On this communion rests the nobler portion of the enjoyment which nature affords. Nowhere does she penetrate us more deeply with the feeling of her grandeur, nowhere does she speak to us with a more powerful voice, than in the tropical world, under the “Indian sky,” as, in the early middle ages, the climate of the torrid zone was called. If, therefore, I venture again to occupy this Assembly with a description of those regions, I do so in the hope that the peculiar charm which belongs to them will not be unfelt. The remembrance of a distant richly endowed land,--the aspect of a free and vigorous vegetation,--refreshes and strengthens the mind; in the same manner as our spirits, when oppressed with the actual present, love to escape awhile, and to delight themselves with the earlier youthful age of mankind, and with the manifestations of its simple grandeur. Favouring winds and currents bear the voyager westward across the peaceful Ocean arm,[53] which fills the wide valley between the New Continent and western Africa. Before the American shore rises from the liquid plain, he hears the tumult of contending, mutually opposing, and inter-crossing waves. The mariner unacquainted with the region would surmise the vicinity of shoals, or a wonderful outbreak of fresh springs in the middle of the ocean,[54] like those in the neighbourhood of Cuba. On approaching nearer to the granitic coast of Guiana, he becomes sensible that he has entered the wide embouchure of a mighty river, which issues forth like a shoreless lake and covers the ocean around with fresh water. The green, and on the shallows the milk-white, tint of the fresh water contrasts with the indigo-blue colour of the sea, and marks with sharp outlines the limits of the river waves. The name Orinoco, given to the river by its first discoverers, and which probably originated in some confusion of language, is unknown in the interior of the country. Nations in a rude state designate by proper geographical names only such objects as can be confounded with each other. The Orinoco, the Amazons, and the Magdalena rivers, are called simply “The River,” or “The Great River,” or “The Great Water;” whilst those who dwell on their banks distinguish even the smallest streams by particular names. The current produced by the Orinoco, between the mainland and the Island of Trinidad with its asphaltic lake, is so strong, that ships with all sail set, and with a favourable breeze, can with difficulty make way against it. This deserted and dreaded part of the sea is called the Bay of Sadness (Golfo Triste); the entrance forms the Dragon’s Mouth (Boca del Drago). Here detached cliffs rise like towers above the foaming floods, and seem still to indicate the ancient site of a rocky bulwark[55], which, before it was broken by the force of the current, united the island of Trinidad with the coast of Paria.