Huge trunks grow around me, hindering a distant view.

Where am I?
Not in the tropic, surely, for these trees are of a northern _sylva_.

I recognise the gnarled limbs and lobed leaves of the oak, the silvery branches of the mountain-ash, the cones and needles of the pine.

The wind, as it swirls among the dead leaves, causes me to shiver; and high up among the twigs there is the music of winter in its moaning.

Yet I am in the torrid zone; and the same sun that now glances coldly through the boughs of the oak, but a few hours before scorched me as it glistened from the fronds of the palm-tree.
The forest opens, and I behold hills under culture--fields of hemp and flax, and the hardy cereals of the frigid zone.