ey have
flowed. The dark indicate vegetable decay, while the others point to
clayey soil. Twice we came across rapids, and in each case made a
portage of half a mile or so to avoid them. The woods on either side
were primeval, which are more easily penetrated than woods of the
second growth, and we had no great difficulty in carrying our canoes
through them. How shall I ever forget the solemn mystery of it? The
height of the trees and the thickness of the boles exceeded anything
which I in my town-bred life could have imagined, shooting upwards in
magnificent columns until, at an enormous distance above our heads, we
could dimly discern the spot where they threw out their side-branches
into Gothic upward curves which coalesced to form one great matted roof
of verdure, through which only an occasional golden ray of sunshine
shot downwards to trace a thin dazzling line of light amidst the
majestic obscurity. As we walked noiselessly amid the thick, soft
carpet of decaying vegetation the hush fell upon our souls which comes
upon us in the twilight of the Abbey, and even Professor Challenger's
full-chested notes sank into a whisper. Alone, I should have been
ignorant of the names of these giant growths, but our men of science
pointed out the cedars, the great silk cotton trees, and the redwood
trees, with all that profusion of various plants which has made this
continent the chief supplier to the human race of those gifts of Nature
which depend upon the vegetable world, while it is the most backward in
those products which come from animal life. Vivid orchids and
wonderful colored lichens smoldered upon the swarthy tree-trunks and
where a wandering shaft of light fell full upon the golden allamanda,
the scarlet star-clusters of the tacsonia, or the rich deep blue of
ipomaea, the effect was as a dream of fairyland. In these great wastes
of forest, life, which abhors darkness, struggles ever upwards to the
light. Every plant, even the smaller ones, curls and writhes to the
green surface, twining itself round its stronger and taller brethren in
the effort. Climbing plants are monstrous and luxuriant, but others
which have never been known to climb elsewhere learn the art as an
escape from that somber shadow, so that the common nettle, the jasmine,
and even the jacitara palm tree can be seen circling the stems of the
cedars and striving to reach their crowns. Of animal life there was no
movement amid the majestic vau