Nothing, however, would induce him to walk, and the negroes were compelled to carry him bodily to the nearest house. Our traveller was much impressed by the beauties of the tropical scenery. In one of her rambles she crossed a small waterfall; she struck right into the depths of the virgin forest, following a narrow path along the bank of a little stream. Stately-crested palms waved high above the other trees, which intertwining their inextricable boughs, formed the loveliest fairy-bowers imaginable; every stem, every branch, was garlanded with fantastic orchids; while ferns and creepers glided up the tall, smooth trunks, mingling with the boughs, and spreading in every direction waving curtains of flowers of the rarest fragrance and vividest hues imaginable. With shrill twittering cry and rapid wing flashed the humming-bird through the transparent air; the pepper-pecker, with glowing plumage, rose timorously upwards; while parrots and parroquets, and innumerable birds of beautiful appearance, enhanced, by their voices and movements, the loveliness of the scene. * * * * * From Rio Janeiro Madame Pfeiffer sailed in an English ship, the _John Renwick_, on the 9th of September, for Valparaiso, the great sea-port of Chili. In sailing southward, the ship touched at Santos, where the voyagers celebrated New Year's Day, and they made the mouth of the Rio Plata on the 11th of January. In these latitudes the Southern Cross is the most conspicuous object in the heavens. It consists of five shining stars, arranged in two diagonal rows. Towards the end of the month Madame Pfeiffer gazed upon the sterile cliffs and barren mountains of Patagonia, and next upon the volcanic rocks, wave-worn and wind-beaten, of Fire-Land, or Tierra del Fuego. Through the Strait of Le Main, which separates the latter from Staten Island, the voyagers passed onward to the extreme southern point of the American Continent, the famous promontory of Cape Horn. This is the last spur of the mighty mountain-chain of the Andes, and consists of a mass of huge basaltic rocks, piled together in huge disorder as by a Titan's hand.