a when she
has been thinking how to give our walk the object which you have just
regretted it lacks."

"Besides, Mr. Benito, I am sure my idea will please you," replied the
mulatto.

"Well, what is it?" asked Minha.

"You see that liana?"

And Lina pointed to a liana of the _"cipos"_ kind, twisted round a
gigantic sensitive mimosa, whose leaves, light as feathers, shut up at
the least disturbance.

"Well?" said Benito.

"I proposed," replied Minha, "that we try to follow that liana to its
very end."

"It is an idea, and it is an object!" observed Benito, "to follow this
liana, no matter what may be the obstacles, thickets, underwood, rocks,
brooks, torrents, to let nothing stop us, not even----"

"Certainly, you are right, brother!" said Minha; "Lina is a trifle
absurd."

"Come on, then!" replied her brother; "you say that Lina is absurd so as
to say that Benito is absurd to approve of it!"

"Well, both of you are absurd, if that will amuse you," returned Minha.
"Let us follow the liana!"

"You are not afraid?" said Manoel.

"Still objections!" shouted Benito.

"Ah, Manoel! you would not speak like that if you were already on your
way and Minha was waiting for you at the end."

"I am silent," replied Manoel; "I have no more to say. I obey. Let us
follow the liana!"

And off they went as happy as children home for their holidays.

This vegetable might take them far if they determined to follow it to
its extremity, like the thread of Ariadne, as far almost as that which
the heiress of Minos used to lead her from the labyrinth, and perhaps
entangle them more deeply.

It was in fact a creeper of the salses family, one of the cipos known
under the name of the red _"japicanga,"_ whose length sometimes measures
several miles. But, after all, they could leave it when they liked.

The cipo passed from one tree to another without breaking its
continuity, sometimes twisting round the trunks, sometimes garlanding
the branches, here jumping form a dragon-tree to a rosewood, then from
a gigantic chestnut, the _"Bertholletia excelsa,"_ to some of the wine
palms, _"baccabas,"_ whose branches have been appropriately compared
by Agassiz to long sticks of coral flecked with green. Here round
_"tucumas,"_ or ficuses, capriciously twisted like centenarian
olive-trees, and of which Brazil had fifty-four varieties; here round
the kinds of euphorbias, which produce caoutchouc, _"gualtes,"_ noble
palm-trees, with slend