As if with a presentiment of this painful loss, we turned our steps in a thoughtful and melancholy mood from this burying-place of a race deceased. It was one of those clear and cool nights so frequent in the tropics. The moon, encircled with coloured rings, stood high in the zenith illuminating the margin of the mist which lay with well-defined cloud-like outlines on the surface of the foaming river. Countless insects poured their red phosphoric light on the herb-covered ground, which glowed with living fire as if the starry canopy of heaven had sunk down upon the turf. Climbing Bignonias, fragrant Vanillas, and yellow-flowering Banisterias, adorned the entrance of the cave; and the summits of the palms rustled above the graves. Thus perish the generations of men! Thus do the name and the traces of nations fade and disappear! Yet when each blossom of man’s intellect withers,--when in the storms of time the memorials of his art moulder and decay,--an ever new life springs forth from the bosom of the earth; maternal Nature unfolds unceasingly her germs, her flowers, and her fruits; regardless though man with his passions and his crimes treads under foot her ripening harvest. ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. [53] p. 209.--“_Across the peaceful ocean arm, which fills the wide valley between the American shore and Western Africa._” The Atlantic Ocean, from the 23d degree of South to the 70th degree of North latitude, has the form of an excavated longitudinal valley, in which the salient and re-entering angles are opposite to each other. I first developed this idea in my “Essai d’un Tableau géologique de l’Amérique méridionale,” printed in the Journal de Physique, T. liii. p. 61. (Geognostische Skizze von Südamerika, in Gilbert’s Annalen der Physik, Bd. xvi. 1804, S. 394-449.) From the Canaries, and especially from the 21st degree of North latitude and the 23d degree of West longitude, to the North-East coast of South America, the surface of the sea is usually so calm, and the waves so gentle, that an open boat might navigate in safety. [54] p. 209.--“_A wonderful outbreak of fresh springs in the middle of the ocean._”