The eye roams with delight over a frondage that partakes equally of the gold and the green.

It revels along waxen leaves, as those of the magnolia, the plantain, and the banana.

It is led upward by the rounded trunks of the palms, that like columns appear to support the leafy canopy above.
It penetrates the network of vines, or follows the diagonal direction of gigantic llianas, that creep like monster serpents from tree to tree.
It gazes with pleased wonder upon the huge bamboo-briars and tree-ferns.
Wherever it turns, flowers open their corollas to meet its delighted glance--tropical tree-flowers, blossoms of the scarlet vine, and trumpet-shaped tubes of the bignonia.
I turn my eyes to every side, and gaze upon a flora to me strange and interesting.

I behold the tall stems of the _palma real_, rising one hundred feet without leaf or branch, and supporting a parachute of feathery fronds that wave to the slightest impulse of the breeze.
Beside it I see its constant companion, the Indian cane--a small palm-tree, whose slender trunk and low stature contrast oddly with the colossal proportions of its lordly protector.

I behold the _corozo_--of the same genus with the _palma real_--its light feathery frondage streaming outwards and bending downwards, as if to protect from the hot sun the globe-shaped nuts that hang in grape-like clusters beneath.