Theodore Winthrop

“ Its prim gracefulness gains the charm of “sweet neglect” by the droop of its ripened and withered fronds, and by the delicate creepers which climb upon the scales of its past leafage. No plant in the upland tropical woods is more elegant than the tree fern. It surpasses even the palm in refinement of foliage, and its plumes become the substitute for palms in the elevated zones where the latter would chill and wither. ”

“ The Artist has come with his hands full of tribute to Flora, and flung exuberant beauty into this sunny, sheltered spot, where warm dewy airs, stealing up the river, bring summer higher than its wont. Liberal as is the beauty here, there is no cramming, — no outlandish forcing of all possible and many impossible objects into an artificial clustering. ”

“ The cope of forest overhead flings itself down to mingle with the floral coppices, and lianas bind the bright shower to ther bright spray below. Just where the bosk thickens, a tree fern stands like a plume, waving us inward. Lesser ferns carpet the vista, making a deeper, richer greensward than Northern climates know ”

“ And as we turn away from the glade, with a boon of sweet flowers in our memory, the last foremost objects that linger with us are two brilliant white blossoms, dashed with the same light which flashes in the cataract, and burns sublimely in the far beacon, the giant dome of snow. ”

“ Sunshine streams in with us a little way, and leaves us for a spot it loves among the choirs of blossoms. So we wander on into ambrosial darkness. And over us the trailers stream with innumerable tendrils ”

“ The sun, which loses no opportunity to pierce in unexpectedly anywhere among these scenes, beloved of sunshine, achieves a weird effect in the shadows upon the rock beneath the morning-glories, cast by the sprays and branches of a dead bush. ”

“ Church’s trees are too freshly alive, and show that they digest air and water too healthily to suffer with any cutaneous disease. A somewhat formal personage the leader of the pioneer trio may be, but his stiff dignity is invaluable in this sybaritic covert, and to the picture, as giving determined perpendicular lines after so much level and slope. ”