d the
forest--dense, green, flower-decked, alive and gay with bird and insect
life--pressed its foliaged walls in upon them ever closer and closer,
except where an occasional break caused by fire or windfall afforded
them a momentary glimpse of giant mountain ranges to right and left, at
first a delicate purple-grey in the distance, but ever, like the forest,
creeping closer in upon them. And now at increasingly frequent
intervals, they began to see Indians, at first a solitary "buck"
spearing fish from his canoe, but later on in parties of from half a
dozen to fifty or more, crossing the river, or, like themselves, using
it as a highway. But thus far, much as Stukely desired it, they had
never succeeded in getting into touch with the natives, for the latter
invariably fled at the mere sight of them.

One of the most surprising circumstances, perhaps, in connection with
this voyage up the river, was the rapidity with which the two
Englishmen--or Dick, rather--lost the capacity to be astonished.
Stukely, indeed, had never manifested the least surprise at any of the
wonders that were continually coming under their observation, for,
steadfastly adhering to that strange fancy of his that he must have
lived in these regions during some former state of existence, he
persistently asserted that everything he saw was perfectly familiar to
him. But with Dick it was very different; he was as matter-of-fact as
Phil was fanciful; and the sight of giant trees between two and three
hundred feet in height towering up into the cloudless blue a solid mass
of purple, scarlet, or yellow bloom; of graceful clumps of feathery
bamboo a hundred feet long; of the lofty forest walls on either hand
draped with festoons of orchids of the most extraordinary and
undreamed-of shapes and the most gorgeous colours; of birds, insects,
ay, and even fish, that flashed and glittered with all the hues of the
rainbow; of monkeys who followed their course up the river in troops of
a hundred or more; of the lithe and graceful jaguar lying stretched upon
some trunk or branch that closely overhung the water, watching with
ready paw to seize any unwary fish that might chance to swim past within
reach; of alligators that basked log-like on the mud banks--all these
things were to Chichester at first a source of utmost wonder and
admiration; yet within a month they had become the veriest commonplaces
to him, and had entirely ceased to attract his attention. He w