M. Desbassayns had promised me some reliable notes respecting her, and I was glad to offer them to my illustrious friend, Count Alfred de Vigny, who, in giving me a farewell embrace, had commissioned me to bear his most tender expressions of love to the region which had inspired the touching narrative of St. Pierre. But alas! remorseless death warns us to remember the uncertainty of life, even when everything disposes us to forget it. He took me to one after another of the most interesting trees, particularly to the _arbre du voyageur_, a kind of banana, the leaves of which are inserted within one another like those of the iris, so as to form, at the height of eight or nine feet, a vast fan. Rain-water, and particularly dew, accumulates at the bottom of these leaves, as in a natural cup, and is kept very fresh; and if the base is pierced with a narrow blade, the liquid will flow out in a thread-like stream, which it is easy to receive in the mouth. The venerable old man opened one of their vegetable veins by way of example, and I soon lanced a great number of these providential trees, and refreshed myself with their limpid streams. {82} Finally, he conducted me by a narrow path to the edge of a deep ravine in which flowed an abundant torrent, forming capricious cascades as it wound its way. After passing over a rustic bridge, an admirable spectacle was presented to our view. An alley was formed through a wilderness of bamboos, so sombre, so narrow, and high, that it would be difficult to give an idea of it. It was as if pierced through a forest of gigantic pipes; and when they were agitated by a storm, they produced a harmony so plaintive, so languid, and at the same time so terrible and full of poetry, that I often passed the entire night in listening to it. I am not astonished by what is related of these tall and sonorous _culms_. In those fortunate countries that are shaded by the bamboo, it is said that happy lovers and suffering souls make holes in these long pipes and combine them in such a way that, when the wind blows, they give out a faithful expression of their joy or their grief. Nothing is sweeter than the tones that are thus produced by the evening breeze which attunes these harmonious reeds, rendering them at once aeolian harps and flutes. As soon as I found out this magical pathway, I betook myself there every day at the dawn, to read, to meditate, and to take notes till the hour of dinner. The next day after this visit, I had the curiosity to destroy one of the _arbre du voyageur_. It inundated me with its fresh stream, but I came near being punished for this profanation of nature, at the moment I expected it the least. A most formidable centipede escaped from the splinters which I made fly, and only lacked a little of falling directly on my face. M. Desbassayns was greatly astonished to see it; for it is generally believed, he said, that these venomous insects avoid this beneficent tree.