Swansea and Glamorgan Herald, and South Wales Free Press. — 1849-10-17 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

ENIGMA. She stood upon the scaffold, With a firm, undaunted miden. Condemned to die a shameful death, —But yesterday a queen : 111-fated -Jane, how brief thy reign! Bow dark thy closing scene! She, fearless, gazes on my first, With sable trappings hung, And to the bright and glittering axe She speaks with jesting tongue: " Pear not to fall, my neck is small, Thy work is quickly dour." • Where are the eyes which fearless gazed? Their lustre now is fled : Where is the tongue where hung the jest? Inanimate and dead : The snowy neck she used to deck, —The axe has left it red. A ghastly sight it is to see My second bleeding there, Distorted now those filitures erst So perfect and so rare: No art can dress that gory tress Of dark luxuriant hair. This is ma scene from history's page, The triumph of might and wrorig ; That barbarous age has posed away, With the power of the proud and strong : --But still, in our day, by law we slay, To teach the erring throng. To show our abhorrence of shedding blood We send the murderer's soul, (Unfit, I ween, to meet his judge,) 'fo a last and awful goal; Ile who con draw good from such law Must be but my senseless whale. SPHL X (formerly of Neath). Para, South America.  THE SOUTH AsIERICAN FtMESTS.—TIie forests of the Amazons not only cover the basin of that river, from the Cordillera of Chiquitos to the mountains of Parima, but also its limiting mountain-chains, the Sierra Doe Vertentes and Parima, so that the whole forms an area of woodland more than six times the size of France, hing between the 18th parallel of south latitude and the 7th equator. According to Baron Humboldt, the soil, enriched for ages by the spoils of the forest, consists of the richest mould. The heat is suffocating in the deep and dark recesses of these primeval woods, where non a breath of air penetrates, and where, after being drenched by the periodical rains, the damp is so excessive that a blue mist , rises in the early moraing among the huge stems of the tiers, and envelops the entangled creepers stretching from bough he bough. A deathlike stillness prevails from sunrise to sunset, then the thousands of animals that inhabit these forests join in one lout discordant roar, not continuous, but in bursts. The beasts seem to be periodically and tulaiiimously roused by sonic unknown impulse, till the forests ring in univsrsal uproar. Profound silence prevails at midnight, which is broken at the dawn of morning by another general roar of the wild chorus. The whole forest often resounds when the animals, shelled from their step, scream in terror at the noise made by bends of its inhabitants flying from sonic night-prowling foe. Their anxiety and terror before a thunder-storm are excessive, and all nature seems to purtake in the dread. The tops of the lofty trees rustle ominously, though hot a breath of air agitates then; a hollow whistling in the high regions of the atmosphere comes as a warning from the bltek sl•4ting vapour; nthinight darkness envelops the ancient Preste, which soon after groan and creak with the blast of the Intrricatm. The gloom is rendered still 'nom hideous Di the vivid lightning and the etunniug crash of thunder.