... A
multitude of animals spread about life and enchantment. From the
extremities of the avenues may be seen bears, intoxicated with the grape,
staggering upon the branches of the elm-trees; caribous bathe in the lake;
black squirrels play among the thick foliage; mocking-birds, and Virginian
pigeons not bigger than sparrows, fly down upon the turf, reddened with
strawberries; green parrots with yellow heads, purple woodpeckers,
cardinals red as fire, clamber up to the very tops of the cypress-trees;
humming-birds sparkle upon the jessamine of the Floridas; and bird-
catching serpents hiss while suspended to the domes of the woods, where
they swing about like creepers themselves.... All here ... is sound and
motion.... When a breeze happens to animate these solitudes, to swing
these floating bodies, to confound these masses of white, blue, green, and
pink, to mix all the colors and to combine all the murmurs, there issue
such sounds from the depths of the forests, and such things pass before
the eyes, that I should in vain endeavor to describe them to those who
have never visited these primitive fields of nature.
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