text:  And what a splendid frame they do compose those colossal mountains in their rich variety of form and colouring! here shining out like molten gold there changing to a dark bronze; covered lower down with various shades of green and with the crimson and purple and violet and bright yellow and azure and dazzling white of the millions of paulinias and convolvoluses and other flowering plants from amongst which rise the stately palm-trees full a hundred feet high their majestic green turbans towering like sultans' heads above the luxuriance of the surrounding flower and vegetable world