was lost to sight beyond; far away in the west and south and
north distant mountains appeared, not in regular ranges, but in
groups or singly, or looking like blue banked-up clouds on the
horizon.

Glad at having discovered the existence of this forest so near
home, and wondering why my Indian friends had never taken me to
it nor ever went out on that side, I set forth with a light heart
to explore it for myself, regretting only that I was without a
proper weapon for procuring game. The walk from the ridge over
the savannah was easy, as the barren, stony ground sloped
downwards the whole way. The outer part of the wood on my side
was very open, composed in most part of dwarf trees that grow on
stony soil, and scattered thorny bushes bearing a yellow
pea-shaped blossom. Presently I came to thicker wood, where the
trees were much taller and in greater variety; and after this
came another sterile strip, like that on the edge of the wood
where stone cropped out from the ground and nothing grew except
the yellow-flowered thorn bushes. Passing this sterile ribbon,
which seemed to extend to a considerable distance north and
south, and was fifty to a hundred yards wide, the forest again
became dense and the trees large, with much undergrowth in places
obstructing the view and making progress difficult.

I spent several hours in this wild paradise, which was so much
more delightful than the extensive gloomier forests I had so
often penetrated in Guayana; for here, if the trees did not
attain to such majestic proportions, the variety of vegetable
forms was even greater; as far as I went it was nowhere dark
under the trees, and the number of lovely parasites everywhere