left of the trace. I hurried down it like any
schoolboy, dashing through mud and water, hopping from log to log,
regardless of warnings and offers of help from good-natured Negroes,
who expected the respectable elderly 'buccra' to come to grief;
struggled perspiring up the other side of the gully; and then dashed
away to the left, and stopped short, breathless with awe, in the
primeval forest at last.

In the primeval forest; looking upon that upon which my teachers and
masters, Humboldt, Spix, Martius, Schomburgk, Waterton, Bates,
Wallace, Gosse, and the rest, had looked already, with far wiser
eyes than mine, comprehending somewhat at least of its wonders,
while I could only stare in ignorance. There was actually, then,
such a sight to be seen on earth; and it was not less, but far more
wonderful than they had said.

My first feeling on entering the high woods was helplessness,
confusion, awe, all but terror. One is afraid at first to venture
in fifty yards. Without a compass or the landmark of some opening
to or from which he can look, a man must be lost in the first ten
minutes, such a sameness is there in the infinite variety. That
sameness and variety make it impossible to give any general sketch
of a forest. Once inside, 'you cannot see the wood for the trees.'
You can only wander on as far as you dare, letting each object
impress itself on your mind as it may, and carrying away a confused
recollection of innumerable perpendicular lines, all straining
upwards, in fierce competition, towards the light-food far above;
and next of a green cloud, or rather mist, which hovers round your
head, and rises, thickening and thickening to an unknown height.
The upward lines are of every possible thickness, and of almost
every possible hue; what leaves they bear, being for the most part
on the tips of the twigs, give a scattered, mist-like appearance to
the under-foliage. For the first moment, therefore, the forest
seems more open than an English wood. But try to walk through it,
and ten steps undeceive you. Around your knees are probably
Mamures, {129a} with creeping stems and fan-shaped leaves, something
like those of a young coconut palm. You try to brush through them,
and are caught up instantly by a string or wire belonging to some
other plant. You look up and round: and then you find that the air
is full of wires--that you are hung up in a network of fine branches
bel