Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/481

Rh eight inches in length, of the most brilliant scarlet, and set in a cup of bright green leaves, the whole looking more like skillful wax-work, than the work of nature.

All around the falls the foliage and shrubbery is so dense as to preclude walking, except in narrow footpaths cut for the purpose, and at the end of the year, when everything in the far North is buried in the snows of winter, all is as green, and red, and gay-colored and beautiful as in midsummer. In this tropical paradise, only man and his works pass away; the glory of Nature is eternal and unchanging: "In Summer and in Winter shall it be."

The rushing waters come down to the edge of the precipice through a rank growth of great canes, which swing and sway with the pressure of the current, like willows by our northern rivers when swept by the winds of summer. Clinging to the jagged lava rocks which divide the stream above the falls, wherever there is a handful of earth to nourish them, are great banana trees, with broad leaves like the banners of an army of giants, waving in the soft breeze of the South. All the face of the rock between the streams of falling water is covered with clinging plants and flowering shrubs, and one rock, shaped like a cross, which projected from the center out into the falling spray, was enwreathed with flowers like an artificial garland, as if they had been hung there by some dear woman's hand, to mark the last resting place of the loved and lost.

We went down by a winding pathway to the bottoms of the cañon, opposite the fall, and sitting beneath the broad-spreading trees, gazed upon the scene until its beauty was indelibly impressed upon our minds, to be treasured up in memory forever; then gathered some