from this place; and at the extremity of the
savanna you enter the forest, and journey along a winding path at the
foot of a hill. There is no habitation within this day's walk. The
traveller, as usual, must sleep in the forest. The path is not so good
the following day. The hills over which it lies are rocky, steep, and
rugged, and the spaces betwixt them swampy, and mostly knee-deep in
water. After eight hours' walk you find two or three Indian huts,
surrounded by the forest; and in little more than half an hour from these
you come to ten or twelve others, where you pass the night. They are
prettily situated at the entrance into a savanna. The eastern and
western hills are still covered with wood; but on looking to the
south-west quarter you perceive it begins to die away. In those forests
you may find plenty of the trees which yield the sweet-smelling resin
called acaiari, and which, when pounded and burnt on charcoal, gives a
delightful fragrance.

From hence you proceed, in a south-west direction, through a long swampy
savanna. Some of the hills which border on it have nothing but a thin
coarse grass and huge stones on them; others, quite wooded; others with
their summits crowned, and their base quite bare; and others, again, with
their summits bare, and their base in thickest wood.

Half of this day's march is in water, nearly up to the knees. There are
four creeks to pass; one of them has a fallen tree across it. You must
make your own bridge across the other three. Probably, were the truth
known, these apparently four creeks are only the meanders of one.

The jabiru, the largest bird in Guiana, feeds in the marshy savanna
through which you have just passed. He is wary and shy, and will not
allow you to get within gun-shot of him.

You sleep this night in the forest, and reach an Indian settlement about
three o'clock the next evening, after walking one-third of the way
through wet and miry ground.

But, bad as the walking is through it, it is easier than where you cross
over the bare hills, where you have to tread on sharp stones, most of
them lying edgewise.

The ground gone over these two last days seems condemned to perpetual
solitude and silence. There was not one four-footed animal to be seen,
nor even the marks of one. It would have been as silent as midnight, and
all as still and unmoved as a monument had not the jabiru in the marsh,
and a few vultures soaring over the mountain's top,