s."

"What did you expect to meet with?"

"Plants all entangled together, birds, monkeys, and tigers."

"Your ideal menagerie will, perhaps, make its appearance subsequently.
As for the entangled plants, if the whole forest was full of them, it
would be absolutely impenetrable. The soil is bare because the trees are
so bushy that no rays of the sun can penetrate, and many plants wither
and die in the shade; but whenever we come upon a glade, you will find
the earth covered with grass and shrubs."

"Then the forests of the _Terre-Temperee_ are more beautiful than those
of the _Terre-Chaude_?"

"You judge too hastily," replied Sumichrast; "wait till our path leads
along the edge of some stream."

"All right," muttered the boy, shaking his head and turning towards his
friend; "the woods we have gone through are much more pleasant. It is so
silent, and the boughs are so high that we might fancy we were in a
church."

The boy's remark was far from incorrect. The dark arches of the
intersecting branches, the black soil formed by the accumulated
vegetable _debris_ of perhaps five or six thousand years, the dim
obscurity scarcely penetrated by the sunlight making its way through the
dark foliage--all combined to imbue the mind with a kind of vague
melancholy. The limited prospect and the profound silence (for birds
rarely venture into this forest-ocean) also tend to fill the soul with
gloomy thoughts, and prove that health of mind as well as of body
depends upon light.

A furnace-like heat compelled us to keep silence, and tree succeeded
tree with sad monotony. The moist soil gave way under our feet, and
retained the traces of our footsteps. At a giddy height above our heads
the dark foliage of the spreading branches entirely obscured the sky.
Every now and then I gave a few words of encouragement to Lucien, who
was walking behind me quite overcome with the heat; especially, I
recommended him not to drink, in the first place, because the water must
be economized, and next because it would only stimulate his thirst.

"Then we shall never drink any more," said the boy.

"Oh yes! Chanito," rejoined the Indian, "when we form our bivouac, I
shall make plenty of coffee, and if you sip it, in a quarter of an hour
your thirst will be quenched."

"Then I hope we shall soon reach our bivouac," said Lucien, mournfully.

If I had consulted my own feelings, I should now have given the word to
halt; but reason and experience e