There is something very striking and suggestive in these impressive efforts of Nature to command, at recurring intervals, a recurring homage. Thus, for one interval of the year the rhododendron holds an undivided empire over the densely-wooded slopes of the great Himalayan mountains in India. All the other beauties of mountain and valley are forgotten for that interval of lovely despotism, and every one who can, goes up to see "the rhododendrons in bloom." Nature is very fond of such "tours de force," thinking, it may be, that men who see her every-day marvels and grow accustomed to them require now and then some extra-ordinary display, like the special festivals of the ancient Church, to evoke periodically an extraordinary homage. Lest the migration of creatures should cease to be a thing of wonder to us, Nature organizes once in a way a monster excursion, sometimes of rats, sometimes of deer, but most frequently of birds, to remind man of the marvellous instinct that draws the animal world from place to place or from zone to zone. For the same reason, perchance, she ever and again drives butterflies in clouds from off the land out on to the open sea, and, that the perpetual miracle of Spring may not pall upon us, she gives the world in succession such breadths and tones of colour that even the callous stop to admire the sudden gold of the meadows, the hawthorn lying like snowdrifts along the country, the bridal attire of the chestnuts, or the blue levels of wild hyacinth. As the priestess of a prodigious cult, Nature decrees at regular intervals, for the delight and discipline of humanity, a public festa, or universal holiday, to which the whole world may go free, and wonder at the profusion of her beauties. The track was, in places, very poor indeed, the cars jumping so much as to make travelling detestable and travellers "sea-sick." And then Dallas, with an execrable breakfast, and away again into the wonderful country, with cattle perpetually wandering on to the track and refusing to hear the warning shriek of the engine. The country was richly timbered with oak and willow and walnut, with park-like tracts intervening of undulating grassland. Here the stock wandered about in herds as they chose, and except for a chance tent, or a shanty knocked together with old packing-cases and canvas, there was no sign of human population. But in the timbered country every clearing had the commencement of a settlement, the tumble-down rickety habitation with which the African, if left to his own inclinations, is content. And wonderfully picturesque they looked, too, these efforts at colonization in the middle of the forests, with the creepers swinging branches of scarlet blossoms from the trees, and the foliage of the plantains, maize and sugar-cane brightening the sombre forest depths. But the heat must be prodigious, and so must the mosquitoes.