s, as
usual, loaded with creepers, orchids, birds'-nests, and huge round
black lumps, which are the nests of ants; all lodged among the butts
of old leaves and the spathes of old flowers. Here, as at
Chaguanas, grand Cerimans and Seguines scrambled twenty feet up the
Cocorite trunks, delighting us by the luscious life in the fat stem
and fat leaves, and the brilliant, yet tender green, which literally
shone in the darkness of the Cocorite bower; and all, it may be, the
growth of the last six months; for, as was plain from the charred
stems of many Cocorites and Moriches, the fire had swept through the
wood last summer, destroying all that would burn. And at the foot
of the Cocorites, weltering up among and over their roots, was pitch
again; and here and there along the side of the path were pitch
springs, round bosses a yard or two across and a foot or two high,
each with a crater atop a few inches across, filled either with
water or with liquid and oozing pitch; and yet not interfering, as
far as could be seen, with the health of the vegetation which
springs out of it.

We followed the trace which led downhill, to the shore of the
peninsula farthest from the village. As we proceeded we entered
forest still unburnt, and a tangle of beauty such as we saw at
Chaguanas. There rose, once more, the tall cane-like Manacque
palms, which we christened the forest nymphs. The path was lined,
as there, with the great leaves of the Melastomas, throwing russet
and golden light down from their undersides. Here, as there, Mimosa
leaflets, as fine as fern or sea-weed, shiver in the breeze. A
species of Balisier, which we did not see there, carried crimson and
black parrot beaks with blue seed-vessels; a Canne de Riviere,
{161a} with a stem eight feet high, wreathed round with pale green
leaves in spiral twists, unfolded hooded flowers of thinnest
transparent white wax, with each a blush of pink inside. Bunches of
bright yellow Cassia blossoms dangled close to our heads; white
Ipomoeas scrambled over them again; and broad-leaved sedges, five
feet high, carrying on bright brown flower-heads, like those of our
Wood-rush, blue, black, and white shot for seeds. {161b} Overhead,
sprawled and dangled the common Vine-bamboo, {161c} ugly and
unsatisfactory in form, because it has not yet, seemingly, made up
its mind whether it will become an arborescent or a climbing grass;
and, meanwhile, tries t