s lower region, as nature exhibits the
riches, so she has spread the pestilence, of tropical climates.
The humidity of the atmosphere, and the damp heats which are
nourished amidst its intricate thickets, produce violent fevers,
which often prove extremely destructive, especially to European
constitutions. But if the patient survives the first attack, the
remedy is at hand; a journey to the temperate climate of the
elevated plateau soon restores health; and the sufferer is as much
revived by the gales of the Andes, as the Indian valetudinarian is
by a return to Europe.

"Above the region of the palms commences the temperate zone. It is
there that vegetation appears in its most delightful form,
luxuriant without being rank, majestic yet not impervious; it
combines all that nature has given of the grand, with all that the
poets have figured of the beautiful. The bark-tree, which she has
provided as the only effectual febrifuge in the deadly heats of
the inferior region; the cyprus and melastoma, with their superb
violet blossoms; gigantic fuchsias of every possible variety, and
evergreen trees of lofty stature, covered with flowers, adorn that
delightful zone. The turf is enamelled by never-fading flowers;
mosses of dazzling beauty, fed by the frequent rains attracted by
the mountains, cover the rocks; and the trembling branches of the
mimosa, and others of the sensitive tribe, hang in graceful
pendants over every declivity. Almost all the flowering shrubs
which adorn our conservatories, are to be found there in primeval
beauty, and what to Europeans appears a gigantic scale;
magnificent arums of many different kinds spread their ample snowy
petals above the surrounding thickets; and innumerable creepers,
adorned by splendid blossoms, mount even to the summit of the
highest trees, and diffuse a perennial fragrance around.

"The oaks and trees of Europe are not found in those parts of the
Andes which lie in the torrid zone, till you arrive at the height
of five thousand feet above the sea. It is there you first begin
to see the leaves fall in winter, and bud in spring, as in
European climates: below that level the foliage is perpetual.
Nowhere are the trees so large as in this region: not unfrequently
they are found of the height of a hundred and eighty or two
hundred feet; t