af, and flower, and fruit, and fresh
tissue for the very stem up which it originally climbed, and
therefore it is that the woodman cuts the Water-vine through first
at the top of the piece which he wants, and not at the bottom, for
so rapid is the ascent of the sap that if he cut the stem below, the
water would have all fled upwards before he could cut it off above.
Meanwhile, the old story of Jack and the Bean-stalk comes into your
mind. In such a forest was the old dame's hut, and up such a bean
stalk Jack climbed, to find a giant and a castle high above. Why
not? What may not be up there? You look up into the green cloud,
and long for a moment to be a monkey. There may be monkeys up there
over your head, burly red Howler, {131a} or tiny peevish Sapajou,
{131b} peering down at you, but you cannot peer up at them. The
monkeys, and the parrots, and the humming birds, and the flowers,
and all the beauty, are upstairs--up above the green cloud. You are
in 'the empty nave of the cathedral,' and 'the service is being
celebrated aloft in the blazing roof.'

We will hope that, as you look up, you have not been careless enough
to walk on, for if you have you will be tripped up at once: nor to
put your hand out incautiously to rest it against a tree, or what
not, for fear of sharp thorns, ants, and wasps' nests. If you are
all safe, your next steps, probably, as you struggle through the
bush between tree trunks of every possible size, will bring you face
to face with huge upright walls of seeming boards, whose rounded
edges slope upward till, as your eye follows them, you find them
enter an enormous stem, perhaps round, like one of the Norman
pillars of Durham nave, and just as huge, perhaps fluted, like one
of William of Wykeham's columns at Winchester. There is the stem:
but where is the tree? Above the green cloud. You struggle up to
it, between two of the board walls, but find it not so easy to
reach. Between you and it are half a dozen tough strings which you
had not noticed at first--the eye cannot focus itself rapidly enough
in this confusion of distances--which have to be cut through ere you
can pass. Some of them are rooted in the ground, straight and
tense, some of them dangle and wave in the wind at every height.
What are they? Air roots of wild Pines, {131c} or of Matapalos, or
of Figs, or of Seguines, {131d} or of some other parasite?
Probably: but you cannot