THE VIRGIN FOREST 



flock of parrots flies with excited shrieks above the tree-tops. And 

 now the deafening, whirring song of the cicadas begins. The whole 

 forest seems to vibrate with it until one's very flesh feels the vibra- 

 tions ; and the wanderer's heart goes forth to all this teeming life. 



It is quieter in the woods which clothe the hills up which the 

 great city of Rio de Janeiro is pushing its cohorts of houses. I climbed 

 the highest of these mountains, the Pico da Tijuca, and after a good 

 deal of trouble made my way back to the highway, which follows 

 a bold, curving line across the ridges and lateral valleys, and 

 gradually descends towards the city: now affording one a view of 

 the solitudes of the mountains (Plate 24), and now delighting one's 

 eyes with a glimpse, beyond the sea of tree-tops waving almost 

 directly below, of the wide ocean. 



While the wanderer breathes with content the cool, scented air 

 of night as he strides down the road, he hears on every side, from 

 the scrub at the edge of the forest, a cry of "Chick, chick !" There is 

 something sweet and peaceful in this quiet, silvery accent, which 

 accompanies us until we come to the end of the woods, and the city, 

 a sea of light, receives us. I have never been able to find the creature 

 which utters this sound, though I have searched for it long and 

 thoroughly ; it may be a little frog, or it may be an insect. 



When on the day after my arrival in Pernambuco I took the 

 electric tram to the edge of the woods, reaching them as the darkness 

 was falling, the unmistakable sense of the tropics, with which I had 

 become familiar in Ceylon, at once took possession of me. A heavy 

 odour of decay rose from the rain-wet ground, and the silence of 

 the tropical night settled heavily and deliciously on my heart, like 

 a recovered mistress. For it is a remarkable fact that although in 

 the tropics the night is often much noisier than in Europe, since the 

 frogs and the cicadas fill it with their cries, it nevertheless impresses 

 one as being peculiarly and impressively silent. The reason is, 

 perhaps, that we are not accustomed to such a combination of 

 darkness, and vegetable odours, and summer heat. With us Nature 

 is not wrapped in darkness until a late hour of the night, so that we 

 are doubly impressed by the onset of night at six o'clock in the 

 evening. And as in the darkness we often imagine that we can hear 

 something breathing, so, in the silence of the night of the tropical 

 forest, when all the little superficial sounds are stilled, we seem to 

 feel Mother Earth herself rising and falling as she deeply and 

 silently draws her breath. 



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