We Crept Along The Side Of A Torrent Among Exquisite Trees, Moss, And Ferns, Till We Came To A Place Where It Divided.

There were three horses tethered there, some wearing apparel lying on the rocks, and some human footprints along one of the streams, which decided me in favour of the other.

H. remonstrated by signs, as doubtless he espied an opportunity for much gossip in the other direction, but on my appearing persistent, he again laughed and followed me.

From this point it was one perfect, rapturous, intoxicating, supreme vision of beauty, and I felt, as I now believe, that at last I had reached a scene on which foreign eyes had never looked. The glories of the tropical forest closed us in with their depth, colour, and redundancy. Here the operations of nature are rapid and decisive. A rainfall of eleven feet in a year and a hothouse temperature force every plant into ceaseless activity, and make short work of decay. Leafage, blossom, fruitage, are simultaneous and perennial. The river, about as broad as the Cam at Cambridge, leaped along, clear like amber, pausing to rest awhile in deep bright pools, where fish were sporting above the golden sand, a laughing, sparkling, rushing, terrorless stream, "without mysteries or agonies," broken by rocks, green with mosses and fragile ferns, and in whose unchilled waters, not more than three feet deep, wading was both safe and pleasant. It was not possible to creep along its margin, the forest was so dense and tangled, so we waded the whole way, and wherever the water ran fiercely my unshod guide helped me.

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