of the New
World had not been yet ascertained. Cousin Benedict would certainly
have attached his name to some discovery of this kind. But he did not
like botany--he knew nothing about it. He even, quite naturally, held
flowers in aversion, under the pretext that some of them permit
themselves to imprison the insects in their corollas, and poison them
with their venomous juices.

At times, the forest became marshy. They felt under foot quite a
network of liquid threads, which would feed the affluents of the little
river. Some of the rills, somewhat large, could only be crossed by
choosing fordable places.

On their banks grew tufts of reeds, to which Harris gave the name of
papyrus. He was not mistaken, and those herbaceous plants grew
abundantly below the damp banks.

Then, the marsh passed, thickets of trees again covered the narrow
routes of the forest.

Harris made Mrs. Weldon and Dick Sand remark some very fine
ebony-trees, much larger than the common ebony-tree, which furnish a
wood much blacker and much stronger than that of commerce. Then there
were mango-trees, still numerous, though they were rather far from the
sea. A kind of fur of white moss climbed them as far as the branches.
Their thick shade and their delicious fruit made them precious trees,
and meanwhile, according to Harris, not a native would dare to
propagate the species. "Whoever plants a mango-tree dies!" Such is the
superstitious maxim of the country.

During the second half of this first day of the journey, the little
troop, after the midday halt, began to ascend land slightly inclined.
They were not as yet the slopes of the chain of the first plane, but a
sort of undulating plateau which connected the plain with the mountain.

There the trees, a little less compact, sometimes clustered in groups,
would have rendered the march easier, if the soil had not been invaded
by herbaceous plants. One might believe himself in the jungles of
Oriental India. Vegetation appeared to be less luxuriant than in the
lower valley of the little river, but it was still superior to that of
the temperate regions of the Old or of the New World.

Indigo was growing there in profusion, and, according to Harris, this
leguminous plant passed with reason for the most usurping plant of the
country. If a field came to be abandoned, this parasite, as much
despised as the thistle or the nettle, took possession of it
immediately.

One tree seemed lacking in this fore