tree, and its usurping progeny of vines, receiving no more succour from
their late foster-parent, droop and perish in their turn.

A vine called the bush-rope by the wood-cutters, on account of its use in
hauling out the heaviest timber, has a singular appearance in the forests
of Demerara. Sometimes you see it nearly as thick as a man's body, twisted
like a corkscrew round the tallest trees and rearing its head high above
their tops. At other times three or four of them, like strands in a cable,
join tree and tree and branch and branch together. Others, descending from
on high, take root as soon as their extremity touches the ground, and
appear like shrouds and stays supporting the mainmast of a line-of-battle
ship; while others, sending out parallel, oblique, horizontal and
perpendicular shoots in all directions, put you in mind of what travellers
call a matted forest. Oftentimes a tree, above a hundred feet high,
uprooted by the whirlwind, is stopped in its fall by these amazing cables
of nature, and hence it is that you account for the phenomenon of seeing
trees not only vegetating, but sending forth vigorous shoots, though far
from their perpendicular, and their trunks inclined to every degree from
the meridian to the horizon.

Their heads remain firmly supported by the bush-rope; many of their roots
soon refix themselves in the earth, and frequently a strong shoot will
sprout out perpendicularly from near the root of the reclined trunk, and in
time become a fine tree. No grass grows under the trees and few weeds,
except in the swamps.

The high grounds are pretty clear of underwood, and with a cutlass to sever
the small bush-ropes it is not difficult walking among the trees.

The soil, chiefly formed by the fallen leaves and decayed trees, is very