roken by the slender shafts
of bamboo tufts, and decked with a thousand gaudy parasites; bank upon
bank of gorgeous bloom piled upward to the sky, till where its outline
cut the blue, flowers and leaves, too lofty to be distinguished by the
eye, formed a broken rainbow of all hues quivering in the ascending
streams of azure mist, until they seemed to melt and mingle with the
very heavens.

And as the sun rose higher and higher, a great stillness fell upon the
forest. The jaguars and the monkeys had hidden themselves in the darkest
depths of the woods. The birds' notes died out one by one; the very
butterflies ceased their flitting over the tree-tops, and slept with
outspread wings upon the glossy leaves, undistinguishable from the
flowers around them. Now and then a colibri whirred downward toward
the water, hummed for a moment around some pendent flower, and then
the living gem was lost in the deep blackness of the inner wood, among
tree-trunks as huge and dark as the pillars of some Hindoo shrine; or
a parrot swung and screamed at them from an overhanging bough; or a
thirsty monkey slid lazily down a liana to the surface of the stream,
dipped up the water in his tiny hand, and started chattering back, as
his eyes met those of some foul alligator peering upward through the
clear depths below. In shaded nooks beneath the boughs, the capybaras,
rabbits as large as sheep, went paddling sleepily round and round,
thrusting up their unwieldy heads among the blooms of the blue
water-lilies; while black and purple water-hens ran up and down upon the
rafts of floating leaves. The shining snout of a freshwater dolphin rose
slowly to the surface; a jet of spray whirred up; a rainbow hung upon
it for a moment; and the black snout sank lazily again. Here and there,
too, upon some shallow pebbly shore, scarlet flamingoes stood dreaming
knee-deep, on one leg; crested cranes pranced up and down, admiring
their own finery; and ibises and egrets dipped their bills under water
in search of prey: but before noon even those had slipped away, and
there reigned a stillness which might be heard--such a stillness (to
compare small things with great) as broods beneath the rich shadows of
Amyas's own Devon woods, or among the lonely sweeps of Exmoor, when the
heather is in flower--a stillness in which, as Humboldt says, "If beyond
the silence we listen for the faintest undertones, we detect a stifled,
continuous hum of insects, which crowd the a