In a description of a mountain scene in Tahiti, drawn with graphic power by Charles Darwin, the Banana forms a prominent element:--"I could not look on the surrounding plants without admiration. On every side were forests of Banana; the fruit of which, though serving for food in various ways, lay in heaps decaying on the ground.... As the evening drew to a close, I strolled beneath the gloomy shade of the Bananas up the course of the stream. My walk was soon brought to a close, by coming to a waterfall between two and three hundred feet high; and again above this there was another.... In the little recess where the water fell, it did not appear that a breath of wind had ever blown. The thin edges of the great leaves of the Banana, damp with spray, were unbroken, instead of being, as is so generally the case, split into a thousand shreds. From our position, almost suspended on the mountain-side, there were glimpses into the depths of the neighbouring valleys: and the lofty points of the central mountains, towering up within sixty degrees of the zenith, hid half the evening sky. Thus seated, it was a sublime spectacle to watch the shades of night gradually obscuring the last and highest pinnacles."[218] This scene must have been one of surpassing sublimity and loveliness. Few doubtless have ever beheld anything that can be compared with it. But perhaps many have felt--I have, often,--that there are occasions in which the sense of the beautiful in nature becomes almost painfully overpowering. I have gazed on some very lovely prospects, bathed perhaps in the last rays of the evening sun, till my soul seemed to struggle with a very peculiar undefinable sensation, as if longing for a power to enjoy, which I was conscious I did not possess, and which found relief only in tears. I have felt conscious that there were elements of enjoyment and admiration there, which went far beyond my capacity of enjoying and admiring; and I have delighted to believe, that, by and by, when, in the millennial kingdom of Jesus, and, still more, in the remoter future, in the dispensation of the fulness of times, the earth--the "_new_ earth,"--shall be endowed with a more than paradisaical glory, there will be given to redeemed man a greatly increased power and capacity for drinking in, and enjoying the augmented loveliness. Doubtless the risen and glorified saints, sitting with the King of kings upon His throne, will have the senses of their spiritual bodies expanded in capacity beyond what we can now form the slightest conception of; and as all then will be enjoyment of the most exquisite kind, and absolutely unalloyed by interruption or satiety,--the eye will at length be satisfied with seeing, and the ear be satisfied with hearing. "_I shall be satisfied_, when I awake up with thy likeness."