t
in the ground show but few leaves or flowers, until they have clambered
upwards, through the underwood, into the light of heaven. Almost the
only relief afforded the sight, in this vast solitude, comes from the
rivers and other collections of water, over whose expanse the eye revels
with the delight we feel on emerging from the gloom of a cavern. Every
object seems to be struggling to get outside of this chaotic growth,
where it can obtain the genial influence of the sun: for near the
surface of the ground are perpetual shade and hideous entanglement.

In this primeval forest we must not expect to realize any of our
poetical ideas of the primitive residence of the first human family.
Here are no Arcadian scenes of peace and rural felicity. On all sides we
behold an undying competition for light and life, among both plants
and animals. We are reminded here of life in a crowded city, where
the excessive abundance of supplies for human wants imported from the
surrounding country causes a still greater superfluity of population,
and produces a struggle for a livelihood more severe than in a rural
district of gravel and boulders. The oases of this great wilderness are
those places in which there is an absence of the general fertility:
barrenness in such circumstances is a relief,--because it allows both
freedom and repose.

This wood is the nursery of all descriptions of monsters, living chiefly
in trees. On their branches and in their tangled recesses, adorned with
all sorts of foliage and flowers, creatures the most terrible and the
most loathsome are seen crowding and crouching in close proximity to
the most beautiful forms of living things. They fill the air with their
discordant utterances, and allow no permanent silence or tranquillity.
Hours of periodical stillness and repose, occurring mostly at noonday,
and affecting one with a sensation of awful grandeur, by contrast with
the preceding disturbances, are followed, especially in the night, by a
tumultuous roar from the legions of contending animals.

"A universal hubbub wild
Of stunning sounds and voices all confused,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults the ear
With loudest vehemence."

Even the notes of insects are a deafening crash, like the rattling of
machinery in a cotton-mill. Except in the hush of noonday, the notes of
singing-birds are drowned amidst the howling of monkeys, the whining of
sapajous, the roar of the jaguar, and the dismal hoo