called here black Roseau. {137a} Close to it rises
another pillar, as straight and smooth, but one-fourth of the
diameter--a giant's walking-cane. Its head, too, is in the green
cloud. But near are two or three younger ones only forty or fifty
feet high, and you see their delicate feather heads, and are told
that they are Manacques; {137b} the slender nymphs which attend upon
the forest queen, as beautiful, though not as grand, as she.

The land slopes down fast now. You are tramping through stiff mud,
and those Roseaux are a sign of water. There is a stream or gully
near: and now for the first time you can see clear sunshine through
the stems; and see, too, something of the bank of foliage on the
other side of the brook. You catch sight, it may be, of the head of
a tree aloft, blazing with golden trumpet flowers, which is a Poui;
and of another lower one covered with hoar-frost, perhaps a Croton;
{137c} and of another, a giant covered with purple tassels. That is
an Angelim. Another giant overtops even him. His dark glossy
leaves toss off sheets of silver light as they flicker in the
breeze; for it blows hard aloft outside while you are in stifling
calm. That is a Balata. And what is that on high?--Twenty or
thirty square yards of rich crimson a hundred feet above the ground.
The flowers may belong to the tree itself. It may be a Mountain-
mangrove, {137d} which I have never seen, in flower: but take the
glasses and decide. No. The flowers belong to a liane. The
'wonderful' Prince of Wales's Feather {137e} has taken possession of
the head of a huge Mombin, {137f} and tiled it all over with crimson
combs which crawl out to the ends of the branches, and dangle twenty
or thirty feet down, waving and leaping in the breeze. And over all
blazes the cloudless blue.

You gaze astounded. Ten steps downward, and the vision is gone.
The green cloud has closed again over your head, and you are
stumbling in the darkness of the bush, half blinded by the sudden
change from the blaze to the shade. Beware. 'Take care of the
Croc-chien!' shouts your companion: and you are aware of, not a
foot from your face, a long, green, curved whip, armed with pairs of
barbs some four inches apart; and are aware also, at the same
moment, that another has seized you by the arm, another by the
knees, and that you must back out, unless you are willing to part
with your clothes first, and your