ntly I came to thicker wood, where the trees were much
taller and in greater variety; and after this came another sterile
strip, like that on the edge of the wood where stone cropped out from
the ground and nothing grew except the yellow-flowered thorn bushes.
Passing this sterile ribbon, which seemed to extend to a considerable
distance north and south, and was fifty to a hundred yards wide, the
forest again became dense and the trees large, with much undergrowth in
places obstructing the view and making progress difficult.

I spent several hours in this wild paradise, which was so much more
delightful than the extensive gloomier forests I had so often penetrated
in Guayana; for here, if the trees did not attain to such majestic
proportions, the variety of vegetable forms was even greater; as far
as I went it was nowhere dark under the trees, and the number of lovely
parasites everywhere illustrated the kindly influence of light and air.
Even where the trees were largest the sunshine penetrated, subdued by
the foliage to exquisite greenish-golden tints, filling the wide lower
spaces with tender half-lights, and faint blue-and-gray shadows. Lying
on my back and gazing up, I felt reluctant to rise and renew my ramble.
For what a roof was that above my head! Roof I call it, just as the
poets in their poverty sometimes describe the infinite ethereal sky by
that word; but it was no more roof-like and hindering to the soaring
spirit than the higher clouds that float in changing forms and tints,
and like the foliage chasten the intolerable noonday beams. How far
above me seemed that leafy cloudland into which I gazed! Nature, we
know, first taught the architect to produce by long colonnades the
illusion of distance; but the light-excluding roof prevents him from
getting the same effect above. Here Nature is unapproachable with her
green, airy canopy, a sun-impregnated cloud--cloud above cloud; and
though the highest may be unreached by the eye, the beams yet filter
through, illuming the wide spaces beneath--chamber succeeded by chamber,
each with its own special lights and shadows. Far above me, but not
nearly so far as it seemed, the tender gloom of one such chamber or
space is traversed now by a golden shaft of light falling through some
break in the upper foliage, giving a strange glory to everything it
touches--projecting leaves, and beard-like tuft of moss, and snaky
bush-rope. And in the most open part of that most open