Italy, and
double that of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Great Britain.

"The different gradations of vegetation, as might be expected in a
country where the earth rises from the torrid zone by a few steep
ascents to the regions of eternal congelation, exhibit one of the
most remarkable features in this land of wonders. From the borders
of the sea to the height of two thousand feet, are to be seen the
magnificent palm-tree, the musa, the heleconia, the balms of Tolu,
the large flowering jasmin, the date-tree, and all the productions
of tropical climates. On the arid and burning shores of the ocean,
flourish, in addition to these, the cotton-tree, the magnolias,
the cactus, the sugar-cane, and all the luscious fruits which
ripen under the genial sun, and amidst the balmy breezes of the
West India Islands. One only of these tropical children of nature,
the _Carosylou Andicola_, is met with far in advance of the rest
of its tribe, tossed by the winds at the height of seven and eight
thousand feet above the sea, on the middle ridges of the
Cordillera range. In thi